Is it a Dog eat Dog world?

“For the leader, By David, a psalm. I have put my hope in G-d, He turned to me, and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the dark pit, from the slimy mud…Happy is the man who puts his trust in G-d, and did not turn to the arrogant, and followers of deceit…”

This past week I was introduced to a business, “power” book.  I was told it’s quite popular and on amazon it ranks pretty high. To me it seemed more like a book on how to deceive people for one’s own selfish benefit and promotion, no matter what. When a person lives in a dog eat dog world, the fastest, strongest, animal wins. The question is, is this world really, a dog eat dog world?? And, if you succeed to devour others, have you really won?

Rashi one of the foremost commentators on the Bible explains the word “slimy mud” from the psalms above, as the type of mud that sucks one into it. A mixture of earth and water that pulls and draws anything that falls into it.

Earth, represents all that is  physical, dark and heavy. There is a tangible sense of self in earth, it doesn’t move, and says, “Here I am.”

Water is a metaphor for G-ds wisdom. It flows from on high and gratifies all that is low. Everything grows, with water. In true wisdom, one becomes absorbed in the new insight and understanding, and the self is nullified in front of the new awareness. A person is endowed with new perspective and true growth. An expanded and improved character becomes the new reality.

People are made of both spiritual and physical. We all have a spark of G-d within, which is essentially the wise intelligent wisdom of G-d that is nurtured and drawn out into our bodies and lives, by studying G-ds wisdom in the Bible and its commentaries.

We are also made of bodies that are made coarser every time we feed and satisfy the desires of this body. The sense of self becomes all the more manifest and prominent and everything begins to revolve around me. In the end a person who feeds the body as a primary concern, becomes very small, in his own small dark and heavy world.

Pursuing exclusively the desires of materiality in itself is pretty dangerous, mixing into this shortsighted and misguided pursuit, wisdom, just enough to give consistency and body to the loose earth, creates a slime and mud that magnifies individuality, and  is a recipe for making a person’s situation  all the more worse.

People get sucked into this way of thinking and behaving. Mixing the earth with some water, covers and sucks in, all those who pursue this mentality in their own small areas of existence, separate and fragmented from anyone else, to struggle for more and more, in the never ending dark little corners of their own places in the mud.

On the opposite side of this mentality is what King David describes as one who is happy, because he does not turn to the arrogant and people of deceit and has placed his trust in G-d.

He lives in the same world with the same body. Earth and carbon is still very real and tangible, but it is the water, the wisdom of G-d and the spiritual which is his focus. Instead of the water serving the earth, he uses every opportunity to have the earth become permeated by the wisdom of the water, so it isn’t slimy mud.

The world is fragmented and disjointed when one lives in slimy mud. When the focus is soul, something much more fluid, larger and more brilliant than the corporeal, unity, strength, wisdom, happiness and light are just some of the positive results.