Hodesh Elul Tov: May the month of Elul be a good one

The Jewish month of Elul begins tonight. It is the month that precedes the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe, a/k/a the "High Holidays," the High Holy Days, and (although I've always disliked this) the Hi Hos.

So many Jews forget, or likely never really learned, that the Days of Awe don't just show up out of nowhere, expecting us to look deeply into our innermost thoughts and feelings and take stock of who we are and who we wish to be. We have the entire month of Elul to prepare for the spiritual work of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and the 10 Days of Teshuvah between them. 

This year, I've decided to take advantage of social media by blogging my way through Elul. I've never blogged before, but I am an avid Facebooker. Counting the Omer* on Facebook is the only way I've managed to count every single day without forgetting. So, perhaps blogging during Elul will spur me to create a heshbon hanefesh, an inventory of my soul---the kind of soul level work that is necessary to delve deeply into the Days of Awe. 

The tools I'm using for this are varied. There is musar, the practice of refining one's sense of ethics by focusing on particular middot, or characteristics, such as patience, humilty, or orderliness. There is Mindfulness, a type of meditation I've been practicing but without discipline for some time. There is writing practice, a type of meditation I learned from the books of Natalie Goldberg---I used to practice this with great diligence, but I have let it go.

I've left out prayer. Call it that, or call it tefilla (Hebrew) or davening (Yiddish)---I need to reassess what it means. Perhaps that is part of my Heshbon Hanefesh?

Elul tov!

*There are 49 days between the holidays of Pesach and Shavuot. From Biblical times to the present, there have been various reasons for creating a spiritual practice out of counting each and every day.