Notes on the Wandering Mind 4: Mystical Mindwandering - Question as Quest

“When this great one was weaned, he began to wander in his mind…”

– Maimonides on Abraham

The prioritization of the personal, inner dimension of experience as the driver of a spiritual life with wandering at its heart is what one prominent 16th century kabbalist identified as the quality that drew God to Abraham – the reason for his selection as the Jewish Prototype. Commenting on a passage in the Zohar prefacing the Lekh-Lekha moment of the divine call, Rabbi Simeon Lavi – who knew something about the rigors of Wandering and the qualities required to meet them, having been exiled from Spain to Morocco as a child, kidnapped and ransomed on his way to the Holy Land, eventually settling in a Tripoli, a place he had not even intended to visit, much less become the Chief Rabbi of for the rest of his life – explains, 

The Zohar brought all these prefatory remarks only to praise the greatness of Abraham – in that he awakened himself from within himself to seek and pursue God, without any teacher or mentor to guide or admonish him. And it is because of this that he was brought close. And it is because of this that he was called “Beloved.” (Psalm 45:8; Ketem Paz, Lekh-lekha; emphasis added)

Which raises a question: can any question be a quest? 

Which naturally can only be answered with another question: Does it feel important enough to hold onto? Does it compel the imagination to follow it across all borders, past fixed horizons, into unknown lands?

Any question can be a quest, as long as you experience it as a glitch in the matrix of reality that others seem not to see or appreciate — but on your life you can’t un-see, un-think, or or un-know.

To be clear, this is not only a question of raw desire and iron will: holding onto a question, and allowing oneself to be held by a question – in the face of contradictions, distractions, and the perpetual temptation to settle for self-flattering apologetics and forfeit the elusive resonance of inner truth – is also a skill that can be practiced and reinforced.  

The skill of Mindwandering: holding a well-conditioned internal space for the passionate, open-ended pursuit an unresolved question, contradiction, or quandary. 

According to Maimonides, the skill embodied by Abraham.