Category Archives: TorahCycles: Midrash for self-exploration and growth

That Other Me: TorahCycle Toldot

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shoftim

As a front piece to her new book Small Victories, Anne Lamott cites a Billy Collins poem, In the Evening, the last line of which is And the past and the future?/Nothing but an only child with two different masks.

That’s this week. The yin and yang of us. The cunning and the simple one. The compassionate one; the selfish one. The wise and the innocent, calculating and trusting aspects of self. Dualities we’ve had imaged for us since Cain and Abel. You and that other you. Me and that other me. Nothing but us playing with different masks. Putting on the play of our lives.

Who’s running your show in any given moment is a matter of circumstance, habit, and sometimes intention. Some is trainable, amenable to growth. Other ingredients will stick in place for another lifetime or three. If you’re a witness to your own development, you’re probably aware what energies you’re running on and working on, and at least some of the what you stub your toe on regularly.

Eons ago I worked on a project to live “with greater awareness and intention.” On the clumsy, foolish days, I wanna ask How’s that going for ya, honey? But on the good ones, the ones filled with gratitude and wonder, I feel so very lucky to be doing that particular part of the puzzle.

My holiday wishes for us all, May you have many, many more of the good days. And may you understand clearly what the bad days are trying to teach you.

These readings offer us vivid examples of acting from desire and greed, and from nobility and compassion. We’re all of those things, depending on the day. Torah’s a mirror asking us to look at which one we’re being now, so that we can up the ante on our game.

Our attitude and point of view is almost always situational and relative. Even when we get to the big picture, a ten-thousand foot view of where we are in our evolution, it’s hard to hold onto. Our understanding scatters when we’re faced with crises or difficult outcomes. One more time we find “that other me” acting out or pushing boundaries. The big insight is knowing that it’s to help us better understand the lessons we’re here to work on.

We’re rarely appreciative. But karma’s such a patient process.

Physicists tell us that a huge percent of the universe is “dark matter”– the stuff we cannot see that probably makes everything we can see function as it does. To me it’s soul matter, directing the reality we live in. NPR had a story the other day about mitchondrial DNA. It’s what make our cells run; a mere 27 genes out of 20,000 plus, but they function like a battery or energetic motivation. So it’s especially important to pay very close attention when that other you–your inner Esau–the one you’re not always in such a rush to claim–acts out and does something stupid or short-sighted.

Because that’s how our othernesses get our attention. By starting fires in and under us. It’s our job to look at them and listen to them. And to to choose our next steps carefully and wisely.

Till Death Do Us Part: TorahCycle Chayei Sarah

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Chayei Sarah 2013People with relationship issues tend to fall into one of two categories: How do I find and keep a good one? How do I change or dump a bad one? There are auxiliary questions of romance relating to finding/losing/mourning one’s true love. And a zillion issues related to communications, money, messiness, honesty, household chores, and bloopers.

I do know a handful of remarkable relationships. The sort we were weaned to believe in. The decades-long partnerships where both halves have grown and evolved in love and support of one another. Sure, they argue and disagree on matters great and small, but the testing anneals the bond rather than breaking it. It’s admirable and enviable.

Why don’t the rest of us have it? Why’s it so hard to find and nurture the connections that challenge, nourish, and enhance our bodies and souls in equal measure?

I wish I had easy answers.

Every single person who’s looking for a relationship has their own version of “the list.” Qualities that Mr. or Ms. Unknown will have as basic part of their core DNA, lifestyle, and character. The pretty much standard ones (in an order reflecting any given moment) are sensuality, integrity, intelligence, spirituality, communications, financial stability, and senses of humor, honor, curiosity, and common sense. A friend one told me one of hers was “forthright,” which I interpret in part as an absence of passive aggressive or whiny tendencies. The ability to disagree and not hold a grudge or desire to prove one’s point.

My own summary is Someone who appreciates my best qualities and tolerates my worst ones with patience and humor. (And hopefully agree on which is which.

Because let’s face it, we have gnarly places. Ways we respond when life doesn’t go our way. Attitudes and behaviors that make us and/or our loved ones crazy. I’m not talking about serious maladies like substance abuse, or petty annoyances like knuckle-cracking. More retreating to a gloomy corner or the frustrating ward-off of cheerful denial. The kinds of traits that make you feel a loved one is either remote or clueless.

This week’s reading has a servant sent on a mission to choose Isaac’s wife. What seals the deal is her compassion. That’s setting the bar at the right place. Because when the hot sensuality is less frequent and times are tough, what you want, or should, is someone who has the grace to approach life (and you) with equanimity and a sense of caring.

For your sake I hope you’ve had at least one great love. The kind that shakes your soul to the core. A red-hot, zappy, can’t keep your hands off one another that lasts until the end. A love you so much my heart hurts kind of romance.

But I also hope you’ve met the person who satisfies your list. The one you want standing by you in the daylight, both when life seems hard and you can’t make it through alone, and in times when you’re happy and excited about the possibilities life is offering.

Partners like that should be well-loved. I hope you are one and appreciate or find yours.

Knock, Knock: TorahCycle Vayeira

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Vayeira 2014Much of lot of Torah is about recognizing and responding to messengers. Messengers and messages that come in various forms. It’s easy to imagine holy messengers looking like white-robed angels. In fact, the Hebrew word for angels is malachim, which translates as messengers.

They come bearing news and pronouncements, instructions and even commands, both joyous and dire. They’re interpreted as performing divine errands. But they’re not on call to you. When you might want them to save or guide you, they can be absent or silent, no matter how much you search, ask or plead.

Who do you listen to then?

This week’s reading has several important moments, with messengers and otherwise. It’s almost a distillation of Torah, framing questions about who one listens to when, how far one is willing to go (in obedience to a god or a spouse), and the generational consequences of those decisions.

In the ultimate supremacy of hospitality, Abraham interrupts a conversation with the divine to welcome three strangers who approach his tent. They are, of course, angels come to bless him and his ostensibly barren wife with news of a child to come. The stories in this reading seed centuries of Middle East conflict: Ishmael/Isaac and Hagar/Sarah, the ancestors of warring tribes, nations, and faiths. It also presents the almost sacrifice of Isaac, interrupted by yet another holy messenger.

Too often we’re shown Abraham acting, but not deliberating, even though he’s confronting serious issues that have deep and long-range consequences. It’s certainly not how I consider far smaller decisions, and contrasts mightily with the bargaining he does to try and save Sodom. What’s the pointing finger trying to tell us?

The metaphor of child sacrifice is scary and compelling. I read it as  putting us eyeball to eyeball with our values. About knowing which voice to follow in very difficult circumstances, albeit of our own making. The whole process that we’re engaged in as humans is about pushing ourselves to understand our true values, and how we’re going to live as a consequence of embracing them. That goes for daily life and bigger things, like elections. If we believe something we need to act to keep it alive.

One of my friends said recently, Nothing important in my life has ever happened where I didn’t hear a call. I feel the same. I’d like to think that if an angel hadn’t appeared Abraham would’ve decided a loving god would not actually require him to kill a child.

I believe in holy resonances but I also believe they’re here to teach us by offering opportunities to step up. In any given moment you have to decide where the lines is that you will or will not follow or cross. Just because you walk down a path doesn’t mean you have to follow it to the sad and bitter end. You get to write your story.

The point is to notice when the messengers and messages arrive. Then to listen very carefully.

You get to decide what you believe in. All the rest is pointing and whispers and hints. And if you are lucky sometimes a great big cosmic pat on the back.

Packing Up, Heading out: TorahCycle Lekh Lekha

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P1000256I bought a little piece of pottery last week, shaped like an old- fashioned suitcase. It reminds me that my parents were immigrants, of the We came to this country with $10 in our pockets, so work hard, get an education, and all will be fine variety. (Yeah, maybe, sometimes.) It reminds me of journeys ahead, and of the personal baggage we all bring along. Our memories and hopes, secrets and fears. The things we keep tucked deeply inside, though our close ones would get lots pretty right.

We carry the emotional legacy of our past, of what’s formed us, and often pack what we think we’ll need to stay safe, to avoid being hurt again (at least in the same way). These defensive patterns shield us. But they also insulate us from what might teach or heal us.

In this week’s reading, Abram (soon-to-be Abraham) leaves his land, his parents’ home, and his country. There’s a strong, dynamic, tension between what we’ve always done/how we’ve always done it and our desire, curiosity, and need for the new. The more old stuff we carry with us, the harder and slower it may be to let go. Think Chinese finger puzzle.

There are places in your soul and heart that have been that way so deep and long that you have to actively choose to make room for change. For the unknown. The hoped-for, but also the unanticipated, surprising, even startling and challenging. Easier said than done.

This is a great time to think about what you’re bringing along, and what not to pack. If you need a meat cleaver to discern the difference, put behind you anything that’s hobbling your growth or seems like a repetitive pattern. If you’re not sure, look for bad outcomes and work back to their source. Catherine Shainberg, whom I respect as a teacher, has many great exercises, to help sort grain from chaff.

How can you develop the part of you that’s looser, that’s easier on yourself, on those you’ve tangled with, and on the folks who see and support you on your journey? It takes both will and a willingness to release.

Many folks organize their lives with compartmentalization and denial. An ignore-the-elephant-under-the-rug practice. But a reframe of that, its higher aspect, is to say What hurt me, or how I’ve hurt myself, no longer has authority over me.

A declaration of emotional independence. A clipping of the ties that bound. Leaving behind your stubbed toes and heart surgeries, whether they were literal or visceral. Transcending what you’ve outgrown. And bringing along the best. The joyous and sweet memories. The lessons learned. And the wisdom and flexibility they engender.

It’s about non-resistance. Yes easier said than done. And easy to get distracted by the clamor of our lives or our very human frailties. But if you pull it off, you’ll travel lighter and happier.

The reading concludes with the covenant of circumcision to mark the relationship with the divine. I prefer the metaphor of peeling back yet the next layer from your heart. Unveiling more you. And experiencing everything in your life one notch more intensely. Living more openly, more vulnerably, more receptively, and with less baggage.

One More Time: TorahCycle Noach

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NasoHere’s the good news about the Noah story: we get another chance. Assuming we’re identifying with the hero. And why would we not?

What if you got a do-over? A real, honest-to-goodness second chance to redo your life. To redefine yourself in some substantive and meaningful way. How would you live then?

It doesn’t matter whether you got there by hitting bottom with bankruptcy, addiction,  a health crisis, or by making new agreements with yourself about your next now. Whether the road is easy or hard, this week’s reading says, you get to head out again.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey describes the trip pretty well: aspire to a great goal, try/fail/fall/keep trying, purifying your soul and karma in the process. Who hasn’t already done it a coupla zillion times? Raise your hand high if you’re where you want to be, and then tell the rest of us how you did it.

Torah says the first ten generations become rife with all manner of corruption and decay. We don’t hear about their journey. Just know they screwed up so badly it’s HaShem who wants the do-over.

In most lives it’s more mundane, but we’re still hobbled by bad decisions, usually about money, partner, career, or habits. Too often we go back to our vices instead of doing our holy work. In the actual Torah story, after getting to dry land, Noah blows it almost immediately with women and wine.

It helps to be curious what we got so wrong. If you know the old stories maybe you’ll have better vision about the big picture. I say that believing that you/we/I are here now to get it right. Or at least better than our previous tries. Because none of us gets it right at once. Even if you do, you get another lesson thrown at you. So do this one as best you can. You don’t wanna have to come back to clean up stray threads of karma.

We’re standing in the gateway of our second chance. In the moment when you decide the future is gonna be different from the past. The whole rest of Torah is the journey to make that true. Trekking through soul space. Learning yourself, finding a tribe, earning and achieving the redemption you have just been granted. We get a rainbow to mark the experience.

Why wouldn’t you sign on for that ride? Why wouldn’t you do it now? (Really, why wouldn’t you? Why haven’t you? Why do you feel hesitant or unready to? Chew on those for a bit.)

It’s time to go back to Go. Back to baseline. Time for the next take. What do we do? We say Yes. That’s what Noach offers. A chance to come out of the wet and the storm and build a fire. To think about how grateful you are for this one more chance to be you. And then to do a good job of it. Your soul is watching and wishing and hoping you’re going to

Lucky you.

New Blank Document: TorahCycle Bereishit

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B 3Whether you’re a creative writer or just someone who’s ever faced a term paper, you know that the blank page is a wonderful and terrifying landscape. If you’re not writing by choice, don’t feel passionate about your topic, or generally feel awkward with words, it can be like having two left feet on the dance floor. But for a writer a blank page can be the gateway to a sense of infinity and awe. Anything can happen. Something rising up or through you.

In her brilliant TED talk on creativity, Elizabeth Gilbert cites a poet out in a field who hears a poem come thundering on the air towards her, and who feels her only purpose in life is to run like hell towards pencil and paper to write it down, to be taken by its mystery, to give the words shape, lest they blow through and past her towards another, readier poet.

How do we catch those wise, insightful, whimsical, and challenging thoughts that come knocking at our door on their way through the cosmos? By listening with every part of us that we can keep present and open. By seizing the moment and by allowing ourselves to be seized by it. By paying attention to new possibilities, and being less focused on what we think we know or want or how life is supposed to turn out.

We need to engage in the dance the universe regularly invites us to. Fearfully or fiercely. Whether we think it’s the right time or not, that we’re ready or not, that time is now.

This is not a new message, from me or anyone else. But it’s one that, no matter how often it is said and heard, bears listening to.

If we are very lucky, life’s creative, not dry. I know the joys of a task list accomplished and getting one’s chores done. But I’m a much bigger sucker for the messy, unpredictable, anything’s-possible-on-this-blank-page invitations of the muses. Because when life feels like that, whether the form is words, music, art, love, or cooking, you’re part of the rush of creative inspiration that this week’s reading invokes. You can live with beginningness.

Great quote from a recent book: A good book invites you to read it again. A great book compels you to reread your soul.

That’s how I see I see the annual re-rolling and re-opening of the Torah, which happens this week. Now is when everything that is was and will be is created out of chaos and void. Now is when all is most fertile, when everything new is possible. We have another chance to get it right. To improve and heal as we trek through our own soul turnings.

One more time we are offered beginningness. The beginning of Genesis is the thundering poem about to grab us by the ankles, the heart, and the soul. It’s an invitation to go on a ride of self-examination, self-discovery, and self-recreation. One more time. Lucky us.

So invite whatever parts of your soul are aching to dance. And invite whatever guides and muses you believe in to inspire you, to fill your own blank document with joy and creativity, as we enter the new unknown.

The Harvest of Our Lives: Sukkot 2014

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sukkot 2014At the end of the day, what do you talk about, you and your soul? Do you get into the existential Why am I here? stuff, or do you think about how you’re doing with your chores, whether they’re simple things like chopping veggies for dinner or deeper tasks like taking a karmic inventory?

In the quiet of the day, what’s the conversation between you and you?

There’s a great holiday that starts this week, early in the Jewish calendar year and at the very end of the Torah cycle. It’s called Sukkot, from the word sukkah, which means booth. Traditional folks build covered shelters, as simple as a frame tented with fabric or wood and a canopy of thatch, harvest stalks, and reeds. They eat and sleep in them. The more observantly elastic take part of each day to meditate outside and share a meal with friends in a less formal sukkah.

The observance is a powerful mirror of the Passover holiday we celebrated six months ago.

Way back then we chose to leave mitzrayim, the narrow place, the symbolic land of constraint. We left slavery and went into the unknown. Now, after reaching our symbolic goal (and a new year), we take time to harvest the blessings of the land, give thanks, and take stock of the insights from our journey.

I’m not always a good practicing Jew. But I cherish the way Judaism organizes the year, the way it moves us inexorably through the cycles of self-examination and growth that so many of us profess to want to partake of.

I frame this writing on the weekly turning of the scrolls because I think that somewhere along the way someone got it right. That there’s a story here, and it’s a good one. That there are paths and processes and journeys that we go on. Spiritually. Emotionally. Intellectually. Physically. That what takes place in the material world happens in parallel in your soul. And if you pay good attention to your process you might learn something that’ll help make it easier/kinder/gentler and also deeper/more meaningful/spiritually valuable. If we all did that, this place would be happier/sweeter/more joyous. And all our paths would be paths of peace.

So if you and your soul aren’t talking, if you don’t think you’re here to learn/grow/improve and to find/create greater goodness and compassion, then what are you doing? Does it teach you or satisfy you? Energize you and open you?

I hope so. If not, then get on with figuring out what’ll give you the same bang for your karmic buck.

As we sit amidst the harvest of the season–the squashes that will sustain us this winter, the aromatics that will flavor our soups, the apples and pears that will sweeten our winter evenings–we give thanks for not only our liberation but for our arrival in this place of safety. Our ability to have perspective and quiet time. No more scrambling and searching and wondering. We have arrived.

At this turn of the seasons, in the oasis of whatever sukkah you choose, take a sweet moment to have a good heart to heart with your higher self. There is simply nothing better.

I’m Sorry: Yom Kippur 2014

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YK-2014On any given day, what I believe may differ from the day before. I’m pretty consistent about basic physics. Gravity, for example, is easy to discern and trust (except in airplanes). My personal mash-up of faith has some reliable components. I believe in synchronicity more than randomness. No white-guy-on-a-throne. But though I believe in prayer, I couldn’t explain it with prepositions like to or from. I think we’re collectively spirit, and that our actions matter. That karma happens, but don’t look for linear examples of it. Bad things happen to good people, and good things to people who don’t seem to deserve them.

Although we’re trying to do good and better, we often blow it. Individually and collectively. I’m not talking about failures to give up cigarettes, carbs, or cocaine. I’m talking about the ways we treat one another on a daily basis, both those we profess to care about, and the rest of humanity.

Judaism has a great annual ritual for acknowledging our lapses, and for asking for forgiveness. It truly doesn’t matter whether you’re asking for it from an external energy or from your own conscience. What’s important is to acknowledge how you’ve not lived at the highest level of personal integrity. To clear the slate and do better the next 364 days.

The process happens on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, starting this year the eve of October 3rd. We say a very specific prayer accompanied by literal pounding of fist over heart. It’s chanted as and in the collective, in part to mask our individual lapses, and also because we act as witnesses to one another, and to the idea that as a community, a tribe, and a global family, we’re each part of a spiritual ecosystem that cannot heal until we all do.

Each phrase is prefaced with For the wrong we have done before you…. and interspersed with the request Please forgive us, pardon us, and help us atone. Read it slowly, thinking about your own hits and misses, and your ability to atone, forgive yourself , and to do better more often.

For the wrong we have done before you….

  • In the closing of the heart,
  • Without knowing what we do,
  • Whether open or concealed,
  • Knowingly and by deceit,
  • Through the prompting of the heart,
  • Through the influence of others,
  • Whether by intention or mistake,
  • By the hand of violence,
  • Through our foolishness of speech,
  • Through an evil inclination,
  • In the palming of a bribe,
  • By expressions of contempt,
  • Through misuse of food and drink,
  • By our avarice and greed,
  • Through offensive gaze,
  • Through a condescending glance,
  • By our quickness to oppose,
  • By deception of a friend,
  • By unwillingness to change,
  • By running to embrace an evil act,
  • By our groundless hatred,
  • In the giving of false pledges.

The focus of the Jewish High Holidays is a process called t’shuvah, return. We’re aiming for a clarity of soul and purpose, a re-commitment to living with integrity, honor, goodness, and compassion. And to creating a world of peace. Amen.

The Way It Feels: TorahCycle Ha’azinu

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hold for later

Somewhere along the way we make agreements with ourselves. Agreements on a soul level about what and how we’ve agreed to experience this time around. Sometimes they show up and I think, I get this lesson easily. Other times not so much. (Of course the “easy” time could really be the fiftieth and I wasn’t paying close enough attention the first forty-nine.) Either way, it helps to be doing your karmic homework.

We all have issues we seem to need to learn the hard way. They’re as unique as our DNA, but the process is pretty much the same: butt your head repeatedly getting it wrong; fall down, complain, cry, or all the above. Rinse and repeat

So how do we learn?

A handful of years ago I said a capital Y Yes to a process I hoped would culminate in emotional and spiritual development. I got a grace period, then a big kick in the butt, some serious choices over a period of time, with lots of healing, friends, head-butting and small bits of progress along the way. It meant moving past fear, sadness, wanting what I didn’t have, not getting what I wanted, or at least not in the way that I wanted it, or as much as I wanted, mourning what I’d lost, and feeling a little wiser. You know the drill.

Making progress took visioning the life I wanted to create and an equally clear knowing of what I was saying No to. Mostly it took shedding a load of heaviness and making lots more room inside for good things to grow.

In Lev Grossman’s brilliant conclusion to his Magicians trilogy [Note: the wise will follow great instructions from the jacket blurb: Throw your electonica down a well and duct tape the door when you begin], he uses the image of a flower to represent the combined emotions of awe and joy and hope and longing. That’s pretty much a summary of a divine spiritual experience. It’s hard to sustain, which is why those peak moments stay etched so clearly in our souls. The moment when….

…. you touch that place in your soul when you’re as close to an enlightenment experience as you’re likely to get this time around.

In the life that follows, your regular one, where you jump-start your day with coffee, put up with colleagues, bad drivers, and stubbing your toe on one thing or another, you sometimes remember that feeling. It can come through a scent or a sight or a thought. And you’re transported to that complex sense of awe and joy and hope and longing.

We are at the cusp of a brand new Jewish calendar year. Soon we’ll be re-rolling the whole Torah and starting again with Genesis. The air is pungent with that freshly-sharpened pencils smell of childhood. We’re anticipating the blessings just around the corner.

Sure, there’ll be butt kicks too. But what the hell. We signed on for this ride, so let’s see what it offers. With luck it’ll be awe and joy and hope and longing. Glimpsed, fulfilled, and more to come.

Choosing Life: TorahCycles Nitazvim/Vayelech

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Mattot 2014Unless you’re in the mood for an earworm, don’t itune the Rent song that so lyrically wraps its arms around what we do with our time in this incarnation. It asks how you measure a life, and answers: In minutes, in daylights, in sunsets, In midnights, in cups of coffee, In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. It encourages us to measure in Seasons of Love, In truths that she learned or In times that he cried, In bridges he burned or the way that she died, and invites us to remember the love.

This week’s reading says, Choose life. There’s simply no better way to spend your time here.

Your choice might be trekking in Nepal and mine watching hummingbirds from my chaise. Others might wish for potable water or a safe place to sleep.

Choosing life comes down to resonating with what your inner voice, your soul, is pointing to and encouraging you see/hear/feel. It’s why some people are good gardeners, and why others sail or put out to sea. Why we write or make art, parent or make love.

We’re each such a strange, wonderful, and mysterious constellation of resources and desires. Life comes down to how we share them.

Several friends have had parents die in the last while, and others are pending same. The ones on the before side are tenser. Each time the phone rings, it’s a potential crises. The caretaker, doctor’s office, or other bad news. The ones who talk about their recently deceased seem to glow a little. They’re free from the worry, and can relax into memories of the gentler times.

Judaism buries folks within a day, and then asks friends to sit with the kin for the first week of evenings. To say prayers and speak of the departed love one. To hear about a mother who loved to docent at the art museum, and learned to tango at 80. The dad who taught his kids to play tennis and chess. These people come alive again in the telling.

Why? Because they lived doing what was most precious to them. And shared their pleasure and joy in doing so.

 

It’s hard to get really angry when you’re happy. Harder to exploit others or start wars. Though it’s pretty easy to feel dissatisfied if you’re having trouble simply staying alive, or feeding and educating your kids.

If we want to keep choosing the life we want, we’ll need to work a little harder making sure everybody else gets the same choices.

There’s always gonna be some evildoers. But if most of us are trying to make a good life for us all, ya gotta think there’ll be less kindling for the flames the malcontents try to light.

If you do nothing else this week, take some moments here and there to be very conscious of what you’re doing right then. To think how you have chosen it, to really feel it, and then choose it again. Or not to, and decide instead to choose something else, a different way of living.

If you really listen, you’ll choose the life you want.