Tag Archives: journey

Ticket to Ride: Pre-Passover 2015

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Tree

When I was younger, playing at Disneyland, we went on all the classic rides, and also bought “E-tickets.” They cost triple and guaranteed more screams and thrills. I carry in my pocket more computing power than first took men to the moon, so I’m sure that 1970’s special effects would seem as hokey now as 1950’s effects did then.

But E-rides challenged you. They took away your sense of time and space. Hard to hold onto small-ego You while hurtling though darkness at strange angles, lasers shooting all about, heavy metal blasting. One either retreats into denial or the boundaries between self/other get much thinner very quickly.

We’re at the gate on one of Judaism’s E-rides. In the rhythm of the sacred year we move between slow times and deeper, more intense, periods. We do have the seventh day metronome of Shabbat, tick-tocking like a heartbeat, to keep us grounded. But now we’re entering a bigger set of sevens. Seven weeks of meditations on aspects of the divine as reflected in self. Time to take a hard look, to see where you’re getting things right, and where you’re not.

All your New Year’s vows and promises, sacred and secular, are past. Most of us had just settled in to appreciating nature’s budding and blooming. Daffodils and birdsong. Feeling renewed without much stress or effort. Life was gonna coast happily.

Now comes Passover. The retelling of the exodus from slavery. We’ll land at the foot of Sinai once again. But this time, instead of brisk walk, we get fifty days to walk the path, one step in front of the other, one day at a time.

This process is called The Counting of the Omer. It’s the kind of thing that introspective people long for. A mandated and validated form of navel gazing. We meditate on the lower seven positions (sephirot) on the Tree of Life. Each an attribute of the divine, and an attribute of self as we mirror the divine. We meditate on them in succession:

Week 1   Chesed: unconditional loving-kindness
Week 2   Gevurah: restraint, justice
Week 3   Tipheret: beauty, harmony compassion
Week 4   Netzach: energy, zeal, endurance
Week 5   Hod: glory, splendor, creativity
Week 6   Yesod: foundation, possibility
Week 7   Malkuth: living in the earthly kingdom with our inner spark aglow.

You can do it alone or you can pair up, with someone you know very well, or someone you want to. You can study, share, articulate, open, and generally clean yourself out, one to the other. This kinda study- buddy system is chevruta. It can be two people or more. But think intimacy.

Can you find ten minutes a day for seven weeks starting Saturday evening/Sunday? If yes, I promise you’ll be different on the other side. Can’t say how. Pretty sure for the better. Definitely softer and more peaceful. You don’t have to do anything more than breathe and open your heart, thinking about the attribute. No giving up gluten or sugar or checking your email when you get twitchy. You just have to show up and listen.

Got your E-ticket? Get on board.

Where’re You Headed?: TorahCycle Vayikra

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Vayishlach 2014

Said if before and likely will every year: Leviticus, the middle book of Torah, is not my favorite. The word means laws. Laws as in: rules; do’s and don’ts; regulations; lots more sticks than carrots, as in punishments for transgressions more than rewards for right actions. Unless you’re counting on an Age of Aquarius style messianic future, which your soul will certainly get an invite for, but your ego/now you may be long forgotten at the party.

Con men and politicians talk about playing the long game. It takes lots of growing up to appreciate. This requires big think, and most of us are stuck in the small stuff, self included.

We get caught, in some life sectors more than others, in the gimme now trap. We may rise to a more tactical approach to satisfying desire in some ways, learn a little delayed gratification. But even when we graduate to having a strategy, we’re still trying to win, to beat the system, too often trying to figure out how to slide in one more pint of Ben and Jerry’s before our diet starts, or the last I-mean-it-this-time cigarette, bet, or needle.

Leviticus assumes you’re going to blow it. But it also gives you guidelines, so if you at least try to color inside the lines, maybe you’ll get it more right more often. It’s a bet on the side of the angels. We’ll get the rebel’s story later.

Now’s the time to make some affirmations. To set some goals, whether they’re for your soul or your waistline.

Six plus months from now we will get to the edge of what is called The Promised Land. Big as a barn wall as it may seem, the messianic age also requires us to all aim that direction sincerely at once. I’ve got enough on my plate coping with my own karma, so I’m gonna choose something achievable, within my skill set, and good for me.

I know mine. If you know me well you probably know mine too. I suspect yours is gonna feel familiar also. If either of us had managed to keep our souls and selves at goal long enough at the same time, we’d be a whole lot closer to the actual Promised Land.

So decide what it’s gonna be for you, for the next six months, now till late September. Write it down. Say it at rising and/or bedtime. Start a journal. Identify barriers that keep you from goal. Reverse the language into a positive. Write down your fears and throw the page into a fire with herbs and incantations. Make up your rituals as you go and enjoy every minute of how you do it. Exercise polite tolerance for the folks next door, who may (and likely will) do something completely different from you. All that really that matters is that they’re aimed at betterment and mutual peace.

The reading is about our next steps to the promised land. Whatever that first step is for you, say it along with your goal as often as you remember. When you get there, identify your next step. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Hide and Seek: TorahCycle Vayakhel-Prkudey

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Yitro

In the mid-80’s a British illustrator came up with a clever set of visual puzzles that challenged viewers to identify a playful character amid throngs of other similarly-clad folks. It reminded me of a game that readers of the Sunday NY Times played, in the days of the great Al Hirshfield. He signed each week’s entertainment cartoon with a number, like 3 or 5,  by his name: that was how often the name NINA would be hidden in the angles of his cover story drawing.

They’re variations of hiding the truth in plain sight. Challenging and simple. And like the optical illusion of the old/young lady or lady/vase, once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee, or believe it took so long, or that you could ever not have seen it. But until you do, there’s so much mystery and searching.

This and recent readings have focused on the building of the mishkan, the portable sanctuary the Israelis would cart with them through decades of trekking. The instructions are given twice, in such tediously exquisite detail that one finds oneself hoping against hope that there’s a revelation so simple and obvious waiting for us once we perceive it. In the interim, there’s counting and measuring of objects as diverse as dolphin skins, spices, and jewels.

We’re told that HaShem will hover over the mishkan in a cloud, so everyone will know they are not alone on their journey. (Always a deeply satisfying reminder: Spirit is with you!) Moses alone will be invited in to talk face-to-face, like you and your best buddy over a cuppa. Come in; sit down; receive the word. That’s when the system works well and you’re in synch with your guides, listening to and hearing one another.

When I was far younger, and every incoming call was a blush-evoking maybe-a-date, my father would answer the phone saying just too loudly, Nobody home! on the principle that anyone too easily cowed was someone I’d be better off without.

That’s how the mishkan works. Your inner Moses has to be brave and smart enough to receive truth. And the universe generous and lined up for you to actually hear it. (Note to self: it helps to be listening.)

Each of us has our own cues: a deer on your walking trail; a synchronistic message from a loved one; a vibrant dream; or even a bright penny by your feet. When things like that appear, we listen a little harder.

The mishkan’s like an extra antenna. Designed to operate on all channels like a SETI beacon beaming out and scanning the heavens, hoping we’ll meet another set of souls with a different cosmic address,

We’ve got a lot of trekking in front of us. But having the mishkan with us helps keeps out feet and souls aimed pretty much aimed the right way, assuming we can hear the directions.

However you think of your mishkan, this is the perfect time to visit it. You’ll find something much deeper and more profound than Waldo.

Playing With Dolls: TorahCycle Tetzaveh

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Kedoshim In my tomboy years I denied ever having played with dolls, even while seated next to a picture of younger me holding one. I did like the nested wooden dolls. They start out five inches tall, but when you’ve opened them all, the teeniest sits like a helpless baby in your palm. My closet’s pretty similar. In the work/playtime/dressy groupings, side by side hang the may-one-day-fit, looks-fine-now, and yikes-need-bigger-today wardrobes.

This week’s reading is about priestly garments. Would you think me more priestly in my smaller or my larger duds? In my jeans or a ceremonial robe?

The ways we appear to others may be very different than how we feel inside. We can look spiffy on the outside, while we protect and hide our smallest inner doll.

What makes us holier? The outer doll we dress for the world or something else? I’m definitely more priestly when my compassion and sense of responsibility to truth telling are greater. But I might be cleaning house or making bad puns about the sacred at the same time. Like our jeans and our ball gowns, we’re wired to be both sacred and irreverent. Neither makes us priestly by default. We have to earn it.

Science confirms faith: we definitely become more like how we say we and believe we are. Words or thoughts, if you aspire to something long enough, even if you’re playing dress-up and pretending, you help make it so.

Where I used to work, our standing joke about the boss was his request (so often prefaced by Helen,…) was Please make it so! The old Bubbe Jewish equivalent, If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

But what if, indeed, as in quantum physics theories visualized in movies like What the ^%^#@*& Do we Know? or studies of the shapes that water takes around various emotions, we actually did make it so? If we became the selves we act, talk, and wish we were?

How does your “me” doll act and look to others, in your suits, your jeans or your robes? Can you be a holy fool, laugh at your foibles? Do you choose to be in the middle of the pack, suppressing your true self? Or can you strip down to your essence and interact directly with the world?

If you read any random fifty match.com profiles you might think virtually all of us were into long walks on the beach and romantic evenings. The few that stood out would either draw you in or push you away. Too often we with very used to hiding our most personal and special parts, be they sacred or damaged. Just like our wardrobes, we’ve all got both parts that make folks want to run like hell and others that inspire love and holiness.

Which aspects of self you encourage and nurture, which you believe in, and dress in like they are the truest you, are the ones you will grow into. Just like your inner holy robes, or your smallest inner doll, that’s the you we all deserve to witness and honor.

Count to Ten: TorahCycle Yitro

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Yitro 2015Many years ago, in my Your Jewish Fairy Godmother persona, I developed her Ten Commandments. I was coaching people addressing life issues like tough relationships or jobs, blocked decision-making and creativity. Developing Ten C was a good exercise for navigating the world.

As I’ve thought about them the past decade plus, they’ve pretty much stood the test of time. I would change only glib number five, and replace it with Know your values. That was the core of how I worked with folks. Because once you’re clear about what feels okay and what does not, your choices become much simpler, even in the pursuit of difficult goals.

It’s rarely a simple do or don’t, like Torah’s original Ten Commandments, handed down in this week’s reading. Most of us never think about violating Thou shalt not kill. But none of us can truly know how we’d act when supremely tested, like in the post-pandemic reality of Emily Mandel’s brilliant new novel Station Eleven, or in the Holocaust.

The original Ten C ask for obedience to a deity and offer guidelines for living together. Though it’s officially none of them, great commentators in virtually every religion say they all boil down to Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you. Shouldn’t be complicated.

Something more open to interpretation, like keeping the Sabbath, gets trickier. Your way may seem like dogma to me or mine like apostasy to you. It’d help world peace to get past judging one another; but we still need to decide what our own values are, affecting a gazillion daily choices.

My painting class is illustrating for me how we shape and form, and then reshape and reform our world. It’s a good mirror for values. Each time you refine your sense of self or your vision for your life, you’re getting clearer on who you are, what you believe, what you stand for, and what you’ll act towards.

Whether you call them commandments, instructions, or suggestions, the Ten C also a useful model to clarify other subjects. What if you considered the ten rules of friendship? Of healthy eating? Of compassion and generosity?

Think about ten things that make you laugh or cry, joyful or angry. Ten things you wish you’d done differently. Ten you still can do in a way more like the now you. Ten hopes for the coming year. Ten intentions to make them manifest.

It’s an exercise I find useful when I’m stuck, whether it’s in a negative emotion, problem-solving, or even creatively stuck. It clears mental litter like the daily morning pages Julia Cameron advocates. It helps you peel away whatever’s stopping you from getting to your core, even if what you find there are unresolved questions.

Your lists of ten will reveal truths about what you really want. Themes will emerge, so don’t just toss the lists. You can’t ask for what you want until you know what it is and what you’ll do, or not, to make it real.

Knowing your values will help you find direction. It’ll help you take the the next steps and the ones after. With that compass you’re less likely to lose your path through the wilderness.

Edge to Edge: TorahCycle Beshellach

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Chayei SarahOf all the images in Torah, the fleeing Israelites facing the (as-yet-unparted) Red Sea has a special place in my heart. Long before I started using these readings as a weekly exercise to view personal process, I understood the challenge of facing a challenge and having no frigging idea what the &^$#@%^ to do next.

We often feel like we’ve come so far. Made it through so much. Made a shift, made some progress, on the road to somewhere better. It’s time for celebration even reward, not another rough patch. I’m willing to enjoy kale chips instead of cookies, so it doesn’t seem fair for a giant new obstacle to appear on the path. Not just a daunting one. But a test to my skills, imagination, and commitment. Even my faith in the process itself.

The old saying goes No way out but though. Or in this metaphor, in.

The classic commentary is of the guy who jumps first. Supposedly the sea did not part until the water reached his nostrils. This while most of us are standing around muttering about making a u-turn back to slavery, aka the known, even with its known bad results.

The waters rarely part quite so easily for me or mine. There’s almost always more drama, even when we think we’re in well past our eyebrows. As I’ve paced the edge of my own Red Seas, I’ve paid attention to my reluctance to jump-start change. A recipe for resistance that includes fear, denial, laziness, and contentment….. plus knowing that change has a compelling momentum of its own, as in, more change happens next, and keeps happening. Add your own favorites.

I’m great at vow-making, drawing lines in the sand, and dipping a couple toes at a time in and then out when the water is cold or the undertow is scary. I’ve gotten wet up to my ankles more often than I can count. But to fully commit without turning away or back, still hard to do.

Each edge is a doorway for the next transition. We’re being asked to say Yes, and… and to follow through, no matter how scary it looks or feels.

In the classic before and after pics used in gym and weight-loss commercials, progress is promoted as effortless and speedy. But any of us who’ve tackled a big shift know there’s a whole lot more middle than advertised. That comes later. But unless you take that first big step now, you’re gonna stay stuck on the “before” shore. I can’t guarantee any seas will part. But I can testify that you will feel better once you begin to change your story.

You’re likely to keep basics like your name and your incarnation. But you might have to choose to recommit or leave a partner, job, home, or health regimen. What you gain from leaping over all that resistance is a new sustenance that the metaphor of manna offers: knowing that you are capable of change. To get to your own version of “after,” you need to keep believing in that.

For now, jump in and keep breathing. Oh yeah, sing and dance often on the next edge.

 

Waxing and Waning: TorahCycle Bo

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Bo 2015Hooray for my intro to oil painting class, which focuses on process: the getting ready, preparing the palette, and the stroke by stoke doing. The careful application of layers of color, each of which changes what has gone before, bringing it forward and transforming it, helping it evolve and emerge.

It’s all about pacing, and, against all my instincts, about patience. Like the moon, waxing and waning in a regular rhythm. Not the fits and starts of impulse alternating with denial and procrastination. Breathe in/breath out; look/stroke; breathe in/breathe out; look/stroke. Watch the change.

That’s at the core of this weeks reading. After the last plague (the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn) and even before the Jews leave Egypt, they’re given their first mitzvah (instruction) about how to organize their new lives: to establish and live by a lunar calendar. It’s a primal rhythm, and one that requires us to look outside ourselves. It lays down a bass line for both timekeeping and for ritual, and establishes a potent metaphor about what’s growing, emerging and possible, and what it is time to forgo and bid goodbye.

Egypt is a metaphor for our heart. The place where we hold pain. We’re used to keeping it safe, even if that seals in what we should release. We can stay locked in slavery to old hurts for a long, long time, until the cycle eventually shifts. Metaphorical centuries before we find liberation, or the first slice of moon in the sky.

We’re used to the rhythm of our solar days. Wake up and do in the light; rest and dream in the dark. A lunar calendar shifts our perspective. Teaches us that whatever’s lousy or hard will shift, and that whatever’s good may also transform, even if that path is not a smooth and reliable arc.

The moon helps us to think about eternity. Nothing more waxing than being born nor more waning than death in the karmic calendar. But we want progress in this life. Rarely Boddhisatva enough to appreciate how our struggles also help us move through our soul calendar.

The moon’s a visual of expansion and contraction pushing against one other, daring and forcing the shifts. Cycles of learning, getting centered, screwing up again, and starting over. Time after time.

But whether the cycles are fast or slow, by their very repetition they teach us we are not stuck. That no matter how hard we are tested and how long it takes for things to shift, eventually they will. That slavery can transmute into freedom. That the heart can and will eventually choose healing.

Our job is to get into the flow. To find the right speed for the circumstances we find ourselves in. For those of us whose “slow” is 3rd gear, it can be exhausting to take things way, way down. To look so deeply within that time seems to stop.

When we look up into the sky we can see the moon waxing and waning, a metronome to our process. Eventually, we get more of something right. We become ready to move on. To choose freedom. To leave the old crap behind and test ourselves on the waters ahead.

 

Good Morning, Mitzrayim: TorahCycle Shemot

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Shemot 2015jpgIt took forever but we are finally here. After all the festivities, gifting, and celebrating, we woke up the other day to a clean new year. One unsullied by bad decisions or old habits. A blank slate. Tabula rasa. A new chance to get things right. Resolutions made. Vows to keep them. Optimism abounds.

Not so fast. We have just entered the book of Exodus.

I’ll assume you read the book or saw the movie. Baby Moses cast into the bulrushes to escape genocide: raised in the palace; kills an overseer who’s abusing Hebrew slaves; is exiled to the wilderness; sees a burning bush on Mt. Sinai; talks directly to God; returns to free the enslaved.

The big punch line of the next several chapters is that we get out of slavery. But the work in-between now and then, and the even harder work after, when the overseer is inner not outer, fills the next four books.

This process is a metaphor of “the hero’s journey” that Joseph Campbell wrote about so eloquently. You have to go into the darkness and make it through to find and appreciate the light. Baby Moses represents our holy spark: waiting to be rescued and reclaimed. For now we need to engage the parts of us that are willing to look into that dark place and use what we see to transform ourselves.

It’s the journey of a lifetime, with oh so many paths, both twisting and straight, obstructed and clear. It can be hard to find our way, but it happens with small steps, one step at a time.

Making bricks under an overseer’s whip is a vivid image of the darkness. Direct communion with The Source is a worthy goal. But to get there you must choose the light, and reinforce that choice with every small decision that follows. That’s what our resolutions are about. I’ve been stuck doing X, Y, or Z. I want to change. Instead it’s time to do _______. Fill in the blank.

In Torah there is a deus ex machina to help. Literally. The divine hand, expressed through acts of wonder and magic, plagues and punishment. More on that soon. But the core question remains: Do you like things how they are or do you want them to change? Really? What’re you prepared to differently to turn your resolutions into reality? Are you waiting for a miracle or are you ready to step up? Now? When? How often and consistently? What will make the changes sustainable, not failed attempts?

Moses answers at the burning bush with a word we see at important moments in Torah. He is called and he answers hineini, I am here. It is an acknowledgment both that he has heard the call and that he is willing to be to respond. To step up.

This journey is all about showing up. Step by step. It’s not about saying No, thanks. Please don’t ask me to up the ante on myself. It is about listening to the guides around you and the knowing inside you, and then doing your work 24/7. It’s about choosing hineini, to be present in every moment and choice of your life, Every step on your journey.

Happy New Year.

Finding Your Way: TorahCycle Vayigash

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Vayigash 2014Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: It seemed like a great idea at the time. You have all these hopes. It’s inspirational to think you have found “the one,” “the answer,” or at that you’re making if not the finest decision of your life, at least the right and best one for that time. One that’ll have great outcomes. Make you happier, healthier, richer, wiser, whatever quest you are on and hope to make a great leap forward pursuing. If you’re in peril or danger, there’s that special relief that you’ve found sanctuary: happily ever after, lush fields, safe home, goats in every yard, and grain for every pot. Good luck with that.

Life is cyclical: this week’s harbor will become next month’s prison. Now we’re being welcomed by a long-lost brother; soon we will be slaves. That’s Torah. In real life, events usually take longer to unfold, and situations are rarely as dire, thought they can feel like it, which helps ready us for the yet next shift.

Torah is a metaphor for evolution. The morals of the next sections: You have to be ready and willing to change to actually change. It may feel great in the beginning but it gets harder. There’s rough stuff and tough times to get through. Freedom and evolution are great goals. Getting there requires hard work. And then more hard work. It’ll feel better before it gets worse, and eventually better again. The in-between matters. How you do it helps determine when you land.

We have one more chapter in Genesis. Remember this all started with creation. From the void till now, we’ve gone through several cycles of starting over, as a species, families, and individuals. We screwed up before, and are likely to do it again. But if we’re living in good faith, trying to improve, to do better each time around, if we’re paying attention to the lessons and continuing to do our homework, the process is worth it. We may never get where we think we want to go. But each new there will teach us what we next need to learn.

For now, we’re choosing to go down into Egypt. To the place that looks good, for now. Like the new love who offers rescue from lonely evenings, or the job that promises income and advancement, Egypt seems like a sure bet. The reading is optimistic: Joseph is united with his family and they’re invited to move in. Smiles, handshakes, and toasting abound.

Part of the message: before you start engaging with new deep work, make peace with as much of your history as you can. The less you’re packing, the better off you’ll be when you enter the murky, mucky parts.

It’s all a mirror of the healing process, however you go about doing it. This is a powerful time to take stock. Not just the end-of-year best and worst lists. But a soul level, What am I working on and How’m’I gonna do it? kind. Asking and answering will serve you well in the times to come.

Which Now?: TorahCycle Vayashav

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JosephThe old Zen instruction goes simply: chop wood, carry water. The occasional crisis notwithstanding, most of us live simply much of the time. In ancient times we were shepherds and farmers, busy herding and tilling, hoping the wolves stayed away. Now we go to work, hang with friends/family, cheer for our favorite teams, generally live a comfy, settled reality. Then, just when things seem sorta predictable, along comes something or someone to shake us up, challenge us, make us move out of our comfort zone, sometimes for love, curiosity, or adventure, and others kicking and screaming every step of denial along the way.

In this week’s reading we’re given the Marvel-worthy tale of a pesky younger brother, a dreamer, sure he’s the handsomest and smartest guy in the room. To make it worse, he’s foretelling upheaval and doom, the end of life as we know it.

The Joseph story is so wonderful because despite all the crap that’s done to him, it’s a story of survival and eventual triumph. His and maybe our own. He has amazing access and prescience, chaneling the signals, hints, and whispers that are all around us into the story of what’s coming, even if we can’t see it on our path.

He’s sold into slavery by his own brothers, narrowly escaping death. I see him lowered into the pit in the hands-up/don’t shoot position. Surrendering to a fate that no one would choose but is clearly his road. If you can foretell what follows, maybe it’s not so bad. if you’re the one in the pit, it must suck.

Biblical Hebrew has no tenses. It’s all a matter of interpretation. Was it then or is it now or will it become? Are you in the pit, climbing out, or does it loom ahead?

In real time our winter (like-a-bear-wants-to-be-hibernating) self is responding to all manner of December distractions. The go out/stay in rumblings fighting it out. And just as we officially declare the season of wood stoves, cocoa, and great books, the ratio of light to dark is shifting to brighter, a fraction of a day at a time. Pure cognitive dissonance. Are we trying to climb in or out?

There’s a great holiday in a couple months to celebrate “when the sap remembers to being to rise.” In the meantime, it’s still dreaming in the roots. The Joseph story says, this is the time to deeply listen. To become a little more prescient, to hear the secrets and portents the universe is whispering in your ear, about what is and will be, now and in times to come.

Use what you are told, so that when light shifts into spring you will emerge into your new, sappier, self. The one who spent winter listening, watching, cogitating, and ripening, letting all your guides and muses pour insight into your ears and soul. Be that you. The one who sees what’s coming as though it were now.

Because it’s all about tense. Past present future now. What the Buddhas and cosmologists tell us is true. Everything is present. Whether you’re a prince or in the pit can be a matter of perspective and attitude. And when it’s not, all the more reason to listen up and pay good attention.