Beshallah | Letting Go

 

וַיְהִי בְּשַׁלַּח פַּרְעֹה אֶת־הָעָם

Now when Pharaoh let the people go...

Exodus 13:17

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

— Rev. Howard Thurman

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

— Anais Nin

 

This week's Torah story begins, in Avivah Zornberg's words, with a moment of dramatic expulsion. The people finally escape, pursued by Pharaoh's armies. It is Pharaoh's “letting go,” the name the rabbis gave to this part of story, that opens the next door into freedom. The Exodus story continues dramatically, beginning with Pharaoh letting the people go out.

What does it take for our inner and outer Pharaohs to let go? Torah centers this inquiry. The formless unseen Breath of Life wants to understand this. The story is a dynamic interplay between a holy trinity of Life Unfolding, Pharaoh-nature and human liberation.

How do we change? Do we ever change? The formless presence that expelled humans from the garden, flooded the earth to begin again, brought hardened hearts and plagues, wants to know. We want to know.

Torah suggests that letting go is the key. Letting go is a translation of the Hebrew word beshallach, in the midst of letting go. The Pharaoh nature embodied in life form needs to let go of clinging to domination and the consciousness of separation to fulfill the human promise.

Torah emphasizes the difficulty of letting go, using different words to describe the stuckness that arises in the heart of Pharaoh. There is protectiveness, a fear that nothing of us will be left if we let go of something. We hold on in an attempt to find  meaning, belonging and safety.  We get stuck in strategies  that  separate us from others.

We fear hearing voices of self judgment in our own heads and judgments from others when we let go of old behaviors: "I told you so;" "You should have known;" "You are defective that you didn't let go of that sooner;" or worse, “You held onto that because you are defective."

As Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, said, “We fear that others will see us as what we most fear or reject about ourselves.”

My late teacher Robert Gonzales helped me understand how I want to make use of letting go. Let go of something if doing so brings your heart and consciousness more fully to life. This is different from choosing to let go because "I should."  If I let go because I'm telling myself I “should," I'm enslaved in the consciousness of “should." The heart of Nonviolent Communication is to source our choices in energy and language that connects us to what is life-giving for us. Not because we "should," but because we trust our own values and dreams. I am caring for myself, my children, the planet, because that care brings me to life, brings me into a sense of meaning and purpose.

This is the very opposite of what Pharaoh stands for in the Torah. Pharaoh stands for the denial and taking of life. Pharaoh stands for the inner and outer forces that prevent us from fully embracing and enjoying the preciousness of life.

Torah introduces letting go through the spiritual journey of Pharaoh. When Pharaoh lets go, the people's journey begins. Pharaoh's letting go was the ingredient that unleashed the capacity of the Israelites to step into a bigger view, to see what they and Pharaoh, stuck in the paradigm of enslavement, hadn't been able to see.

וְחִזַּקְתִּ֣י אֶת־לֵב־פַּרְעֹה֮ וְרָדַ֣ף אַחֲרֵיהֶם֒ וְאִכָּבְדָ֤ה בְּפַרְעֹה֙ וּבְכׇל־חֵיל֔וֹ וְיָדְע֥וּ מִצְרַ֖יִם כִּֽי־אֲנִ֣י יְהֹוָ֑ה וַיַּֽעֲשׂוּ־כֵֽן׃

Then I will strengthen Pharaoh’s heart and he will pursue them, that I may gain glory through Pharaoh and all his host; and the Egyptians shall know that I am Eternally Present. And they did so.

Exodus 14:4

The Breath of Life longs for unconditional love. We too want to be held in unconditional love while we are letting go. Religion at its best helps us source an experience of unconditional love that holds us when we choose to enter perilous seas.

Again and again, the Breath of Life in Torah wants to access and awaken the hidden and stuck places in the heart of humans to our true divine nature. In the Jewish mystical teachings of Hasidism, our tikkun, our path here, is to gather and restore the oneness from which we all are born.

Similarly, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh explains the spiritual practice of Letting Go as taking a bigger view of a situation, freeing ourselves from a narrow view:

Upeksha means equanimity, non-attachment, nondiscrimination, even-mindedness, or letting go. Upa means ‘over,’ and iksha means ‘to look.’ You climb the mountain to be able to look over the whole situation, not bound by one side or the other. .. Upeksha does not mean that you don’t love. You love in a way that all your children receive your love, without discrimination.

— Thich Nhat Hanh, "Talk on Letting Go and Nirvana," January 2012

Letting go of something, in the language of Nonviolent Communication, is one strategy we may choose to meet deeper needs. We choose this freely, knowing that there are many strategies to meet each need. We choose Letting Go when we anticipate it will be a skillful means to bring us into more alignment with our values and aspirations. In the context of spiritual path, we want our Letting Go to be what Sarah Yehudit Schneider calls spiritually productive. In relationships, we want letting go to be in service of needs- ours and the other person's. Needs for mutuality, honesty, connection, safety, respect, etc.

Circling Doubt

וַתִּקַּח מִרְיָם הַנְּבִיאָה אֲחוֹת אַהֲרֹן אֶת־הַתֹּף בְּיָדָהּ וַתֵּצֶאןָ כׇל־הַנָּשִׁים אַחֲרֶיהָ בְּתֻפִּים וּבִמְחֹלֹת׃

Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in a circle dance with timbrels.

Exodus 15:20

In the Torah story, the people flee from the land of slavery but don't understand that the path to freedom will not be straight or familiar. As the Hasidic Berditchev Rebbe taught, they are still in spiritual darkness. The people are haunted by the plagues of doubt and fear as they leave Egypt. The Breath of Life leads them into the wilderness in a roundabout path and this scares them even more. They are used to the narrow straits of enslaved life.

Out of this constriction comes Miriam the prophetess, her prophesy embodied in dance, music and circle consciousness.

Miriam recognizes that God's hakafot, circling, is the way to liberation. She prophesizes thru the circle dance, showing first the women, then everyone, that even as they will want to circle back, even return to Egypt, there is a new way forward. Her embodied dance is the healing of Pharaoh's disconnection from the human form. She and the women prepared for this moment by bringing their musical instruments with them out of Egypt and into the waters.

In the fire of the Nazi occupation of Poland the beloved Rabbi of the Warsaw ghetto, Kalanymous Shapiro, wrote of Miriam's circle dance as bridging the worlds of male and female, darkness and light, pure and impure. Stepping into this non-dual consciousness is the consciousness that brings the greatest freedom.

It's not that doubt doesn't double back. Working with doubt is a principle motif of the unfolding Exodus story. The Torah portion ends with a battle against Amalek, a representation of doubt in the Hasidic teachings. How we work with doubt when it arises is key to avoiding despair. Without skillful means to work with doubt, we are back in the constricted place of Egypt under Pharaoh.

NVC Exercise on Letting Go and Doubt

Part 1: How do we decide to let go of something?

NVC cautions us, don't make choices out of "should," as in, "I should let go."

• Write down something you are telling yourself you "should" let go of. (Variation: write down something you are telling yourself you "should" do.)
• Sit with what you have written and connect with what you are hoping will happen if you do that.
• Use the "Needs Inventory" to find a few needs that you want to meet by doing this.
• Walk into the waters as you are held by the energy of these "needs."

Part 2: Letting go of Doubt

• Write down the voices (in you and/or in others) that are doubting the decision to "let go" and walk into the waters.
• Sit with what you have written and connect with what the voices of doubt want to happen if you attend to them.
• Use the "Needs Inventory" to find the needs the voices of doubt want you to attend to.
• Sit with both sets of needs.
• Walk into the waters as you are held by the energy of both sets of needs.
• Do the waters part?

A Buddhist Koan (parable teaching story)

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!