Emor | The Surprising Purpose of Tamei

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אֱמֹר אֶל־הַכֹּהֲנִים בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם לְנֶפֶשׁ לֹא־יִטַּמָּא בְּעַמָּיו׃ 

Life Breathing [Hebrew: יהוה] said to Moses: Speak to the priestly caste, the children of Aaron, and say to them: protect the collective when the embodied life force [Hebrew: nefesh] enters the state of tamei [over-activation of the life force].

Leviticus 21:1

This opening verse of Torah portion Emor leads to a multitude of awareness practices with our embodied selves. In Torah, the nefesh is the embodied self. It is considered the vessel for the essential universal self from which we emerge and to which we return. The nefesh is both our animal body and the body's soul. It  is the source of our capacity for awareness of our body.

This moment in Torah opens with Life Unfolding charging society's spiritual guardians, the priestly caste, with protecting the nefesh and protecting the collective society when a person's  nefesh becomes contracted by tamei.

Tamei is a state of being that affects the nefesh. It may be the ancient world's concept of trauma.   It can arise when there is unbalanced contact with strong physical transitions such as death, fertility and sexual arousal. Like all physical states, it is natural, impermanent and fluid.

Trauma is a response to anything that’s overwhelming that happens too much, too fast, too soon or too long, coupled with a lack of protection or support. It lives in the body stored as sensation: pain or tension — or lack of sensation, like numbness.

Reesma Menakem
https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/602/it-is-not-in-your-head

The strength and shadow of tamei is its capacity to take over our consciousness so that we lose connection to our collective source. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes:

[Tamei] means that which distracts from eternity and infinity by making us forcibly aware of mortality, of the fact that we are physical beings in a physical world.

As R. Sacks suggests, what is needed when we fall into tamei, are places of refuge and nourishment where we can refesh and replenish ourselves so we  return to balance. In Buddhist practice, this is available through mindfulness meditation. In Nonviolent communication the practice of self empathy is available. In Torah, the practice is special tamei-time.

Tamei time is a time of restorative separation in a safe, nurturing place. The nefesh needs space, time and attention to restore it to a state of healthy connection to itself and to others. At the end of the separation period, in traditional Jewish practice, an immersion in living waters. called a mikveh, is the ritual that marks the successful transition from tamei to balance.

In Buddhist practice, awareness of the body is often the starting point of mindfulness meditation. By resting attention on bodily sensations and the breath, stability and clarity arise. As the thinking mind quiets, the body becomes the lead perceptive organ, and it speaks to us, telling us what our feelings, thoughts and needs are. A foundational Buddhist text, the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, teaches:

Establish your mindfulness in the observation of the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings, the mind in the mind and the objects of mind in the objects of mind.

— Translated by Thich Nhat Hanh from Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 10.

Take some time this week, when you notice, for example, you are tense or distracted, to sit and follow your breath, allowing and feeling all the bodily sensations. These may range from numbness to agitation. Allow it all. Let it speak its story to you.

The Nonviolent Communication self-empathy practice works similarly. The state of tamei in NVC is likened to a life-alienated state. Something happens, or a thought floats through our minds, and we find ourselves overcome by feelings such as shame, guilt and anger. These alienate us from the life force in and around us. We practice resting in the beauty of our needs to bring us back to a life-serving presence.

In all these practices, we need to create societies that reject punishing or stigmatizing people in any way when their souls and awareness are frozen by tamei.  This means interpreting the Torah's prescription for justice , "an eye for an eye" , as restorative justice, not retributory justice. The ancient rabbis understood this when they interpreted "an eye for an eye" to mean that an inflicted harm should be compensated at its value to person who ha suffered the harm. There is no added punishment or stigma.

Here are some practices for when we o are caught in tamei. Not to punish, but to soothe our souls, release trauma and make our bodies our allies as we re- learn how to meet our needs without compromising other people's needs.

NVC Practice: Bathing/Mikveh in the Energy of Needs
Practice for the Week

Take tamei-time. Stop what you are doing as soon as you notice that something happened and you are in a stuck place. Maybe someone else did or said something, or a thought seized hold of your being, and you entered this constricted state.

• Acknowledge to yourself: I am caught in the state of tamei. Stop, breathe and feel without judging what is happening in your body.
• Bring empathic presence to the bodily experience. This is presence without pressure — be present with whatever arises within you. Don't suppress, censor or judge, Just be with your feelings and experience.
• Be curious to explore the state of tamei, a temporary, impermanent state that we earthlings fall in and out of as long as we are in human form.

After a while,

• Call to mind something that has triggered the tamei, the imbalance, the disturbance. Something that when you see, hear, do or forget to do, a judgment arises about the person involved (you or the other person).

You may be thinking, for example, that you aren’t compassionate.

• Now feel how you feel in your body and use your nefesh awareness to become aware of your body in the triggered state. Sit in the feelings, feel their energy, let them speak fully to you.
• Now flip the observation from "you/he/I am not compassionate" to "what I want more of in the world is...compassion. What I want more of in my family, world, community, myself, is compassion. I am longing for more compassion.
• Bathe yourself in the energy, the beauty of compassion.

This is the mikveh bath that transforms the tamei and restores you to connection. Nonviolent Communication is about connection, how to restore connection, how to be present with, understand and heal what blocks connection.

Bathe in the energy of what you are longing for in the world.