M’tzorah | The Affliction of Possession

כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל־אֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לָכֶם לַאֲחֻזָּה וְנָתַתִּי נֶגַע צָרַעַת בְּבֵית אֶרֶץ אֲחֻזַּתְכֶם׃ 

When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict a tzara-at , a plague of constriction, upon a house in the land you possess...

Leviticus 14:34

 

Metzorah

The Surprising Purpose of Anger and Other Eruptions

Note: This week's Torah at the Intersection is in two parts: I wrote Part 1 this week (2022). Part 2 is reposted from 2021. 

Part 1

כִּ֤י תָבֹ֙אוּ֙ אֶל־אֶ֣רֶץ כְּנַ֔עַן אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲנִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לָכֶ֖ם לַאֲחֻזָּ֑ה וְנָתַתִּי֙ נֶ֣גַע צָרַ֔עַת בְּבֵ֖ית אֶ֥רֶץ אֲחֻזַּתְכֶֽם׃ 

When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict tzarat, an eruption of constriction,  upon a house in the land you possess...

Lev. 14:34

This week's Torah portion was called Metzorah by the ancient rabbinical scholars, a word connected to constriction, to enslavement, to an inner spiritual affliction that can be seen but not understood. The condition is so encoded in humanity that it follows us wherever we go and even strikes our houses. Certainly this is how the Buddha spoke about suffering, the pervasive condition of ill being that haunts the human experience.

Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, taught a method of using the eruption of anger. He asked,  what is the surprising purpose of anger? When we make space to look deeply at what anger arrcies in its fiery energy, we learn what is really important to the person experiencing anger. 

Something inside that person has been activated and it boils up and out of the surface. 

Perhaps ancestral trauma has been touched. Or an unhealed wound in the relationship with this person. Anger, like tzarat/metzorah,  is an eruption of the wounding or unhealed trauma. Anger becomes our friend and ally to understand ourselves and others more deeply.

I recently erupted in anger toward a beloved family member. My first response was that I felt horrified because I was scared that the eruption had hurt them and wounded our relationship. I felt the fire of anger that had erupted toward him turn into the fire of shame toward myself. My face was burning and I had no words to put together the mix of emotions in me. I felt lonely because I hadn't been understood  and met in the way that I really wanted. I felt scared of the power of my own response. I felt compassion and protectiveness for the other person and our relationship.

As I sat with the experience and retold it to trusted friends, I realized something deep inside me had been touched and how scary it is for me to be with its pain. So I turn my energy toward regretting my actions or fearing their impact and never get to healing the loss or trauma that gave rise to the response. This is a way of abandoning myself, replicating the experience of loneliness I feel when other people don't  respond in a way that gives me the accompaniment I want. 

When hurt, anger and shame arise in our relationships and households, the very foundations are stricken. We see the same thing in our nation and between nations in the world right now. The surprising purpose of anger is its power to connect us to our underlying feelings, such as fear and loneliness, and our needs, such as safety, respect and being seen. Anger can help us understand our own values and what we want and need in relationships and in our world. 

Understanding our own and other's fear and anger is the beginning of nonviolence and healing. 

Thomas Merton wrote, “What you fear is an indication of what you seek.”  Anger also shows us what we yearn for, what is important to us.  As we touch it's source, we learn what it needs from us.  Perhaps compassion, space or action. Perhaps presence and healing. 

A practice from Nonviolent Communication to uncover and make use of the surprising purpose of strong eruptions:

Write down something you feel angry or fearful about at this moment/time in your life. 

Express (in writing, then out loud to a friend or yourself ) what you wrote this way: 

1. I feel [angry or fearful/afraid] about this: 

2. These are some of the thoughts I have when I think about this: 

3. These feelings and thoughts are important to me because : 

4. Without these feelings and thoughts, I fear I will be: 

5. (Again): These feelings and thoughts are important to me because : 

6. Feelings that arise in me when I connect with why this is important to me: 

7. Needs (what is important to me). Sit with your feelings and needs. Let the energy of what is important to you wash over you.  

Part 2 (2021) 

A few years ago I watched the Disney version of Pocahontas with my then 3-1/2 year old grandson. In this Disney version, the white man came from Britain to ruthlessly claim the land of the native peoples for the purpose of mining gold. The natives were called “savages” and any one of them who got in the way of this enterprise would be freely slaughtered.

The hero, handsome blonde-haired, blue-eyed John Smith, was confident that he could defeat any of the “savages” that got in his way. And in fact he killed off the leading Indian warrior. What Smith couldn’t defeat, and what ultimately transformed him, was the power of love, in the form of the beauty, innocence and goodness of Pocahontas.

Earlier in the week, we began watching an animated version of the Tarzan story. As soon as Tarzan was taken as a possession and put in a cage on board the white man’s ship, my 3-1/2 year old grandson said, "I can’t watch this." Neither could I, so we turned it off.

Both stories illustrate the deep affliction, the m'tzorah, in the dominant culture and structures that are fed to American children. Looking at the stories through the teachings from Torah, the white men who came to possess other people and the land were afflicted with the plague of m’tzorah.

In the Torah story, this rot, called m'tzorah, co-arises with possession of land and threatens the very foundations of what we dream of building. We cannot avoid this. It is our own Torah to work with.

Indigenous peoples throughout the world held onto a different relationship to the land for as long as they could. My friend Suliman Khatib describes himself as from the indigenous people of the land known as Palestine. He said, instead of believing that the land belongs to the people, we believe that the people belong to the land.

All of the people can belong to the land. Suli is a peacemaker, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Liberation from the Rot of Possession

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that liberation from the afflictions that arise from possession lies in transforming the belief that possession of things will bring happiness. True Happiness, he says, comes from another source, from knowing your true nature, the deepest truth of yourself, which is that you are not separate from all life, that you are interconnected with all life, and that your happiness depends on your relationship to the happiness of all life.

The Second Mindfulness Training

True Happiness

Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion; and that running after wealth, fame, power and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair. I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and stop contributing to climate change

—Thich Nhat Hanh, Plum Village, France

 

זֹאת תִּהְיֶה תּוֹרַת הַמְּצֹרָע בְּיוֹם טָהֳרָתוֹ וְהוּבָא אֶל־הַכֹּהֵן׃

This shall be the torah (process) for one afflicted with m'tzorah at the time that he is to be cleansed. ...

Leviticus 14:2

M’tzorah echos this mindfulness training. The healing, or Torah, of the afflicted one is to return to connection. To overcome the sense of separateness so that his/her spiritual crisis can be witnessed and held by the community.

In the ancient time of the Torah story, the whole community stops and witnesses the ritual-holders (the priests in Torah) healing the fellow-sufferer. Without this collective accompaniment, the tsuris (Yiddish for troubles or suffering) that has afflicted a whole body, or a whole house, can spread throughout society.

The affliction isn't outside us or outside our land; it is with us as long as we are caught in notions and systems of possession. It is incumbent upon us to provide rituals, procedures, Torahs, that reconnect the afflicted ones with the whole.

Torah instructs us to be transparent, to reveal our condition, and to believe in healing.

Torah instructs the rest of society to wait for the healing, to protect itself by building refuges for the afflicted, and to wait for their return. To watch over them, to witness their transformation. To train special emissaries, called priests in ancient Israel, to go out to the afflicted ones and embrace them, to examine them, to accompany them, until they are ready to return.

These are the people who were possessed as slaves. The trauma from enslavement lives in their bodies and rots the souls. It is passed on through the generations.

Leviticus is providing instructions for people, spiritual leaders, systems and structures to continually clear out the legacy of possession. This is the way of transformation from slave-consciousness to freedom. Otherwise, we just switch from being the enslaved to being the enslavers, and then back again.

The necessity of the whole society facing and healing the eruptions of enslaving consciousness is part of the package of possessing the promised land of Canaan. Most of us are occupying someone else's land. Torah is calling us to continually face and make reparations for whatever harm is caused by our possession. We live the promise of Torah by transforming the tzara-at in the walls of the promised land itself.

Pharaoh feared that other people, the Hebrews, would become too numerous. The Jews and Palestinians today have the same fear. The white identified Americans and Europeans have the same fear. Unless these whole societies stop and face this, their unaccompanied, unwitnessed fear will lead again and again to the eruptions of violence and hatred.

The book of Leviticus offered a model for one tribe of the ancient world to build a beloved community where no one was excluded. No one's suffering was hidden away under shame. The entire community had a role during the process of the healing of an afflicted one. This is community.

As we struggle in the world today to reconstruct a community where we care for and witness each other, leaving no one out, we also can create this for ourselves. Appoint your special emissaries, called priests in ancient Israel, to go out to you when you are afflicted. Teach them how to support and accompany you, until you are ready to return.

Asking for the Support You Need

One of the greatest lessons I learned from Nonviolent Communication is that it's ok to ask for the support I need. The possibility of doing such a bold and vulnerable thing was presented to me at a social action training with Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of NVC. He said, “It's not surprising that people don't get what they need; they don't know how to ask.”

Marshall always said that he had learned this from a community-organizing partner of his who had been in a gang in the Midwest. They were given five minutes to present a proposal for funding a program to a major funder. Marshal wanted to prep, polish, and give background. His partner said, “I've got this.”

They walked into the office and Marshall's partner said, "Where's the money?" They walked out with the grant.

At the training, Marshall had us break into small groups and role-play making requests to people in power. I had five minutes to make a request to the leader of the Taliban (this was about 20 years ago). Other people were making requests to the US President, religious leaders and other power holders. One by one we shared our requests when we were back in the whole group. After each one of us, Marshall asked the group, who knows exactly what they are asking you to do?

Not one hand went up.

How To Ask For Exactly What You'd Like The Other Person To Do

• Don't expect others to be a mind reader. Are you disappointed or even hurt that they don't already know you well enough to know what you want? Take that sad state of affairs as feedback that a new quality of communication and connection is needed.
• Know what you need. Are you clear for yourself what you'd like the other person to do when you are in a stuck place, a state of m'tzorah? Do you prefer space and autonomy? Or presence and care? Nurturing or advising. This is your general need. You're 1/3 there!
• Now get specific—this is what Marshall was teaching us. What exactly do you want the other person to do to meet your need for presence? Or love? Or space?
• Make a request for them to do exactly what you'd like them to do, that will meet your need. A request means that, if they say yes, it’s clear to both of you what they are saying yes to: what they are going to do, when, how, and where.
• Check in. One of you reflects back what you believe you've both agreed to! Tweak as necessary for clarity.
• If they say no, ask for their help in finding a way to meet both of your needs. (The needs they are meeting by saying no, and the needs you'd like to met with a yes.)