Va’eira | Raising Our Spirits

וָאֵרָא אֶל־אַבְרָהָם אֶל־יִצְחָק וְאֶל־יַעֲקֹב בְּאֵל שַׁדָּי וּשְׁמִי יְהֹוָה לֹא נוֹדַעְתִּי לָהֶם׃

 

Elohim spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am יְהוָֽה. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name יהוה.

— Exodus 6:2–3

 

How does Life Force reveal itself to you? How do you reveal yourself to life? This week's Torah portion, and all of the rest of the Teaching, continue as a conversation between Moses and the formless Breath of Life. How do we reveal ourselves so we can be seen and know each other? If the essence of Life, as revealed last week to Moses, is impermanence and shapeshifting — ehyeh asher ehyeh — can we ever be known and can we ever know?

Will there be an end to the exile of communication, the galut ha dibbur, so that we live in connection to ourselves, each other and life? Torah, like Buddhism, holds up a mirror to the human suffering born of separation and calls us to awaken to interdependence.

At the beginning of Va’eira, meaning “I appeared” or “I revealed,” Elohim, the plural god-name that spoke the world into form at the beginning of Genesis, reveals its nature to Moses in the formless unpronounceable name of יהוה and also in a fertile, embodied form, El Shaddai, Breasted One. Perhaps the message is, "I am everything, I will be everything. Don't grasp, just relax into knowing and receiving."

This is a core message in Buddhism, illustrated in koan practice, ancient Torah-like teaching stories between "master" and student. When the student asks the "Master," "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" the teacher says, "No."

What is the "no"? Thich Nhat Hanh explained to us in a Chinese monastery many years ago, "Of course a dog has Buddha nature." Just as Torah says, "Of course we are all from the same holy source," the dog in your head, the image you have of dog, isn't its nature. It is your thought. And so, Eternally Present instructs Moses, and us, in Torah, don't be enslaved to your thoughts. Live in hope and trust, receive what is revealed to you. This is the way to cross the boundaries that imprison us.

The One Creative Unifying Energy longs for what we long for: to appear, to be seen and known in the plurality of human experience and perception. The alchemy of seeing and being seen, of revealing and being perceived, arises out of the multitude of conditions that are the encounter. Receiver and received inter-are in the experience.

Rabbi Erin Smolker expounds upon how the great Hasidic mystic, the Svat Emet, taught this in 19th century Poland:

'God too must be listened into existence.' ...  If we listen first, then the Divine will speak, then the Ineffable can become “your [personal] God.” We are that powerful, not because we create the Divine, but because we can create space–perform tzimtzum (self-contraction) — to be filled by an Other. Only when we cultivate ourselves as listeners, as attentive receivers, might we hear anything at all. Indeed, revelation itself, says the Rebbe, relies on this dynamic. עשרת עיכוב' הי וזה הדיברות

This echos the principles of Buddhism and Nonviolent Communication that the world as we experience it co arises with our thoughts, feelings and values. Knowing this, living in awareness of this, can liberate us from despair and alienation. Building friendships and community that share meaning and purpose can lead out of exile.

Moses listens and receives a multitude of God names in the first two lines of Va'eira, beginning with the unpronounceable, beyond form יהוה.  That unpronounceable form then reveals another ancient name, El Shaddai,  that was revealed to Moses' ancestors .  Moses too is multitudes, Ivri, indicating both Hebrew and boundary crosser. He was saved and nurtured  by Shaddai in many human forms. Saved by Hebrew or Egyptian midwives, Shifra and Puah. Birthed by a Hebrew mother Yocheved. Raised in the Egyptian palace by Pharoah's daughter, called Batya in some Torah interpretations. Moses was mentored by Yitro, a Midianite priest. Moses carries multitudes in his form.

Perhaps this is why the call to liberation reaches him. Eternally Present hears the people cry from the depths of suffering. They take the first step to liberation, knowing this is suffering. Moses will lead the people from the cruel bondage of enslavement by awakening Pharoah-nature to itself, to its own liberation.

Moses calls to the people. The people cannot hear him because:

 ...מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה ...

Their spirit, ruach, ר֔וּחַ has been crushed by cruel bondage.

            — Exodus 6:9

Ruach, the life-animating breath-spirit has been crushed out of them by cruel bondage. Here Torah offers insight into the nature of trauma and suffering. Trauma is sometimes explained as frozen life. Something happens that is so overwhelmingly shocking and painful that it nestles in the body, closed off, suffocating access to it. Frozen ruach.

The physical hardship of slavery crushes the life force inside of us. The nature of Pharaoh is carried in the system of slavery which subjugates the Hebrews. This is Pharaoh nature, the parts of us that crush and alienate us from the flow of life.

This is trauma-frozen life.

I learned a powerful midrash from Torah scholar Aviva Zornberg that illustrates the hidden costs, the crushing nature of enslavement to Pharaoh. This midrash, an ancient interpretation of the Torah by learned rabbis, tells the story of a Hebrew woman slave who is nursing her baby as she mixes the mortar to make bricks. The work is crushing. Pharaoh has increased the numbers of bricks the enslaved people must fashion in a day.

The woman’s baby slips from her wrap, from her breast, and falls. The dead babies of the Hebrew women are buried in the bricks.

So crushed, the people cannot hear the message of liberation.  They cannot perceive freedom because their spirits are crushed by bondage. Slavery, loss of freedom, is not only physical. It crushes the spirit. The physical trauma finds a home in the body and festers there, crushing, resisting, the flow of life.

Pharoah too cannot hear because his heart is hardened, heavy and also stuck in narrow straits. Physical and spiritual liberation are needed to metabolize the  trauma inflicted on everyone touched by a system of domination and cruelty.  The journey that unfolds through the books of Torah is to create free people and free systems for people to live in.

In Torah, Pharoah represents a completely crushed human. Without any openings, Pharoah is the constricted place, mitzrayim.  And still Eternal Life doesn't give up on Pharoah either. Moses is sent again and again to open Pharoah's hardened heart. Unfreezing that heart is the key to freeing the Egyptians and the Hebrews.

The spiritual journey unfolds with God’s presence revealed to Moses and Pharoah, to Hebrews and Egyptians.. Our freedom and liberation is bound up in each other's. The Mind and Heart of Life Unfolding seeks the communication that connects, the communication that affects.

How do we open the flow of life when it is frozen, crushed inside of us? How do we restore the ruach, the spirit of life, of God? We can do this for ourselves and we can help others.

One practice common to Torah, Nonviolent Communication, and Buddhism, is the art of deep listening, both to oneself and to others.

Today is a time when I feel acutely the limits of my capacity to hear the beauty, the hope, the possibility in my own or others’ human hearts, Yes, today, right now, our spirits are being crushed by COVID, by the divisions in our country, by the hatred and the violence. And there is still, always, that spark of knowing that hope is needed. Without hope, without inspiration, it would be impossible to go on. An inner Nonviolent Communication practice can help to bring that hope to life.

Hearing When Spirits are Crushed; Connection before Solution

A principle of Nonviolent Communication that I use over and over is "Connection Before Solution." Marshall Rosenberg called this, "Connect Before you Correct." But the point is that there is no "correction" until another possibility can be seen, until something else has penetrated, nourished, the crushed spirit.

How does a crushed spirit hear a new voice that calls from a place of freedom? NVC offers the practice of empathic accompaniment. My favorite definition of empathy is Presence without Pressure. Let me have my own experience of the Presence of something else. Without any pressure to fix or educate me — yet. I bring to myself, or with a trusted friend, a new energy to sit in, to bring empathy out of exile, to awaken my capacity to be present with whatever is arising, to hold it tenderly, to accompany and make space for it.

This, incredibly, is exactly what Elohim, YHVH, El Shaddai, does. Torah tells us  that the people cannot hear Moses offering the possibility of freedom because their spirits are crushed. Eternally Present hears Torah and switches strategy. Instead of "working on" the people, there is a compassionate recognition and holding of the people in their state of constriction. Eternally Present gives the people space to have their own experience of encountering freedom.

Listening to Myself: A Nonviolent Communication Practice

Here is a practice to restore yourself, to bring yourself out of crushed spirit:

Begin by calling to mind an image, experience, memory that connects you with the energy of hope. What does it feel like in the body? What is the picture of it? Can you touch it in the here and now? Perhaps it was when I heard, the other afternoon, on my walk, the sounds of children playing in the playground near my house. Or in a friend’s smile or text. Something that caused my spirits to lift.

I bring myself back to that moment, into the feeling of being uplifted. I allow it to permeate my body, to flow to as many of the stuck places as possible. I trace the feeling to the life energy of hope that slowly awakens in me.

If I have a spiritual friend, I may ask them to sit with me (during Covid, in the Zoom room) and witness me exploring how hope lives in me. I can ask my friend to ask me every few minutes, "How does hope live in you?"

I sit, and sit longer, in the energy of hope, feeling it in its fullness, filling myself with hope.

I finish my exploration by asking myself, “Do I have any requests of myself or another person that will support me in staying connected to hope?”

Deep Listening

In the Buddhist practice, Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that a way to awakening compassion is through deep listening. The embodiment of compassion, of deep listening, has a Sanskrit name, Avalokiteshvara.

With ourselves and others, we stop and listen deeply to what the body, the history, the feelings and thoughts are saying. Whatever we hear, we hold with care and tenderness.

We nourish our capacity to listen in this way by taking guidance from this invocation: As a practice, try reciting this intention, alone or in a group, before or during meditation:

We invoke your name, Avalokiteshvara.

We aspire to learn your way of listening in order to help relieve the suffering in the world. You know how to listen in order to understand. We invoke your name in order to practice listening with all our attention and open-heartedness. We will sit and listen without any prejudice. We will sit and listen without judging or reacting. We will sit and listen in order to understand. We will sit and listen so attentively that we will be able to hear what the other person is saying and also what is being left unsaid. We know that just by listening deeply we already alleviate a great deal of pain and suffering in the other person.

Poem: Please Call Me By My True Names

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.