Steadiness (Yesod)

Steadiness comes from being held by the earth, by the water, by a community, a friend, a lover. 

Steadiness comes from being held by myself: a hand on my gut, a hand on my heart. 

Steadiness comes when my heart and my gut are aligned with my mind and my body. 

Steadiness comes with noticing the shaking of my body, from not stopping it but allowing it to continue, from breathing into the discomfort that comes with that lack of control. 

Steadiness comes from my breath, from deep down in my body, below my gut; from sitting up straight, from engaging my core, from feeling the strength at my center. 

Steadiness comes when I feel at one with myself.

Steadiness comest from the deep knowing that before I believe in any of the socially constructed realities that I find myself swimming inside of, I believe that I belong to the earth, I believe that I am of the water, I believe that when the air from the sky fills my lungs the very essence of life is simultaneously captured and reborn in each of those moments.

Sometimes my steadiness is so strong that it can become the ground that others walk on. Sometimes, when it’s at its strongest, it can become the ground I walk on myself. And every once in a while, when I am at my very most steady, I can allow myself to release control completely, not to fall into another’s arms, not to rely on their steadiness, but to float with them, blending ground and air, spinning together, creating a centrifugal force in which I can simultaneously be held in place and in motion. 

I was twelve or thirteen when I learned that steadiness can come from being in motion. My friend Libby and I had just stepped into the cool air of a summer night in the mountains, a perfect foil for the thick air and loud music of the Friday night dance party - a weekly tradition at our summer camp. Standing at one end of a large soccer field, we looked up at the stars and just started spinning. After a few minutes we started spinning across the field. It was not a race, it was simple, joyous, the most innocent version of childhood play. 

We found it so exhilarating that we turned it into our own Friday night tradition. Each week we would take a break from dancing and spin ourselves dizzy. Inevitably, somewhere between half and three quarters of the way across the field we would veer off course and end up collapsing on the ground, the earth spinning below our backs, the sky rolling in circles above us. 

Or perhaps it felt the other way around. Perhaps we, in those moments, understood what it truly meant to be upside down, stuck to the surface of a planet, rolling its way through space. Perhaps in those moments we were free from the story of up and down. Perhaps those moments were the closest I ever came to knowing what it is like to be one with the earth. To feel so steady on the ground while everything around me was spinning and rolling, tumbling and turning. 

Perhaps that physical sensation prepared me for the emotional turbulence that has come for us all in these last years. Perhaps it is because I know what it is to be stuck to the surface of a planet and look out into the vastness of the space it is hurtling through, dispelled from the notion of which way is supposed to be up, that I can stand today, on that same earth, while story after story that I was supposed to believe, crumbles and disintegrates before my very eyes, and know that the steadiness of the earth upon which I stand is not going anywhere.

Awe (Hod)

“For me the entire universe was created”

“I am but dust and ash”

- Rabbi Simcha Bunam Bonhart of Przysucha

A couple of years ago I was listening to a podcast about heartbreak. They were talking about the physical pain that manifests in our bodies and the difficulty that some of us have in getting over heartbreak. At one point the guest said that one of the ways that the body heals from heartbreak is through the experience of awe. 

In thinking back on my own experiences of heartbreak I found resonance in this idea. I noticed that whenever my heart is aching, my immediate impulse - once I’ve finished numbing myself by eating lots of ice cream and watching several days worth of not great movies - is to get myself outside, away from the constructed world, away from the things I am used to. 

I go to the desert with its vast open skies, dry air, and stunning landscapes of rock, brush, and the occasional bright flower. I go to the forest with its rays of light dancing through the trees, lush canopy that feels like a warm intimate embrace, and earthy aromas that smell like life itself. I go to the ocean who’s waves roll and roar in constant motion and with such force that it brings my nervous system into alignment with its natural steady rhythm. And in each of these places, the primary feeling I experience is awe. 

In trying to describe it, I struggle to determine where in my body the experience of awe occurs. I feel it in my stomach, an almost lurching forward from the deepest parts of my core, as though there is something in there that is yearning to get out. I feel it in my heart, a radiance of heat surging, pulsing, flaring up, as if the physical container of my ribcage is too small to hold the amount of energy my heart is longing to produce, to release. I feel it in my throat and lungs, an irregular expansion that leaves me short of breath and full of pure clean air at the very same time, that has me coughing out toxins I did not know were there. I feel it in my eyes, softened by the wide expanse and life size scale of the natural world, a deep heaviness wells up as tears that are a thousand years old seep forward to clear the way for crisper more focused vision. I feel it in my skin, tingly and vibrant, awake, alive, alert, but also relaxed. And I feel it in the part of me that lives outside the physical boundary of my body, a blurring of the separation between my skin and the world beyond it, a sense of connection and oneness with the air, the trees, the ground, and the water. 

What is healing about the experience of awe is that it isn’t about making me feel better, it is about making me feel connected. One of the things that I think we forget in our good/bad binary way of thinking, of naming experiences, is that our emotional lives are way too complex for good and bad. Awe allows me to feel profound relief at how very insignificant I am. It allows me to feel freedom in the beauty and wonder of a world my mind will never fully understand. It brings forward in me a confidence that is at once emanating from the core of my being and completely disconnected from any notion I may have about a thing called self. 

Rabbi Bunam of Przysucha walked around with two slips of paper in his pockets. On one he wrote, “for me the entire universe was created”. On the other he wrote, “I am but dust and ash”. His practice was to pull out and read the one he needed to bring balance to the thing that he, in that moment, was feeling. I too have a practice around these phrases. I like to look at them together, to take them in as one. They are, to me, a written version of the experience of awe, of a truth that I know in my body when standing at the edge of the ocean under the bright full moon: that my insignificance to the roaring of the ocean or the cosmic rhythm of the moon is only matched by the profound privilege I have at getting to experience the awesome beauty of both. 

The experience of awe knocks me straight into presence, releases me from the habits and patterns I find myself stuck in, and dispels me of any story I might have constructed that would otherwise serve to solidify those habits and patterns. Awe is the visceral, full body experience that does for me the thing that the words in Rabbi Bunam’s pockets seek to evoke: remind me that the full experience of being alive is so much more than whatever temporary emotional state I find myself in, be it heartbreak, triumph, or anything in between. And with the clarity that comes from stepping into presence, I am able to show up to whatever moment I find myself in with the the fullness of my being.

The Long View (Netzach)

You are not expected to complete the work in your lifetime, nor may you refuse to do your unique part

- Rabbi Tarfon

There’s a story that has been at the top of my mind lately. I have found myself telling it in nearly every class I teach, and many of the conversations I have. It’s an old story that I’ve heard different versions of over the years and I don’t quite know to whom I should attribute it. The version of the story that I’ve been telling goes something like this:

This is a story about a person in a moment of searching. Their world was full of conflict and strife, and while they were committed to taking action towards the betterment of their world, they did not know what to do, where to begin, or how to go about working for the change that they knew was needed. After many years of efforts that did not feel fruitful, they became disillusioned with their work and set off in search of a piece of wisdom that could help them navigate the challenging times that they were living through.

One day their journey brought them to a remote castle at the top of a mountain where they had heard there lived a wise elder. They arrived at the castle, as people often do in these kinds of stories, at dusk just as a storm of wind and rain was making its way up the mountain. Upon entering the castle they were greeted by a young person who took care of the elder. This host told our traveler that the elder could be found at the top room of the castle. They then gave our traveler a cup filled to the brim with oil, and told them that to see the elder they must bring this cup to the top room without spilling any along the way. 

Our traveler, up to the challenge, took the cup of oil and - very slowly and very carefully - made their way through the castle, passing through every room, with their attention focused on the very full cup of oil. Finally, our traveler reached the top room and, not having spilled a single drop, felt accomplished and ready to receive the wisdom they had been seeking. 

The elder greeted them warmly and, referencing the storm that was approaching, invited the traveler to spend the night. “As you walked through the castle”, the elder asked, “which room called most to you?” The traveler was taken aback, first by the kindness of the elder, but also by the fact that they had to admit that they were not called by any of the rooms, for they were so focused on not spilling the oil that they barely noticed any of their surroundings. “Well”, said the elder, “you must walk around the castle again and this time notice the rooms, notice the art, the views, the feel you get from each one”.

So our traveler, cup of oil still in hand, set back out through the castle, this time placing their attention on the many beautiful paintings and sculptures that filled the rooms and halls. A few hours later, our traveler returned to the top room where the elder sat, this time curled up in a chair by the fire. The traveler was in a state of euphoric awe, so beautiful the art and views that filled the castle were. For nearly twenty minutes, the traveler described in stunning detail each painting, each sculpture, each view from a window that called to them, as well as the feelings and sensations that these experiences stirred up. 

When the traveler finished, the elder, having smiled through the entire monologue, took a deep breath and gently asked, “and the cup of oil?”

The traveler looked at their hands and noticed that the cup was gone, but there were oil stains on the legs of their pants. With their attention on the beauty that surrounded them, the traveler had completely lost track of the cup of oil they were holding, first letting the oil spill then, absentmindedly, placing the cup down somewhere they did not remember. 

The elder, noticing the shock on the travelers face upon realizing this, smiled at them and then turned back to the fire. 

I think the reason that this story has been living so close to the surface for me these last months is that one of the biggest challenges that I, and many of the people I’ve come across, are struggling with in this moment, is how to find the balance between looking at the big picture and focusing on the very practical tasks at hand. 

Many of us are finding ourselves narrowing our vision, focusing so much of our attention on each and every horrific news story that comes across our feed that we can barely breath. We are literally constricting our airways with the narrowness of our attention, completely unaware of the beauty that still exists in the world, almost determined to not see it because the task at hand feels so important and so impossible. 

An antidote to this narrowing of focus that helps me in these moments is to take a deep breath, take a step back, widen the scope of my vision, and take the long view. The long view reminds me that the horror and the suffering that is showing itself in the world is not particular to this moment, that throughout time there have always been forces of greed and destruction, there has always been strife and conflict, and there have always been people working towards making things better, there have always been people driven by and towards love, there is always beauty to be found, to be inspired by. 

Taking the long view allows me to place myself in a lineage of these people, it allows me to learn from and be inspired by them, it allows me to imagine the world I want to live in and find the paths that might lead us in that direction. 

But I want to be clear, the long view is not about getting caught in abstractions, getting wrapped up in utopian dreams to the point that I lose touch with reality. The long view invites me to place the moment we are living through in context: to look at reality right in the face, get clear on the places where my actions can be impactful, take those actions, and keep my eyes up and looking in the direction I want us to be going. 

Taking the long view allows us to imagine the world we want to get to while acting in the world that we currently are in.

Joy & Sadness (Tiferet)

…Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain…When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight…. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy…

- Excerpted from Kahlil Gibran’s On Joy and Sorrow

It has often been the case in my life that moments of exuberance and fulfillment have been accompanied by deep sadness and heartbreak. I do not think I am unique in this experience, though I may be particularly attuned to the ways in which my emotional body experiences and has had to practice holding both. 

In the early spring of 2011, a dream that had lived in me for many years was actually coming to fruition. The outdoor education program that I had designed and had been running piecemeal versions of for a few years had finally reached the point where I could hire a full staff for a month-long run of programs. During the first week of programming, I received some news that cracked open a deep well of personal heartbreak. The next few weeks were filled with a profound experience of dissonance. 

I would, in one moment, be fully present to the incredible dream unfolding around me: interacting with groups of middle and high school students as they made their way through our obstacle courses, supporting my staff as they built supportive relationships with the students, and coaching teacher chaperones. In those moments I felt so vibrant, so fulfilled, so clear headed and alive in my body. 

And then, when stepping away from the group, the deepest forms of agony would wrap themselves around my body. I would be walking the path from the camping meadow and I would suddenly have to stop, unable to catch my breath, unable to tame the beast of grief erupting from my heart. Barely able to hold myself up, I would collapse and cry until I regained enough strength to make it back to my cabin. 

At the time I had a lot of feelings about having to hold these two things together. It didn’t feel fair that this Joy that I was experiencing in the fruition of one of my dreams would have to be diminished by a wound from a different part of my heart. 

A few years later, in the early fall of 2015 I was in a different moment of deep heartbreak and an existential undoing. This one was not paired with any dream fulfillment and had me stuck in a deep state of Sadness. One afternoon, on the advice of a friend, I walked into a near empty movie theater and went to sit near the back. Aside from me, the theater was sprinkled with a handful of young children and their adult caretakers. The movie, Inside Out, follows the inner emotional life of a young girl as she navigates a new and stressful moment in her life. 

What I especially loved about the movie was the relationship that developed between the emotions Joy and Sadness. When, towards the end of the film, Joy realizes that Sadness is the only one that can help break the main character out of her place of emotional overload and willingly gives over the controls, I found myself crying uncontrollable tears. It was a truly beautiful moment, the recognition of the place and power of Sadness. 

At the time I was deeply invested in the power of sadness. The friend who recommended I see the movie did so because of the sadness she recognized in me. I had let sadness take the controls and steer me into a place of deep and prolonged grieving. It was not pleasant but it was necessary. 

Looking back at that version of myself, there was another big takeaway from the movie that - while I may not have articulated it at the time, did resonate with the way that I understood my emotional world. Soon after the climactic tears, Joy and Sadness learn how to share the controls, they learn how to live in the main character together, and they start producing memory balls that glow blue and gold - that contain Sadness and Joy together.

This week, I have been holding in my body that very familiar feeling of Joy and Sadness. I spent much of this week operating at my very best: sharing in powerful learning, deep conversation, laughter and play, song and dance with wonderful friends from many of my communities. And, in every one of those moments, there is an underlying sense that I might, at any moment, collapse into a puddle of tears that are living just a millimeter beneath the surface. It has been a full and beautiful week. 

Fortitude (Gevurah)

“Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle enough to follow the natural paths of the earth and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world”

― Brenda Peterson

There is no sensation quite like the feel of water rushing over my body. When swept up in the force of a roaring river or a crashing wave I lose the boundaries of my body. For just a moment I am a particle of water, connected more to the thing we call river or ocean than to the thing I think of as self. It is a beautiful and terrifying experience: the oneness, the surrender. And it is an experience whose beauty I could not see until I learned to sit in the discomfort of the terror. 

The first time the ocean took me the beauty of the experience was not available, I only felt the terror, I only felt the panic of losing control.

I was eight or nine years old and spending the day with my family at the beach. The ocean was strong that day and it was a beach that I was unfamiliar with. As I played along the shoreline, creeping further out towards the break, a giant wave came and took me. Later I would learn about body surfing, about catching a wave and riding it back to shore. This was not that. This was the wave catching me. This was getting picked up, tossed around, and turned head over heels. There was no riding happening here, this was being hurled. 

When I returned to myself, when I could once again  feel the boundaries of my body, I was lying naked on the shoreline. I had literally been thrown out of my shorts. I was terrified. I was embarrassed. There was water all the way up my nose and sand in every crevice of my body. 

I was, at the time, what you might call a very floppy kid. I was not connected to the strength that lived in my body. I was not accustomed to holding myself upright, preferring to lean, to rest my weight on what I perceived to be a more solid surface - the wall, my bed, a parent. Later I would learn to stand upright, to recognize the boundaries of my body, to feel the stability of my own balance. But on that day when the water first took me I didn’t have the fortitude to hold my body together to the point that I could allow it to dissolve. I didn’t know enough about the boundaries of my own body to be able to discern if this experience made me feel unsafe or just uncomfortable. 

When the ocean swallowed me up and spat me back out, was it telling me “Stop! This is Unsafe! Do Not Enter!”? Or was it saying, “Slow down… get your bearings… center yourself and this is something you will be able to manage…  come towards me at a pace that you can handle”?

When reflecting on those questions I start with the truth that, yes, the ocean is dangerous. But, more than that, I didn’t know enough about the ocean. I didn’t yet know about riptides. I didn’t know what to do to keep myself safe. I didn’t know what signs  to look for, I didn’t know how to measure the ristk. As I learned more about the environment of the ocean and the container of my body the experience of being tossed by the waves stopped feeling unsafe. 

Once I started feeling safe, it took a lot of work to build up my ability to sit with and embrace the discomfort of being tossed under water. But building up my strength to ensure that I was safe, building up my capacity to sit in the discomfort of being tossed, unlocked one of the most profoundly joyous sensory experiences that I now get to have. It didn’t just come. I had to work for it. I had to embrace the discomfort. I had to build the fortitude in my body, to be clear about my boundaries. I had to have the strength to hold myself up, to hold myself together so that I could experience the wonder of surender into the oneness. I had to have a strong container, I had to have deep awareness of that container,  in order to experience the bliss that comes with letting it dissolve. 

Choosing Love (Chesed)

One year, on the last night of a summer camp I was the director of, a camper who had just performed a picture perfect impression of me in the closing talent show, came to find me. He was feeling mixed emotions about leaving camp and returning home, and wanted to talk. We talked about his experience of the summer, the things that stood out to him, the memories he was leaving with, the changes he’d gone through. At one point in our conversation he turned to me and asked, why are you all so nice here? 

The question caught me off guard, and it took a while for me to understand what he was getting at. He wasn’t remarking on a personality trait that happened to be common in our staff members. He was asking about our pedagogy. He was wondering what it was that allowed us as a staff to choose to be kind and caring. He was asking what it was that allowed us to make so much space for him as a camper, to not be triggered by his actions and behaviors, to not respond to him with harshness even when he was not showing up at his best. He wanted to know what made us continue choosing love, even in the stressful moments. 

As an educator I often find myself in community building circles in which a common prompt for introductions is to share, along with your name, one of your super powers. The prompt is meant to invite us to think about the strengths that we have and can offer a group. Answers to this kind of prompt can get very fun and creative. I love to hear what people recognize as their strengths and the ways they find to communicate them as super powers. 

An answer that I often give is that I have x-ray vision. I have an ability to see through people’s armor, to look past the protective layers that we put up, to catch a glimpse of who we really are underneath the masks that we wear: behind the fears, the trauma, the shame, the projections. It is this superpower that allows me to, as my camper put it, “be so nice” or as I would say, to choose love.

Like any superpower, this is an ability that has to be honed, a skill that has to be practiced. Superman doesn’t walk around seeing through buildings, and I don’t walk around seeing through people’s masks. I have to choose it. I have to remember that I believe that deep down we all want love, we want to love, and we want to be loved. So, to activate this superpower I take a breath, I look at the person in front of me, I allow my eyes to soften, and I let go of whatever projections I am placing on them.

It isn’t always easy. There are many people and types of behaviors that continue to trigger me. I do not always succeed at activating my x-ray vision. But when I do turn my ex-ray vision on it allows me to see beyond the hard layers we put up and into the essence of a person, into their soul. And by seeing the essence of a person, it makes it easier to choose to love them. It makes it easier to choose love when I might otherwise choose fear. 

There is a lot to be scared of in the world right now. We are living in a time of deep uncertainty, acute tension, and informational overload. We are living in a time where emotions are heightened and suspicion is much easier to access than trust. We are living in a time where the masks are thick and the armor is heavy. The illusion of stability that many of us were raised to believe in is cracking, the systems that had been presented to us as stable and static are in a process of collapse, and whether we liked the status quo as it was or fought against it with all our might, to see it so rapidly dissolve can be quite unsettling. 

It is hard in this kind of moment to show up at one’s best, and even harder to see the best in others. It is hard to choose love when there is so much to be afraid of. And yet, choosing love, finding ways to see the best in others, to see through each other’s armor, to look past each other’s fears, underneath each other’s masks might be our best hope, might just be the key to our survival.

Wholeness (Malkhut/Shechinah)

Sometimes I do not feel like my whole self. When I begin to get depleted I can feel disconnected, fragmented, cut off from some of my parts, from some of my selves. It can feel as though they are hiding from me, or perhaps we are hiding from each other. 

One of the signposts I have learned to notice that tells me that this disconnection might be happening is that I find myself seeking out distractions - often in the form of bad television, word games, and spatial logic puzzles. Social media was a very easy place to find this kind of distraction until I made a clean break from all of those platforms a year ago. 

But deleting social media and removing game apps from my phone does not address the root problem. Of course, the apps that are designed to capture my attention and bury me in an avalanche of distraction do not help with my feelings of fragmentation and disconnection. They actively prey on those feelings and they certainly exacerbate the depletion of my energy, but they are not the cause. The cause is something deeper, so the solution must be as well. 

When I find myself seeking out distraction it is usually because I know that there are feelings that I do not want to sit with. I know what sitting with grief and fear and rage feels like. I know the pain that welcoming those emotions in can bring. I know the energy that releasing them requires. And when my capacity is low I do not trust that I can handle that kind of emotional outpouring. So in those moments of depletion, when I begin to feel those emotions start bubbling up, when I begin to feel the discordance and the discomfort, I choose distraction, I choose compartmentalization. 

But I do not stay there. I have learned that these strategies of avoidance can be effective in the short term but they come with an expiration date. If I don’t tend to the root issue, if I don’t sit with the grief, confront the fear, release the rage, then they will start to consume me, the fragmentation and disconnection will grow deeper, and the discord I feel in my body will get louder until I have to address it head on or disassociate from it completely. 

My hope is that the distractions can buy me some time to rest, to defuse the intensity of the feelings, and to set up the conditions in which I can do a full confrontation. 

These full confrontations with myself and my emotions often take the shape of a ritual. I light candles, I give myself journaling and meditation prompts, I play music to invite movement into my body, and I make sure to go outside, touch a plant, and look up at the sky. These connection points with my senses pull me out of my head, out of the panic-inducing thought spirals, and allow me to connect with my body, with my breath, with the wider world around me. 

And in those connections I begin making my way back to wholeness. And in my wholeness I begin to feel at one with myself, my communities, and the larger ecosystems that my life is bound up in. And then my breath flows with ease.