The Book of Numbers, B'midbar, the fourth book of the written Torah, opens by thrusting us into the intersection of the hidden and the revealed. This place in Torah is called the wilderness of Sinai, the unformed shadowed side of the mountain where everyone stood together and each person received their own instruction for living in awareness.
What is this shadow side, the wildness in Sinai, the place of chaos and unknown within revelation and clarity? It is the place where seeming opposites can meet, co exist, deepen and inform each other. It is the place where we can understand what seems beyond understanding.
It is the place where there is true peace because no one dominates or judges. In this freedom, we have the space and courage to explore our own shadows, the parts of us that breed violence and hatred. The parts that breed shame when we hold them up to the light of revelation.
Freed from blame, judgment and shame, we can reacquaint ourselves with the parts of ourselves and others that scare and repel us. We can grow understanding. And from there, love.
To get there, we need space in our own minds and hearts for new ways of interpreting the shadow sides of ourselves and others. This is the wilderness space. Torah identifies the characteristic of wilderness as ownerlessness, hefker. This is the consciousness of freedom, where we act and speak as if we neither own anyone else nor are owned by anyone else. We neither submit nor rebel. Free from domination we find new ways of being together, of encountering differences. We step out of the violence, hatred and divisions we have inherited from previous generations by leaving behind the systems of thought and action that are based on ownership, control and domination. As we transform such thinking and actions our consciousness opens up to new possibility of sharing our gifts, our land, our resources, our love.
We enter into the consciousness where we receive new possibilities, new ways of living and solving our problems. As mystic and scientist Albert Einstein taught, a problem that was created in one consciousness cannot be solved in that same consciousness.
To make yourself ownerless in the shadow of Mount Sinai means committing to a path of peeling away layer after layer of the constricted consciousness that uses blame, shame and judgment to make meaning of our pain.
We can free ourselves from the ancient belief that freedom comes from the sword, from crushing others.
Instead, as suggested by one ancient line of Torah instruction, we can understand the counting in the Book of Numbers to signify that we are loved. We all matter. We are called to rise to build a world where everyone matters. We aren't valued because we can take up arms and kill. We are valued because we are loved. The 12th century Jewish scholar, doctor, mystic, Torah commentator Ramban studied the opening of this book of Torah and asked, why does the god of torah keep counting us? For war or love?
Which God do you want to worship, love or war?
This is the question for right now.
NVC: Making meaning without blame or shame
As individuals and as societies, how do we build our capacity to let go of old ways of thinking and maintaining security that, we see now, is costing our very survival? Nonviolent Communication helps us do the inner work of transforming meaning-making away from blame and shame to opening our vision to new creation. We shift from conflict to shared dilemma, from a model of "either me or you" to a model of "us."
NVC, like all the paths, recognize that it's scary to make meaning of our suffering without blame or shame. We have turned to blame and shame to protect us from the vulnerability of the wilderness. NVC offers tools and practices for finding meaning when we realize we are lost in the dark wood.
The first step is to recognize when you are lost in confusion and isolation, without connection or clarity. Stop and ask yourself,
What do I need in this moment, and are those needs being met? If not, I trace back to when I felt out of sorts. What happened? What did I observe?
What needs of mine were met or not met when that happened? And now, recognizing that, what do I want to do about it?
Because NVC is about showing up with compassion in the world, I usually want to begin by giving myself self empathy.
I pause, take a slow breath, and say to myself, in a gentle tone,
Oh, when I read that email, or remembered that I hadn't heard back from a friend, or read a newspaper story, I felt tense, angry , hurt, scared.
I take some time to hold and embrace every feeling that comes up.
I slowly discern my feelings from my thoughts about them.
Oh, I am blaming or shaming because I'm feeling lonely and upset. I want a world where people value life and compassion.
If the disconnect is with a friend, I return to the need I want to meet in relationship to this friend. I really value this friendship. I want to understand why we have broken apart in this way.
This is returning to my inner experience, instead of letting my energy flow out to blaming the other person.
This is using the NVC model to make meaning of what happened and how I feel about it, without resorting to blame or shame.
The Buddhist Path Out of Suffering
This also is the first noble truth of the Buddha. To recognize where I am at in a moment of ill-being. Dukka, the sanskrit word for ill-being, or suffering, is what Marshall Rosenberg called a life-alienated state of being. In this moment I am cut off, alienated from life, from the energy that supports life.
I am in the wilderness. I am ruled by an "inner" or "outer" Pharoah.
The Dalai Lama explains why the Buddha began his teachings by speaking about suffering. Years ago, I sat amidst 5,000 students n Dharamsala, India for 10 days of Tibetan New Year's teachings in the palace courtyard of the Dalai Lama . “You would think,” he said, “that starting with the truth of suffering isn't a good place to start.” He chuckled and said, "not so compelling," in his delightful pithy English.
“But,” he went on, “if we don't start by acknowledging that what is going on is suffering, that we are suffering, we won't have the motivation to find a way out of suffering.”
We are lost in the wilderness by our narratives of blame and shame, not knowing how to count and value all life. The good news is that in the uprootedness itself , in the chaos and shadow of Sinai, we can find creativity, hope and a world of new possibilities.
For more writings on B’Midbar:
https://torahattheintersection.com/bemidbar-beginning-again-space-between-chaos-order/
https://torahattheintersection.com/bemidbar-building-world-everyone-matters/
And registration open for the upcoming series exploring how to talk about Anti Semitism and Islamophobia in relation to the current crisis in Israel/Palestine:
Join our Upcoming Zoom Course: Responding to Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the Context of the Crisis in Israel and Palestine
with Nadya Mahmud Giol and Roberta Wall, Certified Trainers with the Center for Nonviolent Communication
June 26 and July 10, 12 noon EDT, 19:00Jerusalem
This course is open to everyone and offered without charge for Israelis and Palestinians. The course will be offered in English with simultaneous translation into Hebrew and Arabic.
Registration and Details:https://nvcacademy.com/live-nvc-courses/video-conference/responding-to-anti-semitism-and-islamophobia-2024