Living with Uncertainty
Torah at the Intersection/Ki Tisa/ Rebuilding Hope by Transforming our Perceptions
This week’s Torah portion presents a powerful mythic presentation of the challenge and necessity of living with uncertainty. The story in Ki Tisa opens in the Book of Exodus, chapters 31:18-32:1, with the people caught in fear and false perception when they lost contact with Moses and the Eternal Presence hidden in a cloud on Mount Sinai. The people’s fear blocked them from seeing through the cloud to what was really going on. Moses, unbeknownst to the people as they stood and waited at the base of Mount Sinai, was basking in the sweetness of his own connection to the Divine and would soon return to them with clear instructions for everything they were yearning to receive.
The people were triggered to a place where their yearning for safety and trust would be satisfied by one unattainable condition: the unconditional presence and consistent attachment that can only be experienced, even then not always, in the womb. They were overcome by resistance to being born into this world of conditionality and uncertainty.
In the time of uncertainty during Moses’ disappearance into the cloud the people lost their capacity to see beyond their fear and pain. They told themselves they had been abandoned. Trust and safety were broken. In fact, what was happening was that Divine Presence was preparing to give Moses clear detailed instructions to bring to the people so that their connection to the Divine would stabilize in their day to day lives.
Instead, the people took the ingredients for their building project of the mishkan, the heart center to carry the connection to divinity in all of their structures and relations, and built a dead idol, called the Golden Calf. They danced in a trance around the Golden Calf. They created something out of nature and worshipped it. This was so out of resonance with how life is meant to be that they came close to losing the very promise and instructions made to them and their ancestors, the potential to build a society that values all creation. They worshipped deadness. Certainty is deadness. The place from which they escaped, the Egypt of domination and stuckness, is deadness. They worshipped what characterized the Pharoah domination society, turning themselves into Pharoahs from their fear of the uncertainty of life. They told themselves that it was better to return to a fictionalized past of greatness, in a trance of forgetting that the past had the same problems as the present, worse even in many ways.
The people needed a new paradigm. Receiving instructions for living created from the place of certainty, depicted inTorah as “the heavens,” wasn’t going to work. The people needed to participate in creating new instructions that change and evolve to fit our ever changing world of uncertainty. Moses speaks this truth to the Divine and their new partnership creates a new set of tablets and instructions for Moses to bring down . The era of a co creation of the Divine will and human work begins. This is the partnership needed to create a world where Divine Presence is comfortable to dwell.
This is inclusivity. This is the energy of the mishkan. All of us have to participate in building it. Everyone is included. It means building our capacity to include. The human path to survive is learning to live in harmony with earth and with people and nations of which we are uncertain. Stretching to this capacity is the very foundation for building sustainable relationships, lives and peoples.
We are called to build a society around a mishkan, a place for all life form to dwell, not a political entity called a State that limits its beneficence and resources to an artificially created group of people, chosen by that same artificial entity because of constructs of language, history, culture or other human created characteristic. Uncertainty calls upon us to include what we fear or don’t understand. For us today, this is captured in slogans such as, no one is illegal and from the river to the sea, everyone shall be free.
This is signified in the Torah story by Moses bringing down a second set of divine vibrations, a new “tablet” with the “Ten Commandments,” this one a joint project of humans and Torah’s God. We build as if there is a God of all creation to partner with and keep going. Developing the capacity to live with uncertainty is a pillar for hope and continuing on.
“I’m Telling Myself”:”
Nonviolent Communication Mindfulness Practice for Living with Uncertainty
Learning to distinguish our perceptions and beliefs, what we have been educated to believe and perceive about ourselves and “others, ” is one of the foundations of getting comfortable with uncertainty. Nonviolent Communication and Buddhism both offer many practices for us to learn to look with new eyes at people with whom we feel uncomfortable, angry and scared.
Start by writing something you are telling yourself about another person. This likely includes perceptions/judgments you have of someone (e.g.: she is selfish, he is a racist, he doesn’t care about me). (This is also a deep practice to do with how you see yourself.)
How do you feel, in your body and emotionally, when you think now about what you have in mind? (Feelings list to help you).
What is it that you yearn for, that is so important to you, that it generates these feelings? (List of Values/Needs to help you). Sit with these feelings and needs for some moments, to connect with the source of your beliefs/perceptions/judgments.
Now switch, to writing down one thing that person did that supports your judgment of them. (What did you observe them do or hear them say? Not what you tell yourself about their action.) (What would be seen in a video of the event.)
How does it affect you and the way you feel when you go from step 1 to step 2? Do you find value in doing this?
Part 2 Making Use of the Judgment: Self Empathy and Finding the Hidden Jewel in the Judgment
How do you feel and what do you need when you are thinking this judgment about them? (What is so important to you (the Hidden Jewel) that, when you are experiencing deficiency of it, you are thinking this way about another person?)
Can you embrace your needs (Hidden Jewel, core life energies) instead of judging? What is challenging to do this? Do you find value in doing this?
Part 3 Connecting with Curiosity: Empathy for the other person
As you find the jewel in your judgment, do you feel curiosity arising in you to understand what was going on in the other person when they did what they did? What is challenging to do this ? Do you find value in doing this?
What do you guess the other person was feeling and needing when they did that? What is challenging to do this? Do you find value in doing this?
Here are links to more writings (2021) and 2024, 2025 and a video from Torah at the Intersection on Ki Tisa
Ki Tisa | What Illusion Do You Worship?
March 2, 2021 / Exodus | Shemot