ESSAY: Being the Space Between: Becoming a Leader for Your Own System (Parashat Pinchas)

Moshe asks God to appoint a leader in his stead before he dies so that the people will not be “like sheep without a shepherd” (Numbers 27:17).  I think we are often in such a state of leaderlessness in our own internal systems, and I want to consider what the Torah’s discussion here of leadership has to teach us about becoming leaders inside ourselves.  

Recognizing the Problem: Like Sheep Without a Shepherd

The first step is to recognize that we suffer in this way.  What does it look like inside us when there is no internal leader?   Consider the sheep analogy.  Sheep without a shepherd are helpless and lost, confused, wandering about, alone, frightened, vulnerable to prey, in need of care and nourishment.  Or maybe it feels more like a classroom without a teacher inside sometimes, students fighting and getting wild and extreme and out of control, chaos, people going in a million directions, and bullies taking over and hurting the more vulnerable ones.  Internally, this leaderless state might manifest as a sense of inner conflict and indecision, harsh self criticism or a sense of chaos and overwhelm, of being lost and helpless and vulnerable, your basic needs not being met.     

What A Leader Brings: Ruah, “Wind” or “Spirit”

How does the Torah imagine leadership helping this situation?  Both Moshe in his request and God in response use the word ruah, wind or breath or spirit, in their consideration of leadership.  Moshe calls God here Elokei haruhot, lord of the ruhot, of the winds, of the spirits, and God, in response, says that the person to be appointed will be ish asher ruah bo  a person with ruah, with spirit, within them. 

To Be The Space Between

What is this ruah, and how might it help us lead ourselves?  The call is to learn to be the ruah, to be the space rather than the particular parts or emotions you are experiencing, to be the breath of life and wind and spirit that suffuses everything that is happening inside, like the wind between the trees, the space between the words, the pause between actions, like the first ruah of the world, ruah elokim, the spirit of God that was, before creation, hovering over the primordial waters.  The space between is where God is, the space inside us, the breath that blows through us no matter what we are feeling or doing.  The first step in learning to lead is to inhabit the space as our true essence, to lead from that place, the space between the trees, rather than from a particular situated tree.  

We can experience this ruah in our breath, the ruah elokim that blows through us all the time, that spreads through our bodies and surrounds and encompasses all parts of us, all the body parts and also all the emotional parts, the ones that are hurt or angry or jealous or terribly alone and vulnerable and helpless, whatever they are feeling, you can imagine all of those parts as many trees in a forest or as sheep in a flock, and then see your spirit, your breath, your ruah, see how it flits around amidst them all, but is none of them.  You are not your anxiety or your fear or even your helpless inner child.  You are something way beyond that.  You are the spirit that holds them all.  

The Sheep Need You To Lead Them

And they need you.  You can’t just escape and run away from all the trees and be the wind any more than you can leave your sheep if you are a shepherd.   They need you.  Your parts need your leadership.   They are alone and helpless and vulnerable and needy and lost and directionless and sometimes hurting one another.  They need your leadership.  Maybe you can imagine all the emotions or parts of you as sheep in your body, wandering and lost and in need of attention and care.  Maybe you can see how straggly their wool is, how their hooves are untended, how they are hungry and thirsty and feeling alone and lost, looking at you with big sheep eyes.  Or maybe you see them as little children squabbling inside you, hurting and alone and confused, because there is no grown up in charge.  

And maybe you can set the intention to be the shepherd, the grownup, the leader, the space in your own system, not to abandon your sheep any longer.  

Keep Making the Space Bigger

This isn’t easy.  Again and again, we get blended with one or another emotion or part so that we become an individual tree instead of being the space between them.  We feel our anxiety so strongly, we say – I am anxious.  I am scared.  I am depressed.  I am angry.  Or else we are identified with the part that “hates” the anger and tries to stop it and get rid of it.  Each time we notice a part, we can just keep making the space a little bigger, breathing air into the space so it isn’t so cramped, so that we can feel again that we are the air around the tree, not the tree itself, we are the shepherd that takes care of the anxious, fearful little sheep rather than being the sheep, being the anxiety, itself.  And if you have parts that are skeptical or resistant or scared of this whole concept, then making the space bigger to include them, too.  Being the ruah that surrounds them all, we just keep making the space bigger.  

It’s hard to hear a message of possibility or hope in a cramped system.  Moshe tried early in the Egypt story to deliver such a message, and the people couldn’t hear him because of kotzer ruah (Exodus 6:9), because of a lack of space.  Living in cramped quarters, our vision becomes narrow and all we can see is the tree we are on, sometimes not even the tree, but just the end of the branch we are tenuously balanced on, such an uncomfortable place.  We can take a leadership position and move off that cramped perch to inhabit the space around it, to offer a wider perspective and sense of freedom and possibility for the part that is on that branch.   

Accepting Each Part

As a leader in our system, we also need to accept each sheep, each tree, each part of us. Rashi explains Moshe’s request as follows – God, you know how different the people all are from each other; appoint a leader sheyehe sovel kol ehad ve’ehad lifi da’ato, appoint a leader who will tolerate each and every one in their own view (Rashi on Numbers 27:16).   We can do that, too, as a leader in our own system: we can accept each part, each view, each emotion, not judging, but accepting them as they are, sitting with them, even or especially the ones we find difficult (the rejecting one is also a part to include), sitting with them from a place of savlanut, patience or tolerance. 

To Walk With 

To be sovel, to tolerate or accept, each one, that was Moshe’s view.  God’s view agrees and also goes one step further.  According to Rashi, God says to Moshe, ok, yes, like you asked for, I will appoint a leader sheyukhal lahalokh keneged ruhu shel kol ehad ve’ehad, a leader that is able lahalokh keneged, either to walk with or to walk opposite each person (Rashi on Numbers 27:18).  

Lahalokh keneged. Taking this first to mean, “to walk with,” as leaders in our own system, we walk with the parts that are suffering. We hold them and accompany them in whatever they are feeling with compassion.  We stand by them through the thick of it, holding their hands as we walk along the path together, connecting and offering presence and relationship..  

To Offer Pushback

The second meaning of lahalokh keneged is to walk opposite or even against, neged, to be a force that pushes back, that sets limits and boundaries, that does not just go along with what the part is saying, but offers a different perspective, that questions the part’s way of seeing and doing things from a place of care.  This pushing back is also part of leadership, like a good parent or coach who doesn’t just let the child go wild and do whatever they want, but offers guidance and boundaries.  There is strength here to balance the softness of the walking with.  We can notice a part that has gotten extreme in some way, maybe the inner critic or an addictive part, and set limits – I know you are trying to help, but it is not okay to keep doing this.  Or the pushback could feel like questioning a long held assumption that is not helpful to you, a false belief like the notion that you don’t belong or are unlovable. As a leader in our system, from our place of greater spaciousness, we bring some air into the room when we ask – is that really true?   Lahalokh keneged.  Sometimes internal leadership, like external leadership, requires walking against, as an opposing force, to hold a shepherd’s rod and staff for guidance and containment.

Relief

All of these ways of being with our parts open up space so that they can hear what Moshe was trying to tell them way back when and that we are trying to convey now: a message of hope and freedom, of possibility and salvation.  The truth is not as tight and impossible as they had thought in their cramped state.  In Hebrew the word revah, which means “relief” is related to the word ruah.   Revah implies the kind of relief that comes from expansiveness, from a wide open space where we no longer keep bumping into things and hurting ourselves, but can run free through an open field of flowers.  Revah vehatzalah, “relief and salvation” (Esther 4:14) are what we provide for our parts when we step into a place of spacious leadership.

With God

We don’t do this alone, of course.  The ruah that runs through us is always the ruah elokim, the divine spirit that breathes continuous life into us. We connect to the original ro’eh, to Hashem Ro’i, to “God my Shepherd” (Psalm 23), and draw in the expansiveness and endless capacity for care that is the divine so that we become vessels for this energy, shepherds inside ourselves and in the world.  

The Shepherd’s Song

Shepherds lead their sheep partly by the sound of their voice, by the ruah, the breath, they blow into their musical instruments, by the songs they sing that waft out over the sheep and become the wind that surrounds the sheep and the trees.  David the shepherd played such music to soothe the ruah ra’ah, the bad spirit, that had entered King Shaul, to provide him with revah, with relief (I Samuel 16:23).   We, too, can sing such a shepherd’s song to our parts, a song of revah, of relief and spaciousness, a song of care, both ours and God’s, a soothing song that we send on our breath to spread through our system and calm the fear and aloneness and helplessness of the lost sheep inside us. 

Your system is not like a flock without a shepherd.  You are present and leading.  You are the song, you are the space between things, you are a vessel for the divine flow that runs amidst it all inside you.  

Photo by kailash kumar at Pexels