The second of this week’s two parshiyot, Parashat Masei, begins with a list of names of places that the Israelites have traversed through their desert journey, 42 places in all. The Baal Shem Tov suggests that this description of the desert journey represents for us the journey each person takes from birth to death with all its challenges and triumphs, the gradual work of leaving Mitzrayim, leaving a place of narrowness and moving towards the Promised Land.
Each on a Sacred Journey
We are each on such a sacred journey toward a promised land of our own, towards our highest selves, towards the land of our own fully awakened fulfilled potential. We feel this journey as a yearning to movement, a pull forward to some unknown destiny that we are ever drawn towards, even if at times it feels like we are going backwards and not forwards, or going in circles, as the Israelites themselves did, not taking the direct route. Sometimes, often, we doubt that we are on such a sacred journey, and in those moments, we can take note that the Israelites, too, doubted it, that the doubt itself is part of the journey, that this journey and its stops are not marked on a map ahead of time, that it has zigzags and digressions, but that it is still divinely orchestrated, still directed and purposeful, trusting that we, too, travel al pi Hashem, according to the divine will, that each stop along the way, though seemingly pointless and often full of suffering, has a role to play. The Israelites’ journey was also full of suffering and pain and mistakes, but it was the suffering of growth. We often think – if I am in pain, I must be doing something wrong. How different it would feel to understand suffering as a natural part of the journey, trusting that each station in our lives is part of such a sacred process of growth.
Maybe you can imagine your whole life on a map, seeing all the station stops, the valleys and hills, the triumphs and challenges, taking a step back and seeing it all from a wider lens and resting in a sense of its purposefulness, trusting in the process of this life. It’s ok if skeptics come up, as they surely will. Understanding them, too, as part of the process, and welcoming them, including them, too, on the map. Being the larger space in which it all happens rather than identifying with any one of the stops or with the skeptics, inhabiting the wholeness of the journey. This is precisely what this parsha calls us to do – the parsha lists all the places rather than being in any one of them, taking this wider perspective, as if from the mountaintop overlooking the whole valley. Seeing the sacredness and wholeness of this, your life’s journey, and honoring it and all of the stops along the way.
A Midrash: Journey of Healing for a Sick Child
Rashi quotes a midrash here that tells a mashal, a parable, to explain this list of 42 places in the desert journey. It is like a king, the midrash says, whose son was sick and so the king took his son on a journey to a far off place in order to heal him. Upon their return, the father recounted all of the places they had been and what happened in each place – here, we slept; here, we were cold; here, your head hurt (Rashi on Numbers 33:1; Bamidbar Rabbah 23:3).. This loving parental recounting is the listing of places we find in our parsha, according to this midrash.
Each in Need of Healing
If, as the Baal Shem Tov suggests, this journey applies to each one of us, then each of us is in some way like an unwell child in need of healing, our life is a journey towards that healing, and God is not so much our healer as someone who accompanies us on this often painful journey towards our own healing.
While not denying our intrinsic wholeness and wellness, we can also touch into all the ways that we do sometimes feel unwell, sometimes feel very much in need of healing. This is not to pathologize us, but on the contrary, it is to normalize the state of unwellness in humanity, the basic universal human need for healing. It is not strange to have wounds in your body and soul that need tending – it is the normal way of the world; it is, in some sense, the purpose for which you were born; it defines your journey. The journey towards self is inherently one of healing. Lerafoto, the midrash says, God takes us on this journey lerafoto, in order to heal this child, in order to heal the wounded child in us, in order to heal us.
We can feel inside for both physical and emotional aches, for both the pain of this moment and the core wounds of our soul, just lightly touching them and noticing their presence, how much it hurts sometimes, noticing and allowing it to be there, and at the same time, offering that woundedness a sense of hope that we are, as in the mashal, on a journey of healing, that God has set us here to be on such a journey.
God Accompanies Us on the Journey
Though God is often conceived as the healer, in this journey midrash, God is not understood as the healer but as the one who takes us on the journey of healing and keeps us company as we go. The journey is taken together. Kan yashanu. Here we slept. Kan hokarnu. Here we were cold. Together. Kan hishashta et roshkha. And here, God recalls, your head was bothering you. We are not alone in any of this, never alone. Does your head hurt right now? Or some other part of you? God is right here, taking note of your pain. There is always an invisible presence with you, accompanying you through each stage, through each challenge and each joy, lovingly at your side through all of it.
Getting a Glimpse of This Truth
We don’t normally notice this loving, accompanying presence. The world often seems haphazard and harsh and we feel alone in our difficulties. Indeed, even the Torah narrative often seems that way. The original narrative made it seem like God was angry at us and punished us, that we were endlessly complaining and incorrigible, and the nimshal, the comparative reality for the parable named by the midrash, is indeed God’s anger. That’s what the world usually looks and feels like. But the mashal , the parable, offers a different view – the mashal is like a dream state, or maybe not so much a dream state, but like the state one is in on a psychedelic trip or a Near Death Experience, a state of consciousness that is said to be the opposite of a dream state, more real in some way than what we normally see as real, a different state of consciousness where one is suddenly aware of the underlying light that infuses everything in the universe, suddenly aware of the truth of divine love, that love is the Ultimate Reality underneath it all. It is into this state that the mashal invites us, offering us a glimpse into the underlying truth of God’s continuous love and accompaniment.
So we can acknowledge how things often seem otherwise in the world – the appearance of harshness and overwhelm and impossibility – we can acknowledge that and then, we can sink into the otherworldly lens of the mashal, sinking deeper into our own bodily knowing, to the innermost divine point inside us, and from that place, seeing our journey as one of healing and love, feeling God’s presence right alongside us through it all.
Looking Back on Life
This view is obtained from a remembering or looking back perspective, both in the parsha, where we are at the end of the desert time looking back, and in the mashal, where the father is recounting the journey from a place of keshehazru, “when they returned,” on the way back, looking back, remembering. We can see better this way, turning around and looking backwards, as when we die or almost die or have a similar out of body experience, and our whole life flashes before us. That is the view we are invited into by this mashal, our whole life flashing before us with all its individual stops seen in exquisite detail, but this time seen in the light of an accompanying loving healing presence by our side, this time seen through the prism of this otherworldly mashal lens that makes the invisible visible so that the light that is hidden through each step and travail is now revealed to be the truth of our experience, everything, your whole life, permeated with light, even though you were not aware of it at the time.
How might it change us to be aware of this light, this love, this accompaniment, as we go, as we continue, step by step, on our sacred journey of healing and growth?
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