Yosef has a difficult life, but he doesn’t seem to suffer through it like his father Yaakov. He seems to ride the ups and downs with equanimity, grace and success.
How We Navigate the Pits
Consider the image of the pit. Yosef is thrown into the pit first by his brothers and later by Potiphar, and each time, he is taken back out and emerges to successfully take the next step on his journey. Yaakov, on the other hand, Yaakov remains in an emotional pit for many years, suffering over the loss of his son, stuck in that pit of inconsolable grief and despair, unable to move forward.
We can feel the difference between these two ways of being in our bodies. We often feel like Yaakov, stuck in a pit, inconsolable, seeing no way out, a sinking sensation in our bellies, like the rock that permeates the Yaakov narratives, heavy, hard, immobile. What would it feel like to be more of a surfer, like Yosef, to ride the ups and downs of the waves – yes, there are some pits and there are also some hills, as there were for Yosef as he grew in stature – to move fluidly through this life, to allow ourselves to be in a pit for a short time, knowing, trusting we will come back out, to let life take us up and down without worry or despair, not getting stuck in any one place, to be more like a river, perhaps the Nile River where Yosef was, to feel that, too, in our bodies, the movement, the fluidity, the effortless flow, the allowing?
How We Achieve Success
Yaakov and Yosef also each have a different way of achieving success in the world. Yaakov fought and struggled for success and blessing, first with his father and brother and then with Lavan. For Yosef, on the other hand, there is effortless abundance, blessing and success that arise wherever he goes, whatever he touches, easily, without struggle, a natural flow that wants to emerge. Again, we can notice in ourselves what each of these feels like, the struggle to control, to manipulate, to achieve success by making it happen, the tightness of how that feels in our bodies, and on the other hand, the easy abundance of Yosef, the flow, like a river running through us, what it feels like to relax and allow blessing to emerge, to let your muscles unwind in the water. You don’t have to make it happen. It will happen on its own if you let it.
Trust
What is Yosef’s secret? How does he live in this easy, flowing way? Trust. Yosef has bitachon, trust, a word whose root has the same letters as tabach, as in sar hatabachim, the title of Yosef’s master; Yosef is himself not so much a sar hatabachim, as a sar habitachon, an officer, the chief officer, of trust. He is an expert at trusting God, at allowing fate to unfold and knowing that God is in charge. As he says at the end of this narrative to his brothers – you meant it for bad, but God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20). He sees the whole story and trusts in the flow, in the process, in the ups and downs of history to work their way to the intended divine positive end.
Can you taste that inside, what it might be like to let go of the worry and the control and the tightness, and to really trust, to allow the river to flow, to let God lead, to have faith that it all leads ultimately to good, even if you can’t see it now, even if right now all you can see is the pit, but to somehow hold strong to the sense of the river flowing, trusting it to take you where you need to go?
“God Was With Yosef”
How do we develop and maintain such a stance? The key seems to be what the Torah says of Yosef twice here: Vayehi Hashem et Yosef – “God was with Yosef” (39:2). Now surely this is not true only of Yosef, but of every human being, that God is with each of us. What was special about Yosef was that he was able to move out of the way enough to let the truth of God’s accompaniment impact the way he lived. God and God’s blessing were with him in everything he did because Yosef allowed God in, made room for the flow, made room for God’s presence and leadership.
This is hard for us. We have barriers and constraints to feeling that God is with us. We are skeptical and fearful and feel an urgent anxiety to act and fix. Feeling that God is with us involves relinquishing some control, making room, allowing for uncertainty and not knowing, trusting. But we can practice; we can ask the uncertain and fearful parts to soften a little, to step aside for a moment so that we can experiment and experience a glimmer. We can say to ourselves, all through our days – Vayehi Hashem et ____ and fill in our own names. God is with me now. God was with Yosef in the pit and the prison and in his rise to power, and God is with me in all my highs and lows, a steady presence that stands by me no matter what, an unbreakable cord of connection. Vayehi Hashem et ___ God is with me now.
What happens when we experience this kind of divine presence is first of all, that we are steadied. God is with me as I go through this trial. I am accompanied in whatever is difficult for me right now. There is a sense of equanimity and peace that washes over us. We are not alone.
Creativity and Growth
The other thing that happens to us when we feel that God is with us is that we have access to the continual flow of God’s goodness and creativity and life forward energy. Vayehi Hashem et Yosef is followed by kol asher hu oseh, Hashem matzliah beyado, everything he did, God made successful in his hands (39:3). Being attached to the source helps us grow and blossom and be successful.
We find something similar in the first psalm. It compares a person who is connected to God to a tree – : vahayah ka’etz shatul al palgei mayim, she will be like a tree that is planted beside streams of water which yields its fruit in season, whose foliage never fades, vekhol asher ya’aseh, yatzliach (the same phrase as is used for Yosef), and everything that she does, is successful (Psalm 1:3).
You can imagine yourself as such a tree, tall and majestic, and feel your roots buried deep in the ground, connected to streams of water, connected to a source of continual nourishment. This stream is abundant, like the hanukkah oil – you thought it would run out, but it is so much more abundant than you imagined – a continuous never ending flow of life forward energy. Feel this abundant flow coming into you through your roots and nourishing all parts of you, all your pores and crevices and all the parts of you that need it most, that are so thirsty. What is this nourishment made of for you today? What is it you are needing right now – love or rest or grace or hope or light or strength or encouragement or something else? You are a tree, opening up your roots to receive the exact nourishment that you need, letting it enter you and nourish and heal you. Sabeinu mituvekha. Fill us up with your goodness, God. Fill us up.
As you feel the divine nourishment – like plugging into an electric current – flow through you, maybe you can sense some natural growth that wants to emerge. When a plant gets the water and sunshine it needs, it grows and produces new branches and leaves and flowers and fruit. We are each such a living organism. We don’t have to work to produce this blossoming any more than a flower has to work to bloom. It is effortless, an expression of our nature, of our essence. Tzadik katamar yifrah – a righteous person blossoms like a palm tree, shetulim beveit Hashem – planted in the house of God (Psalm 92:13-14). That’s what we are, palm trees planted in the house of God, continually nourished by divine love and light and life energy, so that we naturally bloom in our season. Maybe you can sense your own latent potential, the flower inside you that has been wanting to open and blossom.
Staying Steady In The Wind
Even in drought, in the hottest weather, this tree does not suffer, says the parallel Jeremiah verse (Jermiah 17:8). It is like Yosef. Thrown into a pit, enslaved, falsely accused and imprisoned, whatever happens, whatever storms arise, he remains connected in his roots to the source and so he will not be moved, will not be swayed, does not give up, but stays steady. We can be like that, too, rooted in our Source, steady in times of drought or difficulty, in the stormy winds that buffet us.
“I shall not be moved. Just like the tree that’s planted by the waters. I shall not be moved.” (Johnny Cash song). Vayehi Hashem et ___. God is with me in this moment and the next and that keeps me strong and steady through the tempest.
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