The end of our parsha deals with the yimei hamiluim, the 7 day period of practice and initiation prior to the consecration of the mishkan (tabernacle) on the eighth day, yom hashemini, in the beginning of next week’s parsha. The rabbis tell us that on each of these seven practice days, the entire mishkan was put up and taken down, again and again, until finally on the eighth day, it stayed up (Midrash Tanchuma Pekudei 11).
The Ups and Downs Inside Us
I want to consider this practice of building and dismantling, up and down, up and down, from a spiritual and emotional perspective. We often experience life this way, as having these ups and downs, both internally and externally. Sometimes we are in the space of excitement, creation and construction, full of hope, building something positive, and at other times we are in a state of collapse, destruction and despair, things falling apart inside and out. We can start by just noticing this oscillation inside us, the way we move between these two experiences, these two poles, between hope and despair, between creative elated energy and the sinking energy of dissolution and disintegration.
This movement inside us between extremes can itself feel dizzying, destabilizing and dysregulating, as if we are on a wild roller coaster ride or in a stormy sea with no anchor, tossed about on the waves.
Torah’s Advice: Stay in Your Seat
And here I think the Torah’s description of these days of miluim, of practice constructing and dismantling, helps us. Because here is what is emphasized in the Torah: the priests during this time of initiation may not leave petah ohel mo’ed, the doorway of the tent of meeting. The Torah says it twice in different ways, first – “from the entrance to the tent of meeting [petah ohel mo’ed] you should not leave during these seven days” (Leviticus 8:33), and then: “you should sit in the entrance to the tent of meeting day and night for seven days, and you should guard the charge of God and not die” (8:35).
I read this instruction to stay in the tent of meeting as a response to the challenge of the ups and downs. How do we manage all of this physical and emotional upheaval, going all the way up and all the way down in a single day and doing that again and again for 7 days? The Torah’s advice is: Stay in your seat. During the roller coaster ride, as you get tossed about, stay fastened firmly in your seat and do not leave.
What is this seat? It is the sanctuary inside you, your internal ohel mo’ed, your place of meeting the divine. Stay anchored in that aligned place inside yourself and from that place you can weather the ups and downs. Shabbat has a similar instruction – al yetse ish mimkomo – a person should not leave their place. Don’t leave your place, your inner resting place, your internal sanctuary. Be like a tree; the branches and leaves may fly wildly about, but the trunk of the tree remains rooted in its place. Guard this place, the Torah says, ushmratem et mishmeret Hashem, guard this divine place, stay steady and grounded in it, do not leave it.
Witnessing From the Doorway
The Torah says specifically that you should remain petah ohel mo’ed, in the doorway to the tent of meeting. This is a liminal space that we sit in when the storm rages. We remain firmly connected to the deeper divine sanctuary inside us, but we do not hide out in the sanctuary and ignore the storm. We sit rather in the doorway observing and witnessing what is transpiring. You watch the building go up – the feelings of creativity, excitement and hope rise inside you – and then you watch the building go down – the sinking sensation of despair and desolation that comes next. And then you watch as the hope comes back. You sit in your seat and you don’t move out of this place, your place; you are firmly rooted in your connection to yourself and the divine as you watch and feel and witness the ups and downs.
Because these feelings, the ups and downs, are not in and of themselves a problem. They are the natural cycle of the universe, building and dismantling and building, birth and death and birth again, up and down, high and low, all of this is part of the cycle, and it’s ok. The problem is when we leave our seat in the doorway, when we leave the sanctuary of our own center and fall into the ups and downs so that we become them, we identify with them so completely that we think there is nothing else. We feel thrown about and battered, dysregulated, at sea with no anchor. The Torah describes this experience as a kind of death, saying that if you leave your own sanctuary, you will surely die (Leviticus 8:35). If you disconnect from your Source so completely that you become the ups and downs – tossed about in their waves – then you do die in a way; you have lost the steadiness of your own center. We can practice being like a tree, rooted in our seat inside ourselves, connected to ourselves and to God, and standing firm as we witness all kinds of weather swirl about us. We sit in our seat and witness like a tree.
More Than Witnessing: Meeting
Perhaps we can do more than witness as we sit in this doorway. Perhaps we can also meet these up and down feelings. Because, after all, we are sitting in the doorway to an ohel moe’d, a tent of meeting. It is a place not just of meeting God, but also of meeting the world, both inside and outside of ourselves, meeting the parts of us that do go up and down, meeting them and getting to know them, to be connected to them and to love them. As we sit in this liminal spot at the doorway of meeting, on the one side, behind us, we feel connected, grounded and buoyed by our Source and our highest Selves, and on the other side, before us, we turn towards these shifting oscillating parts with all their challenges. We sit right in that mid spot, truly a place of meeting.
What does it feel like to turn towards these up and down parts inside you? Perhaps you sense it as a single young part that starts out on a high, elated and excited about something, and then ends up deflated and ashamed, crumpled on the floor. Or perhaps you sense it as multiple little parts, maybe a whole group that tends to be upbeat and in charge of building things, and another group that is self doubting and despairing, that tends to tear things down, tear you down along the way, too. Whatever it feels or looks like, these parts, In all their movements inside you, they have been essentially knocking at your door, asking for you to meet them and attend to them. And now you do. Now here you are sitting in your rooted seat, centered inside yourself, and turning towards them with your full focused attention. You answer their knocks at the door and welcome them as they are. From your firmly planted seat, you offer them the highest gift that you have inside you in this mishkan, this place of divine dwelling – – your presence, your steady loving compassionate presence – like the shekhinah, the divine presence.
This is the work of the mishmeret of God, the divine charge, to stay present and meet whoever arises. We can set an intention to be shomer, to guard and keep and protect this charge, to stay in our sanctuary entryway seats and meet all those who knock at the door, whether an upward angel or a downward one.
Miluim: Fullness
When we sit like this at the doorway and attend to the up and down angels, we begin to realize something important. We are already malei, full, inside. These days of practice in the tabernacle were called days of miluim, of fullness. When we practice, as they did, sitting in the doorway and meeting our ups and downs from a place of rootedness in sanctuary, we discover that we are already full, malei, already malei kvod Hashem, full of divine glory. All those parts that are going up and down, this fullness is ultimately what they are after. They know about our core emptiness and they are trying desperately to fill it. They build and they dismantle, both in an attempt somehow to solve this problem of our emptiness, to try to find something, anything, that will fill it. They run – first up and then down – but always running, restlessly running, desperate to fill this hole in us But then suddenly, when we pause and sit still in that centered place in petah ohel mo’ed, when we don’t leave even when the ups get excited or the downs get despondent, when we stay in that place, we find that we are already malei, already full, we already have that sanctuary deep inside us, we don’t have to run around searching after it in food or work or other people. We are full like a vessel filled with water, we are such a vessel filled with presence, divine presence as well as our own presence, attention and love, everything we need, full to the brim, our bodies filled with a warm divine light that nourishes us and our up and down parts and also overflows into a world so in need of it.
