What happens when we are not aligned with our divine purpose? The story of Balaam shows us.
The Donkey Scene
Balaam is invited by King Balak to curse the Israelite people, and as he travels to do this job, riding along on his donkey, an angel appears to stand in his way. The donkey sees the angel and veers off to the side, but Balaam does not see the angel and hits his donkey, again and again, trying to force it back to the path. The situation gets more and more extreme as the road narrows until the passageway is so tight that the donkey, trying to avoid the angel, presses Balaam’s leg into the fence on the side of the road, causing Balaam pain. Balaam continues to beat the donkey until finally, the donkey’s mouth opens and he speaks, and eventually Balaam is able to see the angel and understand (Numbers 22:2-35).
This scene is a great representation of our internal process. God is constantly sending us angels as messengers to guide us on our way so that we will know our true divine purpose and align with it. But we don’t recognize the angels. Some part of us, the donkey intuitive bodily part, does see and know, but we don’t listen. Instead, we punish the messenger, trying to control it and beat it into submission, so that the situation becomes extreme and our pain increases.
Hitting the Donkey: Our Aggression
Let’s unpack the parallels, starting with the most outer layer, Balaam’s hitting of the donkey. This is indeed often our natural reaction to any problem, obstacle or experience of pain – we get aggressive and controlling. We try to force it into submission, to make things go the way we think they should go. We try to whack the problem back into line. We have pain, and we hit at the pain, making our suffering worse. We don’t listen to the pain. We try to control it, to push it away through distraction and denial, to smother the symptoms with medication, to aggressively “figure it out” and fix it, to hit at it with blame and shame. There is so much aggression in our process, even in our self help process.
This aggression doesn’t work. It only makes things worse for us. Since we are not listening, the pain has to intensify to get our attention, the space gets narrower, our sense of tightness and anxiety increases, we have less and less room to maneuver, and our body is caught in pain, like Balaam’s leg squeezed against a fence. Nowhere to go.
The Way Out: Listening to the Pain
But there is a way out, a way to expand the space and breathe and move again, and this way out involves listening, deeply listening to what the pain and the obstacle is trying to tell us. We can pause and breathe the space bigger inside, making room for that pain or difficulty to be here and opening to it with respect and curiosity, inquiring: What is asking to be seen here? Not trying to solve or get rid of or control or whack, but opening yourself to this difficulty as an angel, a divine messenger, intended to guide you. What is asking to be seen here? How might this pain or this difficulty or this obstacle be an angel intended to direct me on my way? What am I being shown through this trouble? What new way of being is it inviting me into?
Balaam experienced this pain because he was off kilter, going in the wrong direction. He was on the road to becoming an instrument of cursing rather than of blessing. He was not aligned with his own divine essence, the truth of what he was meant to offer and contribute to the world, and so things started going haywire for him. When we are not aligned with our divine truth and destiny, that’s what happens to us. God sends angels, in the form of difficulties and painful sensations, in order to let us know – hey, something is not right here. We feel “off” in some way because indeed something is off.
So maybe you can listen right now to anything that has felt off or difficult lately, a place where you have been pushing and hitting and it just keeps getting tighter, maybe you can relax the pushing and consider if there is some message, some angel here. What are you being shown or invited into? How might you be off course in some way? How might you be headed in the direction of curse instead of the direction of blessing for which you were meant? What are the signs pointing to, how might they be pointing you in a more life-giving direction, one of greater blessing and blessedness?
Saying Yes and No to the Wrong Things
Balaam said yes to King Balak’s invitation to curse instead of saying the no that was needed. And he said no and was resistant to the divine role of blesser when there was a deep yes there underneath. We know inside us what the divine whisper is telling us, but we don’t always listen and align with it. We say yes when we should say no, and no when we should say yes. Maybe asking yourself that, too, right now – where are the places in my life that I have been saying yes when the deep divine knowing in me wants to say no, and where are the places where my spirit wants to rise up and say yes with enthusiasm and I have not been embracing that path? And how have these misguided yeses and nos been causing pain and constriction in my life? (Questions inspired by Gabor Mate, When the Body Says No)
Social Pressure That Leads Us Astray
I want to also acknowledge the pressures that lead us to these faulty yeses and nos. Balaam did not come up with this idea of cursing the Israelites on his own. He was asked to do it by a powerful king and offered fame, wealth and success for his performance. We are constantly being asked by society and those we consider more powerful than us, we are constantly being asked, in various ways, to leave our own divine truth, to sell our souls and perform according to the world’s parameters. And this pressure, the social pressure, the desire to meet expectations, to please people and to gain approval, even to make money, all of those lead us at times to get mixed up and follow a path that is not ours and not sanctioned by the divine in us.
The Part That Knows: Our Donkey Part
But there is also something in us that knows the way, our particular way. The donkey knows. The donkey represents the body, the intuitive instinctive knowing of the body and of the unconscious mind and soul as expressed in the body. We may initially dismiss and devalue this donkey part as base and unimportant, but when we begin to honor and listen to it, we find that it holds a deep intuitive wisdom (thank you to Judy Warter, a member of my meditation group, for this insight). The word used here for donkey, aton, is feminine, as if to hint at this intuitive feminine aspect, the neshamah, the soul. It is the quieter voice inside us, but the one more closely aligned with the divine, beyond words and rational understanding. This donkey part in us knows how to align with our highest divine essence and will rebel when we are not aligned.
It is difficult for us to listen to this donkey voice because it usually does not speak in words. It speaks through our body, in vague physical sensations and inklings. It takes time and patience to begin to hear and listen to this voice, to allow it to come into consciousness and to be verbalized. This is the miracle of the pi ha-aton, the mouth of the donkey that spoke to Balaam, the miracle of what happens when we do listen to those vague sensations, the miracle of the donkey’s ability to open its mouth and speak to us, to come slowly and gradually out of the intuitive unconscious place into our full awareness.
The Twilight Miracle of This Donkey Speech
The miracle of this talking donkey, this pi ha-aton, is considered one of the ten miraculous things created during the beyn hashmashot, the twilight of the sixth day of creation, according to the rabbis (Pirke Avot 5:6). It has a sparkly otherworldly quality to it, this type of speech, because it comes from a place deep within us that is ultimately not verbal, beyond words. The ability of the donkey part of us to speak is indeed a twilight phenomenon, partaking of that sacred liminal space beyn hashmashot, between the suns, between night and day, between our conscious and unconscious minds, between our verbal knowing and our divine knowing, between our world and God’s. Twilight is that between time, and this donkey speech exists in that bridge space, as a miraculous almost prophetic moment for us, where we can reach into the dark unconscious soul and pull out some inkling of light and understanding.
When we sit and feel into this liminal space and listen to our donkey intuitive part, it begins to express itself through bodily inklings and sensations, through images and colors and sounds, emerging, as if through a fog, showing us something we didn’t know before, not clear yet but forming, slowly unfolding. Listening to yourself, listening to God in you.
Returning to Our Path
And letting that listening return you to your path, to your particular divine path, to the path of blessing, for yourself and others. Perhaps sensing how, when we listen and return to this path, when we align, we are righted, we are breathed larger, we are no longer constricted and in pain, but become trusting, flowing and overflowing, like a spring of water. We become a blessing.
When we speak from this place, it feels good. It feels strong. It feels true. It may not be received well, as Balaam’s words of blessing were indeed not received well by Balak. Balaam was criticized and chased away, but one imagines that he was still whole and content. He was internally aligned with his highest divine purpose and that is enough. The world pressures us to leave our own path and follow theirs, but if we listen to our donkey part, listen to our pain, listen to the angels along the way that want to direct us, we can always return to God and to our own path of blessing..
