The Israelites’ journey through the desert is described in the beginning of Parashat Masei as a series of 42 stops. The text details each stop with the words – vayisu me . . . vayachanu be, “they traveled from . . . and they camped in , , , “ (Numbers 33:5-39). Vayisu, vayachanu. Vayisu, vayachanu. They traveled and they camped. They traveled and they camped. A rhythm is created here of movement and rest, movement and rest.
Applied to Inner Work: Becoming and Being
I want to consider the importance of holding both sides of this equation in our inner work, both vayisu and vayachanu, both movement and rest. The movement represents our process of change and transformation and growth, of becoming and evolving into something greater, our fullest selves. And the rest represents our coming into awareness that we are, in some way, already there, already whole, that we are not fundamentally broken and therefore not in need of fixing or going anywhere, learning not so much to become, but simply to be as we are. Both of these ways of looking at our inner journey are true, both the becoming and the being, both the growth and the awareness of our already perfect wholeness. They are also represented by the six work days and shabbat. We both need to improve and change the world and also to rest in God’s already perfect creation.
Tendency to Cling to One
We have a tendency to want to pick one of these attitudes and hold fast to it as the only truth. In our society, we tend to emphasize the vayisu side of things, the more active going and doing and becoming. If we were to write about a travel experience, we might write: vayisu, vayisu, vayisu – they traveled here, and then they traveled there – leaving out the aspect of rest and encampment. And in our attempt to correct the balance and in our yearning for some other truth – for the permission to rest that we have not been granted by our culture – we might be tempted to turn to an exclusive focus on the other side, on vayachanu, on the rest, to say – no, the truth is we are all already whole; life is just about vayachanu, vayachanu, vayachanu, learning to rest and relax. We would then lose something of the powerful energy of transformation and growth, of the possibility of deep change in ourselves and the world. Which one do you lean towards and cling to, positing that this one thing is THE answer?
Holding Both as the Road to Freedom From Enslavement
I believe that learning to hold both of these energies helps us to attain maximum freedom and empowerment. The parsha describes the Israelites’ travels as beginning from Rameses, in Egypt, the place of their enslavement. This desert experience of the continual back and forth between movement and rest, vayisu and vayachanu, was an inculcation into freedom, an embodied learning of what it means to take your power back, not to be enslaved (or addicted) to one mode or the other, not to make a new master out of either progress or rest, but to be the Self flexibly moving with agency between the two poles.
I’d like to turn now to fleshing out each of these attitudes in turn, vayisu and vayachanu, exploring what they each offer and are lacking, and how they balance and complete one other, like yin and yang.
Vayisu – Movement
The Torah begins with vayisu, with travel, with movement. The ability to move and change your life is the essence of freedom, to be an agent in your own story, not to be stuck or stagnant, to say – no more of this; I am making a change for the better. I am breaking the chains that have constrained me, leaving Rameses – whatever enslaves me – behind, and moving powerfully forward, taking charge. No one can stop me. There is vitality and energy here, the sense of – I can do this. The world is my oyster. There are unlimited possibilities before me and I an not stuck in the place I started.
This vayisu energy of movement is essential and empowering, but it can also, in the extreme, become aggressive and enslaving in its own way. It can turn into the tyranny of progress, so that change and transformation become our new masters and we subordinate our lives to them. We begin to evaluate ourselves in terms of movement forward and when we don’t measure up, there is shaming and aggression. There is no room for rest, for just being a human, as we are, for our natural weaknesses, limitations and exhaustion, for the little ones inside us who aren’t ready to move. There isn’t the sense of unconditional love and holding that is so grounding for us, because the sense is that what matters is not the person, but the movement, the progress, and so the person in her essential value can get lost in the urgency of rushing forward. There is a devaluing of our wholeness and a focus on what is wrong with us, what needs fixing and changing, not seeing the divine light that is always just beneath the surface. And so in its own way, this focus on change, when not balanced by rest, can actually be disempowering, a force from outside us that pushes us down, imposing expectations and standards, its own kind of enslavement.
Vayachanu – Rest
Now we come to the balancing energy of vayachanu, they stopped, they encamped, they rested. This is the truth of non-movement, of staying in place, of resting where we are, of not needing to earn anything, but simply relaxing into unconditional love exactly as we are, relaxing into grace, hen, a word similar to lachanot, to encamp – hen, grace, held beyond reason, for no reason, with no agenda of getting somewhere other than here, of being some way other than how we are right now. This is the shabbat zone, where there are no more tasks or transformations that need doing, no places to go, nothing inside or outside us to fix.
We return and recover our inherent value through this rest. We re-align with the divine inside us as the Israelites did at each encampment, coming back into the formation that placed the mishkan with its divine presence at the center. We, too, return to our divine center through rest, remembering the truth of our divine connection and wholeness. Instead of moving, we stand still and find the wells deep inside ourselves, discover our own neverending, timeless, unchanging essence. It is all right here. We are not missing a thing.
And yet, here, too, there are dangers and limitations. Taken too far, rest can turn into quitting, malaise and disempowerment; it becomes a relinquishing of our agency, a bodily forgetting of our power to make change and an acquiescence to the way things are even when they are harmful. We can confuse rest with collapse and begin to think of ourselves as impotent and unimportant, incapable of impact. We can’t only have rest. We also need the vital life energy of movement and growth, the promise of a brighter future, the hope of transformation and an unfolding and evolving self and world.
And so we, like the Israelites, need both energies in order to achieve true freedom and empowerment, in order to be sure that neither one of them becomes our new master and we are empowered to become full partners in a world that needs us for redemption.
Learning to Hold Them Both
How do we hold both truths at once? Maybe you can imagine each one in one of your hands, placing vayisu, the energy of movement and growth in one open palm, and vayachanu, the energy of rest and wholeness in the other, on one side the truth of becoming, and on the other, the truth of being, feeling the weight of each one and holding them both at once. Or perhaps we can adapt the Hasidic wisdom of different slips of paper in each of your two pockets. One says – I am growing. The other says – I am already whole. You are the container that can hold both aspects of life inside you, both “I am growing” and “I am already whole,” both the excitement of moving and the restfulness of encampment, inhabiting both in your body in a way that brings harmony and balance and a deep alignment with this dual truth of the universe.
The Israelites did both their travel and their rest al pi Hashem, based on God’s direction. Both energies come from and meet in God. There is a sacred divine place inside us where these two energies meet and integrate and become one. From this place maybe you can sense how both are true at once, how you are growing into your wholeness, and your pure essence is both eternal and somehow also evolving into redemption. We can learn to live from that place, so that both our rests and our movements are sacred and unenslaved, fully free, emerging from the divine source which undergirds and energizes them both.
Photo by Jben Beach Art at Pexels
