ESSAY: Netzach: The Endurance To Keep Going (Sefirat HaOmer)

This week, the fourth week of the Omer, is associated with the divine attribute of Netzah.  Netzach means eternity or endurance. 

In the human body schema, Netzach is associated with the right leg. It’s as if the right leg is stepping forward to keep walking in a committed way on your journey, day in and day out, the endurance to keep going through thick and thin.   Netzach has the energy not of a sprint, a quick intense surge, but more of a marathon, steady and deliberate, pacing ourselves for the long haul, that quality of eternal time.  It is more like the tortoise in the race than the hare.  

In its steady long range energy, Netzach stands in contrast to both urgent activation on the one hand and to despairing collapse on the other.  Below I invite you to sense into each of those extremes in turn in order to feel how different Netzach is from either one. 

Not Urgency

On the one hand, we have urgent activation, the restless need to resolve things yesterday,  the rush to do and call and make it all okay now.  You can sense that in your body as turbulent restlessness in your belly or tightness in your muscles or a quickened heartbeat, ready to sprint.   Netzach slows that all down by suggesting we look up from the tiny urgent perspective we are in, this little spot of difficult time, and get a glimpse of a path ahead that keeps stretching for miles and years and generations; you can see it stretching all the way to the horizon. It’s not just about today or even tomorrow. It’s about sticking with it for the long run. There is patience here and a steadying of your energy level, like a long distance runner pacing herself.  Your breath becomes more even and your muscles supple and strong, less tense, not floppy but also not tight and rigid, not white knuckling your way through this moment.  You are no longer in emergency mode, but vibrantly alive and capable of continuing at a sustainable pace, keeping your eye on the goal.  That is Netzach – endurance, resilience, perspective, fortitude, commitment.    

Not Collapse

On the other extreme, we sometimes fall into despair.  Often it is after an intense output of precisely all that urgent energy.  We have overused our emergency capacity and burned out.  We have nothing left and see no way forward.  There are too many obstacles before us.  We throw up our hands and fall to the ground in a heap, lying collapsed on the side of the road.  Maybe from this place you are aware of the long journey ahead, too, and that is precisely what gets you down. And so Netzach looks at you collapsed on the ground and says to you – just this one leg, just put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. You don’t have to do it all at once, but you do need to be on the journey.  Taking a deep breath, and letting Netzach help you get up, get back on the road and keep moving. Netzach is the steady upbeat rhythmic song we sing on a long hike as the hours pass.  It helps us stay in the flow, so that at some point we no longer feel tired, but in the zone, energized enough to keep going.  That’s where we are in the Omer, too, right in the middle, in the place where we might be losing steam and getting demoralized, where the emergency rush of peak energy in the beginning is wearing off and we see no way to keep going.  It is in that moment in the Omer and in our lives that Netzach comes to say – you got this; just stay steady and stick with it.  

Our Access to Netzach

But where does that Netzach energy come from? How do we get it?  Netzach, like the other sefirot, is a divine attribute. It comes from God. When we have access to that Netzach capacity in ourselves, we are like a tree planted by streams of water, nourished by God.  Ka’etz shatul al palgei mayim  (Psalm 1:3).  Like a tree planted by streams of divine waters, waters that have the flavor of Netzach in their endlessness, ever fresh and hourishing, waters that can sustain us through the cold winters and the harsh summers, through each challenge and obstacle we face.  Maybe taking a moment to feel yourself as such a tree, with your roots reaching down – especially through the right leg that is Netzach – into streams of infinite divine water beneath you, imagining those waters deep beneath the soil and feeling the life giving nourishment coming up through your feet to permeate your body with steady energy and sustenance. It is a flow of liquid that neither dries up nor comes in a rush like adrenaline.  It is regular and reliable, drip by drip, like the steady beat of our heart and the rhythmic flow of our breath.  That is God’s energy in us, steady and nourishing, neither running nor collapsing, slow and steady, well regulated.  

Indeed, our Netzach regel (Hebrew for leg) helps us walk in a well regulated – well regel-ated, as it were – way, each step taken at the same deliberate pace.  Perhaps, whenever we are dysregulated, we need a dose of this attribute, a dose of Netzach to fortify and steady us. We need to offer our shaky parts some of that nourishment from the eternal waters beneath our feet, letting the waters’ consistent flow steady their overwhelm, co-regulating with them so that they slow down and come into sync with the divine pulse. Maybe you can feel yourself returning through those waters to the resilience and firmness of a tree that can withstand all kinds of weather, all kinds of trouble.  That is your Netzach capacity.  

Always There

We aren’t always plugged into this Netzach divine flow, but it is always there.  That is its essence, to always be there. After all, Netzach means eternity. Ki le’olam hasdo (Psalm 118).  God’s love is forever. That generous flow of nourishment does not leave us, does not abandon us.  Netzach is a divine commitment to us that is like no other commitment, cannot be broken or torn asunder.  We didn’t earn it, don’t deserve it and cannot do anything to convince God to leave.   Netzach yisrael lo yeshaker velo yenachem  (I Samuel 15:29). This divine Netzach neither deceives nor goes back on a decision. God doesn’t change God’s mind about us.   We can and do close ourselves to that flow, we forget and don’t feel it, we doubt it, we ignore it, we fight it, feel unworthy of it, but on God’s end, there is no effect.  God doesn’t change God’s mind about us. God just stays put, like a good parent with a wild tantruming child.  I’m here, God says.  Still here.  Like the child crying in the corner with a blanket over her head, peaking out every once in a while to check if her grown up is still there – that’s how we are.  Maybe we can peak out now and notice that, no matter how much we scream and kick and run away, it’s ok.  I’m right here, God says.  Lanetzach.  Forever.  

Being Like That For Ourselves

All of these traits that God has and offers us, we are meant to absorb them and embody them ourselves, too, to become like God, that steady, that reliable, that committed.  And not just towards others.  No, not just towards others, but perhaps primarily towards ourselves.  God models for us how to be towards ourselves.  We so easily abandon ourselves and our own parts. Checking if and how that manifests for you, how maybe you don’t stick with yourself when things are low, when you are suffering or criticized or have made a mistake, how you pile on shame or turn your back on yourself, as if you don’t matter, as if what matters is always something or someone else, always that matters more. Feel the ache of that abandonment. It’s like we’ve left that little child crying alone.  We’ve left her alone.  God has not abandoned her, but we have.  A thousand times, we have.  

She just wants you to stay.  Netzach. To stay the course, for the long haul.  She wants to know that she doesn’t have to perform or earn your love or attention.  She can be a sniveling mess.  And you’ll stay.  You’ll hold her hand and walk steadily through this life with her.  You’ll learn from God and you’ll keep your access to God’s continuous drip nourishment open so you are strong enough to keep holding her hand along the path.  You’ll walk along the beach with her and never let her go.  

Our Inner Need for Steadiness

It’s not that we never do this.  Sometimes we are indeed present and loving for ourselves.  We have ups and downs; we play hot and cold.  We hold our little ones’ hands for a few minutes and then we drop them, turning away, no longer aware of either their cries or their laughter.  And if you have a hard time relating to this notion of your inner young ones, just ask yourself  whether you are steady with yourself, whether you are consistently on your own team and aware of what is happening inside. That is the dropping of the hands.  What Netzach invites and supports us in doing is not just to sometimes hold hands, but to make a commitment to stay.   Again, as with a small child, above all, what we most desperately want and need is that steadiness, not a sometimes love, but a reliable steady love, like God’s. To say – I’ll be there no matter what.  Like the breath that God breathes into us, to be that steady with ourselves.  I’m right here, not going anywhere. 

What would happen if the sun came up some days and other days did not?  Netzach is the promise and the God-given capacity inside us to be as reliable as the sun, to be that steady with ourselves, with our parts, with the people we love and the things in our lives that matter most to us.  Who and what matters most to you?  Can you bring some of that Netzach energy to that?  Not adrenaline, not the sudden high of a peak experience, though that, too, has its place, but Netzach asks for something else.  It asks us to stay the course.  Come storm, come despair, come fear, come war, come hell or high water, I just keep walking, with God on one side of me and with my little ones – both external and internal – on the other side.   Feel God’s unflagging support for you as you stride on with determination and resilience, one step after another, neither running nor collapsing, steady and committed.  That is Netzach in you.  Nothing can stop you now.  

And that steadiness in you radiates outward and makes a solid ground for you and others to walk on.  It paves the way in the world; it brings healing and calm to a frazzled, shaky divided world, healing the world as you heal yourself, one Netzach step at a time.  

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