"And they took him and cast him into the pit;
now the pit was empty there was no water in it.”
- Gen 37:24.
“Now the pit was empty-there was no water in it: Since it says: “now the pit was empty,” do I not know that there was no water in it? For what purpose did the Torah write,
“there was no water in it” ? [To inform us that] there was no water in it,
but there were snakes and scorpions in it. “
-Shab. 22a, Chag. 3a
Sometimes life is the pits, you really are stuck in a hole. When you feel stressed out it can really pull you down, lower your sites and shrink the heart.
Joseph, the biblical character (you know: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat) gets thrown in a hole and left for dead by some pretty unpleasant brothers. OK he is rescued – one brother persuaded them to stick him in the hole rather than kill him – yet who says being sold as a slave is a great way to be saved?
Well you probably know that it all works out in the end. Yet being stuck in a pit to die is no one’s idea of fun.
An empty pit the Bible says. OK so it has no water in it. That’s the logical interpretation. But the Rabbi’s like to make things difficult. The reason we are told there was no water in it is ‘To inform us that there was no water in it, but there were snakes and scorpions in it”.
If that is not confusing enough we need remember that in each story there is a deep personal message. The Kabbalist’s tell us that the hole is the mind – the pit of our desperation.
So here we are stuck in the pit of life’s issues and we face issues with two types of dramas:
Frontal Attack: A snake has its venom up front You get bit and then the beginning of the mental process. Snake in Hebrew, nachash, also is related to the word for guess. I don’t know about you. But when I’m under attack I find it pretty easy to start trying to second guess the situation and if I’m not careful, end up making the problem worse, more anxious, with all the mind games and Shakespearean mental role play.
Attack from the rear: A scorpion has its sting in the tail. It is at the end of the mental process. Have you ever procrastinated because you think your assignment is not good enough and you keep putting it off?
It’s not enough to empty the pit of the mind of anxiety, else it will fill with even bigger snakes and scorpions. So how do we get rid of our snakes and scorpions? Simple: fill the pit with water - life giving, nourishing and sustaining water. No self respecting snake intends to hang around and drown.
What of the pit of our mind? Do we take control of our mind and keep it full with positive, uplifting and sustaining thoughtsand do we hill our lives with good? Or do we let every strange uninvited guest take over our aimless thinking processes? Do we fill our mind and make our life a place where the divine would choose to reside or do we let the demons of our past in habit our future?
Psalm 34: 14 suggests “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” You don’t have to be a Bible believer to recognize that doing good and filling the mind with good things is a better way to go.
The choice is ours. Fill our minds with water, grow a garden in our mind while we await our release or let the snakes and scorpions move in as we wallow in fear.
I know which choice I’m going to make.
0 comments:
Post a Comment