When Jung wrote
What you resist not only persists but will grow in size,
I wonder if he fully understood the power of his words? Whether it’s about a food you try to resist, a person, or for the purposes of this piece, an emotion, the more you resist something, the more tension it creates. In perpetuating this pattern, the more focused you get on the thing, the more attention you give it, you end up making it a lot bigger and more powerful than you’d like.
So, what are you supposed to do? In a modern interpretation of Jung, we need to accept these parts of ourselves. Acknowledge it. Let it process through you, and then keep on moving. When you deny it’s there, it grows. When you welcome its existence, it maintains its place and lets you be in a healthier relationship with it. That way, long term, you can learn how to wield it properly.
This too is a lesson we can learn from the parshah this week. Naso, a portion which deals heavily with a census at its beginning tells us the following in Numbers 4:22:
נָשֹׂ֗א אֶת־רֹ֛אשׁ בְּנֵ֥י גֵרְשׁ֖וֹן גַּם־הֵ֑ם לְבֵ֥ית אֲבֹתָ֖ם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָֽם׃
Take a census of the Gershonites also, by their ancestral house and by their clans.
It reads as a fairly innocuous sentence. Count the Gershonites according to their ancestral and familial homes. The Meor Eynayim, Reb Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, who lived in Ukraine in the 18th century takes it in a whole other direction.
He gives a long introduction that describes how, given God’s greatness and fullness, could a person ever really cleave to God? It would be nearly impossible. To make it feasible, God contracts Godself into the Torah, on a literal letter by letter basis. Instead of just being a collection that can lead us in our lives, the Torah then becomes an object literally imbued with divinity on a minute level.
Here is where he picks up next:
So when a person attaches to the Torah she attaches to Blessed God who dwells within the Torah. And so according to this it would be very easy for a person to attach to Blessed God, meaning through their attaching to the letters of the Torah and prayer which are the capabilities of the Blessed Creator who dwells within them; but there are foreign thoughts which come and confuse her at the time when she is engaged in Torah and prayer. So what can one do about this?
One must ask the advice of the Torah, since the Torah gives us advice about this. For a person must understand the matter of the foreign thoughts: are they not letters which have fallen? For no thought could exist without letters, and the foreign thoughts are also letters, but they have fallen because of her own actions. And therefore when she comes to attach to Blessed God, they also come so that she can elevate them. But a foreign thought does not come, God forbid, to confuse her, and she must elevate them to their root.
And this is what the Torah tells us in pleasant words: Lift up the head, which is to say that your should lift up and elevate א"ת, which are the twenty-two letters from aleph to tav; elevate them to the head and the first who is the Blessed Creator. For all the words of the Torah and prayer, they are all combinations of letters: when you join together vav-yud-dalet-bet-resh it makes the word vayedaber; all the words are all combinations of letters and one must elevate the letters to their roots.
And if you do this then the children of Gershon, the letters which fell and were banished [nitgarshu], they too will rise to their fathers’ house, they being Abraham who was the attribute of Mercy and Love; and the Fear of Isaac, who was the attribute of Reverence; and Israel, in whom I will be glorified (Isaiah 49:3) who was the attribute of Glory. That is, when a person leans and prays with reverence and love in order to glorify her Creator by the name of God’s glorious sovereignty, then the letters go up there above to the Fathers as has been explained.
But how does one do all this? King Solomon, peace be upon him, explained it as Whatever your hand is capable of doing (Ecclesiastes 9:10) which is to say in whatever way you want to do Blessed God’s Will, do it with strength, you must do it with strength; meaning that when you put all your strength and your life-force into the letters of the Torah and prayer, through this you will elevate them to their root, to the Blessed Creator.
It is a masterful reread of this section. A person will come hopefully to a life of study and relationship with our tradition vis a vis ritual and learning. But what happens when they’re sidetracked by foreign thoughts? These are the equivalent of the Jungian types of emotions that we might resist and make greater. Instead of overly focusing on them to try to banish them, the Meor Eynayim says no, you have to pay attention to them in an even handed way. And not only that, but if all letters have godliness in them, then certainly even your wayward thoughts need tlc. So you have to take care of them.
Your job is to bring them back to their holy source. So he interprets, when the Torah says נשא את…it means “lift up from aleph through tav.” Raise those things up inside of you that have fallen. He adds another beautiful layer here because in this verse, the tribe that is mentioned is the Gershonites. Their name in Hebrew contains the root for something being separated. In his words then, the Torah is alluding to bringing back together the parts of you that have become fractured.
And when it mentions their ancestral and family parts? That’s the parts of your heritage that you are returning to. In other words, you are helping put yourself back together again with the help of those that came before you.
It’s a deeply empowering and comforting text in my eyes. In a counter-cultural way, it tells us that all the parts of our selves are holy, even the ones that we or others may look at as negative. The work is figuring out how to give them the proper attention so that instead of weighing us down, we bring them back up.
Without a doubt, that’s a tall task. But all it starts with is something we all can do: pay attention and remember you have strength which the Meor Eynayim alluded to at the end. As Jung wrote:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate,”
That’s the first step. Begin with a soft gaze. Let it come to you. Then, as your awareness grows, so too will your control. From A to Z, or in this case, Aleph to Tav, you’ll realize that you contain immense holiness. All you have to do is lift it back up.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!
This is very deep, at least for me! Can, when you have time, after Shabbat, please give me an example, unless you already did, and I still do not get it! Thank you! Shabbat Shalom! Sending you and your family, hugs and love! ✡️❤️Zeta
Fantastic.