From Suffering To Freedom

The ancient Hebrew festival of Passover celebrates the journey of awakening from a narrow, dualistic mode of consciousness into an expanded, nondual state of freedom. Drawing from ancient mystical teachings, this talk explores how this process can be facilitated by turning toward and embracing our suffering while deeply trusting the benevolent spirit that animates all reality to lovingly midwife us through the painful contractions that often accompany the inner birthing process.

Transcript

This teaching is brought to you by Kaduma.

Org.

The prototype for the journey from contraction into expansion,

For the transformation of our perception from one that is imprisoned in a narrow,

Constricted,

Dualistic mode into a way of perceiving reality that is open,

Expanded,

Free,

And unconfined by the historically conditioned self-identities.

The prototype for that journey in the ancient Hebrew tradition is the narrative of the exile,

The enslavement,

And ultimately the exodus from Egypt or Mithraim,

The narrow or constricted places.

It's auspicious that we're discussing this now since next week is when Passover is actually celebrated.

And this whole ritualistic celebration of Passover,

Which is centered around the Passover seder,

Uniquely emphasizes a particular process that ritualistically re-enacts that journey from contraction into expansion,

From a dualistic,

Historically conditioned mode of perception into,

You could say,

A more non-dual,

Awakened,

God-realized mode of experience.

That process is centered around this ritual of speaking to this journey,

Speaking about the movement from contraction into expansion.

And the central part of the ritual of the seder is the telling of that story.

The Haggadah,

Which is the traditional text that's recited at the seder,

Means the telling,

And the central section of the Haggadah is called Magid,

Which also means the telling,

Or the speaking,

The relating,

The narrating.

So what we're doing is essentially telling the story.

Now in a conventional framework,

That's a recalling,

A remembering,

A telling of the story of how the Hebrew ancestors moved from slavery into freedom.

So we talk about Moses,

Although Moses is actually not mentioned in the Haggadah at all,

Interestingly enough.

But the whole story in the book that's recorded in the biblical book of Exodus,

Of that enslavement and exile,

And ultimately Exodus into freedom,

Is recalled more in historical detail.

However,

From the contemplative and mystical perspective,

That entire telling of the tale is designed to facilitate an actual experiential transformation in the consciousness of not just the one telling,

But the ones hearing the telling.

This is embodied at the Passover seder,

But with the emphasis of engaging children,

Particularly.

In both the telling and the evoking of the tale,

Which is why the entire process of the telling of the tale begins with actually questions,

A set of questions that are traditionally recited by the youngest children present.

It begins with the ma nish-tanah,

Those of you who have attended a seder,

Why is this night different from all other nights?

And then there's a bunch of other questions.

And then we get to the four sons,

Each of which are asking these questions,

The wise son,

The wicked son,

The simple son,

And the one who does not even know how to ask a question.

Those are the four sons that are ritualistically recalled at the beginning of the section of Magid.

And so we see that the invocation to tell the story of movement from enslavement into freedom is actually inspired by questions.

And this points to the power of a question in the spiritual journey.

And in particular,

In the Kaduma path,

The power of asking a question,

Not just any question,

But a true question,

A presence question,

A question that is grounded in a sincere desire to know the truth of the other's experience with an open mind that's open to be surprised to with the assumption that we do not know what the other person's experience is.

And with the sense of grounded presence in the body that gives the other a sense of there is a presence here that is unshakable,

Unmovable,

That is steadfast,

Will be with me through and through as I become more vulnerable,

As I become more naked,

As my essence begins to shine through the cracks that I'm going to allow to be present in this relational dynamic.

When we ask a question from that place of centeredness in ourself with curiosity and desire of heart and openness of mind,

It evokes truth speak from the other.

It evokes vulnerability,

Which is the gateway,

The doorway,

Not only to the other's process of moving more thoroughly through their own constrictions,

But also for the one asking the question,

That process of invocation and of eliciting one's truth from other has an immediate impact on our own presence and our own experience that then brings us on that journey as well.

As the other moves from their place of constriction into a place of expansion,

We as the questioners and the listeners are brought on that journey as well.

And it has an impact on our own process,

On our own realization and on our own understanding of the ways in which we are enslaved and how we can traverse that chasm between enslavement and freedom.

So this whole process of this Passover Haggadah,

Recollection,

Is a recollection of our innate freedom ultimately.

And it's a communal process,

A dialectical process,

A relational process in which there are true questions and true answers that are being shared.

Now this is ritualized in a feast practice,

Which is what the Seder is.

There's ritualistic foods,

Each of which is designed to elicit a certain state of consciousness and a certain landmark on that journey from enslavement to freedom.

But the central organizing principle of the entire event is the speaking and the listening and the questioning.

This is also reflected in the word Pesach itself,

Which means the mouth that speaks,

Pesach,

The mouth that speaks.

And it's also expressed in the various elements that are invoked in this telling process.

Some of those facets include the importance of the quality of trust,

For example.

For us to be vulnerable to our own suffering,

To our own constriction,

To our own contraction,

To have the confidence to turn toward it as opposed to maintaining a posture of distance from our places of suffering.

To turn toward those places of suffering requires a certain kind of trust,

Deep kind of trust,

Really.

Trust that freedom is possible,

That there is some kind of benevolent intelligence to our human condition that permits us to turn toward our suffering in a manner that we have the confidence and the trust that that is optimal,

Ultimately speaking,

For the health of our organism,

For the evolution of our consciousness.

Many of us do not have that trust.

We don't believe that it will be okay,

In the ultimate sense,

For us to turn toward our most suffering,

Contracted,

Painful places.

And yet the whole story of the children of Israel going down into Mitsrayim is the story of us moving down into our contractions,

Turning toward them through and through,

Because as the tradition teaches,

They were at the 49th level of contraction.

If you get to the 50th level,

That's already the point of no return.

So they were almost at the very end of the line,

They were at the end of the line,

At the place of the bottom,

The bottom,

They hit bottom,

As they say.

And it was in that place that the sages teach,

It was through the merit of their trust that the children of Israel were redeemed from Egypt.

Trust that even in that moment of despair,

At the very deep,

Darkest of places,

At the bottom of the pit,

There was enough trust that freedom is possible,

That love is somehow here,

Even though I can't see it or feel it or touch it.

It's like a deep sense in the bones that this is okay,

Somehow this is exactly what is where I need to be,

What is most real in this moment.

And as the text in the book of Exodus states,

It's at that point,

Vanitzach,

That the children of Israel cried out.

They cried out and that crying out initiated this whole cascade of events that ultimately led to freedom itself and contraction.

So even when we can't speak the words,

In those places of deepest despair,

Sometimes all that we can do is to cry,

Is to scream.

And that itself becomes the catalyst for the process of contraction,

Of the Exodus from our contraction into expansion.

Implicit in the process of trusting and in this whole journey of the Exodus children of Israel is the quality of divine love,

Which is also highlighted in the text and in the tradition.

The night of the first night of Passover is considered to be a night of ahava,

Of love.

Not a love that we receive through some kind of activity or action that we do to deserve it,

But freely,

Unconditionally given love,

Grace,

The love of divinity itself.

That is the power that is,

That we allow to be transformed by on the night of Passover.

So at the deepest depths of despair,

Some of the ingredients that are necessary to catalyze this process of movement from contraction to expansion is trust,

Is an openness to the possibility of true,

Unconditional divine love.

That we are worthy of love and freedom,

Regardless of how we feel,

Some deeper sense of trusting and knowing.

And of course the element of emet or truth,

Which is at the basis of where that love comes from.

Because in the moments of our despair and the depths of our contraction,

We have to trust that our own love for the truth of this experience is enough to bring us home.

That if the truth is I'm feeling so twisted up that I feel like I'm going to die.

Although the instinct is to turn away from that as quickly as possible and to seek some relief in whatever way we can to numb it,

To medicate it,

To distract,

To get into a compulsive state of mind towards some other object,

Desired object,

To deny,

To reject or to direct it outwards to others,

To blame other people for our suffering as a way of diverting the intensity of our experience.

Whatever our strategies are,

Love for the truth supports us to actually turn toward the truth of our experience in the moment,

Which may be quite difficult and painful.

But if we trust the benevolence of reality and we trust that truth will indeed set us free and we trust that we can develop,

Even if we don't have it right now,

We can develop the capacity in time to stay with more and more intensity of our experience,

Then already that begins to open up the doorway for the transformative light to enter,

To saturate our consciousness and to bring our perceptual experience into a different state.

So in this teaching it is precisely in those darkest places,

In the most painful places,

Where that transformation is actually most available,

Most potent and most possible.

We evoke that phrase on Passover night.

And every single year we are required to see ourselves as if we ourselves left Egypt.

So even in the conventional kind of engagement with this feast practice,

With the Passover ritual,

We see that there is an understanding that this is not simply a remembrance of some historical events,

But we remember this historical event as a practice of bringing ourselves into the direct experience of freedom.

Now on the mystical level,

Of course,

We understand this more completely as the transformation of our experience itself,

Of our actual consciousness from a contracted mode into a mode of openness,

Expansiveness,

Freedom.

Basically that is recognized as a distinct shift in our perception.

The usual way that we perceive in the state of mitzrayim,

Which is the conventional mode of experience for most of us,

Most of the time,

We are operating through a subject-object divide.

It's implicit in our experience almost.

It's not even something we question.

It's like we're perceiving through this imagined,

Encapsulated sense of self,

Through the whole constellation of our acquired memories and imprints from past.

So this whole organism,

Organ of perception,

Through which we're actually seeing reality,

Perceiving reality,

In the mitzrayim mode is a narrow,

That's the word,

That's what mitzrayim means actually,

It's a kind of narrow circumscribed range of perceptual experience that is defined by our historically conditioned and accumulated set of identities,

Images,

Memories.

That's the usual how we experience reality.

Now we can have moments of happiness and freedom within that range,

But they're usually glimpses.

And to the extent that we're perceiving reality through that more narrowly defined center of perception or lens perception,

That will be the extent to which our underlying sense of disease and suffering will perpetuate.

So mitzrayim and the freedom from mitzrayim calls us experientially into a more embodied experience of expansion,

Which is marked by a distinct absence or erasure of that historically narrow lens of perception.

It's as if something that is always there that we don't even question has somehow just been removed.

And the usual filter of our perception is no longer there and we're simply,

There's simple direct experience of phenomena without that kind of historically constructed lens or filter.

This is one way of experiencing the merkav,

The expansiveness.

And one way that that's marked or one aspect of that experience is that that usual subject-object divide,

Which is that I'm a subject experiencing an object that's separate from myself.

You know,

If I see you,

The usual mode is I am separate from you and I am perceiving you and you are over there and I'm over here.

And it's kind of like the billiard ball model of reality.

We're just these separate entities bumping into each other and interacting with forces that are being acted upon each other.

But the whole process of moving into our contraction and that facilitating the kind of erasure of the historically conditioned mode makes sense even logically.

While this may sound esoteric and very abstract and metaphysical,

It's a very straightforward kind of logical process.

When we have an intense experience of contraction,

Usually for many people the most difficult place contracted experiences are different kinds of emotional or psychological states.

Pain,

Disruption,

Disturbance,

Anxiety or depression or various kinds of wounds or different kinds of grief and hurt.

We all know what that's like to be stuck in one of those painful places.

It's like your whole body,

Your body,

Your heart,

Your mind is consumed in it.

It's like you're inside it.

It's got you.

You're in its grip and it can feel like there's no way out.

Like we are trapped in this force that just feels like pure suffering,

Pure pain.

We're in a compulsive kind of looping of self-perpetuating suffering.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like that?

So that's like what it's like to be human.

Or I should say for many people that's mostly what is known as what it means to be human.

With moments of relief here and there.

But that's kind of like the baseline.

With moments of relief here and there.

It makes total sense logically to seek relief,

Not just logically but instinctually.

Our nervous system is seeking relief.

So we seek freedom.

We seek freedom from that suffering.

And many of the strategies that we know,

That we turn to,

Don't really provide real freedom.

They provide momentary relief of various kinds.

And that's fine.

That makes sense to use those strategies because we need relief.

The book is pointing to a more complete process of transformation.

That it claims,

And many people testify to this experience ultimately,

That it's actually possible.

Freedom is possible.

Not freedom that are just momentary relief,

But it's possible to shift the game such that the baseline becomes freedom.

And the moments of suffering become more the moments of suffering rather than the moments of relief.

It's possible to shift the baseline from one of contraction to one of expansion.

That is the ultimate promise that the Torah is teaching us through this whole narrative.

That with the right set of ingredients,

With the right orientation,

With the right kinds of practice,

With the right kind of lifestyle,

It is our birthright ultimately.

The human consciousness can reorganize itself in a manner that is actually more optimally aligned with the cosmic harmony.

Now in Kaduma,

This is again just one expression of these universal principles that are found in the Torah,

Applied in the contemporary context.

So we take this whole Torah tale,

We see it as an actual guide,

Guide for this very transformation that I'm talking about.

It's the transformation of the baseline from one of contraction to one of expansion.

That doesn't mean that in the state of expansion there aren't moments of contraction.

Of course there are.

But the shifting from the baseline of mitzrayim to the baseline of freedom is indeed possible.

Now we take the principles of practice that have to do,

That are embodied and ritualized in the Seder and we apply it not just at the night of Passover,

But we apply it all the time,

Just to life and can be applied in any context,

In any religion,

In any tradition,

In any secular context in which you find yourselves.

That is to say,

While for people who celebrate Passover and the Seder,

These particular set of teachings may be particularly relevant for them in that practice,

The universal principles of the path are not confined to Judaism or to the Seder or to any religion.

The principles are simple.

The principles are A,

It's possible for human beings to shift the baseline.

Trusting that that's possible goes a long way to supporting our process.

Speaking the truth of our experience not only deepens the trust as the verse says,

Emanti kia daber,

I trusted because I spoke,

Because I speak.

But the process of speech itself is what carries the consciousness from a state of contraction into a state of expansion.

As the Kabbalists teach,

The exile of Egypt was an exile of speech and it was an exile of da'at.

Those are the two Kabbalistic principles that articulate what contraction actually is.

The state of contraction is a state in which da'at is not accessible to us.

That is to say,

The embodied intimacy with our experience in the here and now,

Which is what da'at is,

Is unavailable to us.

We're dismembered from it,

We're cut off from that mode of experiencing.

Da'at is an exile and d'abor,

Speech is an exile.

So the process of first sensing into our embodied experience in the here and now is what reintegrates da'at,

Which is already the journey of moving from contraction to expansion.

We're already reintegrating that lost part.

That is what defines the state of mitzrayim,

Of contraction.

As soon as we sense into our embodied experience in the here and now,

We are already centering our consciousness in the baseline of freedom because it is getting underneath the narrative level of our experience,

The conceptual level,

Which is where the historically identified imitities are constellated,

Are active,

And are functioning most intensely.

When we sense into the immediacy of our experience,

We are already bridging the gap between contraction and expansion.

And then when we speak as that,

From that embodied truth of our experience,

We are reintegrating the second element of exile,

Which is the element of speech itself.

On Passover,

When we speak and tell the story,

What we're doing is we are,

We are bringing ourselves on that experiential journey from contraction into expansion by reintegrating da'at,

By sensing into our experience in the here and now,

And then by speaking to that experience,

By speaking to our contractions in an embodied,

Contactful,

Intimate place with that experience.

Some kind of emotional pain,

For example.

What would it be like to sense into our arms and our legs and our feet and our hands and our belly and our core,

To sense the texture,

The tone,

The temperature?

That already,

It's already disidentifying the obsessive-compulsive mind and its cathesis with our emotional pain.

It's already beginning that process of unwinding,

That identification.

And as we stay with that,

We can begin to relate to our experience of pain from a different vantage point or from a more complete vantage point that's more inclusive of the totality of what we are.

Because usually in states of pain,

The first thing that happens is we slightly dissociate from our embodied experience.

By embodying,

We are already remembering the totality of what we are,

Which brings in already a different kind of atmosphere into our experience,

Which then begins to permit us to speak about the texture,

The tone of our anxiety,

Of our pain,

Of our grief,

In a way that is actually contactful and real.

Like you know what,

The truth is I'm just experiencing a lot of hurt right now.

And this is what it feels like.

It feels like there is a pit of emptiness in my heart.

And when I sense into it,

It feels like it's never ending,

Like it goes on forever.

And the way it affects me is one of like I feel hopeless.

I feel despair.

I feel like there's no point through all of this.

I feel like there's no way out.

And it's kind of like there's a sharpness to this pain.

That process of actually getting into it,

Turning toward it,

Sensing into it,

While at first it can be quite scary,

And especially if there's trauma,

We have to take it quite slow and just approach the first,

First layer of it,

The very first layer.

That first layer,

And as soon as we notice our nervous system getting anxious or reactive,

That's where we stop and we just work with that.

But the power of speaking to it is recognized in the therapeutic tradition and was emphasized,

Of course,

In the early psychoanalytic tradition as a primary way that our system begins to unwind and heal.

So in Kaduma,

We use the intelligence of speech as a process of transformation,

Of facilitating not only embodiment,

But also deeper contact with our experience.

And it also understands the relational power that is implicit in speaking,

Asking questions,

Eliciting truth and facilitating that process of transformation of consciousness.

So,

In this path,

The journey from contraction to expansion happens by turning toward contraction and moving through contraction,

Because there is a spacious,

Peaceful stillness at the heart of every contraction.

There is freedom at the core of every experience.

And as I speak to this,

Notice what you experience right now.

Every experience,

Even the most painful,

At its very center and its very depth,

There is a spacious,

Still peace.

And in that space,

There is the distinct sense of pure,

Unconditional love.

In the space of that still peace,

Pure love,

There is a sense of infinite possibility.

It does not end.

There is no boundary to it.

It doesn't stop at the boundaries of my body.

It's not even mine.

It's like what is just simply permeating all that is.

And we can begin to actually discern that that still purity is what is at the heart of everything.

Not just in our experience,

But it's simply the ground of all that it is.

Reviews

So Illuminating! Oh, to better cultivate Trust! Thank you for all your teachings !✨🙏

This teaching made way for Light to enter, today. Telling, listening, answering. Crying out, trusting, turning the will of the heart.
My heart thanks yours.

Wow! I have so many questions at the same time that I "recognized" what I need to shift. I need to listen to this many times in smaller bits ...thank you

I found it interesting. Some of it lost me, I will listen again.

There is some truth that resonates andit's worth considering.

Thought this was so interesting about freedom from bondage and the symbolism surrounding the Passover Seder.