INTRODUCTION TO DISCOVERING YOUR EARTH BASED JEWISH PURPOSE
The world needs more initiated or psychospiritual adults, and the Jewish world needs more adults grounded in our tradition, as I have argued in the general introduction to the project.
Discovering Your Earth Based Jewish Purpose is my attempt to create a path of practice to become an earth based Jewish spiritual adult. This path overlays Bill Plotkin’s general theory of becoming a spiritual adult with Jewish cultural context, including Jewish ancestors, prayers, myths and practices. It is organized by the rhythm of the three pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot. These holidays are the defining rhythm of our earth based Jewish calendar. I am seeking to blend Plotkin’s model of development with indigenous content and rhythm.
Plotkin argues, rightly I believe, that most folk in our world get spiritually stuck in early adolescence. He asks himself how do we get unstuck and go through what he calls the Journey to Soul Initiation. This has been his life work. Plotkin doesn’t ground us in a particular tradition because he himself is unfortunately not grounded. He is a product of a suburban middle class Jewish American upbringing in the50’s and 60’s and many Jews from his background did not get spiritually grounded in Judaism. He construes the journey as an individual one rather than as part of a community, and the return home as one in which one searches for a community independent of ones roots.
However humans are designed to live in tribal or communal contexts. Historically, we left home literally and metaphorically, wandered to a greater or lesser degree and if we were successful, returned to our village with a gift and a life direction for how to be an adult. That this is no longer the case is part of the disruption of our modern world with which we struggle to cope.
Discovering your true earth based Jewish purpose is thus asking what is the Jewish journey of Soul initiation? We do not have any clear or obvious Jewish maps from any of our ancestral sources, but I think we have pieces that we can apply to create a possible path to walk.
The regalim, the pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot when our ancestors were supposed to come to Jerusalem and celebrate together in the presence of the divine, capture the most important defining features of the Canaanite ecosystem. The ecosystem is defined by two seasons, the wet season and the dry season. The agriculture of the area was largely dependent upon rain from heaven, rather than irrigation. As it says in Deuteronomy about the land “Because the land to which you are coming to take possession of it; it’s not like the land of Egypt from which you’ve come out, where you plant your seed and water it at your feet like a garden of plants [meaning through irrigation]. But the land to whch you are crossing to take possession is a land of hills and valleys. It drinks water by the skies’ showers. (Deuteronomy 11:10-11)
The three regalim were agricultural holidays before they later on took on the historical theological meanings to which we more commonly relate today. Passover was related to the exodus from Egypt, but for Sukkot and Shavuot, “you shall make a festival of Weeks [Shavuot] of the firstfruits of the wheat harvest and the Festival of Gathering [Sukkot] at the end of the year. Three times in the year every one o your males shall appear before YHVH, God of Israel.” (Exodus 34:22-23)
I begin with Sukkot because it seems to me to best capture the rhythm that begins with leaving home. The rainy season that starts at the end of Sukkot was a time of decreased agricultural labor and therefore more of a time to focus on the spiritual education of adolescents. It is true that the agricultural workload would also have been lighter after Shavuot, but it felt right to either start in Nissan, the month of Pesach which is the first month of the Biblical calendar OR the month of Tishrei, the month of Sukkot and Rosh Hashanah which literally means the start of the year.
The rhythm I want to capture is one of leaving home, going through an intense and transformational liminal period in which one acquires gifts and then a return to the community in order to share those gifts. I also started with the idea that Shavuot has to be the holiday of revelation. There’s an obvious overlap between our ancestral revelation of the divine at Sinai and the revelation of one’s mythopoetic identity or true purpose. So my basic rhythm is as follows:
Sukkot to Pesach. First we need to leave home and launch ourselves on a journey of self discovery. But do we have the tools to go deep and discover who we truly are, or will we stay stuck at the surface as is characteristic of the journeys of chronological adolescents and young adults in our society? Thus this first half of our year focuses on psychospiritual preparation and recognition that we are living in exile, in the narrow place that is Mitzrayim (the Hebrew for Egypt which literally means “narrow place.”)
Pesach to Shavuot. The beginning of liberation from our narrow places at Pesach and our journey into the desert to seek the vision of who we truly who, why we were born at this time and in this place. We left home before at Sukkot and wandered from Canaan to the fleshpots but ultimate slavery of Egypt. But after Pesach, we need to go even deeper, away from our temporary home into the emptiness of the wilderness. We have to empty ourselves so that the divine can fill us.
Shavuot to Sukkot. Great, we have had this wonderful revelation, but now we have what is an even harder task—figuring out how to share the gift we received at Sinai and with whom. In traditional face to face societies, initiates would return with visions which would be interpreted with the help of elders who had been through the process themselves. Not only do we not have such elders, but we have this incredible plethora of possible communities and geographic locations. What exactly is my gift? Where do I live? Who is my community? How does all this go along with my survival dance? These are complicated questions with an apparent incredible range of alternatives.
Let me go into some more detail about each phase.
SUKKOT TO PESACH
The period of Sukkot to Pesach, which is 6 or 7 lunar months, covers the phase of preparation and potentially the start of dissolution. There is a huge disconnect that most or all of us have already left home and started or even completed our wandering. We left home without much if any spiritual preparation and without (for most of us), a deep and committed relationship with the more than human world. So if we would be psychospiritual adults, there’s some backtracking to do.
Ecoawakening is the first step in Plotkin’s journey. Ecoawakening is the forging of a deep and primary commitment to the more than human world. We live in a human world that has, for the most part, devalued and banished our relationships with the more than human world. It is absolutely essential to see ourselves as part of the world, not over and separate from it.
This is the first task because to be a psychospiritual adult entails being engaged in the web of life. Ecoawakening is the overcoming of our alienation from the more than human world that is a uniquely human possibility, at least since the dawn of agriculture. A fox, an oak, a mushroom, a clump of clover—all have no choice but to be part of the web of life. We humans have the ability to deny our dependence upon the web of life, and deny we have, to disastrous consequences I don’t need to enumerate. Overcoming that alienation comes first. I talk about different ways to create the likelihood of ecoawakening, using Plotkin and our ancestral wisdom. Hint: all of them involve spending time in the more than human world. There’s simply no substitute for it.
I then shift to preparation. Preparation is crucial, because we won’t be blessed with liberation and revelation unless we are adequately prepared. Further, we won’t be able to make sense of revelation and then translate it into how to offer our unique gifts to our communities without adequate preparation. The example of our ancestors who were left to die in the desert is a perfect mythic description of what happens without adequate preparation and mentorship. They experienced revelations but weren’t able to assimilate it into their lives, so they died.
Preparation isn’t and can’t be perfect. It’s not like there’s some kind of objective scale from 1-10 about how prepared you are, and you’re adequately prepared at 7 and perfect at 10. That’s just not how it works—at all. Everybody always has more preparation work to do. So while preparation should logically come first, we are going to work with it on the fly because that’s our actual situation.
I give ancestral and other tools for leaving home and for preparation for the dissolution of our early adolescent identities as we seek divine revelation about who we are meant to be in the more than human world. I don’t give just ancestral tools because I don’t think that what we have is adequate to the task. My general approach is to give a range of tools and approaches and have you choose based on what draws you—this is your journey, and it won’t be the same as mine. So why would I presume to know what will work best for you? I think of my position as more facilitator than anything else.
The tools I share in this period are the directions and their energies and tasks. This approach is somewhat captured in the indigenous idea of medicine wheels. Medicine wheels kind of exist in ancestral Jewish thought, (see Ezekiel as an example), but are not well developed. So I offer Mike Comins’ adaptation of Gershon Winkler, along with Plotkin’s approach.
I use the model of the medicine wheel as a way to describe the energies and tasks involved. The medicine wheel is meant as a metaphor, not some kind of absolute truth claim. The whole idea is for it to be of service to you. Medicine wheels can be used to both describe different energies and different parts of the life cycle, and I strive to disentangle this potential source of confusion
Preparation will take most of the period between Sukkot and Pesach, and, as I said, will be an ongoing practice if you want to enact your mythopoetic identity or true purpose if/when you are blessed enough to receive some degree of clarity.
At some magical, mysterious point as we have completed enough preparation, and have practices that bring us out into the more than human world enough, we start the process of dissolution of the early adolescent ego, following Plotkin. We need some combination of being whole enough, being dissatisfied with ourselves and the human world we inhabit and faith that something else is possible in order to let go of who we have been and be open to something else. Plotkin describes the task of adolescence as creating a “separate self” that works with our peer group and is true to who we are. Too many early adolescents create a self that works with their peer group but isn’t really true to themselves. Thus they are stuck and become a part of what Plotkin calls the consumer-conformist culture.
We don’t magically dissolve in one weekend, just like we can’t lose the extra weight too many of us carry in a mere month. It’s a bit of a back and forth process, most of which isn’t particularly conscious. It’s scary as all get out, because we are losing our anchors, and we don’t know where or how we will land. We must trust the process and having guides in whom we have confidence who will help us walk our own paths is really important. Metaphorically, we only begin this process before Pesach and complete it in the interval between Pesach and Shavuot so we are ready for revelation.
PESACH TO SHAVUOT
This short period, only 50 days, has three critical components.
v The completion of our preparation
v Our liberation from exile/ our early adolescent selves in which people in our society routinely get stuck
v Our prayers for support in the dissolution phase as we prepare for revelation.
We have now symbolically completed our preparation. I say symbolically because it is quite possible you will not have completed your preparation stage or you may already be far into the dissolution stage. I think it is exceedingly difficult for us to put time frames around each stage. If I look at my own history, it is possible to say that I ecoawakened at 18, started my dissolution at 29 and then received my mythopoetic identity when I was 37, having done enough preparation and dissolution along the way. I got clear about my true purpose when I did a vision fast when I was 59. But I’m a slow learner. Wherever you are, that’s where you actually have to work. But it is important to ritually celebrate the preparation you have done. And perhaps the ritual can be a catalyst to propel you into dissolution.
Dissolution is the phase when our liberation from our adolescent selves is complete. How do you know if your preparation is complete enough? You start showing signs of dissolution, the next phase. You start wandering, literally or metaphorically. You can feel the certainties that have guided your life slipping away. You feel less anchored in your current reality. Your body itches, knowing that there is something different out there for you, but not knowing what it is.
When we read the Haggadah, there’s a temptation sometimes to think that our exodus from Egypt means that we have arrived; no longer slaves we are now free. But it is not that simple. We went from the miserable but known life of slavery to the uncertainty that is freedom. Our ancestors could not tolerate the ambiguity of freedom, complaining about missing the cucumbers and security of Egypt. They were downright scared of claiming their inheritance and so they failed the spiritual test of claiming the land and died in the desert.
In the kind of psychospiritual developmental terms we are using, we can say that they had not adequately prepared for both the freedoms and responsibilities of adulthood, so they retreated back into the familiar and comfortable psychospiritual adolescent level. Joshua and Caleb were the only exceptions, the only people who left Egypt and arrived in the promised land. Today, a handful of arrivals in a promised land is simply not enough. We need to radically increase the number of people who successfully wander through the desert and make it to the promised land of adulthood if we are to successfully address the disasters we humans have wrought in the world.
There is, in my belief, an internal and external slavery, internal and external liberation. As I write this, the Russians are busy committing war crimes in Ukraine (this was before the disaster of October 7 and the horrors of the Gaza war that followed). When you read this, some other defender of patriarchy/dominator societies is going to be committing war crimes somewhere else on the globe. For the people of Ukraine, for our enslaved ancestors in Egypt, a million times in Jewish history, external liberation comes first. But external liberation is never enough to create psychospiritual adults. So we need to mark and ritually celebrate our external liberation because life offers a wider range of possibilities to the free than the enslaved, and be crystal clear that there remains work to do.
We need to dissolve our adolescent identity so there is space for revelation is the next phase. It is terrifying, because we are so unmoored. Our ancestors at Sinai were petrified of the divine. “And it was on the third day; when it was morning and it was thunders and lightning and a heavy cloud on the mountain, and a sound of a horn, very strong. And the entire people that was in the camp trembled.” (Exodus 19:16) We need to stay open to the sacred even as we are standing on quicksand, and not retreat back to the known and secure. It is difficult. We need to pray for support in the process, as well as praying for revelation, the revelation of our unique identity and purpose on earth.
History and our own lives and the lives of most people around us are testament to not successfully navigating the passage to adulthood. We will look at some examples of our history of people who did and how they might have done it. Joseph and the Baal Shem Tov are two prime examples of Jewish psychospiritual adults, at least in my opinion. We’ll look at the interesting story of Moses, who clearly had a vision in the more than human world (the burning bush), but about whom it is less clear that he realized his unique gifts, even while having a very clear idea about his people.
This period between Pesach and Shavuot contains a highly indigenous approach to spiritual development in the counting of the omer and its relation to the sephirot. Unfortunately, I can’t provide any guidance here. Perhaps someone else will come in and walks us through some different ways to count the omer that are consistent with the general direction of this program.
SHAVUOT TO SUKKOT
Shavuot is both the culmination of the grain harvest in ancient Israel and the holiday that marks the revelation at Mount Sinai. The barley and wheat harvest between Pesach and Shavuot comprised over half of our ancestors’ diet in terms of calories, so it was hugely important.
I will suggest that we all begin Shavuot with an all night vigil around a fire, praying for revelation and the courage to face it. To transform our lives is no easy thing. Retreating into Egypt is always available for us on a psychospiritual level. So we pray some more for revelation and the courage to embrace it, just as we have for the period between Pesach and Shavuot.
The content of revelation is a hotly debated topic in Jewish thought, but for our purposes we are going to look at two possible perspectives on revelation. One is the revelation of our mythopoetic identity. Mythopoetic identities demand to be interpreted; it’s not obvious, to put it mildly, what is meant by being “Cocoon weaver” or “Dances with the rhythms of the earth” or “compost bridger of the world.”
If you are blessed to receive or have received this kind of revelation, and/or if you have become clear about your unique purpose, you will have two phases to navigate before you can successfully return to your village(s) and take your place as a psychospiritual adult. What the revelation gives us, to utilize Plotkin’s mythopoetic identity of a cocoon weaver, is the possibility of becoming a butterfly; it doesn’t turn us into butterflies immediately, there’s a process.
The first phase is to become this identity. This is what Plotkin calls the “metamorphosis” phase. After all, we come home from the mountain, the valley or in my case the hotel ballroom where I received “dances with the rhythms of the earth” and everybody else is still the same as they were before your own personal Sinai. And guess what? They expect you to also be the same. How do you navigate that so that your new identity becomes paramount, instead of sliding back into who you were?
The second phase is figuring out your delivery system and your community(ies). How are you going to express e.g. “Cocoon weaver” and to whom? These are not easy questions and they must be answered if we are to become the psychospiritual adults of our communities. It’s a bit ambiguous in reading Plotkin about whether these tasks belong to early adult stage 5 or still belong to stage 4, late adolescence. in his developmental model. But in any event, adults are the people who do the work of the community, and you aren’t going to be able to do your soul work until you become your mythopoetic identity or true purpose and then figure our how you are going to deliver what you have learned and to whom.
Plotkin wove cocoons by focusing on facilitating people interested in spiritual transformation in going into the cocoon and coming out as a butterfly, using an impressive range of techniques in his vision fasts that he led and in his writing. Joanna Macy functioned as a bridge between Buddhist thought and systems theory in her workshops and writing. My delivery system is my website, the parsha class I’ve led, this program.
There is another possible approach to revelation. Rather than a mythopoetic identity, it is possible that a person gains great clarity about their purpose in life. A friend of mine received a vision about reconnecting his people to the earth. I don’t know if he has ever received a mythopoetic name. But I don’t think that matters, since it became clear to him why he is on earth at this very time and in the very place he is. Now, just as if a person received a mythopoetic name, my friend still had the incredibly difficult tasks of becoming the person who could reconnect his people to the earth and figuring out the basics of a delivery system for doing that (his target community was clear enough). So the metamorphosis and enactment phases are still a given, whether what one receives is a name or a purpose.
Shavuot to Sukkot also features two really important themes coming from our calendar. These themes are grief connected to the mythical death and resurrection of Tammuz and repentance as connected to the month of Elul, the month proceeding Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot that all occur in the month of Tishrei. We will explore the importance of grief, using both traditional sources connected to Tisha B’av, and contemporary sources from Frances Weller and Martin Prechtel. Then we will turn to repentance, using traditional sources but expanding repentance and reciprocity to the more than human world and not just limiting it to the human world.
The whole goal here is to return home cleansed of as much confusion as possible. We leave home with the confused heart of the adolescent. Why am I here? Who am I? How do I navigate relationships, both intimate and work ones, how do I become a responsible adult, a person who contributes to my community? If we would return home as a psychospiritual adult from our wanderings, we need to be able to grieve two kinds of losses. One kind are the losses that are an inevitable part of being human, including the loss of the freedom of not being responsible. The other kind of loss is the loss of a healthy more than human world, as we humans, all of us, commit genocide of species every day through our lives. And if we cannot adequately grieve (and believe me, I’m right with you, this is a cutting edge place for me). If we cannot adequately grieve, we cannot embrace the beauty of the world; the two go together.
Repentance is necessary, because we all miss the mark routinely, and we all participate in a culture that is actively destructive. So just as we have to grieve all that we are losing, we also have to acknowledge our responsibility and ask forgiveness—not an easy task.
It’s possible to get lost in grief and get lost in repentance. But that won’t serve the greater purpose we are given in the revelation we have received. So if we would serve that revelation—the whole purpose of the revelation we received--we have to learn how to navigate through it.
People can and do fail at metamorphosis and enactment. Plotkin talks about how revelation is a mystery and sometimes people are graced by it even though it doesn’t look like they are ready. Suzuki Roshi talks about how enlightenment is an accident and the purpose of spiritual practice is to become accident prone. But what if the accident happens and then you find yourself slipping backwards, unable to hold onto the blinding quality of revelation? The answer is practice. Spend more time praying in the more than human world. Keep doing preparation work shoring up your weak direction (that’s south for me). Keep grieving and keep doing repentance work.
What if you can’t find a community or a delivery system? Spend more time in the more than human world---surprise, surprise. But I can say something about delivery systems, based on my belief in strengths based approaches to work and management. Look towards what you are really good at. Although you need to shore up your weaknesses in order to receive revelation and implement your vision, what you are going to do has everything to do with what you are really good at that comes easily to you. My friend and teacher, R. Zelig Golden feels wildly at home in the wilderness and loves big groups, so his delivery system includes both elements of that. I get lost in big groups (and a big group for me is something greater than maybe 10-20) and I’m not at home in the wilderness, so my delivery system isn’t going to include either of those elements that his does.
RHYTHM OF THE PROGRAM
We are going to meet most weeks, probably for an hour. One week will be a presentation with some time to share in the beginning about what you’ve been doing in the previous week and some time to share about the material presented. The next week will be all sharing with no new material.
Expect to commit 5 hours a week to the program? There’s questions to chew on from both Plotkin’s material and from Jewish sources. There’s readings. Nobody is going to kick you out if you don’t do the homeplay. Like most things, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. More important than the time commitment, this program isn’t for the faint of heart. The most important thing, by far, is your willingness to be committed to your own spiritual development, your own initiation.
I can’t promise any specific outcome from the program. What I can promise is that you will have some hugely important building blocks and concepts you can access that could make a profound difference in your life.
