Hi Anita,
You asked “I still need to work on that” — on being me or on being silly? I often wonder if they are one and the same. 😊

One of the blessings of age and the discovery of the contemplative heart is the ability to appreciate the gifts of others and the unique ways they express themselves. Your compassion, your silliness, and even your anxiousness are all part of your gift. If I don’t always know how to respond to such openness, it likely has much to do with my own Calvinist upbringing, a tradition that often prefers the “sober” over the “spontaneous.” – another old inherited story and language that has shaped me, more then I have shaped it.

You mentioned that the “wilderness” for you is that moment of anxiety after being silly, wondering if you’ve been received or rejected. That is a powerful image.

In the Exodus story, the 40 years in the wilderness were a time of shedding. The people, representing our own inner attributes, spontaneity, creativity, fears, and hopes, were often so terrified of the “in-between” that they begged to return to the certainty of slavery. Slavery was hard, but it was known. The wilderness is weightless and uncertain.

I think the reason that generation never entered the Promised Land is a metaphor for the ego: the version of us that lived in “Egypt” (the old habits and defenses) cannot survive in the “Promise.” The wilderness is where that old self falls away so that something new can be born. It’s a place of rest AND creative tension.

It’s perfectly okay to be in that “in-between” space. I appreciate you sharing what crosses your mind, it keeps the conversation in that rhythmic movement we’ve been talking about.

Hi Anita,
I’m so glad you’re engaging with the story this way. I add the disclaimer of “dream analysis” in the earlier posts because I don’t want to impose my own associations on anyone else, it’s more about finding what resonates in the “atmosphere” of the narrative.

You touched on something that confused my younger self too: the shift from Pharaoh hardening his own heart and the movement with the text saying, “And God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” It feels similar to your observation about Moses being “punished” for his frustration. From a human perspective, it seems incredibly unfair… poor Moses and Pharoah!

But in “dream analysis,” we look at these figures as parts of a single psyche. In that light, Moses’ inability to enter the Promised Land isn’t a punishment, but an inevitability.

It’s like those myths where the hero is warned not to look back. What brought the psyche this far, the “Law,” the structure, the forceful leadership, simply cannot accompany it into the next stage. There is a leap, a weightless space between the old way of being and the new. The work of planting the seeds is done. (imagine digging up the seeds every few seconds in order to see where their at, preventing its becoming…. Then blaming the sun for not doing its part…)

For me, Moses represents the “mediator” or the “instruction” a choice to engage with the Wisdom traditions. But the Promised Land requires presence and participation. The “old self” that fought Pharaoh in Egypt eventually reaches its limit. To enter the “Promise,” we have to drop what has become “form” of our past identities, even the heroic ones, and step into the dance with nothing in our hands… the formless.

As my dance instructor taught, there comes a point when, to truly Dance, we must forget what we learned… A difference between dancing to win competitions and DANCING from the heart. We thank dance instructor, Moses for the guidance, make what we learn ours and trust vice believe… That old question of mine – what if we lived what we say we believe??? Would we stop believing and live???

So I feel its less about being “good enough” to get in, and more about being “light enough” to cross…

When the formless hardens into form, we forget, and we try to “work” our way through life, rather than “releasing” our way through. As long as we hold on to our inner ‘Moses’ perhaps out of a sense of ego justice we shell not pass… But I do not feel bad for Moses, I notice in the story Moses seems content as he stands on the mountaintop and bless the “people” who will enter the “promise land”.

I also wanted to share a bit more about my original intent for this topic. As a child, being told the story of Exodus, I was deeply confronted by those words: ‘And God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.’ Hearing that, and then hearing how Pharaoh and Egypt were punished as a result… while simultaneously being told that such a God was ‘Love’ was jarring.

I internalized the idea that ‘Love’ was simply synonymous with obedience and following the rules, a sentiment I think you can relate to. It creates a rigid inner world and a major cognitive dissonance that you are also told to ignore. Eventually, the inevitable happens: you discover that following the rules doesn’t always stop painful experiences or lead to the experience of feeling loved… and here is the really sad part: the young child assumes they are the problem.

I might argue that every child, through whatever cultural or path they walk, eventually hits that wall where the Map (the rules, the words, the expectations) fails to describe the Territory (the raw, painful, and beautiful experience of being alive). When the adults and the “Law” insist the Map is perfect, the child has no choice but to conclude that their own internal compass is broken.

By framing such a experience as archetypal, I’ve been suggesting that the “Exodus” is actually the journey of un-learning that childhood conclusion. The 40 years in the wilderness is the time it takes for that “I am the problem” identity to finally starve to death, so that the person can finally enter the “Promise” as a dancer rather than a servant. A movement from “I must be right” to be loved… to “I am here.” and am Love.

As I’ve explored this topic I find my self continually surprised of how the literalism we internalize as children can eventually feel like a cage. As I discussed with Roberta to find a way out, I’ve found I often have to look toward other wisdom traditions, not to abandon my home, but to find the tools to renovate it. Here is a less biblical example warning of a hardened heart…

I’ve been reflecting on a verse from the Tao Te Ching:

The Way bears one. The one bears two. The two bear three. The three bear the ten thousand things. The ten thousand things carry the yin on their shoulders and hold in their arms the yang, whose interplay of energy makes harmony.
People despise orphans, widowers, outcasts. Yet that’s what kings and rulers call themselves. Whatever you lose, you’ve won. Whatever you win, you’ve lost. What others teach, I say too: violence and aggression destroy themselves. My teaching rests on that

Lao Tzu suggests that we often become caught in the dualisms of winning and losing, subject and object. Again and again, experience seems to split itself into opposites. Yet this cosmology gestures toward something prior to this division, something like the “Law of Three,” where a third presence opens a space for a choiceless choice. It is the moment that is neither inhale, exhale nor holding, a weightless pause where the creative spark arises.

From there, something subtle happens. The spark does not remain formless. Language gathers around it, as moisture gathers in the air. At first, it is light, like vapor, invisible and unbound. Then, almost imperceptibly, it condenses. A thought takes shape, an image forms, and the first raindrop appears. This is natural, even necessary: the formless becoming form, the unseen becoming speakable. Like rain, it nourishes, it connects, it allows life to take root.

But the process does not always stop at rain.

Under certain conditions, when the atmosphere grows turbulent, when currents clash and intensify, the raindrop is carried upward again. It passes through layers of freezing air, and each pass adds another shell. What began as a simple condensation becomes a hailstone: solid, dense, and weighty.

So too with our thoughts. A simple insight, once named, can be lifted back into the churn of reaction, defensiveness, and repetition, until it hardens into a fixed position. This is the “hardened heart” from the old stories, not a divine punishment, but a psychological process where a living truth becomes an icy weapon. What began as a living spark becomes something we grasp, defend, and eventually throw.

In this metaphor, the “One” is the open atmosphere, pure, unformed potential. The “Two” is the condensation, the inevitable forming of a drop. But the hailstone is a distortion: it is form that has been cycled through resistance until it forgets its origin in lightness. By the time we hold a rigid stance, we are no longer holding rain, but ice.

Today, I want to practice what the older Christian traditions called Perichoresis, the “divine dance.” This wasn’t a dry doctrine but a description of mutual indwelling and dynamic movement. It echoes Lao Tzu’s harmony: the One becoming Two, and the Two finding their rhythm in the Three.

Through this lens, the tensions in my own life begin to soften. My active drive to achieve and my passive need to rest are no longer adversaries; they are movements within a larger rhythm. The “third force” is not something added, but something noticed, the breath itself, the living space between.

I saw this briefly this morning in a difficult conversation. There was the impulse to defend, to solidify into a position. There was also the impulse to withdraw. But for a moment, there was a gap. In that space, nothing had yet hardened. It was a moment where I did not have to become the hailstone; I could remain as the atmosphere.

Violence, I see now, is a forgetting of this movement. It is what happens when we try to give permanence to what was never meant to be fixed, so begets and destroys it self. But the Tao suggests a reversal: what is yielded is not lost. By releasing the weight of needing to be “right,” we return to the dance.

The world often operates as if only hailstones are real, solid positions and force meeting force. But beneath the noise, the quieter process continues: the forming and dissolving, the rising and falling.

So today, I will look for that movement in small things. I will notice the instant before the drop hardens. I will allow the spark to remain light a little longer. In that openness, there is finally room to breathe.