Parshat Shelach: Freedom From Fear

Parshat Shelach begins with the Jews resting on the border to Israel. Hashem gives instructions to Moshe: “Send for yourself men to spy the land of Canaan that I am giving to Bnei Yisrael.”1  Hashem does not command Moshe. Rather, He acquiesces. Rashi tells us that it says “Send for yourself,” to tell us that it was Bnei Yisrael that demanded from Moshe that they be allowed to send the spies. The end result is well known. The spies spend forty days scouting the land and return to give an “evil report” to Bnei Yisrael. They tell of the strength of the inhabitants and the great fortifications surrounding their cities. They say, “We cannot attack these people, for it is stronger than we.”2 They spread fear amongst the Jews and tell them that this is a land that devours its inhabitants. Bnei Yisrael cries out in fear and demands that they be taken back to Egypt. For this, the ten spies who peddled the evil report are killed and Am Yisrael is sent to wander the desert for forty years.

Rashi provides an interesting perspective on the event. When the spies return to provide their report, the Torah relates that “they went straight to Moshe and Aaron and the whole Israelite community.”3 The Torah uses two Hebrew words to describe their coming to report to Am Yisrael –  וַיֵּלְכ֡וּ וַיָּבֹ֩אוּ֩ – they went and they came.4 Rashi comments on these seemingly redundant words to say that they are there “to compare their going with their coming. Just as their coming was with an evil plan, so too was their going with an evil plan.” In other words, they had bad intentions from the start.

The obvious question that must be asked is why? What possible motivation could they have had for torpedoing Am Yisrael’s long-awaited entrance into Eretz Yisrael? We’re even told by Rashi that these were worthy, holy men at the time of their sending. “These men, [though they later sinned] but at that time [when they were appointed] they were worthy men.”5 They were worthy men, yet, from the beginning, they planned to do evil?

This seeming contradiction offers us an interesting look into our relationship with fear. Fear is poison. It corrupts our thoughts and manipulates our actions and ruins our relationships. Fear is a lens that skews all that we behold. It makes us cynical, cold, angry, anxious. When we feel fear we protect ourselves from it. We close our hearts. We resort to numbing activities. We begin to worry.

It is not so much that their report was premeditated in as much as it was predetermined. The spies left with fear in their hearts and so their report could be nothing but fearful. Bnei Yisrael has long since been told that the land is a good land, an expansive land, filled with milk and honey. Yet, they still demand that they be allowed to send spies. Moshe knows what is going to happen. He sees that this request comes from a place of fear. As Rav Daniel Katz says, “questions of the heart are not questions.”6 He prays for Yoshua by changing his name from Hosua (לְהוֹשֵׁ֥עַ) to Yoshua (יְהוֹשֻֽׁעַ), which translates to “Gd Saves.” When we approach a situation from a place of fear, the outcome is predictable. We send spies when we worry. We send them out, groping in the foggy future, hoping that they might send back some comforting message. But when are worries are sent in fear and so too do they return in fear – with an evil report to tell.

It is the unknown that we fear. When we stare into the abyss, what we fear is our lack of control. Fear is an effort to control the uncontrollable. We have been sliced and trampled upon in the past. We have made mistakes. We have lost. We remember the pain from those moments and that pain whispers in our ears, “be afraid. Remember what happened the last time you let go? Don’t let that happen again.” So instead of looking at exactly what Hashem has placed before us, we see it filtered through our past lenses. The spies relate that “we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”7 Whether they really looked like grasshoppers to the giants of Nephilim is irrelevant. They projected their fears onto reality. It is interesting that Hashem’s response to this situation is to give us more control, as if to say, “if control is what you want, control is what you will have.” He goes on to describe to us exactly how the next forty years will unfold. When we try to control, we never get what we want. Deep down, what we want comes from surrendering, from trusting, not from trying to control the uncontrollable. This is because that warm, peaceful feeling we want so badly does not come by making our happiness conditional on countless uncontrollable variables. It comes from trusting that no matter what happens, we can find peace regardless.

When we live lives of fear, we never get to see the land that Hashem wants for us. To receive from Hashem means to walk boldly into the unknown. Only then do we open up space to see the true blessings that await us – a land filled with milk and honey, hope and love. But it is a land that consumes its inhabitants. When we live with fear, a land that consumes its inhabitants is a curse. The last thing fear wants is to lose more control. But those who live with Hashem are happy to step into a land that consumes them. All is Hashem. We are consumed by His reality anyways. Some fight it and others embrace it.

Such fearlessness is not easy and we must have forgiveness for both ourselves and for our ancestors who wandered in the desert. To truly let go and walk wholeheartedly and courageously towards where Hashem is taking us takes true courage. Our time in the desert was spent in an emunah “training camp” so to speak. “Whenever the cloud lifted from the Tent, the Israelites would set out accordingly; and at the spot where the cloud settled, there the Israelites would make camp.”8 We walked when Hashem’s cloud rose up and we rested when it descended. Rest when He tells us to rest. Work when He tells us to work. Eat manna given by Him. Drink water given by Him. Realize that there is nothing besides Him. Let go and celebrate the closeness to Him. Practice not-worrying. Enjoy this period before we become autonomous in our own land. Yet we can’t let go. We choose to send spies, for we cannot let go enough to trust Hashem’s word that we are capable of conquering the unknown. We cannot stop worrying, even though it never serves us.

How do we clear away the fear? We walk the way of Moshe, who represents da’at – awareness. We see our fear instead of getting caught up in it. As Michael Singer says, we ask ourselves, not “what do I do about the fear,” but rather, “who is the one seeing the fear?”9 We are not that which we can observe. Associate not with your fear but the part of you that can watch the fear. Watch from your neshama, from that place of pure consciousness. Within each of us we have a place that is never afraid, that is never in pain, that is never lonely. Find that place inside of you and live life from that place.

This does not mean don’t problem-solve. But we must problem-solve from a place of emunah, not a place of fear. Don’t try to solve tomorrow’s problems. Solve the now’s problems and leave tomorrow’s problems to tomorrow’s you. When you do this, you realize that there are no problems in the now, there are just experiences. When we live in the now, we don’t judge things as “problems” or “not problems,” there is simply life, Oneness.

Thus we try to let go. We turn our eyes upwards instead of forwards. We work to realize that there is never any reason to be afraid. A life of fear is death. It locks us in a prison of our own creation and then leaves us depressed that we aren’t living the life that we want. A fearless life of scrapes and bruises is far better than a life caged in fear. The fear voices in our heads do not let us go easily. They tell us that the land we are approaching should be feared. They tell us that we cannot do what we are capable of doing. Turn back they say. These voices are lies. If we want to live a free life, a life of true joy and ambition, a life that is truly ours, defined by our hopes and dreams and not the reports of others — we must let go of fear. We must watch it always so that it never again gets to dictate the lives that we lead. “Open up for me an opening like the eye of a needle and in turn, I will enlarge it to be an opening through which wagons can enter.”10 Walk into the darkness and Hashem will open for you the world. Breath deeply. This world is not what we think it is. Behind the great facade is infinite love, infinite light. Let yourself see it and believe it. You are of Bnei Yisrael. “You need not fear the terror by night, or the arrow that flies by day.” (Psalm 91:5) Let go of all that is not serving you. Stay present. We are carried on the wings of eagles. What would your life look life if you transcended your fear?

An exercise:

Contemplate that today is your last day (Gd-forbid). There is no tomorrow. There is nothing to fear anymore. There is nothing to do besides experience today fully. How is your day different? Notice how suddenly, the judgemental mind turns off leaving you to simply savor every little sensation, every moment. Michael Singer summarizes that people say they what more life, but what they really want is more depth to life. Practice this Shabbat experiencing life more deeply.

______