My Hevruta asked if God was always with Joseph, so there was no need to build an alter or sacrifice to bring himself closer to God. At that point, I felt the presence of Joseph come into the room and he showed me how he experienced the world.
Joseph was a person who was always open to the flow of energy around him. He could perceive it and used it to make choices that based on where the energy would flow most powerfully. He could perceive it in others and his reactions to them were guided by his energetic perceptions rather than his physical ones. In that sense, God was always with him because he could always perceive God around him and in the world. He had no need to increase the energy around him as he knew that it was always there.
When his brothers threw him in the hole, he didn't fight or run away because he could perceive that it was the correct thing to happen. I imagine he was very puzzled by it, but he went with the flow as he always did.
When Potifar's wife tried to seduce him, he ran because he could see her evil intentions and knew her seduction was a power play rather than an expression of Love. He ran from her because he could see through her.
When he interpreted dreams, he could feel the meanings within them. He could see how the energetics of the dreams matched up with reality.
He was the master of Being. He didn't puzzle about life or try to make things happen. He just went where the flow was strongest. He didn't need to build power to get close to God because he could always perceive God in the world.
Photo courtesy of Joseph Brauer
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2 comments:
This sounds like a really beautiful way of existing in the world. It reminds me of the Eastern concept of "Wu wei" - no action. It sounds a little Daoist.
I wonder if this was something that he cultivated (and if so how), or if it was something that was innate in his being and how he existed in the world. If he had periods of greater sensitivity and lesser sensitivity or if it was constant. My understanding of Josef's life is that all though there was some conflict between him and the world around him, he never seemed to go through much internal conflict. It almost seems like there was no personal growth because it's as if he came into this world fully evolved. That matches up with what you're saying. He didn't have internal conflict because he just went with the flow of the drama unfolding around us.
May we all merit to have the wisdom to see God's hand in everything around us and an awareness of where the energy will flow around us.
Amen!
My sense is that he must have had times of greater and lesser sensitivity because that's how the world works. He also faced great challenges, but responded to them with great wisdom.
Judaism never seeks enlightenment, but continual motion. My understanding of the ideal of Wu Wei is in some ways a static state - your challenge is to maintain the state, not to move forward. Though I imagine that it's a continual process of personal growth to continually achieve the state of "no action".
Joseph met every challenge with perception, and then grew from each in the direction that the energy took him. He was not born fully formed, but his energetic perceptions enabled him to appear to flow through life. My guess is that his challenge was to accept where God was taking him, which was often into captivity and deprivation.
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