Letting Go of the Burning Coal:
Reflections on Rabbi Lew's Teaching at Nishmat Hayyim
by Bobbi Isberg

Anger usually flares up in an instant or burns beneath the surface, without our listening calmly and closely to what it might be communicating. It is rare to be invited to fully experience anger when our mind is in a very quiet state. This is exactly what we were instructed to do in our one-day retreat, "Letting Go of the Burning Coal: Anger and how to Heal It," with Rabbi Alan Lew. Rabbi Lew prepared us for this experience through a series of instructions for the morning. We began by stretching our bodies, to prepare for silent sitting meditation. Rabbi Lew gave detailed instruction on positioning ourselves so that we could feel our lower body as a strong foundation from which our spine could freely rise, letting our shoulders drop in a relaxed way, lifting our heads, and allowing for full awareness of the movement of the breath. With our eyes softly opened, we were instructed in "radical awakening" to the movement of the breath as we experienced it in the body, specifically, in the area just below the navel. Following this silent exercise in awareness, Nishmat Hayyim teachers Minna Bromberg, Yocheved Katz, and Carl Woolf led us in a Shacharit chant service.

Rabbi Lew then gave a teaching on anger, drawing from Torah stories and personal reflections. From the Torah, we learned of Isaac's attempt to dig again the wells of water which his father, Abraham, had dug before, in the land of the Philistines. He called them the same names his father had called them, signifying the importance of the wisdom passed from the previous generation. Isaac named the first well Esek, because the local herdsmen "contended with him." Esek signifies an objective conflict, something that is actually taking place "between two separate parties out in the world." * The second well, also contested by the local herdsmen, is named "Sitnah." "Sitnah" means "enmity:" the subjective feeling of hostility, "the propensity for conflict that resides in our own breast."* This second name signifies a shift from the conflict happening in the world, to our own tendency to respond in anger to certain situations, rather than to others. While there are any number of irritating things that happen over the course of a day, we all know that feeling when some particular thing really gets to us and triggers an intense response of anger. It is this pattern of reactivity that we carry within us, that is signified by the name of this second well. Once Isaac had located the struggle in the "inner roots of conflict" in his own breast, the outer conflict was resolved. When he moved to the next well, no one struggled with him, so he named the well "Rechovot," which means "spaciousness." This teaching suggests the possibility of moving from the narrowness of enmity into the spaciousness of awareness that is not constrained by our habitual patterns of reacting.

Following a silent lunch and another opportunity to meditate, Rabbi Lew invited us to welcome any stirrings of anger we might have observed over the course of our morning's study. He instructed us to "breathe in: allow anger to arise. Breathe out: inhabit the anger, allow it to fill you. Allow yourself to inhabit it until you are tingling with anger. Notice that you are the one who is experiencing this anger, …the one who is hurting." Through a series of specific steps, we were invited to shift our focus from our anger to the suffering it causes us. We were encouraged to let feelings of revenge rise up with each in breath, and eventually fall away with each out breath.

Usually, when we are "tingling with anger," we are also out of our minds with rage, poised to engage in battle, filled with visions of revenge. Following several hours of silent meditation and prayer, I found myself able to simply open my heart to the emotion, with no agenda of acting on it, getting rid of it, or resolving it. I was not trying to process this anger in any particular way. Yet I was aware that, with a quiet mind, I could observe it and listen to it in a different way than when I was caught up in the intensity of it. While there was no flash of insight or clear path to follow that suddenly appeared during the meditation, I became aware, as the hours and days passed, that a different process was taking place with the feelings and thoughts I had begun to access during the retreat. I found myself more aware of anger and irritation in the days that followed. However, as time passed, I found myself more accepting of my reactions and then more aware of my own role in "needing to be angry."

Had this been all we learned from Rabbi Lew, Dayenu-it would have been enough. Yet we were treated to another teaching on the following day, at our Monday night meditation and discussion: this time on that other troublesome emotion, anxiety. Rabbi Lew introduced his "Five Step Program" on how to deal with fear, which he derives from the instructions given to the Children of Israel, when Pharaoh's chariots were bearing down on them. "Don't panic, pull yourself together, see clearly, be still, and get going." This program and the more detailed Torah commentary are beautifully explained in Rabbi Lew's book, Be Still and Get Going.* Rather than repeat these explanations here, I encourage you to read this thoughtful guide to experiencing Torah with the quality of awareness that we cultivate through meditation. The teaching, to "be still and get going," is a helpful program for dealing with most challenging situations, when we are feeling the "chariots" of daily life bearing down on us. May we find, in our personal lives, as well as in our meditation community of Nishmat Hayyim, the capacity for stillness from which meaningful action can evolve.

*from Alan Lew, (2005). Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life. New York: Little, Brown and Company (available for purchase at Nishmat Hayyim events for $15)