by Mark Horn
Looking up to the surprise of a murmuration of birds. Seeing dolphins at play. Experiencing the grandeur of elephants in a herd. These are all examples of the Splendor of Creation. Splendor is one of the many faces of Hod, and it is manifested in the infinite variety of nature. And in the face of such Splendor, who does not feel Awe, a face of Gevurah, and Humility, another face of Hod?
In fact, the ability to feel Awe is in a direct relationship to one’s ability to feel Humility. When one has an encounter with the truly Awesome, Humility and Surrender are natural responses. So is terror, so I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you that another face of Gevurah is Fear. And that “Awe full” and “awful” are not so far apart.
I haven’t forgotten that Gevurah is also Judgment. But when we are in a place of true Humility, we do not Judge. Though we may be able to use our Discernment to better understand the things we stand in Awe of. Just before he died, the great scientist Carl Sagan reflected on this when he wrote about science as a source of spirituality in his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, suggesting that awe and reverence are the natural responses of a scientist studying Nature and that both humility and elation arise in the heart of the scientist studying the immensity and intricacy of the universe.8
In the Jewish liturgical calendar, the days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are known as the Days of Awe. But when I think about the experience available to us any day, I believe that if we are awake to it, all our days are days of Awe. And today in particular is a good day to go out into Nature and explore with a sense of reverence, Awe, and Humility.
Day 30: Gevurah of Hod in Atzilut
The Five and Eight of Wands
_________within_________
Humility has its limits. Being Humble does not mean being a doormat. The Gevurah that is within Hod is there to make sure you don’t let other people take advantage of you. Just because one of the faces of Hod is Surrender doesn’t mean you should Surrender to people who attack you. No one in the Five of Wands has dropped his staff on the ground so that he can be beaten by the others. They are all defending themselves vigorously.
The Surrender that we speak of in Hod is to the higher will of the Divine. Or as we saw on Day 12, which was Hod of Gevurah, Surrender to Discipline. But in Gevurah of Hod, we are being asked to use our Discernment even as we Surrender to Discipline or before we give our Devotion to a spiritual path. This is in direct opposition to the words of the early Christian theologian Tertullian, who wrote, “It is to be believed because it is absurd.”9 But it is in complete harmony with the teaching of the Buddha.
In the Kalama Sutta, the story is told of how the Buddha was approached by the people of a town and questioned about what to believe.10 Between all the gurus and ascetics, the traditions and religions they were exposed to, they found it difficult to decide where to place their faith. His answer to them might be shocking to anyone who grew up in a tradition that demanded blind faith. He told the townspeople not to believe something because their teacher said it, or because it has been passed down for generations, or because it’s in Scripture, or because they like the idea, or because it matches their bias, or because they trust the speaker, or because it’s “common sense,” or because it seems logical. He taught them that you should only believe things that you can test against your own experience of what produces good results.
When hardly a day goes by without some spiritual teacher or religious institution being exposed for abusing the trust of their followers, this continues to be sound advice. Use your Discernment before giving your Devotion. And the Devotion should be to the teaching, since after all, teachers are only human and almost certain to disappoint in one way or another.
Day 30: Gevurah of Hod in B’riah
The Five and Eight of Cups
_________within_________
Looking at the Five and Eight of Cups, I see a spiritual crisis that is the origin for a spiritual search. Just what do I mean by “spiritual crisis”? It has been defined as deep grieving or loss that leads to questioning the meaning of life or feeling that life is meaningless and that results in a dramatic change in how life is seen.11 Such a crisis is often set off by a sudden and serious illness or the loss of a close relationship, often through death. You can see this loss symbolized in the overturned cups in the Five of Cups. And the response after the figure in black has grieved is for the figure to then turn away in the Eight of Cups to climb the mountain in the distance.
Experiencing the Limitation and Severity of Gevurah can be profoundly disturbing. Faced with the Limits of mortality, who wouldn’t, at the very least, feel Humbled? This is the origin story of the Buddha, who, as legend has it, was brought up a prince and cloistered by his father so that he would not see any suffering in the world. But in just one day, the young prince came upon a corpse, a man who was very sick, and another who was elderly. He realized that all these things he was protected from seeing could not be kept from happening to him. And it led him to leave the palace in search for a way out of suffering. It’s a good story, though whether it really happened, who can say? But then, as the storyteller in me likes to say, even if it didn’t happen, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
The truth is that each of us has some sort of encounter that shocks us out of our dream state and sends us out to search for deeper truth. I have had several such shocks. I’ve lived through the worst of the HIV crisis, losing almost every boyfriend and many good friends that I met before 1980. I had my heart ripped out of my chest and sliced into pieces when a man I loved dearly fell into the darkness of mental illness and killed himself.
It was the loss of people I loved to the HIV crisis that sent me down a path that led me to discover Vipassana meditation. But like the vast majority of humanity, I tend to fall back into the waking dream state. So no doubt I will have a few more shocks ahead in my life. Rumi recognized this tendency when he enjoined people not to fall back into sleep.12
I hope that your wake-up calls will be gentle. And that you don’t go back to sleep.
Day 30: Gevurah of Hod in Yetzirah
The Five and Eight of Swords
_________within_________
In the Five and Eight of Wands, we saw that the quality of Humility does not require you to be a doormat. In the Five and Eight of Swords, we see the dangers of being a doormat.
In the Five of Swords, we see someone who exhibits many of the traits of negative Gevurah: a person who is willing to violate Boundaries, one for whom Law or Justice is meaningless and who does not feel Constrained by human decency. And the result for anyone who allows this kind of behavior to continue without protest or response is on view in the Eight of Swords; by closing their eyes and remaining silent in the face of Injustice and Boundary violations out of a negative expression of Humility, people put themselves in real danger. If you really believe that we are all one, then injustice against one is injustice against all.
How can you recognize this negative expression of Humility? You’ll hear someone utter the seemingly reasonable phrase, “What can I do? I’m just one person.” You may even find yourself falling prey to this mind-set. For all my activism, I sometimes do. It’s easy to feel this way, to deny one’s own power, because to take action takes us out of our comfort zone. And in fact, it can put us in danger. But the danger of not acting is greater.
The anonymous protester who stood in front of a convoy of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, China, in 1989 did not ultimately stop the slaughter of hundreds and perhaps thousands of protesters. But he did stop that line of tanks, and we don’t know how many lives were saved because of that action. We also don’t know what went through the mind of the soldier driving that tank who decided to stop; how did it affect the rest of his life?
Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist during World War II who started out a devoted member of the Nazi Party. But he ended up spending his entire fortune bribing Nazi officials to save the lives of more than a thousan
d Jews. His efforts could have been uncovered at any time, and he would have been summarily executed. He was not a doormat.
These are extreme examples, for sure. But these extreme situations developed only because thousands of people closed their eyes and said, “But I’m only one person” in earlier situations that led up to them.
This dynamic can also be internal. We all have our inner Boundary violator. And worse, we can suffer the psychic damage of negative Hod. Like the negative thought that tells us that our actions won’t make a difference for good, here negative Hod manifests as the thought that it doesn’t really matter if we do something bad. We’ve all known someone who is a victim of that mind-set (and who thus makes other people victims of their actions). I’ve fallen prey to this mind-set myself. This is why I have found the twelve-step practice of making amends an essential discipline. And the sensitivity of those who developed this process was such that they recognized that one’s behavior might have been so egregious that trying to make amends directly would only make things worse. And of course, there are those we’ve wronged who are no longer alive. So for those situations, the Divinely inspired recovering addicts who developed the twelve steps created indirect ways to make amends. I am forever grateful to them.
Day 30: Gevurah of Hod in Assiyah
The Five and Eight of Pentacles
_________within_________
What happens in Hod when the Power of Gevurah is turned against you? When you have internalized rejection and negative Judgment? Some people put their heads down, deny who they are, and put all their energy into their work, hoping that doing excellent work will ameliorate this Judgment. They become overachievers who nevertheless have low self-esteem. This is the story told in the book written by Andrew Tobias, under the pseudonym John Reid, titled The Best Little Boy in the World.
This novelized memoir of growing up gay revealed a dynamic many gay men recognize and many other people, whether in a disparaged minority group or not, can also identify with. It’s even come to be called Best Little Boy in the World syndrome. It’s when a person will try to deflect attention from something they are ashamed of, but is an important part of who that person is, by excelling in socially accepted measures of success. For closeted gay men, this can mean becoming the school valedictorian, winning an Olympic medal, working for the most elite companies: it can manifest in all these ways and more. By overcompensating in these areas, people who suffer from this dynamic conceal their low self-esteem by erecting a facade of self-worth that only creates a deeper sense of alienation from others and the self. You can recognize this psychological principle at work in the pairing of these two cards.
Of course, one doesn’t have to excel to fall prey to this mind-set. Because excelling means standing out, and that too can be dangerous. So you can see negative Hod manifesting in people who don’t want to be seen—the people who keep their heads down at work, plugging away in life, trying not to make any waves so that no one realizes that fundamentally there is something about them that is unacceptable (or at least so they believe). So many people live quiet lives of suffering in just this way, and it breaks my heart.
Questions for reflection and contemplation: Day 30
1. (Wands) Have you ever felt failed or betrayed by the actions of a spiritual teacher? How did this affect your relationship with the teachings? Are the teachings still valid for you? How much do you investigate a teacher before you decide to follow their path?
2. (Cups) What have been the spiritual crises in your life that sent you on the path of a spiritual search? How have the practices or teachings that you found supported you in times of crisis?
3. (Swords) Thinking back to situations in your life when you could have stood up for what is right but did not speak out or take action: how do you feel about it now? What could you have done differently? Is there anything you can do now? Think back to any times you may have rationalized boundary-violating behavior on your own part. What did you tell yourself? What amends are due to others and yourself? How and when will you make those amends?
4. (Pentacles) Reflect on whether there are any ways that you use something you excel at to deflect attention from something about yourself that you’re ashamed of. What can you do to more fully accept yourself? Do you know anyone who seems to employ such a similar deflection strategy? What can you do to show that person that they’re fully accepted without triggering a shame reaction?
Day 31: Tiferet of Hod
An Open Heart Is Always Full, but Never Full of Itself
Today is the thirty-first day of the Omer, which is four weeks and three days of the Omer.
We have come to Compassion in Humility. An open Heart knows how to put Compassion into action in a way that is empty of self. (And not devoid of self at the same time, since this is a non-dual path.)
The Sefat Emet taught that the goal of Counting the Omer was to purify oneself of all desires so that in freeing ourselves from desire, our spiritual Egypt, we become truly free—Surrendering our will to the Divine Will.*35
In this understanding, “empty of self ” means simply (or not so simply) that the ego has stepped out of the way, allowing us to be fully free for our actions to be in alignment with Divine Will. As we purify ourselves through this practice of Counting the Omer, if we are doing it well, this can be what will happen as the heavens open on Erev Shavuot: we receive our Divine revelation and awaken to the Divine in every moment.
Of course, like any flower, that awareness will open and close and open and close. We will wake and go back to sleep (regardless of Rumi’s entreaties otherwise). And that is simply the natural order of things. Unless you’re the Buddha. Or the Sefat Emet.
Speaking of the natural order of things, you can also read Tiferet of Hod as Harmony within Splendor—the Dynamic Balance that exists throughout all Creation and the web of life. It’s the dance of the interdependence of Nature at every level of existence. And this is a delicate Balance that humanity has been busy overturning at our own peril. We are witnessing the “Sixth Great Extinction,” which is destroying the food chain in our oceans, our forests, and our atmosphere.13
Back when I looked askance at Scripture, I read the following passage from Leviticus as transactional when YHVH says:
If you faithfully observe my commandments and follow them, and I will send rain in their season so that your crops thrive and your trees grow heavy with fruit. Your harvest of grain and grapes will be of such abundance, it will last beyond the next time for sowing. You will have enough food to be full satisfied, and you will be safe and secure in the land.14
This is followed by a long warning of what will happen if we disobey these commands, and it reads, among other things, like a catalog of ecological disaster. So today I have come to see passages like this as a warning to respect all of Creation and live in Harmony with the Splendor of Creation, which is really one of the main teachings of Scripture. May we heed these warnings before it is too late.
Day 31: Tiferet of Hod in Atzilut
The Six and Eight of Wands
_________within_________
In the American mythos of the Old West or even in the Grimms’ folktales, if there’s a man on a white horse, you know he’s a hero. And here in the Six of Wands, we have a hero on a white horse—a leader, crowned with laurel. As I’ve noted in many of the other appearances of this card during the count, it takes Balance to ride a horse. It also takes Balance to be a successful leader. Today the Balance we’ll be looking at is of Hod—Humility, to start.
When someone in a position of leadership has a healthy relationship with Humility, he or she is more approachable. It enables others to be more fully who they are, and it allows for others to share their opinions without fear of judgment. In fact, healthy Humility is welcoming; it actively expresses appreciation to others for sharing their opinions and ideas. It provides the ground for empathy. But when that Humility is expressed as a kind of withdrawn shyness, it can communicate disrespect for others. The leade
r is seen as cold and distant. And this can make a leader seem arrogant at the worst and defensive at the least. This is true whether one is in a leadership position or not, since all of us take the lead in certain situations in our lives.
Someone who went on to become one of my closest friends was shy in just this way when we first began to get to know each other. His reserve came across to me as a snooty arrogance, and I wrote off any thought that this relationship would develop in any direction. It took the sharper observation of another friend to suggest otherwise. And my friend was correct in his observation. I had misread the first man’s demeanor and might have lost the pleasure of his company for the last thirty years had I not adjusted my understanding and responded in a way that enabled him to come forward.
At the other end of the spectrum is someone who is overly Humble. This can seem disingenuous, making the person seem like a “Uriah Heep” character whose expression of Humility feels both cloying and insincere. In a leader, it creates insecurity among the followers, since it suggests that the leader is either naïve or unqualified for the position. And if it is not disingenuous, this is the Humility of someone who has been beaten down.
This pairing, though, suggests a positive relationship with Balanced Humility and Gratitude. The Eight of Wands shows that a well-Balanced Humility can be the source of great strength of character. May we all enjoy such Balance in our relationships, and may our leaders exemplify the best of this Balance.
