In Jewish mysticism, we are taught that there are two spiritual states: mokhin d'katnut, "diminished spirit," and mokhin d'gadlut, "expansive spirit." Fear is a state that strangles us down to a place of diminished spirit, complaining, angry, hurt, unable to permit ourselves to hope. Curiously, it occurs not when we are beaten down by our situation, but, often, when we are standing on the threshhold of escape from all that holds us down.

It is at that moment when we ourselves are the weight that holds ourselves down. The state of mokhin d'katnut rushes in just at the moment when we might give ourselves to joy rather than fear. Here is what it truly means to enter the wilderness. To leave Egypt is to leave that which is comfortingly familiar, even if it stifles growth and freedom and dreams. To leave Egypt is to walk into a wilderness which is only romantic on a bumper sticker; in real life we often see such a moment as scary and unsafe, and we do not see that it is our invitation into mokhin d'gadlut, a chance - that may not come again - to hold out our arms and embrace existence, and to sing its praises. Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. Trust, HaShem tells Moshe, not in what is, but in what is not yet. I will be what I will be; we will be what we are not yet. On this Shabbat, consider: what do you long to hear, yet run from? Can you begin to understand how it holds not only you back from the ability to trust others, and life itself - and how that holds you, and me as well, from exploring the freedom we might share to move through the wilderness in joy?