I want to say something that might be a little uncomfortable, because I think it’s true for most of us, myself included.
When we come to a holiday, when we come to a moment of real spiritual power, we usually arrive with a list. A mental list, or sometimes a literal one. Please take away this fear. Please remove this doubt. Please make this pain stop. Please let this thing I’m dreading not happen.
We are asking the Creator for a wishlist or to come in and clean up the mess. To take away all the anxiety, the uncertainty, the things about ourselves that we are not proud of. And then, we figure, once those things are gone, we’ll feel better. We’ll be clearer. We’ll finally be able to show up as the version of ourselves we hope we’re capable of being.
I understand that impulse completely. I have been there.
But I’ve come to believe that it’s actually the wrong ask. And Shavuot is the invitation to try something entirely different. Shavuot connects us to what kabbalists call the “revelation on Mount Sinai.” The name itself is a code word for the perfect union between the Light and the physical world. Because that’s what occurred 3,400 years ago in the desert: the connection between the heavens and the earth manifested in the receiving of divine wisdom. As a result, each year at this time, we enter a state of pure potential, where anything and everything is possible–even the idea of immortality.
And twenty-one years ago, I had the most powerful Shavuot of my life. Josh had been born a few months before, in April. After his birth we learned that he had Down syndrome and in those weeks and months after, I was consumed by a kind of fear I had never experienced. It was all-consuming, relentless, not something I could think my way out of or study my way past.
I hadn’t slept for three days going into Shavuot. Three full days. And then we had to stay up all night. I remember thinking at some point that maybe my body had simply forgotten how to fall asleep, that this was it now, this permanent, vibrating wakefulness. And underneath the exhaustion was something harder: I was surprised and disappointed in myself. After everything I had studied. After years of Kabbalah, of learning, of teaching. How could I be this consumed by doubt? How could the uncertainty around Josh throw me so completely off my foundation? I looked at myself almost from the outside and thought: this is not who I want to be. This is not who I know I can be, it isn’t even who I really am.
But I didn’t even have the capacity to think it through consciously. I couldn’t reason my way to certainty. I couldn’t will myself into peace. So instead, that entire night, I did one thing: I asked the Creator to let the Light shine through me. Not to take my fear away. Not to hand me answers but shine through me despite the situation and show me the way through.
Around four in the morning, I found a sleeping bag on the floor next to my oldest son, David in the room beside the synagogue. I didn’t even make it to our room. And it was the first time I had slept in four days. When I opened my eyes, the sunrise was happening. And it was the most majestic thing I have ever seen, like nothing before or since. And as it rose, I felt something rise inside of me with it. Fear no longer had the same hold, I felt inspired and enlightened.
That is the power of this night.
Here’s the distinction I keep coming back to, because I think it matters enormously.
When we ask for our fears and doubts to be removed, we are still in a transaction with them. We’re still organizing our inner life around their existence. The fear is the center of the ask. We are, in a sense, giving it even more weight. As Eckhart Tolle famously said, what we resist persists. Focusing on how badly we want it to go away only feeds it more energy and strengthens it
But when we ask for the Light to shine through us—as completely and fully as that sunrise moved through me on that floor—something else happens entirely. You don’t have to fight your fears anymore. You don’t have to argue yourself into certainty or beg for clarity. You become so aligned with the Light that those things lose their grip.
Think of it this way. You can spend your whole life trying to chase the darkness out of a room. Or you can turn on a light. That’s the ask. That’s what tonight is for.
And here’s the other thing we can understand about Shavuot specifically: the energy available tonight is not passive. You don’t receive it by simply showing up and going through the motions. You receive it by actually allowing it in and by letting it infuse you, completely. Not a little. Not up to the edge of your comfort zone. Completely.
We all want the miracle and the healing, we want our fears and doubts removed, but then what? Once they’re gone, nothing will be in the way of us receiving or living fully or taking the chance. Most of us will have excuses ready. I’m too tired. I’m too distracted. I’m too skeptical, or too sad, or too far behind on sleep. I’ve heard these from other people and I’ve said them all to myself. But the obstacle is staying on the surface, keeping your heart only slightly open, and calling that connection.
What if tonight you let it in all the way?
Here’s how to practice this, starting right now:
Change the ask.
The next time you sit down to pray, or meditate, or simply talk to the Creator, notice how you’ve framed it. Is it a list of things to remove? If so, try shifting it: Shine through me. Let me be a vessel for the Light. Let me wake up tomorrow as a version of myself that doesn’t relate to this fear the same way. It’s a subtle shift but a mighty one.
Stop negotiating with your doubts.
Most of us spend enormous energy in debate with our inner fears. We try to reason them away, reassure ourselves out of them, argue against them in our own heads. That’s exhausting and it doesn’t work, because you’re still in the ring with them. Just like arguing with an unreasonable person, why not just stop? You can acknowledge the doubt without reacting at all.
Be honest about where you are.
This is where I was twenty-one years ago on that floor. I couldn’t pretend anymore that I had it together. I couldn’t hide behind the version of myself that knew things and had studied things. I was just a person. That honesty is what made space. You don’t need to perform spirituality tonight. You just need to be real about where you are.
Expect to wake up differently.
I mean this literally. Come into this holiday with the genuine expectation that the version of you on the other side of tonight is not going to see your challenges the same way. Your challenges likely won’t disappear but the Light will be inside you differently, and that can change your perspective. Expect it. Ask for it. That expectation is itself a form of opening.
Shavuot is the night the Torah was given, which means it’s the night the highest Light became accessible to every soul, not just scholars or teachers. Everyone. Including you, exactly as you are tonight, with whatever fear or doubt or exhaustion you are currently experiencing.
Don’t ask for the fear to be taken away. Ask for the Light to shine through you so completely that by morning, the fear has nothing to grip. That is what this night is and that is what’s available.
Chag Sameach.
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