Hidden Treasures Of The Sand

י"א בתשרי תשס"ח

I dreamt.

In my car, I fled being "caught" by the family of a woman I had been visiting.

She was learning from me and the family didn't like it, even though I wasn't teaching her intentionally. She had more or less tricked me, telling me she was sick. In my mind, I was visiting a sick woman who needed my help. I didn't particularly want to be there at her house. We weren't close friends. I was doing a mitzvah by helping her.

She was sick - that was the truth. But she didn't need my help - that was not the truth. She had family who could help her. More importantly, the family had not wanted me to help her - the woman knew this but I had not, until I needed to flee from them when they came to visit her while I was there. The woman hid me from them and sent them on an errand to give me a chance to escape. But, they knew I was there. Nevertheless, to save the woman (not me) from the embarrassment and shame she would be forced to endure by being caught with me there against the family's wishes, they went on the errand for her.

It was just before dawn in the morning.

While they wanted to protect the woman, they wanted me dead. On the way out to run the errand, a family member of the the woman tried to prevent my "safe" escape by knocking down the board on the enclosed porch where my keys always hung during visits. Somehow, knocking down the board would have caused my keys to be "lost" (had my keys been on that board). It was almost as if he thought I too would be "lost to oblivion" along with my keys through the act of not being able to find my keys - as if I would "follow" my keys into the abyss of absolutely nothing. Only this time, this one time, I had not put my keys on the usual board - I had hung them up on another board. So, I had access to the keys to my car in which to "safely" escape.

Yet, in addition to trying to "lose" my keys, the family member had also broke my brakes and acceleration pedal, so that when I backed my car out of the driveway, my car wouldn't stop when I put on the brakes to shift it's direction forward. Not only would my car not stop, but it sped up as well.

I sped dangerously in reverse toward a bridge over a river in the darkness. I was steering in reverse. As I turned my head to guide my car over the bridge, I saw that the bridge was out. Half the bridge was gone, ripped out, torn in half. I was going to plunge into dark oblivion after all!

Nevertheless, I didn't give up steering my car faithfully down the middle of the bridge, even seeing the dead end coming up fast. I would steer my car clear up to the end - no matter the result. I kept both hands on the wheel, steering it "safely" with focused singleminded intent to avoid a collision with the hard steel sides of the bridge.

I prepared myself mentally for the plunge into dark oblivion. It never came.

As I arrived at the edge, where the second half of the bridge had been ripped off, a bar of sand (חול) materialized. My car came to a steady gentle halt upon firm land. There were workmen there on the sand which now formed the opposite landbank. They were surprised to see me, yet they were not surprised at all. They said "no one else has ever survived this before." No one else had ever "arrived" upon the sand before - all before had crashed into the sides of the bridge or plunged with uncontrolled terror over the ripped off edge of the bridge into dark oblivion. Except me. I had arrived.

I woke up.

And of Zebulun he said: Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and, Issachar, in thy tents. They shall call peoples unto the mountain; there shall they offer sacrifices of righteousness; for they shall suck the abundance of the seas, and the hidden treasures of the sand.

Devarim 33:18-19

As I wrote in Two Goats, Nogeáh V'eino Nogeáh:

(My story) has newly begun. Walking On Fire is a living witness to that which began over a decade ago, and to the brilliantly transformative power singularly tied to the higher service (mesirut nefesh) of the goat for Azazel - אתהפכא חשוכא לנהורא

The "sand" confirms it. The Hebrew word sand חול is from the shoresh חול meaning "starting", "beginning", "entering" and "prospering".