As I’ve explored this topic I find my self continually surprised of how the literalism we internalize as children can eventually feel like a cage. As I discussed with Roberta to find a way out, I’ve found I often have to look toward other wisdom traditions, not to abandon my home, but to find the tools to renovate it. Here is a less biblical example warning of a hardened heart…

I’ve been reflecting on a verse from the Tao Te Ching:

The Way bears one. The one bears two. The two bear three. The three bear the ten thousand things. The ten thousand things carry the yin on their shoulders and hold in their arms the yang, whose interplay of energy makes harmony.
People despise orphans, widowers, outcasts. Yet that’s what kings and rulers call themselves. Whatever you lose, you’ve won. Whatever you win, you’ve lost. What others teach, I say too: violence and aggression destroy themselves. My teaching rests on that

Lao Tzu suggests that we often become caught in the dualisms of winning and losing, subject and object. Again and again, experience seems to split itself into opposites. Yet this cosmology gestures toward something prior to this division, something like the “Law of Three,” where a third presence opens a space for a choiceless choice. It is the moment that is neither inhale, exhale nor holding, a weightless pause where the creative spark arises.

From there, something subtle happens. The spark does not remain formless. Language gathers around it, as moisture gathers in the air. At first, it is light, like vapor, invisible and unbound. Then, almost imperceptibly, it condenses. A thought takes shape, an image forms, and the first raindrop appears. This is natural, even necessary: the formless becoming form, the unseen becoming speakable. Like rain, it nourishes, it connects, it allows life to take root.

But the process does not always stop at rain.

Under certain conditions, when the atmosphere grows turbulent, when currents clash and intensify, the raindrop is carried upward again. It passes through layers of freezing air, and each pass adds another shell. What began as a simple condensation becomes a hailstone: solid, dense, and weighty.

So too with our thoughts. A simple insight, once named, can be lifted back into the churn of reaction, defensiveness, and repetition, until it hardens into a fixed position. This is the “hardened heart” from the old stories, not a divine punishment, but a psychological process where a living truth becomes an icy weapon. What began as a living spark becomes something we grasp, defend, and eventually throw.

In this metaphor, the “One” is the open atmosphere, pure, unformed potential. The “Two” is the condensation, the inevitable forming of a drop. But the hailstone is a distortion: it is form that has been cycled through resistance until it forgets its origin in lightness. By the time we hold a rigid stance, we are no longer holding rain, but ice.

Today, I want to practice what the older Christian traditions called Perichoresis, the “divine dance.” This wasn’t a dry doctrine but a description of mutual indwelling and dynamic movement. It echoes Lao Tzu’s harmony: the One becoming Two, and the Two finding their rhythm in the Three.

Through this lens, the tensions in my own life begin to soften. My active drive to achieve and my passive need to rest are no longer adversaries; they are movements within a larger rhythm. The “third force” is not something added, but something noticed, the breath itself, the living space between.

I saw this briefly this morning in a difficult conversation. There was the impulse to defend, to solidify into a position. There was also the impulse to withdraw. But for a moment, there was a gap. In that space, nothing had yet hardened. It was a moment where I did not have to become the hailstone; I could remain as the atmosphere.

Violence, I see now, is a forgetting of this movement. It is what happens when we try to give permanence to what was never meant to be fixed, so begets and destroys it self. But the Tao suggests a reversal: what is yielded is not lost. By releasing the weight of needing to be “right,” we return to the dance.

The world often operates as if only hailstones are real, solid positions and force meeting force. But beneath the noise, the quieter process continues: the forming and dissolving, the rising and falling.

So today, I will look for that movement in small things. I will notice the instant before the drop hardens. I will allow the spark to remain light a little longer. In that openness, there is finally room to breathe.

I also wanted to share a bit more about my original intent for this topic. As a child, being told the story of Exodus, I was deeply confronted by those words: ‘And God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.’ Hearing that, and then hearing how Pharaoh and Egypt were punished as a result… while simultaneously being told that such a God was ‘Love’ was jarring.

I internalized the idea that ‘Love’ was simply synonymous with obedience and following the rules, a sentiment I think you can relate to. It creates a rigid inner world and a major cognitive dissonance that you are also told to ignore. Eventually, the inevitable happens: you discover that following the rules doesn’t always stop painful experiences or lead to the experience of feeling loved… and here is the really sad part: the young child assumes they are the problem.

I might argue that every child, through whatever cultural or path they walk, eventually hits that wall where the Map (the rules, the words, the expectations) fails to describe the Territory (the raw, painful, and beautiful experience of being alive). When the adults and the “Law” insist the Map is perfect, the child has no choice but to conclude that their own internal compass is broken.

By framing such a experience as archetypal, I’ve been suggesting that the “Exodus” is actually the journey of un-learning that childhood conclusion. The 40 years in the wilderness is the time it takes for that “I am the problem” identity to finally starve to death, so that the person can finally enter the “Promise” as a dancer rather than a servant. A movement from “I must be right” to be loved… to “I am here.” and am Love.

Hi Anita,
You asked “I still need to work on that” — on being me or on being silly? I often wonder if they are one and the same. 😊

One of the blessings of age and the discovery of the contemplative heart is the ability to appreciate the gifts of others and the unique ways they express themselves. Your compassion, your silliness, and even your anxiousness are all part of your gift. If I don’t always know how to respond to such openness, it likely has much to do with my own Calvinist upbringing, a tradition that often prefers the “sober” over the “spontaneous.” – another old inherited story and language that has shaped me, more then I have shaped it.

You mentioned that the “wilderness” for you is that moment of anxiety after being silly, wondering if you’ve been received or rejected. That is a powerful image.

In the Exodus story, the 40 years in the wilderness were a time of shedding. The people, representing our own inner attributes, spontaneity, creativity, fears, and hopes, were often so terrified of the “in-between” that they begged to return to the certainty of slavery. Slavery was hard, but it was known. The wilderness is weightless and uncertain.

I think the reason that generation never entered the Promised Land is a metaphor for the ego: the version of us that lived in “Egypt” (the old habits and defenses) cannot survive in the “Promise.” The wilderness is where that old self falls away so that something new can be born. It’s a place of rest AND creative tension.

It’s perfectly okay to be in that “in-between” space. I appreciate you sharing what crosses your mind, it keeps the conversation in that rhythmic movement we’ve been talking about.

We often think of stories as things we read, but sometimes, a story begins to read us… As children, we naturally inhabit the world of myth and narrative. We don’t ask if a story is “objective” or “fact”; we simply feel its weight in our bones. For many of us, the story of Exodus was our first map of power, suffering, and liberation. But as we move into the second half of life, we may find that these old stories start “haunting” us again, not as religious doctrines or historical accounts, but as mirrors of our own inner landscape.

In the following exploration, I am setting aside traditional theology. I am not looking at Exodus as a statement of “belief,” but rather as a dream of the psyche.

I should offer a disclaimer: like all dream analysis, the associations belong primarily to the dreamer. This is my way of taking back a story that was given to me as a child, move by move, and seeing it fresh. If we treat the characters and objects of this story as parts of our own internal world, what do they reveal? What part of us is the “Pharaoh” that refuses to move? What part is the “Israel” crying out for freedom?

This is an attempt to see the story as a process of transformation, a move from the “stone” of ego-control to the “fluidity” of a life lived in the rhythm of grace.

**Exodus as a Dream of the Psyche**

If Exodus is a dream, then “Egypt” is not “out there.” It is a psychic location, a state of consciousness. “Egypt” is the place where order is imposed from above, where productivity is extracted, where identity is defined by function. It is the realm of ego control, survival logic, and fear-based stability. In Jungian terms, it resembles the dominant attitude of the conscious mind: efficient, hierarchical, defensive, and deeply invested in maintaining control.

Pharaoh, then, is not merely a ruler but a principle within the psyche. It is that part which believes stability comes from domination, safety from control, worth from usefulness, that order must be protected at all costs. This is not an evil impulse. It is protective, hardened by repetition. The slavery of “Israel” is not enforced by brute force alone; it is the psychodynamic consequence of living too long under a single ruling principle. When one mode of consciousness becomes absolute, all other aspects of the psyche are reduced to labor.

To leave “Egypt“, therefore, is not to reject structure, discipline, or intelligence. It is to loosen their tyranny. “Egypt” is the place where everything must justify itself: feelings must be useful, compassion must be strategic, rest must be earned, and mystery must be controlled. Leaving “Egypt” is the frightening moment when the psyche dares to believe that not everything that matters can be measured. It is the shift from control to trust, from extraction to participation, from certainty to responsiveness, from stone to flesh. And this is precisely why “Pharaoh” (self) panics. A psyche organized around productivity cannot tolerate gratuitous freedom.

In this dream, “Israel” represents the exiled parts of the psyche… emotion, imagination, vulnerability, longing, grief, memory. These are not weak elements; they are disruptive to rigid systems because they refuse reduction. To leave “Egypt” is to allow these parts to move again. Speech returns. Memory awakens. Desire surfaces. The heart begins to beat to a different rhythm. It does not feel orderly. It feels destabilizing—exactly why the old regime experiences it as a threat.

The crossing of the sea then marks a deeper threshold. It is not triumph but terror. The sea represents the unconscious, and to cross it is to allow the ego to be overwhelmed by forces it cannot command. The waters do not part in advance; they open only in response to movement. There is no proof beforehand. Meanwhile, Pharaoh’s army, old habits, reflexes, and defenses, pursues the psyche into the passage. Even in transformation, the past follows closely behind. What perishes in the sea is not reason or order, but the belief that control is identical with life.

Between “Egypt” and “Promise land” lies the wilderness. Psychologically, it is the liminal space between identities, where old structures no longer function and new ones have not yet formed. There are no monuments here, no economy of productivity, only daily bread, trust and presence. To enter the wilderness is to accept the loss of control, the withdrawal of certainty, and the necessity of dependence. It is no surprise that many, in such a state, long to return to “Egypt“. Slavery with clarity often feels safer than freedom with uncertainty.

Seen this way, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is not punishment but process. It is what occurs when a psychic structure refuses to evolve when, confronted with change, it doubles down on its own rigidity until it becomes brittle. Pharaoh is ego inflated, cut off from the deeper Self, mistaking dominance for wholeness. Leaving “Egypt” is not victory over an enemy; it is grief for a mode of being that once ensured survival but can no longer sustain life. And perhaps this is why the story repeats personally, culturally, spiritually because no one leaves “Egypt” only once.

Within this movement, Moses emerges as a crucial figure: not consciousness itself, but the mediator of structure. He is law-giver, translator, one who shapes the formless into something livable and shared. He brings pattern down the mountain, commandments, boundaries, rituals, distinctions. This makes him indispensable. Yet it also defines his limits. “Moses” belongs to the realm of form. He can lead the psyche out of Egypt, but he cannot fully inhabit what lies beyond structure.

The Promised Land, psychologically, is not a better Egypt. It is a different mode of being altogether, one that cannot be governed by the same tools that enabled escape. “Moses” inability to enter is not punishment but inevitability. What brought the psyche this far cannot accompany it further. When he strikes the rock instead of speaking to it, we glimpse the reflex of force and certainty, methods that once worked but no longer belong. Moses must remain at the threshold: seeing, blessing, releasing.

At this edge comes a final, subtle warning: not to look back. In mythic language, this is not a moral command but a psychological truth. To look back is to attempt to reclaim control, to fix transformation into certainty, to possess what must remain alive. At the threshold, attention itself can collapse the liminal. Certainty hardens what needs to stay fluid. Grasping freezes what must continue to move. The past, if re-grasped, reclaims its authority.

In this light, “Moses” is completed leadership. Every psyche requires such a figure to name what matters, to break the spell of captivity, to orient the journey. But Moses cannot become Joshua. The next movement requires participation rather than mediation, presence rather than instruction. The Promised Land must be lived, not explained.

The deeper truth, perhaps, is this: the journey does not end with leaving “Egypt“. One must also let go of the guide who made that departure possible. Form must yield to life. Structure must soften into relationship. And the land ahead can only be entered by those who no longer need to define it, only to dwell within it.

Hi Anita. Thanks for such a raw and honest exploration of the topic. I think you were correct in noticing a political nuance; the ‘hardened heart’ seems very present in many of today’s leaders. Wisely, though, you have seen past that to the psychological shadow that perhaps lies within all of us.

You’ve touched on something important: that for a child in pain, hardening isn’t a “mistake,” it’s a survival strategy. When the world is divided into the rejected and the rejecting, the heart turns into a shield just to endure. To a child, such “either/or” experiences are very real, so I appreciate your thoughts on a third, middle way. I very much relate to that experience and wonder if this is the ‘birth of the shadow’ that eventually transforms into a “Pharaoh” that will not or at some point cannot ‘let go’.

I think you nailed it by noticing that “empathy without discernment” is the real trap. The solution, not a label of ‘sin’ but the middle way as a journey for all of us to remember the rhythm that was perhaps taken away from us long ago.

Perhaps that is why the story of Exodus has “haunted” me and felt in need of reclaiming… to that end I plan to further explore the story as if it were a dream to see what else might be revealed.