Don't enter the Promised Land
Lessons from Gregory of Nyssa
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Moses stood on Mount Nebo staring at the Promised Land. But God said,
“I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it (Deut 34:4).”
Why, after dragging the Hebrews through the desert, didn’t Moses, the leader—the chosen one—step foot in the Promised Land?
Because Moses had already set foot in the true Promised Land—not made of dirt, but the Divine Reality our soul longs for. But the Hebrews he led were blinded by their ignorance, cowered at the base of Mount Sinai. And in their ignorance worshipped the golden calf.
Moses’s life is our spiritual map. We must follow it, according to Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 AD), the Christian mystic.1
First, we like Moses must flee Egypt—shed the first blood by killing the Egyptian soldier, ditch the royal court of ignorance. Then trek into the desert. Find the burning bush, the call to ascend. Return to Egypt and free ourselves fully from the chains of slavery. Kill hate, lust, anger, every single firstborn Egyptian before they grow into a mighty army.
All the while we must be watchful. Pride hunts us like Pharaoh’s army of chariots chasing the Hebrews into the Red Sea. Ready to make us slaves again. Whispering in our ears that we’re better than our neighbour, that our neighbour is not an extension of ourselves but an enemy.
Here we must walk into the Red Sea without regret and drown the chariots—covetousness, unbridled desire, rapacious thinking, the passion of conceit and arrogance, wild impulse, wrath, anger, malice, envy, and all such things. Otherwise, we’ll never awaken. Once we’ve been baptised in this metaphorical water, we move forward towards Mount Sinai.
And when we arrive, we must cast our lower man aside at the base of the mountain and climb! At the top, we’ll see the dark clouds. Approach it. But remember that it’s impossible to enter it with our rationality. It’s only with love that we can enter the Divine darkness.
In this Divine darkness, words are but straws.
All we see is Light.
Language drowns in this immeasurable deep ocean of the One, the Truth, the Tao, the I AM. Nothing compares to it.
Moses saw this. Thus he didn’t need to enter the Promised Land.
So too we must willingly climb Mount Sinai and encounter the Divine darkness filled with Light.
Till next week,
Peace!
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Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses.