The Beginning Is the End (And That Changes Everything)
- Solomon Berezin
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
“The beginning is wedged in the end, and the end in the beginning.”
— Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation) (1:7)
There’s a deep paradox in growth.
We assume life moves in a straight line. We start small, and if we’re doing it right, we get
bigger. We perform activities longer. We do more.
But the deeper truth is quieter.
What if the end looks a lot like the beginning? The quote above from the earliest writing on Jewish mysticism suggests just that: the outcome of a process is already embedded in its inception, and the initial, divine intent is only fully realized in the final, physical result.
As Shunryu Suzuki famously said:
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
When we begin, everything is open. There’s no pressure to perform. No identity to maintain.
Just a simple act—fresh, alive, and full of possibility.
And naturally, we build from there.
Five minutes becomes ten.
Ten becomes twenty.
Twenty becomes an hour.
This is how we’re taught to grow—in fitness, in meditation, in learning, in almost everything.
Start small… then expand.
But, then what?
What’s often left unsaid is what comes next.
Because if we’re paying attention, there comes a moment where expansion no longer feels
like growth.
It just feels like more.
More time. More structure. More commitment.
And sometimes, more weight than freedom.
I recently listened to a podcast where a meditation researcher promoted and encouraged
five minutes a day of meditation for a month, along with its benefits from this short period of
practice. However, it was asked, “once a month of five minutes a day is over, what should one do next? Increase time?” The guest answered that one can gradually increase, as he
practices forty five minutes a day, along with occasional meditation retreats.
I’ve experienced this personally. I started with five minutes a day—simple, grounding, real. Over time it grew: ten minutes, twenty, an hour, even attended to meditation retreats.
And it felt good and assisted with what my intentions were. So I held onto it.
But in hindsight, I wasn’t just practicing anymore. I was having a challenge integrating it with
what was current in my life at that time.
In my piece Returning Higher, I wrote about something small but telling.
After stepping away from coffee for a few days, I came back to it—not from a place of
needing it, but simply enjoying it and elevating it’s G-dly sparks
Nothing changed externally.
But internally, my relationship with it did.
That’s the idea of returning—not as regression, but as elevation.
You come back to something simpler, but freer.
When Enough Is Enough
There’s a strong cultural push to always improve your practice. "If you're not growing,” says
the personal development world, “you're falling.”
Add time.
Add weight.
Add intensity.
But what if the original form was already enough?
What if five to ten minutes isn’t just a starting point, but a complete practice?
We don’t often consider that possibility.
Because we equate “more” with “better.”
But more isn’t always better.
Sometimes, more is just more.
Meditation, for me, became more than a tool.
The way I practiced became something I felt I had to uphold.
And that’s where the shift happened.
Because tools are meant to serve us, not define us.
It’s similar to medication. When someone begins to heal, the goal isn’t to keep increasing
the dosage. If anything, the healthier they become, the less they need.
And too much can even become counterproductive.
So too here.
At a certain point, continuing to expand the practice didn’t deepen the freedom—it began
to limit it.
A Different Kind of Freedom
In the podcast I mentioned, the guest did mention, though, something that caught my
attention.
He described a practice known as undistracted non-meditation, where the practitioner
drops all techniques, control, tightness, yet is fully aware. Complete freedom.
It struck me.
Because that’s what we’re actually seeking - not the practice itself, but the state it points to.
And sometimes, the structure that gets you there can also get in the way.
Leaving Egypt
The Arizal explains that Mitzrayim (Egypt) is Meitzar HaGaron, a constriction of the throat.
A narrow place.
Not just physically, but internally.
It’s the gap between what we know and what we live. Who we are.
Like the idea that the longest journey is from the head to the heart.
Exodus isn’t just a historical event, but a personal process.
Taking something you understand intellectually and actually embodying it.
As an Orthodox Chabad Jew with other tools of learning Chassidus and mitzvahs of morning
prayer, adding, or in my case sustaining, that length of meditation practice began to not
serve me. Only I wasn’t aware of that for a while thinking that it’s a must to uphold. As you may be able to imagine, having a lengthy meditation practice each morning is not so
flexible.
Really, anything that’s a big commitment each morning can become quite limiting.
The thing that once serves you, you can begin to serve.
Prayer is a mitzvah. It has a seder, an order. And yet, within that structure, there’s space.
There’s movement.
It’s not rigid in the way self-imposed systems can become.
And that’s the distinction I’ve come to appreciate:
A mitzvah liberates and connects you with Source, Who is the ultimate expression of flexible
(as well as unwavering).
A tool can become constricting if we hold onto how we think it ought to look.
What Got You Here…
There’s a well-known idea: what got you here won’t get you there.
And maybe we can take it one step further:
What got you there might not be what keeps you free.
Growth isn’t always about adding.
Sometimes it’s about releasing.
Letting go of the need to do more.
Letting go of the identity built around the practice.
Letting go even of something good.
Not to abandon it, but to return to it differently.
Your Seder Doesn’t Have to Look a
Certain Way
This shows up in a very real way on Passover.
Yes, there are essential elements. Standards matter. Halacha, Jewish law, matters.
But beyond that your Seder doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s or a certain way.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
It doesn’t have to follow someone else’s script.
I heard Rabbi YY Jacobson mention in a Pesach Women’s class last year (2025) that as a kid
one year before Passover he was starving and ate up all of the zeroa, the shank bones, not
realizing they were for the Seder that evening. He shared that everybody got a laugh out of
it and, believe it or not, they survived. “Some people get so dysregulated by the seder not
going according to plan,” he said, “and we often miss the point.” We have to know what’s
the main thing and what is secondary.
The seder is not how I think it ought to look.
Freedom isn’t found in imitation.
It’s found in presence. In connection.
The Beginning, Again
Maybe that’s the meaning of “the beginning is wedged in the end.”
That after all the growth, all the expansion, all the searching,we return.
To something simple.
To something real.
To something that was always enough.
But this time, we experience it differently.
Not as beginners, but as people who have come full circle.
And are finally free. Really free.
May we experience true and complete freedom this Pesach with Moshiach Tzidkeinu, the Righteuos Messiah.
Where in your life can you return to something simple, not because you have to, but because you’re finally free?
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