We wake up. Perhaps wash our hands, perhaps not. Some of us may daven, pray in shul – running through the words and others may be more honest and ignore the traditions altogether. We work, hustle, work more, and hope to find time to play with our kids within the distractions of our lives. The cell phones, Netflix, ball game, overtime – the noise of life anchors our senses to this world, the world of physical pleasures never quite satisfied, but always sought.
Sometimes we hear of stories of long ago, of a time when we were slaves and then free through miraculous fashion. We chuckle at the thought of this, at the childishness of these tales.
“Freedom? I have all the freedom I need.” And then the phone rings or an advertisement on the street catches our eye or our friends drag us out to another loud and noisy restaurant.
***
All of us are children of the King – the Creator of the Universe. Our souls have been sent to this world of physicality to retrieve that spark lost at the exile from Gan Eden. We have been here before, stuck in this world of confusion and chaos, darkness and lies. Our path is not clear and our purpose hidden, yet we continue sleep walking until one morning we feel something strange, something we never felt before. It starts small, but it grows into a deep longing for something more than what we have been told and that is when we want out.
Each one of us yearns to be free, free from our own Mitzrayim, Egypt. We want to believe that the tales of old are true and that they are not confined to the past, but part of each of us in a very real way. The world feels out of sync with our inner needs, yet we never seem to have time to stop and figure it out and when we do we tell ourselves that the hurdles are too high and the obstacles too immense to truly leave our own personal Mitzrayim.
What we don’t realize is that these doubts, these are our own inner illusions that we have projected onto our lives. They are our fears being played out daily.
The world we find ourselves in may seem daunting and distracting, but we can overcome it, we can move beyond our daily routine if we truly want to be free.
The darkness that surrounds is not real, it is not permanent, it is part of an illusory reality that we have adopted in order to cover up the guiding hand of the Creator in our lives. However, we must know that this guidance does not go away even if we ignore it. God is guiding our lives whether we believe or not. The darkness is only darkness because we think it is so. Behind it all is the Creator’s light, waiting to be uncovered.
We can be free of the stress, the chaos, the trauma of this world. No, not by escaping it, but rather walking head on into it and through it; knowing that it is in fact Hashem the whole time behind it all. All he is waiting for is for us to yearn enough to be free, to reach out to him, and then we will be home.
(Based on Likutey Moharan 115, Likutey Halachot Tefilin Halacha 6)
