INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL NARROW PLACES

We have one month between Purim and Pesach, the holiday of our liberation from the narrow place of Egypt (the literal meaning of Egypt in Hebrew is “narrow”). I will do a series of four blogs.

·       Preparation and Liberation from internal and external narrow places

·        Liberation to uncover unique purpose and blocks that hinder implementation

·        Joseph as an example of a person who fulfills his true purpose

·        Moses as someone who fails to fulfill his true purpose

I believe that true liberation is manifesting one’s life purpose on this earth.  It isn’t escaping the cycle of birth and death as the Hindus or Buddhists would have you believe, and it’s not being deserving of an eternal life is some better place called Heaven, as the Christians would have it (and possibly some Jews with an emphasis on Olam Haba, the world to come).  I have come to believe in reincarnation in some sense. Reincarnation is a traditional Jewish belief, though less discussed than it might be.  Still, what counts for us in this lifetime is our purpose that can only be manifest in this world and for the benefit of all beings in this world.

What prevents us from manifesting this true purpose?  We can talk about both internal and external narrow places, internal and external mitzrayims.   

External narrow places are real.  Viktor Frankl teaches us, in Man’s Search for Meaning, that it is possible to be free even in a concentration camp.  That even in a concentration camp people can liberate themselves from their internal mitzrayims.  True and important, and there are some places which are wider and some that are narrower, some that it is easier to gain freedom from, and some that it is harder. I am a child of privilege, and that is easier than coming from a place of deprivation. Still, all of us in this culture have to confront the external narrow place of living in a culture that consistently acts against our personal spiritual development by inculcating a consumer, conformist culture that is distant from the more than human world.  Additionally, we all have individual external narrow places.  This could be a job, a family situation, a health condition, where we live or any of a million things. I lived on the West coast of the United States for ten years, and I hated it; it was an external mitzrayim for me. For others, living on the West Coast is an external situation that widens their internal choices.

Solving our external mitzrayims will not solve our internal ones, as important as they may be.  We need to pursue justice for all people, as we are taught (Tzedek Tzedek tirdof, Deuteromony 16:20), and we need to work on where we are internally constricted. How able are you to love?  To trust?  To work? To protect yourself from internal and external pharaohs?  These are but some places to look.

What are your mitzrayims, your stuck places, from which you need liberation?