Bo: From Darkness to Light

The last three plagues prior to the Exodus from Egypt came with a deeper awareness of the Creator as the One and only cause and effect of His Creation.

Each plague corresponds to a particular level of consciousness that we must awaken in order to have a complete awareness of Him in our life and in the material world. We are His creatures, and anything we may think or believe we are or have comes from Him and belongs to Him: “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, may the Name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21) and this is the first step to start the process of getting to know Him.

The plague of the locusts represents the Creator's ownership of our nourishment both material and spiritual, and the verse of its arrival is juxtaposed to His Commandment for Israel to serve Him:

“Let My people go, and they will serve Me. For if you refuse to let [them] go, behold, tomorrow I am going to bring locusts into your borders.” (Exodus 10:3-4)

The awareness of His absolute ownership and control is a premise to relate to Him according to His will, which is to serve Him. The main obstacle to assimilate and adopt this premise is ego and its desires, represented by Pharaoh and Egypt. The following plague, darkness, is the material and spiritual experience of the complete absence of God's Presence in our consciousness, which is also a direct consequence of ego's blindness to give in to God's Love from where His Creation comes:

“They [the Egyptians] did not see each other, and no one rose [moved] from his place for three days; but for all the children of Israel there was light in their dwellings.” (10:23)

This awareness (the Light in the dwellings of the Israelites) of God's Presence in His Creation makes the difference between darkness and Light. In this context ego is one dimension of consciousness that we also must direct to our full awareness of the Creator's will:

“And Moses said [to Pharaoh], 'You too shall give sacrifices and burnt offerings into our hands, and we will make them for the Lord our God'.” (10:25)

In our positive actions and deeds (“our hands”) we serve and honor God's Love, and ego is successfully directed not by good intentions but by good deeds. When we act in Love's ways and attributes, our positive actions don't leave any room for materialistic fantasies and illusions. These seduce ego to take control of our life and lead us back to darkness, where we can't see beyond ourselves.

Darkness is the result of ego's agenda to make the world spin around its desires. In this sense, darkness is the worst of all the plagues because it prevents us to see beyond of who we think we are. In darkness we are really lost, and in this predicament we have no choice but to seek the Light in order to be truly redeemed. This was the Creator's preordained experience for us to move our consciousness towards the Truth. Our Sages teach that the darkness of exile is the beginning to search for the Light of Redemption.

The tenth and final plague is the death of the firstborn of those who denied the Creator's ownership of His Creation. The firstborn represents our primary intention in life along with its values, principles and goals, like the first fruits of the land that we must bring as offerings in the Temple. The Egyptians' firstborns were inexorably dedicated to submit their lives to materialism without creating anything beyond the futility of ego's illusions.

The firstborn is the first expansion of our human essence, as a reaffirmation of God's Love as the cause and effect of everything, including life. In this sense, we have to consecrate such expansion to Love's ways and attributes as the material manifestations of God's Love:

“Sanctify to Me every firstborn, every one that opens the womb among the children of Israel, among man and among animals; it is Mine.” (13:2)

After all, everything belongs to Him. When we consecrate our extensions to ego's rule we are indeed “dead” before God's Love. The experience of our closeness to God's Love is the beginning of our freedom, and it is our first Commandment as Jews to commemorate the first of the months as a memorial of our liberation from darkness. The New Moon as the beginning of the months (see our commentary on Hanukah in December 2011 in this blog) because we realize our true Essence and identity when we reveal Light out of darkness:

“And this day shall be for you as a memorial, and you shall celebrate it as a festival for the Lord; throughout your generations, you shall celebrate it as an everlasting statute.” (12:14)

This is the experience and legacy of our exile and bondage in darkness: to live the blessing of revealing Light as our true identity when we cry out loud to God's Love to lead every aspect and dimension of consciousness in His ways and attributes. Mystic Sages explain that the seven-day period to celebrate Pesach and Succot represents a continuing process through which we correct and elevate the seven primordial emotions known as loving kindness as compassion, power as self-control, truthfulness as enlightenment, perseverance as triumph, honor as glory, righteousness as the foundation of justice, and prevalence as sovereignty. When we are committed to practice these qualities on a daily basis as a moment to moment expression or our true identity, we are serving the Creator in order to fully reveal His Presence in the material world.

This knowledge we must have every moment, not only as a Commandment: “And it shall be for a sign upon your hand (in what we do) and for ornaments between your eyes (in what we think, see and learn), for with a mighty hand did the Lord take us out of Egypt.” (13:16)

The permanent awareness of God's Love as our Creator and sole owner of all that exists. This includes the Light He gives us to return to Him when we realize that we don't belong to darkness in the realm of illusion, but to His Love as the realm of Truth. As individuals we must have the courage to “come to Pharaoh (ego)” and confront it with the full awareness that Love is the real ruler of life from its beginning to its end, as God's Love is the ruler of His Creation.

Parshat Bo: Freedom as Our Destination

Our sages broadly discuss the use of “coming” instead of “going” to Pharaoh, and conclude that coming implies that Moses would do so accompanied by the Creator of all.

“The Lord said to Moses: ‘Come (Bo) to Pharaoh, because I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may place these signs of Mine in his midst’.” (Exodus 10:1)

In fact, there is no other way to either go or come to anywhere or anything we personally don’t have the power to transmute or transform, because any possible power only comes from the Creator. Dealing with ego is not an exception.

Ego, as well as our basic human instincts, is one of the most complex aspects of our consciousness we can’t completely control. This is not about controlling them but to direct them toward our individual and collective well being. Regarding these aspects we need in particular the company and guidance of God’s ways and attributes.

Our sages reveal for us that the “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart is what contemporary psychiatry calls “the losing of free will”. This happens when one is unable to distinguish between good and evil.

It is a critical point in human consciousness when one only perceives negativity and does harm to others and himself because he can’t see any goodness at all. This is the result of obsessive negative patterns of perception and behavior that lead to one-sided approach to life.

The lesson to be learned in this biblical passage is not easy to grasp because it involves a deeper comprehension of the dynamics of our relationship with the Creator and His creation.

Losing free will as an impairment of perception has to be indeed extreme in order to make a clear contrast between darkness and light. In other words, darkness must be obscure enough to be able to fully recognize the light when it is fully manifest.

The primordial message here is that we have to be accompanied by God’s love in our dealings with material illusions and potentially negative aspects of our own consciousness, simply because we can’t do it on our individual understanding. There are material fantasies and illusions that are too far beyond our “control”.

This is the risk one takes by allowing his/her ego to be in control of those illusions. Hence the Creator “hardened” the hearts of Pharaoh and his servants to tell us that He is in charge and in control of His Creation. God does it in His ways, not ego’s ways.

“(…) and in order that you tell to the ears of your son and your son's son how I made a mockery of the Egyptians, and My signs that I placed in them, and you will know that I am the Lord.” (10:2)

Our oral tradition tells us that four fifths of the Israelites “died” in the darkness of their selfishness and egotism, which didn’t let them help those in need around them.

“They did not see each other, and no one rose from his place for three days, but for all the children of Israel there was light in their dwellings.” (10:23)

Egotism in its darkest expression is a real killer of anything considered cherished and loved in the eyes of human consciousness.

The story of the Exodus is indeed the confrontation of total darkness with total light, with no penumbra or “gray” in between. It is either one or the other as widely stated in Judaism’s ethics. This is why Moses did not compromise on Pharaoh’s requests.

“But Moses said: ‘You too shall give sacrifices and burnt offerings into our hands, and we will make them for the Lord our God. And also our cattle will go with us; not a hoof will remain, for we will take from it to worship the Lord our God (…)’.” (10:25-26)

With no exceptions, all aspects, traits, and dimensions of our consciousness (higher and lower) must be united and together under the guidance of God’s ways and attributes. This occurs when we allow (Moses) our highest awareness of God to guide the entire consciousness in consonance with His will.

“So the Lord gave the people favor in Pharaoh’s eyes; also the man Moses was highly esteemed in the eyes of Pharaoh's servants and in the eyes of the people.” (11:3)

Again we are reminded that every aspect of God’s creation is under His will.

“This month shall be to you the head of the months; to you it shall be the first of the months of the year.” (12:2)

This commandment joins our daily prayers to remember our exit and redemption from Egypt. It also reminds us that in every moment of our life we have to make the right choice. It is the choice between remaining in the bondage of ego’s materialistic illusions, and exiting from them through the redemption that only God's love can give us in the midst of our worst ordeals.

It is the reminder that we must always keep in our hearts and souls.

“And this day shall be for you as a memorial, and you shall celebrate it as a festival for the Lord; throughout your generations, you shall celebrate it as an everlasting statute.” (12:14)

Humbleness is the vessel represented by the unleavened bread that our ancestors ate in their transition from darkness to light.

“And you shall watch over the unleavened cakes, for on this very day I have taken your legions out of the land of Egypt (…), you shall not eat any leavening; throughout all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened cakes.” (12:17-20)

This is remarked again (13:3-7).

The unleavened bread is reiterated as the essential symbol of the way in which we abandon the land of egotism and gross materialism.

“And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: ‘Because of this, the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt’.” (13:8)

The portion ends telling us to permanently bear this awareness in mind, heart and soul.

“And it shall be for a sign upon your hand and for ornaments between your eyes, for with a mighty hand did the Lord take us out of Egypt.” (13:16)

Only God’s love takes us from our darkness into His light.