Imagine the scene. You’re leaving the Egyptian exile, which is all you’ve known your entire life. You’re leaving behind your home, most of your possessions, a familiar culture and landscape. It’s true, you are taking some of Egypt’s wealth with you—after all, you were told to do so by your Rebbi, Moshe. But you’re headed towards a desert while leaving behind the source of Egypt’s great agricultural wealth, the longest river in Africa, some say the world – the Nile. You are also leaving behind denial, the unconscious refusal to acknowledge the degree to which something – in this case the spiritual effect of exile – is negatively affecting your life.
The main opponent of this denial in our generation is Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. He opens our eyes to the tricks of the sitra achra, the side opposite goodness, and shows us that the power to choose is ours – if we believe in ourselves.
Rebbe Nachman says: If you want you do. (And if you don’t want, you don’t do.) But first you have to be aware something is wrong. In the current exile, as in all exiles, Godliness is often concealed from us. But this time around, we are experiencing hastara shebetoch hastara, a concealment within a concealment. Because of the negative pressures of this exile, so many people have stopped even looking.
Rebbe Nachman teaches us that when we make a choice that moves us away from the Divine Light, we create a concealment, a veil between us and God. The more we repeat this choice, the thicker the veil grows. What does this veil consist of? In our inner, psychospiritual world, this veil is the fermenting of our mind, the souring of our thoughts and feelings. In the coarse material world, this veil expresses as chametz, leaven, which is forbidden on Passover.
It’s hard work removing chametz from our homes and hard work removing the chametz in our minds and hearts. It’s as if we’ve created a different reality for ourselves, so much so that we believe in the veil more than in the truth it conceals. That’s why we need Pesach…read the rest at the Times of Israel.
