A Passover Transformation

 

Roasted Quail Eggs for the Seder

Several years ago during the beginnings of the spring season I was feeling lost, off kilter. My personal balance tilted more to the baser side than grounded, the usually relative quiet of my mind loud with whiney voices. Invited to three Passovers, I was truly ambivalent about the holiday. I have been to many Passover dinners, heard the story of the enslaved Jewish people, the refusal of the Pharaoh to grant them freedom. I always wondered at the intensity of the plagues, questioned what kind of God would incur such suffering on anyone. This year my feelings were amplified. I’m suffering here. So where’s God? This so called Source of All Things?

Then I learned about motzirah, what is described in the Torah as the “finding of nasty things”–Judaism’s version of doing personal inner work, searching for those aspects of one’s self that restrict, confine and imprison us as surely as any Pharaoh.

Suddenly I saw how some recent events had conspired to bring me to this place of rawness in order to recognize my own plagues, my own enslavement.

A life cycle change of letting go of mothering, and the stress of sorting out a complicated insurance claim fused together inside my psyche, setting off the fuses of old resentments and grudges that I thought had long ago been worked on and set free. But no. Inside my mind was a constant fireworks display of bad thoughts, dark dramas and worse case scenarios. I couldn’t shut it off.

Until the next morning. While sitting at my desk a sense of calm came over me, not unlike being becalmed out at sea when the wind disappears and the sails fall limply around the mast. The bothersome thoughts fell away and a clear voice spoke inside my head. “It will all turn out fine. All of this is happening now so that you can finally let go of these old resentments.”

The intense anxiety eased. Relief was palpable and I knew it was true. But the complications still remained in the insurance paperwork sitting on my desk. So faith had to take over. That evening our Rabbi spoke about motzirah. There is some comfort knowing that your personal dark nights of the soul have centuries of wise acknowledge-ment behind them. That wisdom got me through another night. Friday morning, after a phone call to an insurance angel, the paperwork mystery was solved for the moment (it later was completely settled in our favor).

At the first Passover dinner we came to the part in the Haggádah about the Pharaoh and the plagues. From a place of deep knowing I understood the infinitely layered metaphorical link of the Passover story. With the Jewish people suddenly freed, what remained was the ancient reality of a fearful and angry Pharaoh, of real hunger, thirst and sickness after swarms of pests and pestilence, the grief and loss at the dying of first-born sons. The Egyptians’ world had suddenly become restricted and confined in the same way their Jewish neighbors had been for years.

And in the same way we ourselves restrict, confine and imprison ourselves by our own thoughts, which are mirrored around us in our actions and spill over onto our loved ones. These personal plagues can be resentment, old anger, unresolved grief, or personal challenges such as acquiring discipline or getting rid of old habits like laziness, “Oh, I think I’ll go to the gym tomorrow.” I mention these only because they are the attributes of my own personal Pharaoh. You have your own plagues, your own Pharaoh.

My ambivalence is gone. I’ve learned God/Source of All Things is in the dark places as well as the light. I’m off to a Passover Seder; I’m eating my way to freedom.