Before the ruler of Egypt dies, everybody’s work has an egoistic nature. When the sovereign dies, he loses his significance; in other words, we achieve a state at which we stop cherishing our ego and do not want to devote our lives to it any longer.

We start realizing that our ego is not worth working for. We still continue to be attached to our selfishness and we even get a certain pleasure from it. At the same time, our consciousness expands and we come to understand that our ego is worthless. Even if we continue doing the same thing for 10 or 20 years, we’ll never rid ourselves of this slavery.

When a person finds himself in an unbearable situation, he asks: “What is next?” However, we always have a chance to arrive to such a query before the circumstances we are in become absolutely intolerable. All we need is to raise the level of our consciousness in order to become “sages” who see the future states in their infancy.

An infant or a small child doesn’t see the future; he demands everything right away. After he gets a little older, he begins to realize that he has to wait in order to get something he wants. When a person grows and is more intelligent, he is already making complicated calculations.

Our lives are limited by some 70 – 80 years, which makes us feel that we still have plenty of time ahead. However, as we grow we begin to clearly realize that time tends to get squeezed. We stop being animals and turn into humans. Animals never consider their future; they don’t think about tomorrow, nor do they look into the nearest moment.

Animals live in the moment. Even though animals sense certain things which humans are unable to comprehend (for example, an approaching earthquake or tsunami), they still perceive life solely through sensations of the current moment.

People, on the contrary, look into the future and are able to detect signs of their next steps. When a person is convinced that there is no need to work hard for the sake of his ego, he plunges into despair. We see now that half of the world is depressed and the number of suicides is steadily increasing. This means that people do not want to work for the Pharaoh anymore; they just don’t see any point to this kind of life.

This happens in the most affluent and civilized European (mostly Scandinavian) countries where people are secure with all sorts of material things, but it is not clear what to live for.

People would not ask questions if they did not sense that the final outcome is quite different from their current well-to-do existence. These questions emerge only with dissatisfaction: Either they lack happiness or they foresee that their current state of contentment will end soon.

So, when the “kind” Pharaoh dies, new questions arise: Why do we have to work so hard for our ego? This is what humankind as a whole and each individual separately keeps asking. It’s the point at which clarification takes place: What is the purpose of our work—is it receiving or giving?
[74878]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Degrees Of The Growing Ego
Depression Is The Best Advisor
Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart?

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