Question: Is annulment before the upper a path of coercion?

Answer: It is said that there is no coercion in spirituality. Yet, it seems that annulment before the upper is coercion from the upper toward us. If we look at it through the lens of the Passover Haggadah, the Creator adds the evil inclination to Pharaoh and then strikes Pharaoh.

The poor Pharaoh does not know where to escape. He cannot go anywhere, because he is 100% made of opposite qualities. So, where can he run?

Thus, it appears that there is no more miserable or terrible state than the way the Creator treats Pharaoh. Is it fitting for the Creator to relate this way to His creation with all its qualities?

Question: I am asking not from the side of the Creator but from the side of the created being. Is choosing the opinion of the upper an act of coercion, opposite to my own opinion? After all, with that tiny force I draw from the group, I force myself to go against myself.

Answer: From the side of the person, it is exactly the same. Pharaoh is everything within us, our entire nature. Can I do anything with it if it is 100% this way? You say: “My so-called choice of the Creator is not really my choice. It is simply an action I take out of helplessness.”

When I receive blows, and as a result begin to see even slightly that if I move into another state, perhaps even acquire another nature, I will be able to escape these blows, then it is precisely this that compels me to make a certain choice. But is this called free choice?

That is, the desire to receive seemingly “chooses”: it would rather die than continue to feel the blows, to the point that they are worse than death. Better not to feel myself at all, as if I do not exist, just not to feel this suffering.

A feeling of such despair is created within us that it becomes easier not to feel anything than to endure the blows. Can this be called choosing connection with the Creator, with spirituality, with eternity? Who says that this is free choice, that there is freedom of action without any coercion?

On the contrary, it is said: “You have not a blade of grass below that does not have an angel that strikes and tells it, ‘Grow!’” or “He is forced until he says: ‘I want.’” There are many such expressions describing states where only through blows and suffering does the desire to receive agree to renounce itself, to annul itself. In this, there is no free choice.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/26, Rabash, “What Is Heaviness of the Head in the Work? ”

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