We must constantly work on our egoism, push ourselves toward unity, and within it, toward connection with the Creator. If we cannot connect in the ten, we will not be able to connect with the Creator. Therefore, it is written, From the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator.
Every time we try to connect, it is as if we knead our dough by mixing flour with water. While we are working on this dough, which is not yet ready for baking, it does not turn into chametz [leaven]. The main thing is to keep making efforts, then it will not turn into chametz. We can even work all day! The will to receive is not considered spoiled as long as we are working with it.
When I reach the correct state, that is, the correct connection, and I feel that I am ready to disregard everything for the sake of connecting with my friends, then within it I can connect with the Creator.
Thus, I exit the authority of Pharaoh to the authority of the Creator and see the entire ten as a means of pulling me out of slavery in Egypt and leading me to the authority of the Creator. The ten is in the middle between them, like an intermediate station.
From this, it is clear how important matzah [Passover bread] is; it is the central symbol of Passover, the festival of freedom, of exiting Egypt, from egoistic intention to bestowal, from the authority of Pharaoh to the authority of the Creator.
We cannot stop working on ourselves, on the connection in the group, pressing ourselves like dough until we are so mixed that the dough becomes absolutely homogeneous. There will be no flour or water left in it, but everything will merge into one.
After performing such compression on ourselves, such exercises, turning the ten into a single monolithic material, we will feel that we are ready to connect with the Creator. The Creator, with His external pressure, awakens us to such a connection. But the question is whether we as a group can awaken ourselves to knead our dough even faster and become a matzah.
Matzah means that a person is ready to enter into an argument with his egoism in order to connect with the group. He is ready to put pressure on himself to make a dough in which there is no flour or water separately but only a combination of both. Flour, that is, the will to receive, absorbed the water and became one single material with it.
The ten friends are so strongly integrated with each other in their yearning for the Creator that it does not matter what direction each had. We reach one direction, one understanding, one feeling that combines everything together. This is how we take the form of a matzah, the bread of poverty, that is, we are ready to be together without any distinction between us.
This is the preparation for leaving Egypt. We make a matzah from ourselves and bake it in Egypt. Matzah is the new character of the connected group.
Our will to receive is flour and the will to bestow, the light that shines upon us a little from above, is water. We pour this water into the flour and start working with it, kneading the dough to prepare it for baking.
This means that we need to get a little more understanding from the Creator about the qualities of bestowal and connection as much as we are able to understand it and can begin to implement it more and more in our as yet egoistic desire.
The most important is not how much personal desire for bestowal each one of us has, it is our common efforts. To the extent that we try to get into this desire for bestowal so that our flour takes on the qualities of water, to the extent that we want to combine the will to receive with the intention to bestow, we will advance.
If the connection in the group is the result of the common efforts of the entire ten, then we will attract the reforming light that will connect us. Every drop of water we get to bind another gram of flour into one dough, into one body, depends on our overall effort in the group.
If the dough becomes soft and homogeneous, that is, all our egoism, the entire individual form of everyone, has disappeared, then we are ready for baking, and we can make a matzah.
Matzah is called the bread of the poor because we bake it because of poverty, in the absence of strength, sensation, and understanding in the mind and in the heart. But then, with the help of this new form we have received, we can cross the border between the possessions of Pharaoh and the possessions of the Creator, free from the angel of death, our egoistic desire.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/20, “Pesach (Passover)”
Related Material:
Why Don’t We Eat Chametz (Leavened Food) On Passover
When “Frugal Bread” Turns Into “Bread of Love”
Unleavened Bread
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Question: Chaim Vital wrote that in order to ascend the spiritual worlds where you will feel the influence and the reality of the Creator, you need to completely remove all thoughts and imaginations that we receive from our animalistic nature. How can we properly conduct workshops during a spiritual ascent?
