Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 6:10 – 6:13: And it will be, when the Lord, your God, brings you to the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you, great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and you will eat and be satisfied. Beware, lest you forget the Lord, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord, your God, worship Him, and swear by His name.
If we argue from the point of view of an ordinary person, haven’t we earned the land of Israel by being in slavery in Egypt for 400 years and then wandering in the desert for 40 years, “Have I received it for free? I spilled so much blood for it, suffered so much.”
But spiritual work is completely different from what it seems to us. Everything that is described in the Torah happens within us to the extent that we seek to unite with each other. By revealing stronger connection we get closer to the land of Israel in it.
The land of Israel is this common desire that we acquired the first time as an egoistic desire in Egypt, when we were connected only by the desire to exist for the sake of egoism, i.e., for the sake of Pharaoh.
We constantly fulfilled this desire, allegedly enriching Egypt, until our egoism swelled so much that we saw how it buries us in it and kills us. And then through the ten plagues that the Creator brought upon us, we cried out to the Creator and asked to exit the slavery.
All our work was that we were shouting, asking the upper force of love and unity to pull us out of our egoistic separation and mutual hatred. We were coming to it also during the forty-year journey through the desert, when we didn’t yet work with egoism in order to unite in it, but were only rising above it.
Through completely breaking away from Egypt and rising above egoism we enter the land of Israel, i.e., egoism itself, in order to convert it into the quality of bestowal and love. And when this great desire called Pharaoh or Egypt is transformed into this quality, it is already called the land of Israel.
Therefore, all the names of places mentioned in the Torah do not relate to geography; they are within us, inside our enormous egoistic desire that the entire humanity serves to this day.
And now we begin to realize that it is killing us, that we invest our life into this enormous desire and eventually die without leaving anything. So what do we live for? Is it in order to throw ourselves and our children in the crater of an insatiable ugly creature—egoism?
And therefore we decide to rise above it, as it is said, “And the sons of Israel cried out from the hard work.” This is when we receive forces of unity that are above egoism and begin more and more to pull ourselves from egoism during forty years of work in the desert.
And then once above egoism, we create a new strong generation that was born in the desert, we begin to enter egoism, to conquer this land. We descend into egoism and begin to transform and correct it. And this is the entry into the land of Israel.
Thus, every time during ascents and descents the laws are explained to us that are equally revered, but are implemented on completely different material, and therefore we see them in a different way.
[190211]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/6/16
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Question: If the world around us is becoming more violent and more intimidating every day, how should we connect with people at work, or when using public transportation, and in other places we encounter people whose point in the heart has not been revealed yet?
