Why Abraham Is Just As Relevant Today As He Ever Was
Just as the Creation story can be used to help us understand the evolution of our souls and our purpose on the earth, the story of Abraham the Patriarch teaches us about the essentials of growing toward the Creator and coming to know Him in our lives to fulfill our purpose in life. Anyone who ascends from this world toward the Creator and unites with Him must take the same path that Abraham first took, and for which he is regarded as the father of the nation.
If we relate to the Torah as a historic tale, we will see that it is not very different from the histories of other nations. But the Torah does not deal with the past, rather it deals with us. It deals with each and every one of us; with who we are and what we are and what we must do with our lives. The Creator appeals only to people, to each and every person. That is how the Torah explains the entire system of creation. Each person contains everything that exists in all the worlds inside him or her, including our own world. Besides humanity, there is only the Creator. Humanity is the representative of creation and of all the other worlds.
What ‘Abraham’ Really Is
The Creator turns to Abraham, who represents a specific attribute in us and who is like all other properties (nations) in a human (Av Ha’am, Abraham in Hebrew, means “the father of the nation”), and tells him: “I now separate this specific trait in you, which is called Abraham, and you must leave your country, meaning your situation and all the desires that you cur- rently feel. Go from your homeland, and break free from the desires you were born with.”
In other words, God tells Abraham that he must exit his original state of being, the state he was born into. The Creator is inside Abraham’s primary egoistic desires, and he must leave them and go to the land that God will show him. There is where Abraham will find God. The Creator only appears before Abraham to compel him to take the path at the end of which He will appear before him in completeness. In that state, the entire creation will appear before Abraham, and he will obtain the opposite properties: eternity and completeness and the degree of the Creator Himself.
The Creator appears before every single one of us just as He did before Abraham. We have all felt, even if only once in our lives, an inner voice, an inner power and desire to live in a different way—to think more of timeless, meaningful things, leaving behind all the petty dealings and routines of life and slowly rising above them, somehow leaping out of them.
What Abraham’s Journey to Egypt Actually Signifies
By telling Abraham to leave his desires, the substance in which he was created and had been immersed, and go to another desire, one that God will show him, the Creator does not show us that we must ascend spiritually. Rather, He says that we must first go down to Egypt, meaning to the gutter, to our darkest and fiercest egoistic desires. These desires are so egoistic that they are like the Egyptians in our world, who knew how to use the egoism so perfectly that they could mummify their bodies and preserve them virtually forever. They even made idols of their dead and were completely tied to their bodies.
That means that the most perfect state is when Abraham has already been through Egypt. The Creator doesn’t even say that Abraham must go through Egypt, but simply tells him to go there. It is an unreasonable commandment. After all, Abraham is an ordinary person, a shepherd who lives his daily life in the bosom of his family. Suddenly he is compelled to experience terribly low situations (called Egypt) to attain the higher spiritual state.
Why ’Recognition of Evil’ Is So Important for Spiritual Advancement
Abraham goes as far as Beit-El. This is likened to a person who attains spirituality and begins to be attracted to the books that concern that subject. He or she reads them, perhaps even begins to study Kabbalah, and thinks that this is Beit-El (house of the Lord). When Abraham sacrifices to the Creator—when he begins to examine what life really asks of him, what the Creator and his inner voice want him to do—he suddenly begins to feel hunger. That hunger is so intense that it drives him off to Egypt. During a preliminary reading of the books, we begin to feel evergrowing pains, accompanied by a still greater spiritual hunger. We begin to see ourselves through our innermost feelings as lower and meaner than ever. The world appears so petty, that this feeling is like going down to Egypt, meaning to our lowest desires.
We cannot obtain the correct desires, under the direct instruction of the Creator, without first being in Egypt. Our initial desires are very small, and even if we stretch them to the limit, they can only bring us as far as Beit-El, meaning the practice of the ordinary Torah, where we feel as if we have already entered the house of God, and the Garden of Eden and the next world are ready for us. But in fact, this is not the case! The Torah should bring us first to the recognition of evil, to the feeling that we are completely egotistical and that all our desires are completely opposite to spirituality. If we experience that state, understand and internalize it, then we accept that that is also our own situation. People’s recognition of their ego must be an emotional, tangible experience. To the extent that they feel it this way, they begin to want to correct themselves. Therefore, the recognition of our ego as evil is a very long phase.
How to Develop Great Spiritual Hunger Like Abraham
To feel who you are and what your properties are, you must feel at least a little bit of what spirituality is like. You must experience these feelings to the fullest and examine them in every way. When the process is completed, you are granted exodus from Egypt.
We cannot imagine what is not within us to begin with, what we never felt, and even what our fathers and our forefathers never felt. Because of that, it is only possible to bring us out of that state and throw us into the state of acquiring new desires through immense spiritual hunger. That hunger can only be developed and amplified in a group with a teacher and some very special books. If we read these books in the wrong order, it is very easy to be misled and deviate from the right path, which means a temporary halt in spiritual evolution. We must always maintain a careful watch and examination, making sure we are on the right track. But in fact, even if we stand still, yet nevertheless desire spirituality, then the Creator Himself pushes us forward using that hunger.
If the Creator turns to you, you feel it as that unique property called Abraham. That inner voice that you feel addresses you is called the Creator. The effort to understand it, the voice and indeed yourself, is what the Torah aspires for.
“Do You Know This Shocking Truth About the Bible’s Abraham?” is based on the book, Awakening to Kabbalah: The Guiding Light of Spiritual Fulfillment by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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