Who do you think is in charge in the world, Pharaoh or God? The Pesach story pits the tyrant Pharaoh against God, and the Torah makes it clear who the winner will always be.
And who is in charge inside you, Pharaoh or God? I believe we participate in redemption internally when we strengthen our own divine force by standing up to the Pharaoh voices inside us, not letting them be in charge, but reclaiming our internal divine power.
The Internal Pharaoh Who Inhibits Our Growth
So who is Pharaoh on the inside? Thinking about the exodus story, we are told that the people grew numerous and strong, and it was this intense wild growth that frightened Pharaoh (Exodus 1:9) and made him enslave the people and work to disempower them and inhibit their growth,to put constraints, metzarim, on them, to keep them small and powerless,.
We have internal forces that similiarly work to disempower us and keep us small and inhibited, limiting our full freedom and growth. They, like Pharaoh, are scared of our incredible growth potential and power, scared of the dangers involved in our shining too brightly. And so, though it can be quite subtle, there is often an internal disempowerment project working against us. It manifests as self aggression, criticism, doubt, and shaming, always trying to inhibit and intimidate us. Sometimes it also manifests as catastrophizing, a kind of internal terror project that keeps us frightened and collapsed, anxious and despairing, feeling like powerless victims instead of the powerful agents we could be.
How do you know if something is a Pharaoh voice? One tell-tale sign is aggression. Even if the voice is saying something positive like – you should really be more aligned with God and work harder to not listen to your Pharaoh thoughts – if it has a self aggressive tinge, if it feels like you are being beaten up or pushed in a harsh unkind way, that’s Pharaoh whipping you to build more bricks. God and your internal divine force is gentle, not harsh. It’s great to notice the Pharaoh voice when it comes up. Noticing and naming it is the first step to getting enough distance to reclaim your own power.
Reclaiming Your Power
We don’t have to demonize those Pharaoh voices. They, too, are struggling, as Pharaoh was, with great fear and a limited perspective, and I think that ultimately they, too, need our love. But first we have to reclaim our power. First we have to align with the divine force inside us and assert that it is we who are in charge and that we will not tolerate this kind of bullying. The story of exodus tells us that ultimately what God most desires for us is our freedom, our freedom from Pharaoh, both internal and external, our freedom from such forces of disempowerment, enslavement and inhibition.
Taking Up Space
How do we re-empower at the seder? By taking up space. Physically, we are mesubin, reclined, a posture of unrestrained expansion and confidence. We’ve been cramped in a corner, hiding, as our ancestors hid from persecution, and now we emerge and stretch out, as if we are standing, feet apart, hands on hips, shouting from the rooftop: here I am, see me, I can take up space, a lot of space. I am not going to shrivel up and disappear. I am going to stretch and shine and spread out and be my full self, like God wants me to. Like a flower growing tall, reaching up for the sun, no worries about outshining other flowers or fear of being chopped down.
In Hallel we say – mikimi me’afar dal, me’ashpot yarim evyon. God raises up the poor from the dust, lifts the needy from the garbage pile (Psalm 113:7).. Those Pharaoh voices in us have thrown us into the dust a thousand times, trying to keep us small, not wanting us to see our true light and potential. We gave away our power to them, letting them treat us like garbage. But God raises us up. It’s something that wants to happen inside us; despite Pharaoh’s resistance to any kind of change, still, there is this divine force inside us that wants us to stand up and be free, fiercely and insistently tall and free. The next line of Hallel is lehoshivi im nedivim, im nedivei amo (Psalm 113:8). This one who was lying in the dust is now seated among nobility. Feel your posture get straighter, sit up taller and prouder. This is who you truly are, despite all the Pharaoh voices that want you to believe otherwise. You are noble and grand, a child of God. Live into that identity. Reclaim it.
Talking a Lot
We take up space at the seder not just by physically stretching out, but also by speaking a lot. Kol hamarbeh lesaper – the more speech, the better. There is a sense of expansiveness about our speech, the luxury of, for one night, not being constrained by time or work or social norm, letting it all hang out, going on and on. Normally when we speak, we have this nagging inhibiting Pharaoh voice saying – did I take up too much space, maybe I should hold back, make myself smaller. Indeed Pharaoh uses the same root harbeh to speak of his fears about the Israelites – pen yirbeh (Exodus 1:10). Lest they grow too numerous, be too much. That’s our fear – what if I’m too much. And maybe sometimes that is appropriate. Maybe. But it’s also a way of disempowering us and making us smaller than we are meant to be. What would it feel like to live into our harbeh, our muchness, to say to that Pharaoh constraining voice – Yes, you’re right, I am a lot, and I’m going to take up a lot of space. So what? Claiming our muchness as divine abundance. Ilu finu male shirah kayam. Our mouths are full of song like water. We have so much inside us that wants to flow out, to burst forth, the abundant human potential that is our divine destiny.
Encouraging Each Other’s Growth
We think we will take away from someone else by living jnto our full brilliance, but the opposite is the case – we give each other permission to shine. It’s like the rabbis with their Haggadah number game about how many plagues there were at the sea. One rabbi begins the game of multiplying, and that sense of expansiveness is contagious, encouraging the next rabbi to go even bigger, egging each other on to keep expanding God’s and our own power. I imagine a field of flowers, each one brilliant in its color and vibrancy, each one nodding encouragement to the others to grow into their own brilliance. When we delight in our own divine greatness, we delight in those around us as well, letting go of competitiveness and scarcity, sitting and basking in the divine light that bathes us all.
Not About Speaking Or Being Smart
Each of us will shine differently in our fullness. It won’t always be through speech. I think that’s what the four children of the haggadah represent – different ways to be present and to be yourself. Simplicity is to be honored alongside silence and rebelliousness as well as the classic intelligence. Being smart, as the haggadah makes clear, is not the only or even the primary way – even if we were all geniuses, we would still need to go through some experience tonight. It’s not about being smart or clever, having the best insight or saying things in the right way. There is no performance here, no yardstick. That need to perform, to be smart, to be funny, to do it perfectly, whatever that pressure is, that, too, is a Pharaoh voice. Perfection and expectation are constraints. So right now, we can, each of us as we are, relax and trust the divine in ourselves, living into the freedom from constraint that is calling to us, living into the flow of water inside, no longer shutting it off, becoming that flow of abundant water.
Fierce Commitment
This takes courage and strength, day in and day out, to stand up, again and again, to the Pharaoh voices, both internal and external, that tell us to diminish ourselves, that make us feel that we are less than, that terrify us into anxiety, collapse and despair, that convince us we are powerless in our lives and in the world. Vehi She’amdah – we say – there is a divine force in the world, hi, a feminine divine force, that stands up for us, that encourages us to stand up for ourselves, bekhol dor vador, in every generation, in every moment, continually, again and again, a kind of promise, havtachah, that God makes with us and that we make with ourselves – to be omed, to stand up, to the Pharaoh voices, not to be disempowered by fear and judgment and expectation, but to stand firm and fierce in our commitment to ourselves and our own fullness, to reclaim our power and freedom from the forces that want to limit it and diminish us. Maybe you can feel that fierceness in your own body right now, a sense of standing firm like a tree in your right to be here as you are and not to hide. Feeling that as unshakable power running through you. No one can take that away from you. Letting divine power enter you, like the yad hazakah, God’s mighty arm; you have that strength and power in your own arm, in your own body. Reclaim it.
Letting the Pharaoh Voices Fade
What do we do with this power internally? How do we approach the Pharaoh voices? It is a matter of being in charge. The Pharaoh voices can be here, and over time, we may even choose to turn to them with tenderness and care, but they are not in charge. They try to usurp our power, but with God’s help, we reclaim our power and learn not to listen too carefully to those voices, to give them less attention, to let their negativity gradually fade away. If you look at the haggadah, the name Pharaoh does just that. In the beginning you hear it a few times and then it fades away, perhaps still there, but like a radio whose volume has been turned down. What’s left is God and us, singing away at the end to our hearts’ content, without constraint or inhibition. This is what can happen internally when we center what matters to us, when we stay committed to that center in a fierce tree-like way. The forces that want to diminish and disempower us can prattle away, but we stay centered in our alignment with God and with ourselves.
It’s a work in progress in us as it is in the world. We can keep asking ourselves – who is in charge right now inside me, Pharaoh or God, Pharaoh or my Higher Power? Each step we take closer to reclaiming our own divine power from the Pharaoh forces inside is one step closer to that happening in the world, one step closer to the ultimate redemption.
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