The plagues escalate until finally, Pharaoh lets the people go. The Torah shows us here what the divine process of redemption, growth and freedom look like. I want to take the whole scene inside and see how it maps onto our own inner work.
Both Pharaoh and the Children of Israel Inside Us
I think we have both Pharaoh and the children of Israel inside us. First, beney Yisrael, the children of Israel – these are indeed banim, children, our inner children who have been hurt and treated harshly for a long time in our systems and locked away inside us in bondage, not allowed to be free to be themselves, young parts with deep wounds, what IFS (Internal Family Systems) calls “exiles.” You may not have immediate access to such parts since they have indeed been “exiled” in the system, but maybe you can get a sense, even a physical sense, of an unexplored ache in the core of your body, as if you can hear some crying from behind a barred door. This is your beney Yisrael part.
We also have inside us a Pharaoh part along with a team of Egyptian taskmasters. These are the harsh parts that stand guard over the inner children and do not allow them to be free. Pharaoh represents our hardness of heart towards ourselves, our self aggression, the stern inner disciplinarian who whips everyone into shape and often treats the young parts unkindly, shaming and shutting them down. Maybe you can imagine a guard in full regalia standing alert with his weapons, guarding the door to the children and their pain, not letting them out, pushing them back if they start to emerge. .
The Process of Growth
Pharoah can stand guard and the children can be locked away for a very long time. The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years. But God has planted in us and in the universe a basic movement towards healing, towards growth and towards freedom. And so at some point, a process of change will arise. And this process is usually not comfortable or pleasant or clear or calm. It often brings suffering and instability to the system, like the plagues in Egypt, before the release and growth eventually come..
Rabbi Dr. Avraham Twerski, z”l, a renowned rabbi and psychologist, was famous for his you-tube video about how a lobster grows. The stimulus for the lobster to grow is to feel uncomfortable, says Rabbi Twerski. The lobster has a soft inner body and a hard outer shell. As the inner body grows, the original shell becomes too small and there is rising discomfort until finally the lobster sheds its outer shell and begins to grow a new bigger one.
The stimulus for the lobster to grow is to feel uncomfortable. We can think of it as an eruption of internal growth energy. The inner children who have been shut down for so long are wanting to emerge and stretch into their freedom, and the outer shell of Pharaoh remains stagnant at first, adamant in preserving the status quo – I will not let you go. I will not let you grow. The pressure mounts and mounts until there is no other option than to release – to shed the old and build a new shell, a new way of being.
Maybe you can sense how this process wants to happen inside you as well, feeling inside again for your trapped inner child, for the places where she got stuck emotionally, and feeling for any inklings of rising movement in her, maybe some timid steps outward or maybe she is getting up and stretching, becoming bigger, wanting to emerge into her full true self. She pushes up against the Pharaoh parts that hold her down, that shut her in, that resist change, but still there is this desire, her desire, our soul’s natural desire, to grow and become free. Maybe you can sense both at once as if you are a lobster growing out of your shell, both the stretching upward and outward on the one hand and the uncomfortable squeezing, pushing downward on the other hand.
The Plagues As Signs Of Growth
Perhaps this is what the plagues were – the discomfort and suffering that is caused by growth and exacerbated by the resistance to such growth. The plagues are called otot, signs. They are signs of the need for growth and change, for some radical shift in the system. There is some new freedom wanting to emerge and there is not yet room for it and this is painful. This is how our system speaks to us, this is how God invites us into transformation, this is how the inner child puts pressure on the system to open the doors and make room for her to emerge, for her pain to be released so that she can come into freedom.
These plagues come in many forms – – in Egypt, it was as darkness or lice or disease or wild animals; in us, it can appear as depression or oversensitivity or extreme rage or obsessions or physical ailments or other symptoms. These are otot, signs. Our difficulties are signposts or trailheads indicating that there is something deeper that needs tending inside. This is how the system cries out for change, this is how God points us on our way, this is how the universe lets us know that our inner child needs healing and releasing and freedom. Our turmoil and angst can sometimes be understood as the simple cry – let her go!
When We Don’t Listen To The Signs
The question is – do we listen to these otot, to these signs? Pharaoh did not listen. Again and again they appeared, and each time, he pretended to listen, but returned to his old ways. We are like this, too. Emotional patterns are so difficult to change and we are so entrenched in our habits, like Pharaoh. And so the signs, the symptoms, they are forced to come back, again and again, and often, to get worse. It’s like the little child is asking for something – at first it is a gentle request, then a soft cry and then it gets louder and louder because we aren’t listening.
How does this play out for you? Are there certain emotional difficulties and patterns that come back again and again? Maybe you try to change them by force. You declare – I won’t do that anymore. And for a while, maybe that works, as it did with Pharaoh, temporarily. But then it returns. The same emotional or sometimes physical disturbance always returns – sometimes in slightly different form, like the plagues – always coming back, letting you know the core issue is not resolved.
Because it is an ot, a sign. It is asking for something. It is a messenger from beyond asking you to tend to something deeper inside, asking you to turn towards the core hurt of the ben, the inner child who is locked away inside you. It is a knock at the door that, when not answered, turns into a pounding and then a piercing siren call, like the sound of the cries in Egypt during the last plague.
Listening
So maybe we can pause and listen now, listen to the siren call of whatever signs and symptoms are up for us and feel deeply into ourselves and ask – what is the underlying need here that has not been met? Can I find the beney Yisrael part, the vulnerable inner child who has been hurt and banished, who is tied up inside me, the tzerurah, my bound up soul? Can I find her and sense her yearning to be released, released from pain, released from confinement, allowed to grow and to be free to be herself? Let the otot, the signs of external suffering that pop up in your life, let them lead you back to her, back to this trapped inner child deep in your core.
Release
Of course we can’t do all the work in this moment, but maybe we can taste it, maybe we can taste a little bit of the release. God wants her to be released. And through these otot, through these signs that God sends, some release can indeed happen. Tatir tzerurah. Untie her knots, we ask of God. We invite in this divine power, the koach, that lies behind all these otot, inviting that divine energy into ourselves and sensing how that gradually softens the hard Pharaohs inside us, sensing how they might put down their weapons now, move aside, unlock the door, untie the knots and let the little girl move a little bit, releasing her to emerge and be herself.
These little children in us – like beney Yisrael – they hold a lot of old pain, generations of it as well as their own, stored capsules of unprocessed pain, and that is what can begin to release. We can feel the shackles and the heaviness and let some of it fly off on the wind. Shelah – send it out – release some of that little child’s pain.
A New Freedom
As part of this release, there is an emergence of something new, a new freedom, a new possibility of how to live. As beney Yisrael leave Egypt, are released from the narrow straits of Mitzrayim and their bondage, they move into the wide open desert where they can become themselves, grow into something larger, grow into their full divine potential. And that is what our little one needs to do as well. She has been trapped behind the doors of Pharaoh and his guards and now she steps out of her bonds and over the threshold into a new open space where she, too, can become herself. This is our soul, our essence. She has been bound up, tzerurah, and now she begins to emerge, to feel her body, to let go of the old pre-conditioned habits that kept her scared and shut down, small and and insecure. Now she emerges and stretches. She looks up at the sky above and feels God smiling down on her. The process is not over, but just beginning. She needs to find her voice so that maybe next week at the Red Sea, she can begin to sing.
Photo by Scott Webb at Pexels
