Real Kings Don’t Hide: Weekly Spark
G-d tells Moses to make a morning meeting with Pharoah at the Nile to tell him about the plague of blood. Why then and there? Why not the palace at normal visiting hours?
Pharoah pretended he was a deity. One of his charades was going to the bathroom secretly before the day began, as if he wasn’t subject to a human need like relieving. Moses caught him with his pants down.
In truth, we all have a bit of old Pharoah in us when it comes to our shortcomings – it’s quite normal to pretend we’re someone we’re not, or to conceal aspects of ourselves in ways that demand of us bizarre perspectives.
Adam and Eve “hide” from G-d after they eat from the tree.
“Where are you,” says G-d.
“We’re hiding,” they say.
Huh? Do they really think they can hide from G-d? Does Pharoah really think he can pretend he is a god?
The key to facing the parts of ourselves we’d rather hide from, say the Sages, is twofold:
1) Realize that our tendency to recoil from our own weaknesses comes from the belief that those weaknesses define us, they are who we are. “Yuk!” In truth, it’s nothing personal – G-d gave each of us a lower self and a higher self. Self-love, like all love, comes from seeing and associating ourselves with our virtues.
2) Take responsibility to choose the desires of the higher self over and over – irrespective of feeling an immediate change.
Real kings don’t hide. They confront themselves with small choices – over and over again.
Shabbat Shalom,
Henry Harris
