As we make our way along our spiritual path, we may often find ourselves feeling content with where we are, relaxing our sense of urgency to transform ourselves into the person we were meant to be. We might gravitate more towards selfless acts that are easier for us to handle – while passively ignoring those acts that we may find more challenging. We feel okay about it because we are still revealing some Light and changing ourselves a little – but in truth, we are doing ourselves a disservice.
In the beginning of the portion Lech Lecha, there is a sentence in which the Creator says to Avraham, ‘Go from your Land, from your birthplace, and from the house of your fathers, to the land which I will show you.’ There are many explanations for this; one by the great sixteenth century kabbalist, the Maharal of Prague. The Maharal explains that the ‘land’ referred to in the passage is equivalent to the body, which refers to the physical reality. ‘Birthplace’ refers to the soul, and ‘house of your fathers’ refers to the intellect. So the question arises: Why does Avraham have to leave all of these entities?
Most of the time, in our spiritual journey, we go from one spiritual level to another in an intellectual way. However, if we let go of all of these things at once – our intellect, our physicality and what we perceive to be our spiritual work – then we can have true certainty in the Creator. Having true certainty would bring us to the level of actually experiencing the Light of the Creator and miracles in our lives.
Another way that we can achieve the ability to see the greatness of the Creator is by working on our negative traits. The Creator gave us many traits and qualities, and all of them have both a positive and a negative side. We have the freedom of choice – free will – to break away from the negative side of our traits and transform them into positive aspects of ourselves.
Avraham represents a level of consciousness that we should all strive to reach. He is prepared to get up and go – regardless of where the Creator tells him to go. How many of us are prepared to just drop everything and hit the road – without knowing where we are going? How many of us have reached that true certainty in the Creator, where we are truly ready to listen? Most of us will only listen if what we are being told to do falls within our spiritual and physical comfort zone.
The portion Lech Lecha gives us the strength to not only step out of our physical and spiritual comfort zones, but to really check ourselves and test ourselves. We can use this portion to learn how to be true to ourselves, and see how much we are really willing to trust and believe in the Creator. It’s very easy to say, theoretically, ‘I trust the Light 100%’, or ‘I will do whatever the Light wants’, but how many of us really listen if the answer is uncomfortable, or if the answer is ‘no’? Let’s use the energy of this portion to step outside of ourselves and create miracles by pushing out of our physical and spiritual comfort zones.
