Leave Egypt Behind: reflecting on ODP+ 2024
“The Exodus from Egypt occurs in every human being, in every era, in every year, and in every day.”
– Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
ODP stands for Original Divine Personality. Out of the 70 people attending the workshop, how many of us can say that we are always embodying our ODP? If anything, what defines our journey for most of the time is wrestling in between the potential of that divine personality, and the strong pull of our foul one. How can we attempt to be victorious when we look within? How can we claim our God-given identity beyond what’s our current state? How can we be sincerely hopeful about who we owe to become?
And yet with these confronting thoughts in mind, we chose to walk THE WAY.
Throughout each day of the workshop, the atmosphere was building up: inspiration struck differently, clarity came to be, and as a group we were flowing into an experience of love, seriousness, worship and prayer. But the hero’s journey – which all of us are called to – is not one of comfort and inspirations, coziness and stay-at-home feelings. The workshop was moving towards two very specific and demanding questions, pointing at the very core of our struggles: what do you need to leave behind? and what do we commit to?
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The Israelites were not miraculously transported into the promised land. It wasn’t anymore about dreaming and yearning for freedom. It was for them to get it, and for that it was required to leave behind the chains of slavery – physical but also spiritual – and jump into the abyss of freedom and potential.
Very often what’s holding us back from a better future doesn’t appear to be such a dangerous threat. But let us not fool ourselves: the threat is the comfort of what we’ve known all our lives, and the illusion of control and structure for our days to be. We all know that God didn’t create us as dependent on external forces. The Israelites didn’t arrive at Egypt as slaves, they became them. And as time passed, it was necessary for God to call them again to remind them of their covenant, and to liberate themselves from the land that they were both slaves and dependent on.
In this workshop we had this great story of exodus in mind and heart. Looking deeply within to see that we must leave Egypt – once again – and trust fully in God’s call. It takes great courage and honest self-reflection to willingly move forward, knowing what part of yourself must be left behind, and how this process of separating our odp from our foul one must be made over and over again.
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But It’s not only what we are leaving behind that holds the power of this symbolic and at the same time very real archetype story. Whether we want to leave behind our limitations, our unhealthy concepts, or our mistakes, when we leave Egypt, we don’t do it for the sake of just escaping pain and suffering. What we do is to aim with full trust and faith that the promised land is to come, and God’s blessing is both in the journey and the destination.
And for that, we won’t make it to Canaan if we hesitate throughout the long and uncertain journey. We must commit to arrive. If we let doubts, fears and worries creep in our heart, nothing but questioning – and later on resentment – will come to flourish in the time that any difficulty will come. And then once again, we will turn our heads and implore to be back in the safety of our spiritual slavery.
“I am no longer a slave to fear” – the workshop sang during a night activity
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There is no point to leave Egypt if there is no destination. Our divine personality is yearning to be embodied, and God wishes nothing but the manifestation of each of our unique qualities. I can only guess that even though we as a workshop reflected on the powerful vision of who we can be, only each person knows truly what is the hope of God for each one of us. There was a sense of walking together, only because we were all willing to walk alone.
Walking alone with God not because we are meant to live in solitary existence. But because each of us acknowledge how specific and different is what God called us to. Different personalities, families, friends, jobs, countries, cultures…and still, God’s call is transcendent of any circumstance and resonates with our hearts in ways that nothing but silence can express.
God wants an army of warriors, not a mass of slaves. And in that self-determination, that intimate conversation with God, each participant was called to go ahead and find the Canaan that was always yearning in their hearts. That was the way we aimed as a workshop, and that is the way that we hope God can guide us on.
Remember: Protect this Way
Javier B.
on behalf of ESGD
