It is written in the Torah that we each go through tests in our lives through which the upper providene examines us. Indeed, our lives are a test.
It is most obvious in the story about the exodus from Egypt. “Egypt” represents our egoistic desires, and the more we prepare ourselves to exit our egos, the more we start feeling our ego working on, controlling and overcoming us, and we too constantly try to overcome it.
The increasing difficulty to overcome our ego is called “the burdening of the heart,” which brings us to feel that we are entirely under the ego’s rule, under Pharaoh, and we feel it as our enemy.
Why do we come to feel the ego dwelling inside us as our enemy? It is due to a tiny point of a desire in us called “Moses” that attracts us to the other side of our ego: a reality of positive connection among each other with attitudes of love and bestowal in our midst.
In this game with the upper force of love and bestowal called “the Creator,” as well as with Pharaoh, Moses, the people of Israel (i.e., those who share the common point of a desire to rise above the ego) and the Egyptians, we start discovering these forces operating inside us. We start seeing how we are lost under Pharaoh’s rule without the upper force of love and bestowal (the Creator) to pull us out.
If we go through life knowing that it is our Egypt and that we have to rise to a higher level and not remain in the ego, where our inner Pharaoh and Egyptians want to hold us, we will then learn how to use our lives in a way that brings us all to a state of total harmony, peace and happiness. We then come to see life as our aim to escape our egoistic nature and head out to what is called “redemption,” which is the sensation of the upper world, eternity and perfection.
Our lives are thus indeed a test and an opportunity. If we constantly try to see where and how we are being operated upon, and try to hold onto the thought that beyond our egoistic desires there is a higher force of love and bestowal that wishes for us to become mature beings by rising above our egos, then we can view our lives as a test—as our own test on ourselves.
We can then exercise what it means to live above the ego in a reality where the upper force of love and bestowal fills the connections between us. By doing so, we draw those loving and bestowing forces into our lives and accordingly rise to the eternal and whole spiritual life. If we do not apply such a test upon ourselves and continue letting our egoistic desires determine our every thought and movement, then we simply disappear when we die, and we then just reawait our next chance in the next lifecycle.
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