Paralleling the Jewish heart and minds, Pharaoh went through a transformation of his own, and became like a “new King.” And he began to consider the rising Jewish population as a threat rather than a blessing.
His eyes and heart changed.
Slavery began with the eye and heart; for the eye sees, and the heart follows.
When Moses reappears in Egypt, the Jews have little patience for his dreams of freedom. The concept is ridiculous. There is no room to concern themselves with how they could walk out, nor where they would go. Strategy and planning for the future is not practical. When your eyes and heart are closed – when you can only see the dimension you are stuck in, and your heart loses all hope, there is no point in discussing change.
In order to break the head-lock, Moses must first break the obvious. He begins with water, turning it to blood. He does not philosophize his way to change.
The first step in our journey is to see things differently. How do we change the perceptions of our eyes and heart so that we can open ourselves up to change?
It begins with water and then moves to blood. The path of change is not to merely believe in it, or to prescribe it to some philosophy of how. The way toward change is the willingness to see the situation differently than you presently do.
Before Moses accepted the task to free the Jewish population, he was first shown a “burning bush” that was not consumed. There are numerous suggestions as to why G-d chooses a thorny bush. All of the explanations can be distilled into this: looking at the obvious (fiery bushes lead to ashes), but see a different outcome. Who says burning bushes must die out in a pile of soot?
See the Point?
In order to open my heart and mind and see how I can escape my virtual prison cell, I must see the “point”, depicted in Hebrew as the letter Yud.
I must exercise finding that letter Yud in what I see. Nothing really changes, there will be bushes and there will be fires. But instead of burning up, it will not be consumed.
The letter Yud is the letter of possibility. Like an idea that is still unformed by language and explanation, the Yud is a small seminal point that can lead to many possibilities. It is the seed that meets the egg and it is yet undecided whether this meeting will result in girl or boy (See Talmud Brochas page 60 that explains that you can pray for a girl or a boy up to 40 days after conception).
Everything – events, objects, people, and me – possess the Yud, the letter of possibility.
This state of possibility, the Yud, is associated with water. Water moves. It changes shape and color depending where it is contained. (The solid form of water is snow and ice, possibility locked into shape and size).
I tried exercising this looking with “watery eyes” and seeing the point in things.
I started with myself.
The ice I saw first, the pre-formed stuff was what I do well, and what I do not do so well. I felt what was bothering me and what was ok. Where do these come from? These little “ice cubes,” these fixed, seemingly unshakeable, concerns of my life?.
As I realized that the little ice cube of concern comes from water – a possibility of many emotions that I feel – the ice cube melted, but remained a cube.
I tried it on others.