The Inner Pharaoh and the Truth Within

Preface for January 7 2022

Torah Portion Bo – The Inner Pharaoh and Truth Within

The Jewish tradition loves serious play with words. This week’s Torah portion begins with God’s telling Moses, “Go to Pharaoh.” Moses is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. The problem is, the Hebrew is “bo el Paro,” which literally means “come to Pharaoh,” not “go to Pharaoh.”

Instead of explaining away this grammatical oddity, the spiritual tradition focuses on the literal meaning of “come to Pharaoh.” “Come to Pharaoh” is understood as God saying to Moses, “Come to me, but you’ll have to go through Pharaoh.”

Pharaoh is interpreted, from a spiritual perspective, as referring to those forces within that compel us to act in destructive ways, forces that are hidden in the unconscious realm. To find God, or the Authentic Self, we will have to go through forces of resistance. One force of resistance is cynicism – there is no authentic self, there is no better or worse. Love, justice, truth and beauty are words that to do not refer to anything real.

Other forces of resistance are depression, anxiety, anger, resentment, overwhelm, and so forth. We might know that there is better and worse, but we just don’t feel we can achieve it. Sometimes, the lie of resistance tells us, the good is unachievable because we are not able. Sometime, the lie of resistance tells us, the good is unachievable because the world around us is so bad. The Inner Pharaoh is the liar. There is some good that can be done and nothing in the world can stop us from doing some good, even if only within.

We can’t just step around the Inner Pharaoh, though. He will ambush us.

“Face your inner destructiveness” sounds like a spiritual platitude. People nod and say, “Sure, obviously!” and then allow those destructive forces to take over their thoughts, feelings and emotions. People say, “I couldn’t help but get (fill in the blank – angry, accusatory, defensive, hopeless, fed up, etc.). I agree. Our inner destructiveness can take us over. At times, we can’t help giving in to the forces of the unconsciousness ego self.

To fight the Inner Pharoah, we have to train. For beginners – don’t talk , text or write an email until you calm down, for example. Stop catastrophizing. We can hear ourselves when a negative script takes over. Stop saying those lines. Write a better play. Rehearse your way out of Pharaoh’s incessant grip. You can be helped, by you.

The inner destructiveness has many ploys not to allow you to help yourself find and live your Authentic Self. A common one is to “rationalize.” To rationalize is just about the opposite of being rational. To rationalize means to give a reason for doing something when there is actually something else that is the real cause or motivation. To rationalize is to be pretend to be rational. We create narratives to make acceptable our destructive thoughts, feelings and behavior, and therefore our speech and behavior. We hide from the truth.

That is the Inner Pharaoh’s game, hide the truth of the matter. For example, the truth of the matter might be that you became too hungry, angry, lonely or tired. Sometimes we get caught off guard. Sometimes we are needy. Sometimes life just becomes too much. Your resistance to the Inner Pharaoh has been weakened.

The path to redemption is to acknowledge our inner turmoil and find a way back to the path of truth, virtue and wisdom. Something pushed you off the path. That happens. The main thing is to dust yourself off and get back on the path, not to make it as if you discovered a new path to truth.

“The Inner Pharaoh” always has a very persuasive story to keep up from getting back on the path. Or the Inner Pharaoh has us ask pointless “why” questions such as, “Why would someone do such a thing?”

The Inner Pharaoh wants us to think that coming up with a relatively pointless rhetorical question is actually doing something. Pointless “why” questions do accomplish something. They distract us.

There is a famous little saying in the Talmud (Baba Batra 60b), “K’shote atzmecha techilah – achar kakh k’shot acherim.” The Aramaic word “k’shote” has two meanings: truth, and also beauty. One meaning of this aphorism might be, “Beautify yourself (do the right thing), before you demand that others be beautiful.” Another meaning might be “Be truthful with yourself, and then you can be truthful with others.”

Both meanings are intertwined. I think that most of us want to do the right and beautiful thing, but we can’t until we honestly seek out what is going on inside of us as we discover the True Self. Finding the truth is difficult; the Inner Pharaoh stands in the way.

When the Inner Pharaoh tries to push you around, start by pushing back.