Too Much Ego!

Have patience, the Zohar’s descriptions of the end times will be coming soon, and long before the end of days actually gets here, and they won’t really be an end to our days, but more like a beginning, if we’d only let G-d in.
We will soon be revealing the “Sword of Moses,” another tool concealed within the Torah, but one that will remain sheathed until the days of Moshiach draw nearer. Even so, we want to discuss the use of spiritual tools in general and Moses’ most powerful one.
Moses had all the tools of he universe and he knew all the secrets of creation, so why, when it came to healing his sister, did he chose to supplicate to G-d instead?
Moses understood, as it says in the Torah, Devarim 4:35 “..He is G-d; there is none else beside Him,” that by removing himself (his ego) Moses would open up all the possibilities of G-d to perform His miracles. He made the space for G-d to enter.
As explained in The Genesis Prayer, one of the reasons that the Ana B’koach (42-Letter Name) works for us is that by using it and we’re admitting that we don’t control everything and that we need G-d’s help. Make the space for g-d to enter.
When Moses recited the 11-letter sequence El Na ReFa Na Lah (EL NE RGE NE LH), which happens to be embedded in the 42-Letter Sword of Moses, he pleaded with G-d twice to heal his sister, and in so doing he let G-d in, but he also gave us a path to follow.
It’s a doubly wonderful path because on it he gave us a powerful sequence for us to recite when we supplicate G-d to help someone who needs healing El Na ReFa Na Lah (EL NE RGE NE LH), and because it served as a model to emulate whenever we need help. This healing sequence, in case you’re not familiar with it, is sung as part of “Yedid Nefesh” at the 3^rd meal of Shabbat, Saturday evening, a special time of goodwill.
Yes, we need to strive to make the most of our lives, to know the ways of Hashem as deeply as we can, and to transform our selfish reactive nature as best we can, but then we need to let go and to admit to ourselves that we are nothing. It’s then that we can receive everything, all the wondrous effects of the tree-of-life reality, life without limitations.
We all understand that we want to be one with G-d and the universe, one soul, but look around you; there are a billion other souls that you are barely connected to, if at all,. There are places in your town you will never visit, let alone on the planet, solar system, galaxy, universe, parallel universes, so how can we ever hope to be one with it all. It’s nearly impossible with our spouses, kids, siblings, and teachers.
We stand on this earth, look around ourselves, look off into space, into the endless universe and choose to become one with it by making ourselves bigger. We consciously, or subconsciously, think that we can become one with it by filling it up with ourselves, our desires, our knowledge, our importance, and our influence. That’s our ego, and some of us fill it much more than others, but still it’s a tiny drop in a huge bucket.
Now, let’s look at ourselves as Moses did, from the universe’s point of view. Look how small, inconsequential, we really are. Wouldn’t it be much simpler to reduce ourselves (shrink our egos) the rest of that very short way to nothing, and thus join the universe as one; after all we are so much closer in size to nothing than to everything.
Moses, knew that, the Baal Shem Tov and many other great tzaddikim knew that. That’s why miracles entered their lives and actions. Because they took their ego out of the picture and let the universe (G-d) do the work.
We’re not saying removing our ego is easy. It’s the hardest thing, but it’s still a lot easier than trying to be G-d. And what makes it so hard is our own inconsequential size within the universe; we want to hold onto that ego as a form of protection. That was the fig leafs that Adam grabbed for when he was deprived of the tree-of-life in Gan Eden and forced to live the tree-of-knowledge reality. Ego is much more than a drive to put our name on tall buildings-that at least is constructive ego-but it’s also ego when we cling to our secrets, when we don’t trust one another, when we want to be left alone, when we’re feeling guilty.
Ego is the clothes that Adam and Eve donned when the fiery sword blocked to path to the garden. We’ll unlock the mysteries of the sword, not because of our knowledge, but because that’s what G-d wants for us, but first, we must shed our clothes (metaphorically), our egos. It’s time to let G-d be G-d and to stop trying to block Him out of our lives.
When the Torah said, G’d made man in His image, it didn’t say He made clones. Think of a image as we know it today, it’s made of thousands of pixels. If we all play our roles as pixels, let the light guide us and shine through us, the image will appear, and the word for image (zelem) has the same gematria as that for tree (etz), as in the tree-of-life, which is what will appear once we get out of our own way.