Note of caution: For those suffering from more serious PTSD, you may need to have a competent therapist guide you through the process.
Step #4: Break your Resistance. When you catch yourself acting or responding to a false rule of yours, break through all resistance and change course.
For example, Sara frantically dusts her house before her in-laws arrive for dinner so that everything looks just perfect. Sara catches herself in the act, breaks through her resistance and holds off with the dusting until after her in-laws leave.
Or take Danny for example. He really wants to stay late after work so he can wrap up the project he’s been working on, yet he knows his wife and children are waiting for him to come home. Danny breaks through all resistance and makes the courageous choice, family before work, because he now knows that his worthiness is not dependent on his performance at work.
Why Be Free
Why should you free yourself from all your “rules of love”?
Because you are a tzelem Elokim – created in the image of God. You are already perfect, even with all your imperfections. You don’t need to be extraordinarily beautiful, successful, healthy, wealthy or wise to be worthy of love. God loves you unconditionally. So this Passover, let’s imitate God’s ways and give ourselves the true gift of freedom – the new rule of unconditional love!
The Walls In Mitzrayim:
At some point towards the end of Galut Mitzrayim, the Mitzrim used the Jewish babies as bricks to fill in the walls.
I can’t begin to imagine the pain of all those innocent precious souls wanting desperately to be free to study the holy Torah and join their families.
There’s a baby that lives within most of us, wanting desperately to be free. Yet it’s blocked – blocked by our rules of love. The more rules we have, the stronger and thicker the wall surrounding our heart is. There’s that baby (like those babies in Mitzrayim) crying desperately behind our wall screaming, “Let me out, I want to be free!”
The Only Route to Freedom – The Torah:
Thank God we are not slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, or to anyone else for that matter. We may not have consciously chosen the rules that enslave us to bad habits and addictions, but as adults we are completely responsible for our freedom. The Torah is our roadmap to complete freedom and happiness. The more we keep the mitzvot and follow the Torah – the less “enslaved” we are by our own or society’s “rules of love.”
Pirkei Avos teaches us: “v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha” – we should love another like we love our self. The key is to begin by loving ourselves unconditionally first so that we can allow ourselves to love others and experience the beauty of true love.
May God grant us with the courage to pass–over those rules of love that inhibit us from experiencing true joy, and may this Passover be the start of our journey toward absolute freedom.