Fifteen years ago, I left my job as a corporate lawyer to start my business as a real estate broker. As an independent contractor in business for myself, I’d have freedom over my schedule and the ability to answer only to myself.
I’d have the promise of “freedom.”
Except that’s not how it has materialized. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve learned that “freedom” from corporate life doesn’t always feel free. Instead of answering to law firm partners, I’ve had the challenge of being in service to clients who can’t predict when they’ll be ready for my services. I’ve hardly taken vacations, and I’ve burned out several times.
I’ve also met hundreds of other entrepreneurs who left the oppressive structure of “9–5” jobs (although being a lawyer was never a 9–5) only to find themselves in the vast desert of solopreneurship, searching for the elusive promise of “freedom.”
When everything rests on your shoulders, it often feels like you have less freedom than when other people are involved.
There are three lessons relevant to this predicament that we learn from the holiday of Passover.
Lesson 1: Freedom From Oppression is Just the First Step to Full Freedom
Passover is commonly explained as a holiday about freedom. It celebrates the miracle of the Exodus, when God lead the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt under the rule of Pharaoh after 400 years as slaves.
What is often overlooked in the retelling is that the Exodus did not give the Jewish people their freedom.
The Exodus was their liberation from physical oppression. They were no longer slaves, but they were not yet free.
Once out of Egypt, they faced a long journey through the desert wilderness. For 40 years they traveled in uncertainty, not knowing where they were headed, what they would eat, what would happen next, or when they would arrive at their destination.
They still did not have control over their schedule or their time; they traveled without knowing how long it would take. The sages explained that what made the Jews slaves in Egypt was the uncertainty over time: not knowing how long the labor would take. It was an emotional and psychological burden.
This element was still present during their long trek through the wilderness.
In addition, the conditioning that had been trained in them for 400 years was still in their bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. They may have left the conditions of Egypt, but the conditions of Egypt were still inside them.
The lesson we learn here is that freedom from what oppresses you is not true freedom. It’s simply the first step in the process.
Freedom from what oppresses you is not true freedom. It’s simply the first step in the process.
Lesson 2: Restrictions Are Not an Obstacle to Freedom
The Jewish people attained true freedom weeks later, at Mount Siani, when they agreed to receive the covenant from God, in the form of the Torah. This was when they went from being the “Children of Israel” to the “Jewish people.”
It’s notable that by accepting this covenant, the people agreed to be bound by various restrictions and laws. It doesn’t seem like “freedom” when you can’t always do things the way you want to do them.
But in fact, the structure of the rules gives a boundary that allows for freedom within the constraint.
The lesson here is that the presence of restrictions does not indicate the absence of freedom.
The presence of restrictions does not necessarily indicate the absence of freedom. Restriction and freedom are not a binary.
Lesson 3: The Pre-requisite for True Freedom
Notably, God didn’t offer the Children of Israel the covenant immediately after the Exodus.
If they had accepted it immediately after the Exodus, it would have been under duress, a decision influenced by the fact that God had just saved them.
In order to attain true freedom, the Jewish people had to embark on a journey of spiritual healing to bring their nervous systems back into alignment and reattune to their true nature.
Only in this fully aligned state could they choose to accept God’s covenant out of their free will, rather than out of a sense of obligation in reciprocity for having been saved.
The lesson we learn from this: decisions made under duress, when our nervous systems are hijacked, are not decisions made from free will.
True freedom is attained when we have a nervous system that is stable and secure,
Decisions made when our nervous systems are hijacked are not decisions made from free will.
The Omer: A Journey to True Freedom
The spiritual healing journey to true freedom is replicated each year during the period of the Omer, a seven week process that takes us from Passover to Shavuot, or from Easter to Pentecost.
The Omer journey is about navigating the transition from “freedom from” what has oppressed you to true soul freedom.
Over the next seven weeks, I’ll be sharing more about this journey and how we can use it to attain freedom in our modern lives.
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