The influence of the Intellect.

When G-d revealed himself to Moses on Mt Sinai, he said, “When you take out this people from Egypt, they will serve me on this mountain.” Later on, when Moses speaks to King Pharaoh, he says, “Send out my people so they can serve G-d.”

The going out of Egypt was not an end itself. Being free from servitude, if not replaced with a worthwhile way of life, is no guarantee for true freedom, to choose what is truly proper for the individual.

Exodus was merely the first step in the direction of serving G-d, by receiving the Ten Commandments, 50 days later. Now, true freedom and real choices was possible and available for the first time ever.

During the Holiday of Passover, G-d revealed Himself in a phenomenal, miraculous, supernatural way, to punish the Egyptians and free the Israelites. That is why the bible says, “ the nation hastily left Egypt.” In mysticism, we call this an awakening from above.

G-d did this on his own, without much deserving on the part of the Israelites. They really didn’t do much to improve or change themselves from the evil that was all around them. When G-d showed them an opportunity to escape, they needed to run away immediately from their existing evil.

The advantage to getting something far more than what is deserving is that it is so much more. On the other hand, because it comes from the outside, and isn’t something that was generated and earned from the inside, the influence doesn’t make much of a permanent and personal impact, and the appreciation is always with a sense of detachment.

The seven weeks between Passover and the next Holiday, the giving of the Torah, and the Ten Commandments represent acting on the trigger of Passover. When a person experiences an awakening and a spiritual stir inside, ‘The light shines.” It must be snatched if it is to accomplish anything at all.

Mysticism explains that there are seven layers to ones emotions and character. Each of these seven has an element of all the other seven, for a total of 49 levels that make up ones spiritual personality.

For example, there are people who are kind, and many times, kindness must be tempered with severity, like in the case of a parent saying no to a child because of their love for a child. So, we have an underlying love that is expressed in a negative gesture of no.

The seven weeks is a time for a person to examine his emotions in all 49 levels and determine whether they operate because this is natural, or because a conscious decision was made to behave in one way or the other. When a person behaves only because this feels good and/or it comes natural, this will always lead to detrimental and negative results. What happens when I stop feeling this way, or something bad for me makes me feel good.

The mind must be strengthened to influence, not just the natural inclinations of a person, but even more so, the actual nature of the natural tendencies of ones emotions and character. They must be influenced, directed and totally transformed by the mind.

The shine and trigger of Passover, a time for freedom and liberation, must be absorbed and captured so that all one’s emotions are influenced by the mind in its objective freedom and not because of strictly and purely emotional impulses.

Once a person has worked on himself in this manner, where the intellect influences the feelings of one’s emotions, he merits the Holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah. He becomes a receptacle to receive the expanded, deep, and broad wisdom of the Holy Torah, the ultimate in intelligence.