The Luck Of Cats

Question: What are these 49 Gates of Tuma’a (Impurity) they passed through before the exodus from Egypt?

Answer: We try to get out from our ego toward love of others, and we are not ready. Again we try, and again, we don’t succeed. We try again and again, until, basically, we discover that all of us are in a situation in which we don’t want to leave Egypt. We have no possibility of doing this and no strength. We are not able to leave. It is a completely hopeless situation.

Our ego, as it is now, pulls us into all kinds of stupidity with which we try to fill our lives. So, in what way are our lives different from the life of a cat, besides the fact that the cat feels good about himself? Yesterday, the weather was clear. He laid down and warmed himself in the sun. There is something to eat, so the cat eats and sleeps, and nothing more concerns him.

A person needs to receive a thousand times more than a cat to feel satisfied. So, who is more joyful and happy, the person or the cat? As far as it seems, the cat is happier. He lies in the sun all the time, he knows that his owner always will feed him, and he is not concerned about anything for himself.

The cat looks contemptuously at how his owner runs around all the time. He runs to work, doing a thousand other things. He doesn’t understand why people make such  a hectic life for themselves. Why are they running around so much? Every day, they go around in the same circle: They put the children in kindergarten and they run to work, to the store, and home. They prepare food, eat, and go to sleep to start all over again. Is it worth it to go around like this all year, to break out once a year for a seven-day vacation?

And the cat lies around all day, licks himself, and it is good for him. So, which of us is more joyful and happy? Who is more complete? Certainly, it is the cat, whereas the person is a most miserable creature, as it is written about Ishmael, “…his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.” (Genesis 16:12).
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/15, Writings of Rabash