Hi Alessa, you point directly to the heart of the matter: “look toward the light, be kind, and help where you can.”… and I might leave it their, if I haven’t been noticing how difficult that sometimes is.

I really appreciated your perspective. As a young mother, you’re navigating the objective world in such a vital way, while I’m at a stage where I tend to look at things through the symbols they leave behind, or may be living us… my attempt at shining a light…

I wrote that post because I’d notice a bit of a struggle in my own heart, questioning my own kindness. That feeling pulled up an old memory of the Exodus story. As I sat with it, I realized how much that story had “lived” my younger self; exploring it was my way of taking ownership of what was mine. I also felt it was a good example of how a story can ‘live’ us unconsciously, individually and nationally.

I have learned to view Pharaoh a little differently, though. As a symbol I don’t feel his heart was ever broken ‘open’; Instead, I think he represents that rigid part of ourselves that hardens to a point it simply cannot give in. In my view, such an inner “Pharaoh” can’t change until it is overwhelmed by life it self… I’d like to avoid that.

I hear you on why “Golden Age” feels like the wrong term in today’s, often ugly, divisions. In my head, I was looking at it through a long historical lens, thinking about how we have so much more, compared to any time in the past. Where so many get to indulge in our wants above and beyond or needs. Instead, in what should be a Golden age, we seem to be retreating into those old, rigid ways, spending more on missiles than on the people who need help. I suspect history, and our children children may not be very kind to us for that.

I try to stay fluid, moving and responding, rather than letting the weight of the world turn my heart into a stone that refuses to move. But it’s not easy and perhaps why noticing any harding is important work. Individually, nationally and globally.

We often think of stories as things we read, but sometimes, a story begins to read us… As children, we naturally inhabit the world of myth and narrative. We don’t ask if a story is “objective” or “fact”; we simply feel its weight in our bones. For many of us, the story of Exodus was our first map of power, suffering, and liberation. But as we move into the second half of life, we may find that these old stories start “haunting” us again, not as religious doctrines or historical accounts, but as mirrors of our own inner landscape.

In the following exploration, I am setting aside traditional theology. I am not looking at Exodus as a statement of “belief,” but rather as a dream of the psyche.

I should offer a disclaimer: like all dream analysis, the associations belong primarily to the dreamer. This is my way of taking back a story that was given to me as a child, move by move, and seeing it fresh. If we treat the characters and objects of this story as parts of our own internal world, what do they reveal? What part of us is the “Pharaoh” that refuses to move? What part is the “Israel” crying out for freedom?

This is an attempt to see the story as a process of transformation, a move from the “stone” of ego-control to the “fluidity” of a life lived in the rhythm of grace.

**Exodus as a Dream of the Psyche**

If Exodus is a dream, then “Egypt” is not “out there.” It is a psychic location, a state of consciousness. “Egypt” is the place where order is imposed from above, where productivity is extracted, where identity is defined by function. It is the realm of ego control, survival logic, and fear-based stability. In Jungian terms, it resembles the dominant attitude of the conscious mind: efficient, hierarchical, defensive, and deeply invested in maintaining control.

Pharaoh, then, is not merely a ruler but a principle within the psyche. It is that part which believes stability comes from domination, safety from control, worth from usefulness, that order must be protected at all costs. This is not an evil impulse. It is protective, hardened by repetition. The slavery of “Israel” is not enforced by brute force alone; it is the psychodynamic consequence of living too long under a single ruling principle. When one mode of consciousness becomes absolute, all other aspects of the psyche are reduced to labor.

To leave “Egypt“, therefore, is not to reject structure, discipline, or intelligence. It is to loosen their tyranny. “Egypt” is the place where everything must justify itself: feelings must be useful, compassion must be strategic, rest must be earned, and mystery must be controlled. Leaving “Egypt” is the frightening moment when the psyche dares to believe that not everything that matters can be measured. It is the shift from control to trust, from extraction to participation, from certainty to responsiveness, from stone to flesh. And this is precisely why “Pharaoh” (self) panics. A psyche organized around productivity cannot tolerate gratuitous freedom.

In this dream, “Israel” represents the exiled parts of the psyche… emotion, imagination, vulnerability, longing, grief, memory. These are not weak elements; they are disruptive to rigid systems because they refuse reduction. To leave “Egypt” is to allow these parts to move again. Speech returns. Memory awakens. Desire surfaces. The heart begins to beat to a different rhythm. It does not feel orderly. It feels destabilizing—exactly why the old regime experiences it as a threat.

The crossing of the sea then marks a deeper threshold. It is not triumph but terror. The sea represents the unconscious, and to cross it is to allow the ego to be overwhelmed by forces it cannot command. The waters do not part in advance; they open only in response to movement. There is no proof beforehand. Meanwhile, Pharaoh’s army, old habits, reflexes, and defenses, pursues the psyche into the passage. Even in transformation, the past follows closely behind. What perishes in the sea is not reason or order, but the belief that control is identical with life.

Between “Egypt” and “Promise land” lies the wilderness. Psychologically, it is the liminal space between identities, where old structures no longer function and new ones have not yet formed. There are no monuments here, no economy of productivity, only daily bread, trust and presence. To enter the wilderness is to accept the loss of control, the withdrawal of certainty, and the necessity of dependence. It is no surprise that many, in such a state, long to return to “Egypt“. Slavery with clarity often feels safer than freedom with uncertainty.

Seen this way, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is not punishment but process. It is what occurs when a psychic structure refuses to evolve when, confronted with change, it doubles down on its own rigidity until it becomes brittle. Pharaoh is ego inflated, cut off from the deeper Self, mistaking dominance for wholeness. Leaving “Egypt” is not victory over an enemy; it is grief for a mode of being that once ensured survival but can no longer sustain life. And perhaps this is why the story repeats personally, culturally, spiritually because no one leaves “Egypt” only once.

Within this movement, Moses emerges as a crucial figure: not consciousness itself, but the mediator of structure. He is law-giver, translator, one who shapes the formless into something livable and shared. He brings pattern down the mountain, commandments, boundaries, rituals, distinctions. This makes him indispensable. Yet it also defines his limits. “Moses” belongs to the realm of form. He can lead the psyche out of Egypt, but he cannot fully inhabit what lies beyond structure.

The Promised Land, psychologically, is not a better Egypt. It is a different mode of being altogether, one that cannot be governed by the same tools that enabled escape. “Moses” inability to enter is not punishment but inevitability. What brought the psyche this far cannot accompany it further. When he strikes the rock instead of speaking to it, we glimpse the reflex of force and certainty, methods that once worked but no longer belong. Moses must remain at the threshold: seeing, blessing, releasing.

At this edge comes a final, subtle warning: not to look back. In mythic language, this is not a moral command but a psychological truth. To look back is to attempt to reclaim control, to fix transformation into certainty, to possess what must remain alive. At the threshold, attention itself can collapse the liminal. Certainty hardens what needs to stay fluid. Grasping freezes what must continue to move. The past, if re-grasped, reclaims its authority.

In this light, “Moses” is completed leadership. Every psyche requires such a figure to name what matters, to break the spell of captivity, to orient the journey. But Moses cannot become Joshua. The next movement requires participation rather than mediation, presence rather than instruction. The Promised Land must be lived, not explained.

The deeper truth, perhaps, is this: the journey does not end with leaving “Egypt“. One must also let go of the guide who made that departure possible. Form must yield to life. Structure must soften into relationship. And the land ahead can only be entered by those who no longer need to define it, only to dwell within it.