The Prophecy

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

THE PROPHECY
The Midrash goes on to say, “One day Nimrod’s astrologists
approached the throne reverently and prostrated before the
king. ‘Oh, great lord,’ they proclaimed, ‘We come with news
of great peril which threatens your rule. The stars foresee
that a boy will soon be born in your kingdom who shall
deny your divinity and shall defeat you.’”
Nimrod’s astrologists are your own fear, dear reader,
which exists within the ego itself. The fear is that something
may shake your foundation, your Nimrod. This fear is
always driving your ego to worry about its fulfillment and
prosperity, seeking more stuff, bigger stuff, newer stuff. And
yet, this perpetual drive to fulfill yourself ultimately brings
you to a point where a “boy is born” inside you that will one
day defeat Nimrod.
Who is this boy who will be born inside you? It is the
budding of the next degree. It arises from that same Nimrod,
from your “I,” which suddenly begins to understand that
being a Nimrod is nothing but misery. All of a sudden you
realize that your life is far from cloudless, since you’re always

concerned: concerned with building yourself on the ruin
of others, with protecting your “I” from attacks, and with
staying on top, on your throne.
At the same time, you cannot destroy everyone who
threatens you. Otherwise, whom will you dominate?
It follows that your ego is completely and absolutely
dependent on those in your environment, and we see many
examples of this. For instance, take movie stars or other
celebrities flashing their perfect smiles—a testament to their
absolute happiness. But is that really so? For all of their
massive incomes, they are still very much dependent on the
press, on their producers and directors, and on the public—
in short, on everyone around them. They often break under
the pressure and lapse into drug or alcohol dependencies in
a desperate attempt to find a way out of the cage that their
own egos landed them in.
“Nimrod” is in power, demanding to always be
worshipped. “Do whatever it takes to make others respect
you,” your ego keeps murmuring.
You cannot destroy your environment. You cannot erase
their “I.” And even if you could, you wouldn’t, because then
you’d have no one to rule over. After all, you neither can nor
want to demonstrate your superiority to a herd of cows. No,
you need to be surrounded by intellectuals; it is them you
want, not a herd of cows bowing down before you. Only then
does the ego thrive. It follows that your Nimrod is incredibly
dependent on other people. He must support them, pay
them, nurture them, and at the same time, oppress them.
Indeed, the ego rises precisely when it oppresses others.
Hence, the next degree of the ego’s (Nimrod’s) development

in you is when it begins to recognize its own dependence,
vulnerability, and fragility.
This process is called “the recognition of evil in Nimrod.”
It is when you finally get the feeling that your freedom is
somehow restricted.
You are dependent on everybody else. That is the
problem of kings, presidents, and whoever else might be
in power. But in reality, it is the problem of every person.
You must always build a pyramid around you, but in a way
that always keeps you on top. You need to have the respect
of your children, wife, relatives, co-workers, passengers on
the bus or other means of public transportation, even your
neighbor’s dog barking at you. But how long can you keep
up with this game?!
So your next degree is Abraham. He is freedom, he is
ascent, he is the revolutionary idea that comes to you after
all the suffering, and the discoveries that bestowal, not
reception, must be the sole purpose of your existence. He
wants to deny and discard all the lies and excesses! This is
the new degree arising in you, in your Nimrod.
It follows that Abraham cannot exist without Nimrod.
Nimrod is the degree preceding Abraham. Nimrod is the
exorbitant ego that realizes that its ultimate destiny is selfdestruction,
unless it can find a new system of fulfillment,
that is, unless it can rise above itself.
Now let us continue our story. “One day Nimrod’s
astrologists approached the throne reverently and prostrated
before the king.” Who are Nimrod’s astrologists? They are
forces in your ego that vow that you cannot continue living
as you were. They are intermediary states that predict,


foresee, and anticipate the next degree that Abraham
should become.
So, the astrologists inside you are the intermediary state
between Nimrod and Abraham.
“The stars foresee that a boy will soon be born in your
kingdom who shall deny your divinity and shall defeat you.”
What do the “stars” symbolize? These are the forces of your
inner development. It is useless to resist them. It will be as
they say, even if you are King Nimrod himself. You cannot
circumvent them. Sooner or later, one way or the other,
egoism will give way to altruism, and you will be happy. You
will reveal the spiritual world and accept its laws. That is the
only goal they’re guiding you toward, no matter what you
do—they will get you there!
Nimrod turned to his ministers. “What protective
measures do you suggest?” The answer came quickly,
“Issue a decree to have all newborn boys put to death!” “A
wonderful suggestion! Call a meeting of architects. I shall
issue an order to construct special houses that will keep all
the pregnant women. We need to make sure that only girls
are left alive.”
Fear not, dear reader, but keep on trying to get at the inner
meaning of what is going on here. To start with, let us clarify
that “son” or “boy” in Hebrew is Ben. The word Ben comes
from the word Mevin—“understanding” or “attainment.”
Attainment of what? The new degree. And that is what
Nimrod fears so much. That is what poses a threat to his
power. To protect itself, the ego must eradicate attainment,
allegorically expressed in killing newborn boys.
“We need to make sure that only girls are left alive.”
Girls, daughters, the feminine part in you, is the
personification of the desire to receive. This is why your
Nimrod is so fond of the notion of women giving birth to
girls. In other words, the more new desires appear in you,
the more they will add to Nimrod’s glory and add to his
growing authority and dominion—and that’s something
Nimrod has no problem with.
What he does have a problem with is another method of
fulfilling the desires, a new method for receiving pleasure
that is born in the form of Abraham.
Let us try to step outside ourselves for a moment and
examine ourselves. Our desires grow, meaning that girls are
born to us. But one day we notice that the desires change
qualitatively. We are no longer satisfied with the previous
fulfillments. It is no longer enough to plop down on the
couch with a beer and watch TV. Wealth no longer brings
the same satisfaction. The pleasure of being a big boss grows
stale, and the achievements and acquisitions from before no
longer fulfill our desires!

This means that our desires not only grew, but changed in
quality, and now we want a different kind of fulfillment. We
want it, but fear it at the same time because we understand
that it will turn our lives entirely upside down. That’s
Nimrod rebelling within us! That is how he concludes that
all similar thoughts must be destroyed.
But can he destroy them? From our Nimrod, from our
very own unfulfilled ego rises a new generation, and this
process cannot be stopped!

The girls (desires) and boys (ways of fulfilling them) that
are born within us pertain to a new degree. In Kabbalah, it
is called the degree of Bina within us. Bina is the degree of
bestowal, love, and mercy. Through this process we learn
that at this degree we can feel infinitely more pleasure. In
fact, we can feel infinity itself.

Listen to your inner Nimrod. It is telling you, “Fine, I’m
willing to bestow. I will do it, but only because it will give me
pleasure.” “I will feel good,” Nimrod thinks to himself, “I
will use this part of Bina that’s in me, this degree of bestowal
and infinite pleasures, but I will use it for my own benefit. I
will bestow, sure, but only because it serves my interests!”
This is called “using the spark of love,” the Creator’s
spark, which exists in all of us, but for our own benefit. This
is what “killing the sons” means, receiving the entire Light—
all of the tremendous energy of an ascent—for the sake of
your own satisfaction.

But as it turns out, it’s a doomed endeavor, and the
Nimrod inside you is about to realize his folly. He still hasn’t
realized it, and so he welcomes the birth of girls (desires of
the new degree), but fights tooth and nail to prevent the
birth of Abraham—a new manner of their fulfillment. For
now, he still thinks that his plan will work.
Terah, one of Nimrod’s most esteemed nobles, asked
jokingly, “You don’t plan to put my own wife into one of
these buildings, do you? She is pregnant as we speak.”
“We weren’t talking about your household, Terah,” the
king assured him, “for you are the most trusted of all my
ministers.”

Terah is “one of the most esteemed nobles,” Nimrod’s
right hand, Nimrod’s ideologist, the ego’s ideologist. So, the
ego inside you grows, and the Terah inside you must find a
new way to manage this growing ego in a way that you can
continue to feel pleasure.


Terah represents the method of fulfilling a desire.
Therefore, we need to spend a little time on the man called
Terah, the ego’s ideologist, to understand how he could
beget the Abraham inside you.