The Zohar makes an interesting point about the plagues that occurred in Egypt: Pharaoh seems to forget about each plague after things return to normal. All the water turns to blood (plague one), but as soon as it is back to water, Pharaoh forgets what happened. Frogs (plague two) infest the land, but as soon as they’re gone, Pharaoh forgets that they were ever there. And so on and so forth.
Now my question is this: Come on, if somebody slapped you seven times, would you really not remember? But the Zohar clarifies the situation. It wasn’t that Pharaoh forgot; it was simply that he reverted back to the place where he had been before that particular plague occurred, a phenomenon that happens to all of us from time to time.
Consider this: How many times have we been whacked by the universe in one way or another, only to revert back to where we were before it all happened? How many times do we fail to heed the lesson that is being presented to us?
We go through the same routines time and time again, and each time the same issue comes up (and it will), we’ll smack our forehead and say, “Darn it, I knew I shouldn’t have gone there. I knew that it was wrong.”
As human beings, we are bound to continually make the same choices and exhibit the same behavior patterns unless we somehow find a way to free ourselves, to elevate ourselves to another level of consciousness.