Our Torah parshah, Miketz, brings us to an auspicious time when Joseph is released from his confinement in prison. He is immediately brought before Pharaoh and asked to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. This release from imprisonment is so sudden and so surprising, that it turns the whole view of Joseph’s life around, lifting him out from all his challenges into the absolute light of becoming the governor of Egypt.

This sudden surprise can remind us that whenever we go through any challenges, without knowing what the outcome will be, we need to trust that there is an overall plan that will eventually benefit us, even though it’s beyond our usual awareness.

In fact, the stories in the Torah unfold to show us how Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, each overcame their many challenges, and ultimately entered into a more peaceful way of being.

In Joseph’s case, it looked like there was no way out for him, and yet the end of his troubles turned into a whole new beginning. The Komarno Rebbe explains that God is in the beginning and in the end. He encourages us to realize that whenever we think we’re at the end, it’s not really the end … there’s already the possibility of a whole new beginning.

As we face anti-semitism and anti-zionism, and all the other violence and suffering that exists in so many places right now, we need to remember that everything is given to us by the higher wisdom of the creative universe. May this secular new year bring us a heartfelt, uplifting time, when we can visibly start to see a more enlightened new beginning of real peace in the world.

This week’s parshah, Vayeshev, is like a blueprint for understanding the way the world works. Life is not simple. It always has challenges, in one way or another. When we see that Joseph is treated cruelly by his brothers, we can relate to the times where life has challenged us. But these challenges are not meant to pull us down—they’re meant to expand our awareness as we overcome them.

As we read about the gradual process of Joseph’s journey, we can see him learning how to respond to his difficulties with patience and understanding. Wherever he is placed is what he has to deal with at that moment, for that period of time. His story teaches us to recognize that as we go through each day’s experience we are building more understanding of our own life’s work. We might think we’re deciding for ourselves how we will express who we are, but this always depends on which opportunities are available at every stage in our life.

No one decides where they’re born or which family they’re born into. Then the opportunities within each country vary depending on the political climate in that country. If we’ve been discriminated against, we have to overcome more challenges than if we’re allowed to develop naturally, in a safe political environment.

Once we realize that this creation of the world is something that we have to learn to relate to, we can respond more readily to whatever is placed in our path. When we understand that we can develop a sense of inner strength, by patiently listening from within, we can deal with challenges in our life much more easily.

The Torah is giving us a route, a path, into a more direct awareness of the structure of our consciousness, so that we can confront our challenges from a clearer recognition of why each difficulty has shown up in our lives.

When we’re ready to delve into the psychological insights that the Torah gives us, on a very subtle level, we can gradually develop a more profound awareness of what we need to do in each situation. Then we’ll be able to realize that we all live within an amazing matrix that is always ready to help us travel through any challenges in our life.

Most of us feel like we know who we are, most of the time. But in this week’s Torah reading, we’re told something different—that there’s more to life than we can at first see. By speaking of Jacob’s struggle with the angel, we can come to understand that there are two levels to who we really are. Jacob is told:

“No longer shall your name be called Jacob; rather, Israel shall be your name. For you have struggled with the divine and with men, and you have prevailed” (Genesis 32:29).

One level of who we are is like Jacob, working to survive the physical reality. The other level is that of Israel, which is the part of us that can come into a higher awareness of the wisdom of the universe. It might take some time to discover this level of awareness, but it can gradually be realized when we take the time to listen for it from within.

However, this does not mean that we change from one level of our self to the other and leave the first level behind. We’re still in both levels. So life challenges us to discover the subtlety of knowing when to be at the earthly level of these two levels and when to relate to life from the higher, more enlightened perspective.