The Case for Living Unaligned
Do I do what doesn’t feel good, or do I commit only to what feels aligned with my inner truth? We live in a culture that prizes alignment above all else, authenticity, resonance, inner harmony. And yet, I want to make the case for something counterintuitive: the spiritual necessity, and even the holiness, of living unaligned. Not in the sense of being false or dishonest, but in the sense of moving through realities that do not fully match who we are on the inside.
The Baal Shem Tov’s foundational teaching of Hashgacha Pratis, Divine Providence, gives us the framework to understand this. Nothing in life is accidental. Every encounter, setback, humiliation, and detour is precisely orchestrated.
The Midrash teaches that Yosef’s descent to Egypt was entirely driven by G-d’s will. The exile of the Jewish people had already been foretold to Abraham, and if necessary, Yaakov himself would have been brought down to Egypt in chains. Yosef’s descent was arranged so that Yaakov would instead arrive as the honored father of the viceroy of Egypt. The sale, the journey, and the suffering were all instruments of Divine design. Yosef was not merely a victim of circumstance; he was the conduit through which destiny entered history.
Yet the manner of Yosef’s descent mattered profoundly. He did not go to Egypt as a willing agent fulfilling a Divine command. He was carried there by events beyond his control. Because of this, his inner self remained unexiled. His body was in Egypt, but his soul never left home. That distinction shaped everything that followed, allowing Yaakov to descend with dignity and preserving the spiritual stature of the entire family.
Would Yosef have listened had G-d told him explicitly to go? Without question. But had that happened, the descent would have claimed the totality of who he was. His inner sanctity would have entered exile along with his outer life. Instead, by being brought down unwillingly, Yosef preserved a protected inner core, pure, whole, and untouched.
This teaches us that we, too, are made of layers: an outer self that must engage the world, and an inner self that must be guarded. There are moments when alignment is not the goal, when full inner consent would actually be a spiritual loss. Living unaligned can itself be an act of faith, moving forward because life demands it, while quietly refusing to let the circumstance define who we are. In a world governed by Hashgacha Pratis, even our discomfort and resistance can become instruments of redemption, not despite them, but because of them.
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