What We Can’t See Can Hurt Us: The Plague of Lice

Let me guess, as soon as you read that word, you started to itch?! There is really no way of speaking about lice without becoming uncomfortable. And if you have ever been infected with lice you know exactly why it is so miserable.

Now, even saying that, it still begs the question how it is severe enough to be considered a plague. Water turning into blood is pretty intense. Less so than that we have endless frogs taking over the habitat both inside and outside. But lice? Sure it is uncomfortable, annoying and extremely difficult to get rid of, yet a plague?

Once again we must understand what lice are, what they do and what they represent. For starters, they are practically invisible to the naked eye. Lice are able to blend with the hair and scalp becoming almost impossible to see. And they are fast. Man are they fast. Even when you spot one, by the time you have parted the hair to get it, the thing is gone. And they of course reproduce at alarmingly fast rates so if you think you can wait till the next day to deal with them, you will be sorry.

Lest you think they just affect you, they are extremely contagious. They do not jump like the frogs but rather crawl. So while they are on you, chances are they will be all over you. And as scavengers and parasites they feed off of skin suck the blood, slowly but surely, from their host.

Gross. I know. Of course, they also itch like crazy but even worse, they make you wonder if you are not actually crazy. See the thing is that once you have lice or are around someone with lice, you itch even when they are gone. You lose your ability to trust yourself and determine if you are actually experiencing something or only thinking that you are. To put it simply, lice represent mind games, doubts, insecurities and all other negative thoughts that are invisible to others but debilitating when we are plagued with them.

With the first plague, everyone could see the Nile turn to blood. With the second plague, the frogs were everywhere so there was do denying them. But the lice? This was something that attacked the individual, not the surroundings. And so each and every Egyptian had to deal with it directly and personally.

If you have ever dealt with lice you know that as difficult as it is to have it, it is even more difficult to get rid of it. Because they lay their eggs everywhere, anything that could have been affected must be boiled or separated. And since they reproduce so quickly, each and every nit (egg) must be found and killed as well. For the purpose of this article we will only deal with head lice. And on the head, the lice crawl along the scalp and deposit their eggs at the root of the hair. Therefore, in order to remove each and every one must be sought out and taken away. And they stick. They are not easy to remove. It requires time, patience and checking over and over again.

In our lives, we all have negative thoughts or situations that we try to ignore. We sometimes hope or think that if we just don’t give it too much attention, it will go away. But the lice remind us that when something external to who we are and how we should be attaches to us, it must be found and removed. And that will take effort. These things attach and stick. Right at the root, the foundation. But if we don’t seek them out, they will only reproduce and continue to affect how we think and perceive the world around us.

More so, we get rid of them with intense heat. Through boiling. When there is something negative, pessimistic and unhealthy aiming to get us…combat it with warmth, love and light. The plague of frogs showed us what coldness and apathy can achieve. So we must never forget the power of combatting that with heat. The heat of our emotions, our intellect and our spirituality can ultimately destroy those invisible, yet awful, hard-to-see parasites that try to stick to our heads.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/plagues-of-the-heart-and-mind-part-5/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/plagues-of-the-heart-and-mind-part-3/

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