The enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians and their exodus from the land of Egypt have a dual meaning, depending on whether we look at it from a macrocosmic or a microcosmic standpoint.
If we view exile as a microcosmic feature–on this level, the concept of exile no longer bears a relationship to history.
It is no longer in the realm of time, but rather within the individual himself.
Instead of being an event, exile becomes an experience every individual must go through during the course of his or her life.
Exile is an experience we live through, and the cycle of the Jewish year is its model, its framework, and its locus.
This cycle creates a parallel between external, or "objective," time and time as we experience it.
It calls upon the individual to relive history within himself.
This specific inner experience of time bears much in common with development on a biological level.
According to biologists, every individual relives the course of development of homo-sapiens from its beginnings.
Similarly each of us individually relives the historical evolution of the Jewish people.
Thus on a microcosmic level exile is an individual experience and a certain way of living one's life.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Seven Lights, p. 105, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz