The Seder is a Seder

On Erev Pesach 5766 (2006), the Rebbe said the following:

The critical underlying cog in the story of human freedom is the concept of seder. Without it, you live as a “responder”; life becomes just a series of demands on your time, energy and gifts. As such, you are never really free. You are enslaved to whatever might be the demand of the moment, be it the demands of the physical body, our fears and ego, or demands made by society and culture. We are so busy doing things just as they come up that we have no sense of where we are going. One needs to be able to pinpoint where they want to go and what steps they need to take in order to get there.

The avodah of the Seder starts with Kadesh. Kadesh means sanctification, consecrating oneself, saying, “I am holy. I am for Hashem.” Divine service starts with a kabolas ol of kedusha, the conviction to say, "I am going toward holiness and I want to get to the ultimate result of Nirtza, that I should be מרוצה to Hashem, that I should be pleasing to Him." We would like, at the end of our service in this world, for Hashem to pronounce over our lives the word Nirtza.

The question is, how do we get there? What are all the steps in between?

During the Seder, one needs to reflect on how this particular step is useful to me in my avodas Hashem in general. What can I learn from Urchatz, Karpas, and all the other steps of the Seder Night and how can I apply it to serve Hashem? You can use information from seforim or you can invent your own original insight, but the goal is to use each one of the simanim of the Seder as a stepping stone to reach the ultimate goal of Nirtza.

(from memory, not a recording)