The Meaning of Exile

When Israel is exiled from its land it is death. This is expressed in Yechezkel's vision of the Dry Bones by the comparison of exile to a cemetery. Yirmiyahu also said "We have been placed in darkness like the eternal dead," on which the Midrash comments that Zion is like a dead person. Death takes a whole body and shreds it. Extending this metaphor to the Jewish people, exile is the state in which we are only living external lives, individual lives. We are no longer one body but ripped apart limbs, disparate parts scattered to the four corners of the earth. The Gaon of Vilna describes the long exile as a body slowly rotting from the outside in until there is nothing left whole.
The result of this is that each person serves Hashem in an external manner as well. And each person is focused only on himself. We lack the ability to view ourselves as our internal selves because of the shredding of the Nation. We view ourselves as independent entities looking out for our own good, both in this world and the World to Come. This self-centered view of Mitzvah observance is part of the curse of exile that results from the loss of an internal life which is only possible when we are reunited in our land. As the Zohar says, "'And who is like your nation Israel, one nation in the land,' they are only called One when in the land."