Rabbi Reuven Kigel - Why Are You Associating Yourself With Negative Thoughts?!

hi everyone Rabbi ruen keigle from Emma College Outreach today we are talking about lanara or like thereof that is uh one of the themes of this week's Torah portion we're reading in the Torah portion in tazan mits so uh it's possible for someone to get an Affliction either their house is going to get an Affliction or their body is going to get an Affliction or their clothing is going to get an Affliction meaning like some kind of red marking some kind of white marking something that makes them stand out and the question becomes what is the reason why this afflictions happening so there's several reasons given but the main one the one we're going to concentrate on today is Lush and Har Lush and Har as sounds is evil speech so now what about evil speech is so bad why does it cause someone an Affliction and then also why don't we have an this same Affliction today well I answer the last question first the reason why we don't have this Affliction day is as you guessed it we'd all be walking around very Afflicted with a lot of spots on ourselves because lanh Hara is probably one of the most difficult things to avoid as a Jew but it's so juicy to talk about gossip to say something negative about someone even if it is true our you know it seems like our hearts desire this right now there's actually newspapers that are devoted to gossip there's columns that are devoted to gossip there's TV shows that are devoted to gossip and uh every aspect of life people are constantly gossiping usually when in some worlds when someone leaves for dinner uh when some people are eating dinner when one of the people leaves you expect everyone's going to be talking about them behind their back so what do we do with that why is this so bad besides the things that you're thinking about besides the regular negativity besides the fact that it doesn't make for such good friendship if someone's always talking about other people behind their back there's another reason you see our mind is constantly working and our mind constantly is thinking I think a famous philosopher said I think therefore I am so now when you're speaking lanar lanar means negative speech so that means you're looking for negativity in things you're looking at the negative aspect of things so now once you realize okay you know what L and Har negative speech is something I'm not supposed to say then things change what happens now your mind since since it still has to work starts looking for positive things to say about people so instead of looking for negative things to say instead of saying like oh that person what's wrong with them you say oh that person let me tell you what's right with them and then when you start looking at the positive things about people then you start looking at all the positive aspects of your own life you start looking at all the positive aspects of the world about you and what happens is that you become a really positive person instead of being a negative person so now when there's five things in front of you and five things seem pretty good and five things seem pretty bad instead of ultimately uh instead of right away looking at the five things that seem bad you start looking at the five things that seem good and so when you stop speaking L you stop concentrating on the negative you stop concentrating on what's wrong you start concentrating on what's right and when you do that you become an ultimately happier person and that's exactly what Hashem wants from us he wants us to be super happy and one great way to be super happy is to concentrate on the positive and when you stop saying things that are negative then your mind since it's still working automatically concentr starts concentrating on the positive so everyone should have a tremendous Shabbat and should look at all the positive things in their life shabbat shalom