Rabbi Yom Tov Practical Spirituality: Truth

Shalom everybody and welcome to practical spirituality here in the old city of Jerusalem in Asia tour overlooking the Temple Mount today we're talking about truth truth is a very unpopular word nobody likes too much truth as I will continue speaking you'll start to get more and more uncomfortable so I apologize in advance we have a human beings have a really negative relationship with truth and because we're all meaning making machines meaning you can't help but make meaning out of everything in fact even while I'm speaking right now you're all just stunned because you're like how am I supposed to make meaning out of those like what cuz it's not easy to make meaning out of real life coming at you all the time so so you don't even know what I'm saying right now we're just fine but because you're such a meaning making machine that all the parts of your life that are not true you build hush gufa around it you will actually create a worldview that it will fit into the lies that you tell yourself and others did you get that back there you you got that part you can repeat that for everybody please just kidding the but i'ma say it again anyway in case you missed it and whatever part of your life is not true meaning all the lies you tell yourself and others is what you do is you you fabricate a worldview that supports it you'll just create a worldview that supports it and and then everything seems to fit into the to the bluff of your life you know which is one big bluff from every aspect from your diet to your self-image to your looks to your weight to you name it it's all part of one big fat lie and not only that but your even your even your Judaism's probably mostly a lie not that not that the observance of Terror is a lie but your relationship to it is probably filled with all kinds of knucklehead crazy things that you've made up for why your e-wallet why you keep Shabbos or why you do what you do or why you keeping kosher like you why you dress modestly I mean you've probably got a million knucklehead reasons why you've made up about this that have nothing to do with real truth so even your Judaism's not really based in truth and so and then there's the whole and I mentioned already self-image but self-image is the probably the furthest from the truth is your own self-image of yourself is it's highly underestimated meaning those of you which is all of us myself included all those of us had myself those of us who think of ourselves as really unnecessary not very smart not needed uninteresting stupid ugly boring lost weak and worthless all of that extreme underestimation of ourselves is awesome one more you know divergence from our truth which is what's really true about you which we all know is you're actually created in the image of God I mean you're you're great you're awesome but how many of you are walking around feeling that way about yourself you know almost nobody and then and then the other part of you which is like the the ballooned up part of you that has you all ballooned up to think you're really great like you're the best thing since sliced bread is probably also not very true what's great about you isn't what you think's great what's great about you is the real inherent stuff that you don't even recognize like the real truth inside you that truth of how awesome you are is the part that's amazing it's just that you're probably ballooned up you know all kinds of other areas compensating for the negativities that you say about yourself aren't you guys happy we are discussing truth today yeah yes it was his idea you all have him to blame for this subject but as I said you'll be getting more and more uncomfortable as I go but but it will be refreshing in the end to maybe have some access to truth that will give you a really happy life because the truth is quite great the truth is really amazing and then of course you have moods Richards no good for truth because when you're in an exaggerated Lehigh mood you know you're just you're like on glue or something like you've been sniffing glue like you're you're not at all in the real world and and then when you're in a low mood where you're seeing everything is black it's not black so you're also very far from truth when it comes to moods so it's like we have no access to anything true really and then you might think well Tara you're learning tour in yeshiva in these days which is Shiva simcha you're learning with me have I met no I saw you there you came enjoying this I was wondering if you're gonna join us dance in there and you did and that made me happy it was kind of weird to be the only guy not dancing but so you just jumped right into this game nice and welcome with him so both I thought I don't know and I hate a minute when I'm shocked oh I wasn't expecting the one guy asked where he learns this where I learn more fees law you know what's your name Yom Tov nice to meet you it's a pleasure what should I sing good read from get to know the guy but uh nice nice from Milan great awesome live in nothing great me too welcome for a third meals and stuff everyone's welcome to third meal anyway which makes you feel really special I'm sure so truth so yeah so even your relationship to Terra like you might say well hey you know in Sim you know I'm learning tire it like that's got to be true that's not true because your your the lenses you're wearing by the time you are like have any relationship to the huzzah you know who are actually explaining Torah to us cuz Torrez like completely it's unintelligible I mean there's every single word has 70 possible meanings so good luck getting anywhere with that without cause all now cos all put it together for us as best as they can but that's of course only as best they can who knows what the truth is of the 70 meetings of every word I've you have 10 words with 70 meanings where we act with possible meanings of that sentence any mathematicians here 10 words 700 no it's some crazy another yeah so you want to say like your relationship to Torah there well that's true isn't it well I don't know and then and then there's of course well you can read hard scroll isn't that true no that's that was however many rabbis were big scholars who sat together and said these are translating it would be impossible but what if we all sat together and mold over each sentence to have the least misunderstanding like how can we create the least misunderstanding of the Torah okay they give me a relation Betar but let's just say hypothetically that you actually got a sentence of Tara to understand and you do understand it meaning you learned all 70,000 possibilities of those ten words and now you know them all and we tested you you know everything on that guess what you still have your own your own way of looking at things well how do you know the way you look at things has anything to do with truth I doubt it does I doubt it does I'd know mine doesn't I know I look at things in the way I want it I'm twisting it towards all the other things I ever learned you know what if I learned something that's so out of the box of everything else I've ever learned that it it causes me cognitive dissonance to add that because that would change everything so I'm gonna learn it in a way that works for me and how many of us are learning everything so that it works for us so what is our relationship with Tara are we uncomfortable enough with this discussion yeah especially there conservative and reform skinny little jab that I didn't you guys have been to a lot of my god I never mentioned serving for him right you ever heard me never comes out you can be in my class for three years it was just a joke that I couldn't help but tell ya I'm sorry [Music] yeah for sure but David and I'm with you on that night I also think that's the beauty however like like if there's got to be a real truth there I mean part of truth is there's a real truth and we're always gonna be in a version of it we're all gives meaning in truth version seven point six you know based on our experience no we're just having in our relationship to truth no okay so that was our introduction to the subject of truth I hope you liked it now let's move on in let's let's see where we can go with this whole truth business you do have a relationship with truth you really do it I'll give you some examples um anyone here brush their teeth at least once a day okay okay now I'd just like you to say truth cuz it covered cuz it's true okay I wouldn't try that cuz it's true okay very good here we go I'll point to you and your job is to say cuz it's true ready okay I'm gonna point to this student the back in the Patagonia well I didn't ask the question you do brush your teeth at least daily didn't ask oh whoa oh I get it you say yes why excellent excellent and you sleep once in a while right because if you don't sleep you know the immune system goes down and then you like get susceptible to a million different things yeah so why do you sleep cuz it's true if you don't sleep you're in trouble right um you eat a couple times a day yeah why excellent right cuz you don't eat man you're in trouble so so we're doing a lot a lot of stuff cuz it's true so we do have access to truth meaning the beginning the intro of this class was that you don't have any access to truth they chapter two of this class is you have a lot of access to truth and in fact you're learning all the time what is true and one of those things is wearing a seat belt in a car or a helmet on a bicycle or a motorcycle these are all truths and looking both ways before you cross the street these are truths so when it comes to survival or at least physical survival we have a lot of truth that were involved in um also I think a lot of people have the humility and certainly people in this room have the humility to know that they don't really know on their own and therefore they're referring or deferring to Torah and the wise sages of history to guide them raise your hand here if someone's guiding you right now like and not me teaching I'm saying like you actually have someone kind of holding your hand through life whether it's a Rebbe a Rebbetzin a counselor someone wise grandma raisin have you got someone guiding you right now like really guiding you excellent excellent and and so that that's part of the truth you let me know over people who couldn't raise their hand right then you're on your own you know which is not a good idea and by the way you have one of the reasons people don't have guys they're afraid what if it's not really the right guide but there's nothing wrong with having a temporary guide until you find a better one but going guide 'less is not so smart if you want it you want to have someone guiding your way and it's also really important I mean I have a whole class on this on YouTube called finding a rough finding a rub on YouTube it's a one-hour class how to find a guide in your life and but one of the one of the pitfalls is if they can't have an agenda for you meaning if their agendas like you're happily married one day that's okay but other than that like no real agendas they have to be willing to allow the wildness of your soul to develop you know and and that may mean pretty out of the blue kind of out there advice but there's a lot of guides who aren't true guides and they're always covering their tracks cuz they don't want to ever get back to them that you know they led you on some wild journey you know but but you want to anyway there's a whole class on that it's an hour class on YouTube called finding a rough and it really kind of puts it puts all the parameters of what it means to guide somebody for real and let them make their own mistakes and but at the same time be be a net for them when they're making those mistakes and and obviously helping them avoid those mistakes but also not taking away free will all kinds of details yes right well that's the danger of it is though non guides will will be picking out uh stuff of their gonna guide you towards their hush gafas those are non guides by the way you may like someone so stuff up I've been to Shabbos it was where I was like I love this place like this is the energy and so I made them part of my guidance because I wanted to shop a stable like that you understand but I was totally picking up and they're not true guides they were just I said you know what I'm taking these people for guidance cuz I want somehow my shop establish and wind up like this Java stable inside got really close to the family and let the rub of the family guide mean a lot of aspects of my life cuz it is picking a scuff of it but that's not true guidance a true guide there's no escape you know like for example my guide my guide is you know I mean he's super hardcore I mean this is a Kabbalistic sleeps 2 hours a day only eats the food that keeps his body alive he's been going like this for like 40 years and he doesn't sleep Thursday nights and doesn't sleep Chavez night so I don't know if you call that 2 hours a day but he just is a totally Murr he's a total Merlin and he's a and he's one of the great masters of our generation of the rum hall the kiss faerie and The Ballad Tanya who's all his writings are the most Kabbalistic level it was before Chabad really got on his feet this is just the the one who sat at the magnet station Europe the pallet Tanya anyway he's one of the Masters in our generation of all those works not to mention a how--look how look like you know opposing I love him he's huge but he's very reclusive Nona has ever heard of him don't even knows who he is he is secret and he's my little secret I found and I've never left second I met him most like this is it and I'm with him now 24 years and the anyway but there's no hush kapha Noah's cuff up what you do I did I did and I'm a pin scar little closer we're in the gold zebra you know robe on Chavez and and I'm part of that as cuff I chose a scuffle my guide is not from there not from there nothing to do with the place hush cuffing means world view like choose a community that shares more or less your view I just want to mention while we're on that and then we'll go back to the true thing but this relates is that you need a community for anyone here not raised observant or raised lit fish you need a community you actually need a community and but especially Bali to Anita community and meaning if you raise the lid for your raise let's fish okay you can survive without a community it's fine you know it's enough you guys are together on simplest or whatever whenever everyone's together once a year or at a bris or something I don't know when they get together you know but the but for Bali chewer to be community Lissa's it's that's so good it's not good for the kids kids need to feel part of something because you don't really have the generations to show they can't go over to bubby in zaydis house you know and get bounced on the knee of a white bearded man and you know which with which in in the other communities you've got that or a non community yeshiva community where they at least got does a tea with the beard and and so that helps the kids a lot so if someone's raised non-observant its conduct it makes sense to have a community so the kids get context to life because you can't teach a kid Torah kids start tour at like 10 11 12 maybe you know eight they're starting Mishnah but really not anywhere with it so you're gonna wait 10 years to start training your child that's not gonna be very good you want you want them in a community where this community experience happening all around them so they feel part of something but by the time they start being able to learn with their father understanding to give them that connection that you could give them just needs they need a connection before that to the traditions without you know they need all the thousands of years wrapped up in the glowing eyed white bearded members of the community that you know if they're nice we'll take you in and make you feel the part of things while I'm on that subject don't overdo it though because because if you overdo it you can never pretend to be raised observant and if you overdo it it puts your kids in a very uncomfortable position of dad dad the faker and and so you know they got they got the faker dad and it's he was trying to be like everybody but you can never do it there's no way to join the observant community never look normal you'll never be normal and you should it's a blast you should love it and they love you so much more for who you are than anything you they would ever love you for pretending you're like them you understand like they'll pat you on the back that make you feel good that you pronounce something right for a change but um that's not why they love you you understand they love you for who you are they don't love you for fact you're able to pretend you're one of them and and it's really not good for your children cuz children see through bluffing parents so we're kind of on truth right now that's what this is truth you know be be yourself all the way and don't go against the community need to be part of things but be yourself part of things your kids will find their own way yeah so so back to our connection the truth is we have guides we also we also we do have torah study and we we have the chance to to put as much tor as possible into our minds in our hearts to guide us so that so there is an access to truth big-time big-time there and but the the and what i'd like to what i'd like to focus on those your is your own relationship to yourself as being true is to see yourself as awesome like let's try that together everyone on three say i am awesome but would like all your heart with all your heart i am awesome now for those of you think that's ego-oriented it's not ego oriented to say anything else is like spitting at your maker you're creating in his image so if you're not awesome then he's not awesome and you're saying god's not awesome he didn't make you awesome thank you you are amazing you are awesome so let's try i'm awesome okay with all your having one two three i am awesome i totally didn't buy that that was not it at all yeah let's try that again we're doing i am awesome but with enthusiasm and heart okay okay maybe would try it with our eyes closed to you're not embarrassed in front of me I'll close my eyes to it okay everyone close your eyes your eyes aren't closed I can feel you looking okay ready one two three I am awesome take a breath will do one more heartfelt one one two inhale three I am awesome breath I'm putting up the eyes did you close your eyes the anyway the how many of you felt it to your core and rage I felt your core raise your hand if you felt like you were like that was a joke okay okay felt it to your core raise your hand that's okay that was a joke and the rest you are lying okay all right so what I'm gonna ask everyone to do is to is to put up a white flag of surrender I want you to surrender between a battle what is that battle it's the battle between who you are and who you say you are a battle between who you are which is awesome and who you say you are which we're not getting into here yeah I don't want to even hear which who you say you are you know and probably half of it you don't even hear so what you do is is we're gonna surrender we have to surrender to truth I mean in the end we're all going to a place called olam Emmis the world of truth we're all gonna be shown up there you have a question in the context word in right now which is super broad it's every aspect no I don't really but let me give it a shot it stands up its Stanton truth would stand up in every situation every attack every no matter what it would be it would it would survive it truth would survive every situation like for example Torah being true would survive Hawking's or Steven Hawkings or what's that guy's name Adam no who's the famous atheist who's on YouTube what Duncan's dead who's the young guy since of meditation and psychedelics Sam Harris thank you tor would survive that if we can't survive that so then it's questionable you understand it has to survive atheist websites now you're you're hemming and hawing over that cuz you're thinking of the flood the flood doesn't have to be a physical flood Torah has to be true like I'm teaching a class next hour for the gusher program here in Discovery it doesn't matter who you are walking in the door that class every single person leaves that class knowing for 100% fact that a human being did not write the Torah that it was not written by him by a human well that doesn't leave a lot of other options I mean possibly another intelligence is playing a fast one on us and did a whole Torah and prophecy and Sinai and Moses and Jews crossing the desert and you understand but Torah being true it's it's either stands up to it or or or it's not true not everyone's equipped to deal with those questions and also and also there's a diffuse thinking that you may not be aware of in your own way of thinking what's your name Ellie you mind that we're having this dialogue you're cool with this dialogue yeah so Ellie there might be a diffuse way of thinking that's also part of access to truth what I mean by that is that there's a diffuse way of thinking would be for example remember I mentioned the flood so so a literal flood that flooded the earth with more water than exists in the in our universe not our universe but who knows what's out there in the universe but on our earth in our atmosphere a flood that flooded the earth with more water than exists doesn't have to be taken literally for tour to be true do you know why do you know why the flood didn't have to happen literally for a tour to be true you don't know so I'll answer quickly okay you want the answer Li you everything good okay does anyone else want the answer I thought you don't have to have a flood happen for tour to be true you want the answer so so the Torah itself meaning this combination of letters here in Hebrew that combination of letters has absolutely nothing to do with what the translators or even the even what let's say you're a master of Torah the actual what's called shot lemma of Torah those letters may or may not have anything to do with anything in the physical world for example the tour is counting days when the sun's created on the fourth day what's that supposed to mean a day for everyone no everyone knows a day is the relationship between the Earth and the Sun so a day can't be less than or more than the 24 hours it takes for the earth to spin when with the Sun there in you have to have a relative body of you have to have a relative luminarie and call that a day so tor is already counting days before there's a Sun what's that supposed to mean what are you supposed to do with that oh now it's not true it's already not true in the first chapter you understand like the very very beginning of tor it's already not true because the Sun is created on the fourth day and why is it using the word days what are Dave's weird days without us in when I study Kabbalah le and I'm you know we're doing our all-night work Thursday nights when we would learn late you're welcome to join by the way it's almost unintelligible but you can certainly jump in my van and join me it's it's amazing just being in the presence of the teacher even though you it's hard to understand it gets more understandable later in the night but early starts super cabbalistic when we're learning the parsha like the parts of the week like for example last week was parses Vieira and the piece we were learning did reflect the story so that was cool but so many times I'm learning the parsha with him and I keep looking up at the top of the book cuz it tells you what parsh your own thank you thank you I look at the Rebbe I'm like what does this have to do with the parsha and he's like this is the parsha it's just inside inside inside inside we're in it inside we're on that code level where right now we are in string theories we're in we're in combinations of letters it's it's a code our world this physical world is the outer edge of an entire gigantic matrix of spiritual realities parallel universes of how light becomes matter so the Torah is creating that entire system all the way down to this place so what is a flood and we're Adam and Eve on this earth if Torres true and the answer is no they weren't they were in a realm called youth serie till they denied eating the fruit when they denied eating the fruit they were punished and God hid himself what does God hid himself he's playing hide and seek God went and hid under a basement in a basement somewhere know what it meant was God chunked the world down another notch into a world called ASEA our world God put the world down in the world of ASEA this world which is called hiding because now you can't see him but when you read the story the Garden of Eden days and they're clearly a Garden of Eden no there's for sure Garden of Eden juxtaposed in our world that would be juxtaposed to it and there's even cobblers who know where it is somewhere near a rock or something and so it's the juxtapose place to that world so what exactly was the flood we don't know we have no idea but you it's an extremely immature view and an overly focused view not a diffuse view but a way overly focused in an erroneous view to judge Torah by whether or not a flood happened you understand that I think when you're talking about a book that is that is that is layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of depth all of it code all of it code every single word of it is just code there's even those who found the periodic table you know the periodic chart hydrogen oxygen although with their pure there they have an atomic number of their atoms so they actually does someone who found the exact correlation of the atomic numbers with the counting of the Jews leaving Egypt that the atomic numbers are matching up the atomic numbers of the periodical tail are matching up with the numbers of the Jews who left Egypt meaning because you how many of you have been sitting there in shul during the Book of Numbers about me bar you just like I'm gonna pull my hair out listening to like counts over and over again like why do they keep counting these people who cares and I not to mention we just had Genesis where it tells it doesn't simple math for us it tells us how long he lived till he had someone and then how long he lived after he had him and then it says in all the years of his life were I mean can do man I don't need you to tell me that over and over again for every single person for ten generations when when we're taught there's not one extra letter or word in the Tarot this book is unintelligible in its encoding and what it's up to we have no idea what it's up to it repeats the whole entire thing of what's in the temple I think everything gets repeated for a book that has no extra letters I mean that's quite a read from quite an extra an entire to parshas of repeat so we can never engage whether this is true on on YouTube atheist website atheist websites YouTube videos we ain't nobody's food and I always feel bad that uh what's that Jewish guy with the key pose of politically fighting with everybody's conservative ben shapiro that dude should not be defending terra I mean I thought he was just great at defending everything else but should be defending Terra cuz that's the answer you should just go straight to the answer that we're not gonna discuss it because because it's not something that you can even get near but he'll actually try to discuss it and it sometimes looks really bad and when you're talking to a guy like what was his name again sam harris you kind of look like a fool I would not leave a Sam Harris interview looking like a fool he would have to agree in the end he's very smart he would say okay if that's what you're saying we don't we can't discuss it that's like okay great let's not discuss it but we're not gonna make tor or those who keep it look like a fool in the end and the kids no dummy by the way Ben Shapiro is brilliant but I think he spent more time studying other things than cobble up from what I can tell okay everyone and that was our truth today it was kind of a weird day I'm also having a weird I totally woke up on the wrong side of the universe today I apologize I only got like a little more dynamic in like the last ten minutes but I really felt like like I didn't have much of a pulse today not just in your class the whole day shall I may run that's a local rapper [Music]