Divine SUNSET meditation | Tanya & Meditation Part 3

This is the third week in a series of classes on Tanya meditation that we've been doing. If you haven't been here for the previous two weeks, it's fine. They're basically standalone classes. Uh the basic premise is that we just finished as a group, we just finished the 53 chapters of volume one of Tanya. There are a lot of meditations in Tanya, particularly in chapters 41 through 50. When we were going through the study of Tanya, we learned what the meditations were, but we didn't like stop and actually practice those meditations. Um, now that we finished Tanya, at least the first volume of Tanya. So, we're using this opportunity to go back and to take a slower look at the meditations and to actually even do them in a semi guided format. Um so that's what we're doing right now. Uh last week we spoke about the three levels or the three rungs on the ladder of meditation. You remember that? Just to quickly review there is the limudis that happens in conjunction with study. You study a subject and then after you study the subject you close the book and you process the information and make sure that you're connecting to what it says. meaning the meaning the the the ideas. Then there's something called pre- prayer meditation where you're connecting on a more emotional level. You're connecting to the energy of the idea as opposed to the to the content or the the intellectual content. And then we had his the meditations happening while you're praying. which is um much more of a getting lost in the idea in the godliness and the infinity of the idea sort of a surrender to the idea coming one with the idea um why am I mentioning that because probably what we're going to do is going to be level one I mean yeah I have two questions first of all where do vape us fall into this Vegas is and I just want to qualify when I give definitions of terms I'm defining them as they are used in the system of kabad which was founded by the alterba the balatana okay so other people may use these terms differently that's fine there's no trademark on these words is a state is a state of of mind and and really of soul where one literally feels attachment vas to be dovok means to be attached so it's a state of uh being profoundly connected to godliness would be uh a product of meditation does that answer your question. All right. Oh, okay. The meditation that we do bits feel we become like subsumed in the godliness. So I'm a little confused because I thought the point was to bring the boiness down to the physical as opposed to lose our Well, you ask a wonderful question which really is the question that you always ask which is really an appropriate question to ask. Does everyone get it the question? So, I think you could answer it yourself, which is that obviously the process doesn't end with rung three. You got to come back down the ladder, right? We go up to come back down. Yeah. Right. So, it's the the the the ultimate goal is not to become lost in godliness and then hooray, you did it. The ultimate goal is now that you've done that, how are you going to live your life differently based on that? Well, is it about us or is it about God? Well, it's how you going to live your life based on that because that's God's ultimate will is that you live your life in a body in your circumstances serving him. So, yeah, it's about coming back to your separate selfhood. It's not about losing your yourself. Although part of coming back to your separate selfhood in a healthy way is temporarily losing yourself. But when we think about Gobitoon and so it I understand it more as bringing God into right. But part of being able to live your life in the physical world and not become consumed with physicality unto itself as an end unto itself is temporarily losing yourself. I thought you were going to say is bringing God. Well, it is bringing God to the world but but we in order that we remain God conscious we have to temporarily lose ourselves. And then and then come back down. Of course, intention. Correct. Yes. So I mean this is the running and the returning. This is the pulse of basically of everything really. This is the theme of of everything is the running and the returning. It's a it's a dynamic sort of uh it's a rhythm. Yeah. But it's not returning to where you were. It's returning and every time you return, you're returning to a higher level. Yes. Corre correct. It's it's it's a spiral. It's not cyclical on one on a plane. It's it's spiral. It's an upward spiral. Yeah. Okay. So, if you remember two weeks ago, anyone remember two weeks ago, we looked back at chapter 41 of Tanya. And those who went through Tanya with us remember that chapter when we studied it the first time. Um we we focused on the meditation of rings a bell a little bit. Hashem is standing over us. And remember we spoke about generally the point of meditation is to produce an emotion and that for sake of simplicity we'll say that there are two general emotions two directions that the emotions can either go love and awe right very good right okay so love is to move toward the beloved a is to stand back in awe from the one that we are reverent of So love that we did in chapter 41 two weeks ago. What was that? A love meditation or an awe meditation? Awe. Very good. Okay. That was supposed to fill us with awe. Now I want to look in chapter 42 um at another meditation which is also an awe meditation. But before I do, I want to read some of the background that chapter 42 gives. and uh it'll be familiar to those of us who were who were here when we studied chapter 42. Okay. But if if you weren't here then uh you'll be able to follow as well. So he explains regarding awe. I'll just paraphrase and summarize at first that the way to experience the feeling of awe of reverence for Hashem is through what we call our internal measure. You remember this ring a bell? Anyone who was here when we'd study chapter 42. Yeah. by the internal measure and that the internal measure is synonymous with the faculty of anyone remember you see access that level well when we were meditating yeah remember which faculty specifically okay it was dos and if you remember back to like who was with us when we did chapter three of Tanya yeah okay so you remember when we introduced the the 10 soul full powers the three intellectual and seven emotional and we we introduced which is the acronym right and it's interesting because um you know we spoke a lot about if you remember two weeks ago we spoke a lot about in fact I made quite a to-do about the fact that the word which means meditation is related to or comes from the word bina which is a particular type of elaborative thought remember I said it's the feminine sector or the womb of thought where small ideas become big ideas where we flesh out the idea in its in its uh various dimensions. Okay. So, DAS is the third intellectual faculty and DAS is focused. DAS is concentration. But another way of describing it is that DAS is um integration. So that an idea does not remain intellectual because you can have Beina and still the idea will not hit you personally. In other words, Beina is great if you want to become eloquent and to explain things really well. um to have nice stories and examples and metaphors but it will not lead to personalization which uh we spoke about last week. The ultimate level personalization is when you have an emotion but even if you don't have a full-fledged emotion we spoke about last week the idea of tunis which are sort of proto emotions or pseudo emotions which are good enough as far as our goal here. Um but it will not lead even to that if you don't have DAS and DAS means to take something that is academic and to make it personal. Um I I would almost call it like the difference between uh book smarts and street smarts. Somebody knows something in theory that's not DS. somebody has experience that's das. So when we're talking about godly concepts which we are we're talking about godly concepts how do you have das of these ideas which are inherently abstract you understand the problem the inherent dilemma like how do you have das of a concept which is inherently abstract like it's almost all you can do is sort of use big words to talk around it to philosophize about it but how do you h So, right. So, the I mean that's the simple answer. It's easier said than done, but yes, that's what the meditative process is. It's an attempt to connect to the idea. So, it ceases to be an abstraction even though it's inherently um a spiritual idea. So let me just read a little bit from chapter 42 serving Hashem with your heart which is a reference to prayer and our sages say it is all in accordance with your das your ability to emotionally connect is all going to be determined by das which is an intellectual faculty but it's a particular intellectual faculty which makes things personally relevant like it says know the God of your father and serve him with a full heart and with a desirous soul. This is uh King David's advice to King Solomon. Um, da is the imperative command. Da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d i in da from the word das. No. K n o w. Not no like n l k n o w. No, it's command. No. Know the god of your father. What's the god of your father? God of your father means the god of your father. It's not your god. It's your father's god. And it's not your personal god. It's what you inherited. They sent you to Hebrew school. That's what they told you to believe it. But da know the god of your father. K n o w means now make it your personal relationship. Okay. So there's the information which is not your original thought which is really what's happening anytime we meditate the way at least in the way in the way that we're talking about meditation here is that we study something says in the holy books. I mean you did you write the book? You didn't write the book. So, it's somebody else's insight. It's the god of your father. I mean, doesn't necessarily mean your literal biological father, but I'm just saying it's the god of some great person who came before you, not your original insight. And now you're taking that and you're making it personal. So the faculty of the mind that takes holy ideas, lofty ideas and turns them into personal insight is called das. That's what it means know k the god of your father and then consequently vo shalom you'll be able to serve him with a full heart. In other words you'll have the emotional results of that. Okay, in the I'm still reading from chapter 42 and in the future it says in the future means in the messianic future no longer will one person teach another person saying no Hashem kn Hashem because they will all know me k again they will all know me in other words. Well, what will happen when Messiah comes that you will no longer have to refer to somebody else's experience in order to have a relationship with God? God will be so revealed that we will all have our own connection automatically. We will not rely on somebody else's experience. Okay? However, you should know that the main dash that we're talking about is not knowing about the greatness of of God through scribes and books. Scribes means the teachers. Books means the books. In other words, either through a personal mentor or through some great mentor you never met, but you read his works. But that's not the main das. But rather the main thing is the main thing is and here's the joke on all of you who studied Tanya with me for how long? Two years. And you think you Yeah. Two years. We took how long did it take us to finish Tanya? Two and a half years. So here's a joke on you who think that you gained anything from studying Tanya for two and a half years. It's not about going to class and hearing information. No, that doesn't do anything. I shouldn't say it doesn't do anything. I mean, keeps you out of trouble for the hour that you're in class. But the main thing is to deepen your dust in the greatness of Hashem and to aix your thought in Hashem with intensity of the heart and the mind. In other words, what you studied, that's all well and good, but that's just what you need to go go now and focus on. The study isn't really transformative. Study isn't transformative. The study is the material that you now have available to you to focus on and that's transformative. Yeah. Question. Yeah. What's the difference? Even though anybody it's really a gift from Mashia gift but what's what's the real value so like getting this gift of mash like in in the era of like the consciousness upgrade to one doing this before humans you're saying what's the difference in the consciousness that we attain now when we have to work so hard for it as opposed to when will be so freely available when Mashiah comes kind of it's just given as a free gift right versus right when one has to work yeah how will that feel or look different yes for I mean obviously we all know the difference between something you worked for and something that was given right so now is the opportunity to actually gain it through meditation very soon all the things that we're working hard to attain through meditation will be just the regular default consciousness of the world. Even even animals will see it. The wolf will eye with the lamp. You know those who explain it non-metaphorically that means God consciousness will be so prevalent that I mean really even inanimate objects will will be influenced by it. Yeah. So now is the opportunity to to earn it and then obviously has a deeper effect not just a greater subjective value has a deeper effect. Okay. But he says here that the main thing is not to have transferred to you somebody else's insight. That's a prerequisite for having DAS but that's not the DS itself. Understand learning the holy books doesn't give you das. It gives you material to focus on so that you will have das. So he describes the intensity of this this uh mental process. You're supposed to fix your thought. Your thought should be tied up or bound up with Hashem in a strong knot and a strong connection. The way that your thought is tied up or bound up with a physical thing that he sees with his physical eyes and he thinks deeply about. Think about how real physicality is to us. to the extent that people will even I mean this is a terrible awful disgusting heretical thing I'm about to say but it's so common if I didn't tell you that I could probably just say it nobody would even fletch people describe the physical world with the word reality they'll say like when I don't know when the soul comes to reality or um that's nice spiritual ideas but how does it apply to reality right they'll use reality as synonymous with the physical plane which like I said is terrible and disgusting and heretical and really just warp thinking but you could say it like in a very religious crowd and no one will even call you on it no one would even be bothered by it okay now maybe you'll start to be bothered by it but why Why is it so terrible? Because what what are you implying? You're implying that the spiritual plane is made up. It's like theoretical. It's a it's a fantasy. So there are plains of reality. Now, we all know that when we're in a body, the physical world really does feel more real than the spiritual worlds. That's undeniable. That's undeniable that physical stimuli, while we're embodied, physical stimuli really have the greatest um the greatest influence on at least our conscious opinion of what is happening. Um, spiritual sensitivity is like a faint little like a glimmer. But here's the deal. He says when you use your das to focus on the spiritual ideas that you study, he says you should be as deeply connected to those ideas as you would be to some physical thing that you've seen with your physical eyes. In other words, if I tell you about something and you've never seen it, now people don't really remember. The kids don't know what it was like in the olden days when like we didn't have the internet and you couldn't just go Google a picture of anything in the world you wanted. So like if somebody told you about a place unless it was in your botanical in Britannica encyclopedia like what or your world book okay so you would not really be able to know what it is just someone would tell you what it is and then you'd have to just sort of imagine it. um or tell you about some animal like you ever heard of the I don't know whatever emperor penguin no I don't whatever point is there are certain things you didn't see it so it's kind of abstract to you but you saw it you saw it then it's very real to you they say seeing is believing right okay so he says take the spiritual idea and focus on it until it is as real to you as something that you've seen. If you're still feeling like the spiritual ideas are sort of flimsy and ethereal, then you're not done. You're clearly you're clearly not done. Yeah. kind of like one mark of boundary between spiritual bypassing and actual integration. You're saying could you use this as like an indicator to check in with yourself? Yes. Yes. And I'll put it in Yeah. And I'll put it in very very like simple behavioral terms. Let's say you have a moral dilemma. Let's say something really really simple like you want to eat a piece of food. Why? Because you're hungry and because it tastes good. Okay, those those are very compelling reasons to the body. Uh but it's not kosher. Well, what does that mean? It's not kosher. That's a spiritual designation. Well, which one of those is more real to you, right? Okay. So, that that would be like a practical example. Or like shabas, like you you want to turn on the light in the bathroom. That's what you practically want. That's what your body wants. Uh but it's Shabas. Well, that's a spiritual concept. So, which one is more real to you? The fact that you want to turn on the light or the fact that you know that it's uh that it's Shabas. So, yeah, state of you have this like intimate connection with Hashem. The physicality totally align. You'll need to like remember I'm about to make this braha this boot like it become automatic. Well, you're saying, right? Well, I don't have to try to like integrate physicality because that the the intimacy like it's a natural manifestation. You're subsumed. You're just Yeah. Well, what what I'm saying is that it's very very possible to be to to study these texts and to know them well and to be able to actually even explain it or teach it to others. And it would not be compelling to you when it comes to real life situations. Meaning you would see the physical as the reality and the spiritual as I don't know a nice a nice aspirational idea. It's a it's a it's a it's an ideal but it would not feel as compelling to you as as the physical. So it's very possible that you could know all of this information. It just wouldn't feel as real to you as the physical stuff. So what we're saying is it requires a process. It requires a process. And what's the process? The process is not just studying the information. Process is deeply internalizing it. And he gives you a hint what that inter what that internalization process is like when he says it should be like something you've seen. It should be like something you've seen. In other words, you want to spend time in your mind trying to see this idea, whether that means a a a metaphorical visualization, a representation or or other types of ways of delving into an idea. But the point is that it can't just be you know about it, you know it. You know the difference to know about something and to know something. The the real real technical terms is we spoke about this before is I know that something exists but I don't know it means I've experienced it. I know what chocolate cake is. I ate chocolate cake. It's not something I'm taking anyone's word on. It's not hearsay. I' I've experienced it. I I know the feel. I know the taste. They know the smell. Okay. So we're saying is DAS is the process of taking ideas which are abstract ideas and spiritual ideas and focusing on it intensely enough that you start to have experience of the idea. Experience that's what I would call I would call it experience. Okay. Are dreams considered participation? No. No. Has to be process. It has to be deliberate. It has to be work. Has to be work. Okay. Some people have a hard time falling asleep. Their dreams just a lot of work that I have about you so practical and live experience. I don't know like that's the meditation. Well, we're not talking about meditating on Shabas and Kashras. No, no, no, no. Listen, listen. If you learn a concept in, let's say, Hashem permeates all existence, if you really really meditated on that concept until it became something that was as real as something that you've touched and you've tasted and you've and you've seen, then it would translate into shabas and kashras and conducting your business fairly and everything else that you need to do. I'm that the behaviors are not the object of meditation. The abstract concepts of are the objects of meditation. And where I'm giving an example where it would translate to is that if you had a moral dilemma, that dilemma would not be so compelling anymore because the spiritual reality would be more real. So I just want to clarify, we're not meditating on kash. We're not meditating on shabas. We're not meditating on any behaviors at all. We're meditating on abstract concepts. Okay. So, I want to last week I wanted to do a meditation and we didn't we did not do a meditation. I just explained the three rungs of meditation. So, I want to jump ahead. I want to jump to the end of chapter 42. And if you want to study the actual chapter 42, I suggest go back to the recordings of the class when we did it. It's all in order of uh I think there are 88 classes and it's all in order you'll find where we did chapter 42. Yeah. We meditate so much so that Hashem we integrate this concept of Hashem's oneness or any concept. Sure you're as an example Hashem's oneness as an example. It's not the only concept but yeah. Okay. Okay. at a certain point once it's so integrated there really is no internal struggle anymore. There's never no internal struggle anymore. I mean that's the basic premise of Tanya that we're always running up a down escalator because every day you wake up your your mind body is being inundated with physical stimuli which are influencing you to forget about the spiritual to prioritize the the physical. So we're keeping ahead of it. We're keeping ahead of it. So in a Tanya context, it would be like, okay, what are you going to do with this God consciousness? In a Tanya context, I'm going to say, well, I'm going to plug it into my behaviors and I'm going to live the life that God wants me to live. What other context is it? Well, there are other models. There are other contexts. I just want to be honest about that. Okay. All right. But yeah. Yeah. Correct. Okay. All right. So, let's look at an actual meditation. All right. Um he speaks about the fact that you can bring yourself to awe of Hashem by meditating on the life force on the energy of Hashem that is present in the universe. And what you can he calls it like the clothing like the king's clothing. The king's clothing is not the king. Um, but it's a way of relating to the contents. So, sometimes we think about something that's more superficial, but it's in order to lead us to an insight to what's behind it. Uh, in this case, I'm just going to read the words. Um, yeah, he should remember that with a king, let's say king who you're in awe of, it's not his body that you're in awe of. The body is the container of the greatness of the king. His his actual greatness, you don't physically see. I mean, greatness is an abstraction. You see the king's body, but the king's body is a representation or an indication of the greatness that you realize intellectually that inside the king is who is the king? The king is not the king's body. The king is the king is the uh the concept of the king. It's not that you're afraid of him because he's he's his physical body, what he's strong, he can bench press. Uh I mean that's not the point. The point is what the king represents is is embodied uh quite literally by his body. In a similar way, we can tap into some awe of Hashem. Okay. Now, I'm going to go slowly and we're going to actually try to implement this. We're going to actually try to do this as a meditation. Okay. So, people are watching online, they can't see. Everybody sitting on their own yoga mat and No, we're just sitting at a table and just normal people sitting at a table. All right. Some people are sipping their coffee and Yeah. Okay. Oh, you're saying we're not normal. Okay, you're right. You're right. It's not normal people. I strike that. It's not normal people, but they're sitting normally. Okay, they're sitting in the normal way that people sit at a table. Okay, some people are not at the table cuz there there's not enough uh table space, but everyone's just sitting in a chair in the normal way that people sit in chairs. Okay, just so everybody knows. Why am I saying this? Because as silly as it is, people have so many preconceptions about meditation. and they think they have to go like like light incense and sit on the floor and weird things like that. Like we're just sitting here and we're just thinking. That's it. We're just thinking. All right. All right. Let's do it. So, we're thinking we're meditating on the visual sight that we have of the heavens and the earth and everything in them. The infinite is invested within those entities. So we don't see the infinity. We don't see the godly energy but we see that which the godly energy is invested in. We see with our physical eyes. We see how the celestial bodies are bottle are subservient to Hashem's light in as much as they bow to him. They bow westward as they set like the sages say on the verse and the heavenly hosts bow to you that God's presence is in the west which is why the celestial bodies are setting in the west. We're taking literally like you can close your eyes, you can keep your eyes open, whatever you want to do, but we're imagining a sunset. We're imagining a sunset. Sunset is a phenomenon which we're all probably extremely familiar. We've probably seen thousands of sunsets in our lifetime. And we're imagining now the movement of the celestial spheres, the great celestial bodies. And I'm just going to say the elephant in the room. There's some people sitting here who are diehard helioentrists and they're like, I can't get into this medieval stuff. I don't think the sun is setting in the west. I think the earth is rotating and it makes it look like the sun is setting in the west. Okay, fine. So, I'm not going to debate you here about that. All I'll say is things are moving. And if things are moving, there's a mover. And the fact that these giant bodies are moving is pretty awesome. And the fact that we don't even think about it is something uh maybe we ought to start thinking about. So here's our meditation. We're just thinking about the very familiar phenomenon of a sunset. A sunset is a superficial outer manifestation of God's power, right? It's just like the clothing of the king. But remember inside the clothing is the king. So we're trying to feel the feeling. I'm going to guide you a little bit. I'm going to lead you a little bit. You know, like the the lawyers when they give a leading question. If I think more deeply about this sunset and I think about the the massive power that is invested in that sunset, this should give me a feeling of the pervasiveness of God's presence, the greatness, the sheer greatness of God's power. And obviously as and I and I mentioned this at the beginning of class, the emotion that this is leading me toward is awe. So we're thinking about the sunset as an outer manifestation of the power of the infinite as it is present here on the physical plane and it is filling us with awe. I'll continue. So it comes out the movement of the orbits westward every day is a form of bowing and surrender. So these massive orbits, how big are they? They're big. Pretty big. They're bigger than a bread box, bigger than a car. And they are surrendered. They are bowing. They are subservient to him. He must be pretty big. I don't know how big, but bigger than that. Bigger than these massive orbits. Right? So, this is filling me with awe. Now, even someone who never saw the king and he wouldn't recognize him. Remember the altar is writing in the late 1700s when there was no internet, not even any TV, not even encyclopedia in Britannica, not even the world book. So maybe even somebody wouldn't know what the king looks like. Let's say you're a rube from the countryside and somehow you find yourself walking into the king's courtyard. You're in the king's courtyard. You made it into the palace. How? I don't know. But you made it. And you see great exalted, prestigious officers of the court. They're bowing to one person. In other words, you don't know the king. You couldn't pick them out of a lineup. But you see these great officers, these great noble people. I don't know who they are, but they look pretty important. I don't know who that guy is, but they're all bowing to him. He must be even more important. This will fill us with dread and awe. In other words, I can't comprehend the greatness of God. But if even the massive orbits, you're talking about massive mass of things that are literal literally not literally like the kids use the word literally, which means figuratively, but literally literally astronomical, right? We're talking about entities of astronomical sizes. Literally, we're talking about the orbits. If those are moved by the mover, then how astronomical must he be? I don't know. I can't fathom it. But just like I'm in the courtyard, he can visualize this. And I see these these officers bowing to one person. Even if I don't know who the king is and I've never seen the king and I wouldn't recognize him if I saw him. But if I see all these great people bowing to one person, there's a feeling that I get that I'm in the presence of greatness. And although of course we're describing something that is invested in many garments, right? We're not meditating on God. We're meditating on the orbits and we're understanding by association that they are subservient to God. So it's like I know this isn't the king himself. This is the king's clothing. This is a this is an outer level manifestation that I'm able to access. This is something that's relatable enough to me. This is a phenomenon that's familiar enough to me that I'm able to meditate on it. Okay. So, I understand these are just clothing. It doesn't make a difference as far as having met the king if the king is unclothed or if the king is clothed in many many layers of clothing. He's wearing many many layers. The main thing is habituation is habit that this should be constantly affixed in your mind. In other words, we all know we're we're conceding the fact that right now when we're thinking about the orbits that that's the king's clothing and it's maybe not even his his clothing. It's like his overcoat. I know that. I know that. I know it's an externality of an externality. I know it's a layer upon a layer. But that's not really the important thing. What's the important thing he says is habituation. that if I think about it a lot and I think about it habitually and this should become the way that I see things not just while I'm in my meditative state that everything I see with my eyes the heavens the earth and everything in it it's all the clothing the outer clothing, the outer cloak of the king, the holy one. Blessed be he. This is what meditation is supposed to bring me to. And now whatever I experience, whatever I see, it's not a world that's divorced from its creator. It's not a world that's just operating on its own independently. I become acutely aware through my meditative process and the experience that I have in my meditative process. I become aware now that all the phenomena of nature are the cloak are the garb of the king and through this I will always remember what's inside of them the actual life force that's inside of them it's not about the orbits or the earthquakes or the lightning those are the garments It's about the life force and the power that is garbed within them. And so when I do this meditation frequently then my way of perceiving the physical world will be different will become deeper. I will appreciate what's happening inside. I will appreciate that the physical world like I said before that we all call reality. It's not the entirety of reality. Oh, it's real because God created it. But it is the outer garment and I will become more sensitive and aware of what's inside of it. And then I will be in a state of awe of Hashem throughout my day. And then of course, let's bring this down. Let's bring it down. What does it mean to be in a state of awareness of Hashem throughout my day? Well, in the most practical sense, it means that my behavioral choices will be informed by what is right in God's eyes and not what is expedient to my body and my ego. It means also that I will not be ruled by the fear of created beings because I I'm already in awe of God who is in control of all of these created beings. So nothing can come along and intimidate me. Okay, that's the meditation. Um, everyone can get up, walk around, shake it off.