How to Work on Yourself | PART 1

3 2 1 go. All right, welcome to our second webinar. We did our first webinar a few weeks ago called how to answer any question. And there was amazing response but I had to show and people wanted more of this type of learning. What do I mean by this type of learning? What I mean is that if you go to soulwords.org, which is my website where I put all my classes and all my speeches. Basically what you get there is Torah classes or lectures on Torah subjects because that's that's what I'm all about. That's my passion. That's what I care about. And when I'm teaching a Torah subject, obviously I try to bring out the relevance by relating it to practical examples, right? Because Torah isn't just information. Torah In fact, the word Torah means Ira. Instruction. Guidance. So whenever I teach a Torah subject, I try to show how it is applicable to a real life situation. Okay. However, sometimes and this is the feedback that I'm getting, people want to do it the opposite way. Instead of starting with a Torah concept and showing how it has practical relevance, do it the opposite. Reverse engineer it. Start with the issues that people are facing in life. And then bring out the Torah sources in order to address those practical issues. And uh so I'm I'm I'm obliging. I'm doing this webinar called how to work on yourself. And obviously what it really amounts to is is a Torah class, but it's sort of a reverse Torah class because we're not starting with the agenda of teaching Torah. We're starting with the agenda of answering a question that people are dealing with in their lives. But, we know because all truth is from Torah and and ultimately um you know, Torah is the best of Torah and that's the best merchandise. So, that's what we're going to end up learning and teaching. But, uh we're starting from the premise of okay, we've got this issue. What do we do about it? All right. So, uh I want to begin by discussing the occupational hazard of working on yourself. Somebody said to me, by the way, that in the last webinar about how how to answer questions, that they liked that I used the term occupational hazard a lot. I don't know how many times is a lot, but I do like that term. I like the term occupational hazard. Um I like being aware of the pitfalls. Doesn't mean that you have to avoid a path just because you know there are places where you might stumble, just means that you need to uh be prepared before you embark on that path. So, let's talk about some of the um the risks the risks that you run when you're working on yourself. I'm going to start off with a with a Hasidic parable. Um Once upon a time, and you know what a parable is. It's a story that never happened, but it's true anyway. So, once upon a time, the Malach Hamoves, that means in Hebrew, the angel of death, came to Hashem, came to God. And he complained, the angel of death told God, "My name is bad for business." Because the angel of death's job is to punish people. Um but in order to punish them, he has to ensnare them and catch them and then prosecute them. And he says, "My name is scary. So, nobody wants to do business with me." So, he tells God, "I got to I got to get a DBA, you know, doing business as." Um So, God says, "Okay, no problem. I I get it, you know, people don't want to talk to a guy named named Angel of Death. So, call yourself um Yetzer Hara, which means the evil inclination." So, the Angel of Death went back down to Earth and he called himself Yetzer Hara, the evil inclination. And he came back to God after a while and said, "It's still no good because it has the word evil in the name. I need to trip people up. My job is I got to make them make the worst decisions of their lives, but they think it's a good decision, right?" So, but it has evil in the name, so it's showing my cards. I got I got to get a new name. So, God says to the Angel of Death {slash} uh Yetzer Hara, meaning evil inclination. He says, "Okay, fine. I got a new name for you. Satan." Satan is adversary. So, go try that one out. So, he tries it out and comes back and says, "God, adversary? That was supposed to work? When I'm about to close the deal, people are like, 'What's your name?' I'm like, 'Satan.' They're like, 'Well, what does it mean?' I'm like, 'Don't worry, it's a Hebrew name.' 'No, what does it mean?' 'Adversary.' 'Adversary? Who's adversary? My kid adversary? Get out of here, fly a kite.' So, it's not working, God." So, God says to the Angel of Death {slash} evil inclination {slash} adversary, "Okay. So, try this name. This this name's actually almost cute. It's like fuzzy. It's a fuzzy cute name. The Seder The Seder made up a name for you called Nefesh Ha-Behamah, which means animal soul. Call yourself animal soul. And maybe you'll be able to trip people up with that name. So the angel of death slash evil inclination slash adversary goes back down to earth as animal soul. And he comes back to God after a while and says, "God, it's still no good because I'm about to close the deal and people like, "What's your name again?" I'm like, "Animal soul." They're like, "Animal animal, you know, I'm just not comfortable taking life advice from an animal." And then, you know, I'm then they they go away. They're like, "Oh yeah, I'll get back to you. Yeah, I'll call you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a website? I'll follow up." Then they never follow up. What's with that? I I can't do business with this name. So God says to the uh angel of death slash evil inclination slash adversary slash animal soul, "Okay. Okay, I didn't want it to come to this, but you make a very valid point. I'm going to have to give you another name. Oh wow, this name I I scary to give you this name because it's going to be so effective. In fact, if I give you this name, it's really the perfect name for your job, for what you do, because if I give you this name, everyone will listen to you. Not only they will listen to you, they will listen to you even when their loved ones tell them the opposite. And they will always think that you have their interests at heart, no matter how destructive your advice is. And the angel of death slash evil inclination slash adversary slash animal soul says, "God, please lay it on me. What's my name?" And God says, "Your name is Yesh." Yesh. Existence. Ego. And and that's it. Yesh, I exist, conscious existence. And uh so since that time the angel of death {slash} evil inclination {slash} adversary {slash} animal soul has been doing business under the name conscious existence. And business has been so booming that he hired a delegate to specialize on each and every one of us. The point of the parable is that self-consciousness truly is the devil. When Adam and Eve were in the garden before the fall life was perfect because they had no sense of self-awareness. And they ate from the tree of knowledge. What kind of knowledge? Self-knowledge. But I don't mean self-knowledge in the sense of epiphany but self-knowledge in the sense of self-awareness, crippling self-consciousness. And that's when they experienced toxic shame. They knew they were naked. They knew they were naked before cognitively. It just didn't mean anything. In fact, the Lubavitcher Rebbe once said that before the sin of the tree of knowledge, a person would be no more embarrassed of his reproductive organs than you are embarrassed of the arm on which you wrap to fill it. It's just a body part that you use for a mitzvah. Why should you be embarrassed? It only becomes embarrassing when you have self-awareness and through self-awareness you you experience God separation and then you become uh savvy, sophisticated in figuring out how to do a hack, a life hack, a work around, and how to use yourself in ways other than the way you were designed to be used. And there's shame in that. And that's where Adam and Eve began to experience shame. When they when they felt that they could hack themselves to be in a to to live in a way that wasn't the way that they were designed. And ever since that time, ever since the sin of the tree of knowledge, we have been living with the curse. You know what the curse is for eating from the tree of self-knowledge? Self-knowledge. You don't think that's a curse? Of course it's a curse. The conscious ego is the root of all mental disease. Of course it is. All emotional dysfunction. Of course it is. So, now we're going to work on ourselves. Do you see why that might be internally or inherently risky? Do you understand why that might be inherently risky? My whole problem is self-awareness. Now I'm going to pay even more attention to myself? And you see that it happens. Oh, oh, do you see? You see that there are people who in the name of working on themselves become even more self-obsessed than they were when they were supposedly sick. Their version of getting well is sicker than what they were like when they were sick. Because the working on oneself is ac- actually just an even more intensified version of the self-obsession that was the disease. And the more self-obsessed a person becomes, the more unreasonable they become, the more you're it you're stuck in a in a in a in a endless loop because you can't get a reality check, right? That's the whole problem with with being self-referential and being stuck in your bubble is you just you can't get objectivity and therefore you can't break out of it. You just get more and more and more ensnared in it and you rationalize and rationalize and rationalize and you know what it means to rationalize? Rational lies. A lot of smart ideas being misused to justify whatever loop it is that I'm stuck in. So, it's a risky thing and and in that sense um Should I say this? I mean, I guess I'm halfway saying it already. I'm not sure how comfortable I am making this statement, but I'll I'll put it out there just as something I wonder. Not saying it definitively, but I I certainly do wonder if it weren't um maybe some people would be better off not working on themselves at all. Yeah. Because the solution sometimes causes more problems than than the problem. Or causes a bunch of new problems. And uh you know, at least the old problems we had a lifetime to learn how to adapt and to cope and to cover. The new problems sometimes you know, you see when somebody's supposedly getting well, things unravel even more quickly than when they were sick. Okay. So, that's that's certainly a description of the problem. Um let's talk about the solution. If you were with me in the last webinar about answering questions, I think you probably remember me saying that every problem really is the solution. That every question really contains the answer. So, too here. In this case, the problem itself contains the solution. There are different ways of working on oneself. There is when you take what you already are and you build upon it. And then there is when there's a systemic failure. When there's rot in the foundation and you have to tear the structure down and rebuild from scratch. The first kind of self-improvement where you are taking a self and merely improving it is the one that is going to have the highest risk of leading to more and more self-obsession. However, the second kind of self-improvement where actually you temporarily have no self where you lose yourself where you hit rock bottom as they call it and experience ego death usually not by choice. Usually imposed by or precipitated by some crisis. That's just the fact how it normally happens to people. But when someone experiences that bottoming out uh condition then there's a special call it ace rotsyn a special propitious time a window opens up where you can start building in a healthy way because the ego has been removed. Maybe uh maybe you didn't want it to be removed. Maybe you didn't ask for it to be removed, but your situation in life has caused that and now you have a special opportunity to start working on a brand new self without becoming self-obsessed because there is no self to be obsessed with. Maybe I'll describe it in in in biblical terms. We we know about um the rhythm of Jewish time. Jewish time is cyclical. Um it's described as a spiral staircase. And every year we come back full circle but on a higher level, right? So each year when we come back to Rosh Hashanah, let's say, the world is being judged, but it's being judged on a higher level on a loftier level than ever before and renewed on a higher level than ever before. We come back to Yom Kippur and it's atonement again, but it's on a higher level than ever before. Pesach is freedom, you know, on a higher level than ever before. The There's There's a time of year in which self-improvement is embedded. In fact, it is the basically the theme of a significant time of year. It's It's seven whole weeks during which the focus is self-refinement. It's known as Sefirah. Sefirat HaOmer. And it is the 49-day period between Pesach and Shavuot. Now, what's interesting is that when the Jewish people came out of Pesach came out of Egypt and and Passover and Pesach, they experienced rock bottom. They were so low that if they'd stayed in Egypt for another moment, they would have been irretrievably lost. They were on the brink of extinction. And finally, when they did get out of Egypt, they did not leave by their own power. They could never have left on their own power, even if they were given a million years to conspire to do so. When they finally left Egypt, they were removed. God took them out of Egypt and did for them what they could not do for themselves. The symbol of this ego death, of this humility, is matzah. Matzah is flat. Matzah represents the complete deflation of ego. Which was the sum total of 210 years of servitude and brutality. Stuck in a truly stuck stuck in a situation that we could never extricate ourselves from. And indeed we never did extricate ourselves. We were removed by a power greater than ourselves. Sefirat HaOmer, the counting of the Omer, which is the self-refinement process where we start day one with chesed she be chesed, kindness of kindness. And the second day gvurah she be chesed, uh self-discipline within kindness, and so on and so forth. That happens after the ego has completely been crushed flat like matzah. So, if you look at the natural rhythm, the natural cycle of self-refinement in the Jewish calendar, you see that self-refinement follows ego death. And it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. After the surrender, where we allow God to pull us out of a situation that we have no ability to remove ourselves from, that's when we begin to build a new self. When that process culminates, and in the case of the Jews in the wilderness, it took 49 days, 49 days after Passover, after the Exodus, they were standing at Sinai, and they experienced divine revelation. God spoke to them face-to-face, like prophets, a nation of prophets. They experienced absolute uh intimacy with God. This event is commemorated and coincides with uh another holiday. Just like Passover is at the beginning of the 49-day period, Shavuot is at the end of the culmination of the 49-day period. It's the 50th day. On Shavuot, in the times of the temple, they would bring a special sacrifice. Every Jewish holiday had special sacrifices. But, on Shavuot, they had a special sacrifice that was a bread sacrifice. Loaves of bread, shtei halechem, two loaves of bread. And they were chametz, leavened bread. You see what happened? At the beginning of the process, when we were still in Egypt, we were matzah. We had to be matzah. Because if there were any semblance of ego remaining, we would have had too much attachment to allow God to remove us from our situation. We would have resisted the surrender. So, we had to be flat. We had to be matzah. Total ego deflation. But, then we work on ourselves for 49 days. We we look at our character. We we refine our character. And then, at the end, we become like the puffy leavened bread that is brought as a sacrifice in the in the temple on Shavuot. In other words, ego went in 49 days ego went from absolute poison to neutral to holy. By the time it's Shavuos and the leavened bread is being used as a sacrifice, as something holy, the this represents the ego having completely been transformed. And now the self is a holy self. And now self-esteem has no bad side effects because the self-concept is really a God concept. The ego death of Passover allowed one to surrender fully to God, to accept unconditionally God's everythingness, and my selfhood merely as an extension of him. And now when I get my ego back, it's not my old ego, it's a brand new a brand new ego, which is not only no longer uh poison, but it's holy, fitting to be brought as a sacrifice on the altar in the temple. So, that's really in a nutshell a description of healthy self-improvement. It starts from nothing. Now, the question is always, you know, what is bottom? Is there an objective uh definition of bottom? And uh I say it's pretty obvious that there isn't an objective definition of bottom. Because you see so many people having so many different bottom experiences. You know, how do you objectively describe what the worst day of someone's life looks like? I know plenty of people who the worst day of their life they were still married with two cars in the garage and their kids were still talking to them. And yet it was the worst day of their life and you can't minimize it. Because whatever amount of emotional pain they were in that was more emotional pain than they wanted to ever be in ever again. And so for them, that was bottom. And then conversely, you see people who've lost everything and they're still hanging in there. And apparently that's not bottom. You know, they've they've crossed every red line and they they you would think you've been you you've been to a hundred bottoms already and it's not for them. So my point is only that bottom is clearly a relative term. Or or like some say, when you hit bottom when you quit digging. It's relative to the person. But whatever definition, whatever personal definition of bottom you have the common denominator is surrender. Now this begs the question. If I'm nothing if I've surrendered, I gave up, I'm crushed why am I working on myself? Like what do I care anymore? If I'm still hanging in there, if I still have, you know, a thread to hang from, okay, I'm still working, I'm still trying to still trying to prove myself, still trying to build back the trust in all the bridges that I burned, right? But if you're telling me, no, it's all gone, it's all over, the the bridges are all burned, you know, so who cares anymore? You got the question. And this question actually has probably the most important answer. Um or the the answer to this question probably the most important idea in uh in working on yourself. The answer is you're asking me? Do I want to work on myself? Do I want to improve? Do I want to be better? I gave up wanting. I gave up wanting cuz every time I wanted something and I pursued it, I got hurt. It blew up in my face. I hurt others. I'm done. I'm done. I'm not pursuing anything anymore, even what I perceive to be a grand ideal. Not doing it. No. I have to work on myself because I have to work on myself. Not cuz I've chosen to improve my life, but because God demands it of me. You understand? It's a totally different flip. It's not for me. I gave up. It's for him. He demands it of me. He made me. He gave me my potential. And he expects me to make the best of the potential he gave me. Now, there's the old Hasidic explanation of that verse in the book of Genesis where God says nasa adam b'tsalmenu, let us make man in our image." Right? And it's always I mean Rashi commentary there deals with it, but it's a it's a famous verse because it um it can lead to heretical mistakes. You know, the plural God speaking in the first person plural, we. Let us. Let's make a man. And anyways, there are classical explanations to that, but there's a Hasidic explanation as well. Nasa Adam, "Let's make a man." is God speaking to each one of us and saying to you, "Together, let's make a man. Let's make a mensch." This is our project together. So, if self-improvement is because I want a better life, forget it. It's just more self-obsession. But if self-improvement is because it is demanded from me, it is required of me by my maker that I submit to a partnership where I maximize my potentials, now that's real self-improvement. Not self-obsession. To the contrary, if you ask me, I'm done. But I'm not allowed to check out. I'm not doing this for me. I gave up on having a better life. I'm doing this because my maker requires it of me. Now, I just want to sort of tone down my the rhetoric over here for a second and and and and be very uh transparent about the fact that I'm aware that there are people who work on themselves as a hobby, you know, just for the heck of it because why not, you know? It'd be good to be better." And I'm I'm not here to disparage that. Um but as I described, there is certain certainly an inherent risk involved in that kind of approach. And uh from a religious from a believing a faith perspective a God-conscious perspective which is what I try to take, you know, I try to take a a God-conscious perspective on everything. Um the only real legitimate reason for self-improvement is because God demands it of you. It's not for me. It's for him. What that also means I see somebody posted here in the in the chat, by the way. I think what I asked if I gave up already, why am I bothering to work on myself? Somebody wrote, "Because that's full bittul." That's full humility. And in you're 100% correct. You're right. That is the full surrender is I don't even care about myself anymore, but God cares about me. And therefore, if I have submitted to God's will, I have to take care of myself. I have to rebuild myself. Not for me, but for him. 100%. Um I want to share with you something that uh I think illustrates the concept of radical self-transformation where there is a bittul process or a uh bottoming out or ego death stage before radical re uh reinvention of self. Okay, I'm going to share the screen. Now, we're going to check this out. Okay, we're on SoulWords here. All right. Uh Okay, here we go. If you want to be something incomparably greater than you've ever been, then you have to lose everything that you've ever had. And the metaphor for that is the seed. Take a seed. A seed is meant to become a tree. That's what its destiny is. But, if the seed doesn't want to stop being a seed, just wants to become bigger bigger of a seed, what's going to happen? You got to have a seed that is a thousand times bigger. Have a seed that's a million times bigger than what it started as. What are you going to get? You're going to get a big giant seed. The only way that seed's going to become a tree is you put it in the ground, you bury it alive, and it starts to rot and decompose. And when it loses all semblance of its old structure, when it's completely wasted, you know, you had a perfectly good seed, and uh you know, a bird could eat it, I suppose. I mean, it has its own uh value. And then you throw it in the dirt, you throw it away. It comes ruined. And then, when it's completely broken down, it becomes a tree. So, there's a saying that when you're down to nothing, God's up to something. If you want to become something incomparably greater, if you want to be comparably greater, you want to matriculate, if you want to go from level one to 10, or 10 to 100, or even one to a million, then you can just build upon what you've had. But, if you're ready to be completely reinvented, to be something completely new, that only happens when uh you let go of everything I've ever been. Okay. All right. Here we are back. It's a fun little video. Um, made that a couple years ago. It's really broker. Animated that my brother David produced that. Yeah. Anyway, um, let's continue talking about the reduction of the ego as the sort of impetus for our growth. Um, practically speaking, what is this What does this do for us? What does this knowledge do for us? Well, one thing it does for us is it allows us to realize that emotional pain is our teacher. Wherever we're experiencing uh, disease, wherever we're experiencing conflict, especially if it's repeated, especially if it's a if it's a pattern, that is alerting us to where our ego has outgrown its functionality. You know, there's a story. A guy went to his Adamic. Who was the Tzemach Tzedek? Uh, the third Adamic of Chabad. Oh, there's a picture of him right there. See the picture of the Rebbe in white over my shoulder there? That's the Tzemach Tzedek. He's the grandson of uh that rabbi. The Alter Rebbe. Okay. Anyways, um there's a story. A Chassid went to the Tzemach Tzedek in Yechidus, in a private audience, and he complained. He said that everyone in shul is being mean to me. Now, the way that he said it actually was interesting. Um it's an idiom, and it works in English as well. But, he said, "Everyone in shul steps all over me." Right? They step all over me. Now, I don't know what that means, you know, literally, how they offended him. But, basically, he wanted something in shul, and they weren't giving it to him, or, you know, they were they weren't treating him the way he wanted to be treated. So, he said, when I, you know, everyone in shul is stepping all over me, which is a little bit immature, if you think about you have the opportunity to meet with a spiritual master who knows your soul better than you know it. And you can ask anything for any guidance, and you go like you're, you know, tattling to a uh kindergarten uh lunchroom monitor, you know, the kids are being mean to me. But, that's what he did. That's what he did. And he he told the the Tzemach Tzedek, um you know, uh the guys in shul are stepping all over me. So, the Tzemach Tzedek said to him, "And what can they do if you spread yourself out over the entire shul? Everywhere someone steps is on you." Now, I want to explain something to you. The Tzemach Tzedek, that wasn't a zinger, that wasn't like a uh you know, gotcha. That wasn't like a uh you know, Don Rickles insult comic. Okay? Um that was loving spiritual advice. The Tzemach Tzedek explaining the mechanics of what was happening. What does it mean to spread yourself out over the entire show? Let's go back. Remember we were talking about Passover and matzah. Okay? So, let's go back to that imagery of flat ego-less matzah and puffy leaven. Okay? So, spreading yourself out, spreading yourself out. That means overextending the ego. What does it mean overextending the ego? Well, you know, the ego has a purpose. It It's It's The ego was made by God for a purpose. And and it's God-given functionality is necessary. Like everything that God made in his world, it it has, you know, it's necessary. Uh it keeps us alive. It's the instinct for self-preservation, which we require in order to remain in a body so that we can remain souls and bodies and perfect this world, which is what God wants. So, we do need to have that ego. Um the problem is when it exceeds its functionality. So, instead of reminding me to eat, it reminds me to, you know, make sure to stand at the buffet at the kiddush and get the last brownie before the kids come, you know, and gobble it up, right? Or instead of telling me, you know, to procreate, it makes me obsessed with getting that kind of affirmation through those types of, you know, relationships. Or instead of telling me to be a social creature and be around people, it tells me to be a social climber and to uh you know, would obsessed with getting uh you know, social proof of my worthiness and and affirmation and and so on and so forth. The point is the basic needs of the ego are God-given. Um they're not holy, but they're certainly not evil. And if they're kept small, they are functional. But what happens is for whatever reason and I'm not going to get into it right now. Uh tomorrow night I want to speak a little bit about healing from trauma, a little bit. But uh a whole webinar could be done just on that topic. But I I'll say why the ego starts to become twisted, why it starts to outgrow itself. Sometimes it's in response to trauma. You know, scar tissue you know, is puffier than you know, than than regular uh skin, right? Sometimes something got hurt and now it's like projecting out. Uh other times it it wasn't a trauma. It's just look, that's one of the risks that happens when souls come into bodies and they have this ego and it it's just one of the things that happens when you're in the in a physical world full of physical stimuli and sometimes uh you just end up getting hooked on those stimuli and I I'm not going to get into the the reasons why it happens because it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant and I and I'm pretty sure that for most people it's a combination of factors. And and since we can't prevent it from happening to people anyway, why talk about it? Like if by identifying the factors how the ego started to get puffy, we could go you know, save children from it happening to them in the first place, then maybe I'd want to go examine it. But I I'm not so sure it can be prevented or it should be prevented. I think that that's part of the human experience. Part of the human experience is uh the ego becomes uh dysfunctional. It outgrows its functionality. Now, to what extent to what extent you know, do do you put on an extra 10 lb or you put on an extra 100 lb, right? How how much is the ego poking out? And not how much not only how much but where, you know? Which direction, you know, what aspect of my ego is is overextending? Right? My need for approval, is it my need for security, is it my uh need for control? I'm just giving examples of things, you know, that the ego wants. Well, how to find that out? Real easy. I just look and find out where I keep getting hurt. Now, before I before I continue, I want to make it clear I'm not siding with those who inflict pain on us. Trust me, I'm not siding with them. Although it's kind of funny to speak in those terms, since all of us are also them and all of them are also us. Just like you've been hurt, you've also hurt others. You've been on both sides. And I'm not here to uh you know, compare who got hurt worse or did I receive more abuse than I gave. That's not that's not relevant and that's not helpful. Okay? All I'm going to say is I'm not justifying those who have done wrong to us. They did wrong and they will have to answer to God. But I am not their judge. And and I don't want the job of being their parole officer. I don't want to be involved in their case. God can take care of it, okay? So, setting aside the culpability of those who have harmed us, and looking just at the wound that I have experienced, that wound is very, very, very educational. Because when I see where I'm getting hurt, I can find out where my ego is poking too much. So, just like that guy, he's going into shul and getting stepped on, well, I can tell you something. He didn't say he's going home and getting stepped on. He's going to work and getting stepped on. Apparently, there's something about shul. Maybe he wanted to know Leah. Maybe he wanted to be chazzan. I have no idea. Maybe he wanted to give a speech at the kiddush. I don't know what his ego wanted, but it was sticking out. Okay? When he walks into shul, his ego starts grasping tentacles of an octopus. He's grasping for things. And when he's all spread out trying to grab grab things and get his needs met, he gets stepped on. Cuz if you're spreading out your net trying to get your needs met, obviously people who are going about their business are going to step on you. And I'm not even talking about unscrupulous people who are going to actually take advantage of it and and and and and and take advantage of the fact that you're a needy person. I'm even talking about people who are somewhat oblivious to it, and they just don't realize that you're very sensitive in this particular area. They didn't know that by not giving him an aliyah one minute, he was going to put them on his enemy list for the rest of his life. Right? You ever found that out that you like really hurt somebody in a deep way you had no idea it was that hurtful to them? Because they attributed certain meaning to it that that you could not even fathom. Sure. It's happened to me, and I it's happened from me. Of course. Of course. Anyone who's lived a life has been on both sides of this. The point is that my pain is my teacher. My pain is my teacher. My pain is my teacher. The areas of life that are most difficult for me. And I'm going to own this, okay? If this is too hard for you to hear me saying it to you, I'm not saying it to you. I'm saying it to me. I'm genuinely saying it to me. Wherever I repeatedly experience frustration and pain, that is precisely the area where I got to go and check. Again, it doesn't excuse others who may be mistreating me, but their mistreatment of me is a sin, and sins are answerable to God. They don't have to answer to me. I don't need them to answer to me. Trust me, I don't want my abuser to come and use me as an amateur therapist, okay? I don't need them to come with their modeling apologies, you know, like leave me alone, all right? Better let me just take stock and say, you know, remember that old country western song? Looking for love in all the wrong places, right? Where do I keep showing up? Where do I keep insisting on showing up? Even though I keep getting hurt. And I don't mean a physical action, although perhaps it could be that too, like the story of the guy who kept getting hurt in school. But I mean, what situations, what relationships, you know, when I look back through my life, I and I see the the damaged relationships, do I see a pattern emerge? And what I'll And if I do see a pattern, usually what it is, I find that the relationships where I got hurt the worst were the ones in which I was the neediest. Where I needed the most. And it sounds terrible, not fair. Oh, because I was needy, I got hurt. Again, it's not right when people take advantage of our emotionalness. But, I'm not interested in taking their inventory. I got to take my inventory. And it's very, very educational for me to realize this. That the patterns, the recurring patterns in my life where I experience pain, frustration, disappointment, conflict, um those areas where I have to examine whether my ego is just way too hungry. And I have to use those precisely those painful situations as my laboratory for growth. The great irony. Here's the great irony. You know what people say when they're working on themselves? They they say, "You know, if I could just get some peace, if I could just get the crisis, the roller coaster just to quiet down for a for a for just a minute, I could do something with myself." Right? Like my if if the chaos around me, it's like, "How am I supposed to work on myself while there's so much chaos around me?" And the answer to that is, that's not a bug, that's a feature. The only place where real work happens is when the bombs are blowing up all around you. It's It's the great irony. Let life quiet down and then go work on myself. No, no, no. The only place where real work happens is in the place where the bombs are going off around you. Cuz the bombs going off around you, again, completely removing from this this calculation any fault that others may have. Cuz it's not going to help me to look into that. Remove the calculation and any fault that others may have. Just looking at my reactions, my reactions. These bombs that are blowing up around me, these stressors, are very, very useful information for me. So, let me get even more pointed here. My self-growth started from surrender. Started from letting go. And it continues to be an act of surrender. The areas where my ego overextended its functionality and is getting hurt are the precise areas in which I need to start exercising surrender. So, this particular issue that pains me so deeply, that's precisely the issue that I need to give over to God. And I need to be able to say with a full heart, "I'm not pursuing an outcome. I put this in your hand. I accept the chaos around me as a necessary process. And I'm willing to stay here humbly, quietly, calmly, ready to offer any productive act that I can that's of service, but not reacting to the chaotic stimuli. In that sense, I hope it's apparent to you that it's kind of difficult to manufacture this kind of situation. In other words, life puts us to the test. To create this or to simulate it uh through through, you know, human power to sort of intentionally self to the wall doesn't really work. Perhaps the first type of self-improvement that we're not even talking about can be induced through some type of, you know, manufacture pressure. But, what we're talking about is very organic. What we're talking about is we are respecting the rhythm of our life. Life goes through repeated ebbs and flows of ego death and rebirth. Oh, should I not have I should Okay, I'm going to have to I'm sorry. I should should have put a warning first. If you're going through this the first time, God bless you. It doesn't just happen once. It happens again and again and again. That's not a curse. I'm not trying to scare you out of life. That's the nature of things. We're always growing. Thank God, we're always growing. And when we finally perfect one level of surrender, we will be tested. We'll be tested and forced to surrender on an even deeper level. So, what I'm saying is life creates the test. Life puts us in these dire straits, these Egypts. Egypt is mitzrayim, metzarim, you know, narrow constrictions. And then we surrender. We allow God to remove us. Then we have our sphere of period of regrowth, and then we have our shorashim's period of being a nice puffy piece of bread, being a healthy ego, where self-esteem is actually love of God, because now our only the self-concept is synonymous with our own awareness of our godly soul. And then we do that for a while until we come to a a higher level, you know, relative to the level that we're on. We come to a a new level called mitzrayim, dire straits. And we we do that over and over again. And and it'll be okay. And I'm going to First of all, you're on a webinar with hundreds of people right now. So, we're all doing this together. So, we will be okay. All right? Um A lot of questions coming in in the chat. And it's hard to uh keep up. So, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to address it all. Um I don't We have we we have about a half an hour left tonight. Okay? It's a It's a two-part webinar. So, we have about a half an hour left tonight. So, I want to go to another uh topic right now. If that's okay. Um Obviously, I mean, I think it's understood this Jewish spiritual faith-based approach to uh to this topic. So, I want to talk about the issue of secular sources, secular wisdom, secular uh programs of healing, and how that may or may not be compatible with a Jewish uh belief system. Particularly because many people who are deeply believing um and very deeply spiritual, uh they find some type of outside help. I mean, outside of Judaism. Some type of system, whether it's therapy or recovery or the like. And And sometimes there's guilt about that or you know, sometimes not guilt, but confusion. Sometimes there's resentment, like, you know, why was this you know, where where has this been all my life? Why can't my Jewish life be like this? Um So, I want to talk a little bit about that in the remaining time that we have. If that is that is okay. Uh You're probably aware of the fact that the Rambam, that Maimonides says to receive the truth regardless of its source. Kabel Ha'emet Mi'pi Ha'omer. That's in the Rambam's Shmona Prakim. So, first of all, what does it matter where you hear the truth? Maybe it also says this stuff in the holy books. But, if you didn't hear it in the holy books, what do you care where you where you heard it? Um maybe it says in the holy books, but you couldn't understand it with with the way you were looking at things until you happen something that was outside of the holy books. There's a famous Chassidic story. I I actually I once I was with a a Jew in recovery. He had many many years in recovery. And he was like, "You know, for years it bothered me how come I had to go to these meetings to hear these basic concepts that I you know I really I should have heard this in Yeshiva. And retroactively I look back and I realized that I did, but only retroactively. So, he's like, "You know, it bothered me for years." He says, "But then I thought about this you know this old this story about the Baal Shem Tov." And the Baal Shem Tov um he told his students that um the story about the I mean the punchline is the Ukrainian line, "Mozhesh da nye khochesh." You can, but you don't want, right? So, he told them this idea that sometimes, you know, a person says they can't they can they can't they can they just don't want to. And then uh there was this uh this wagon driver was coming into the shul and he was begging them to help him with uh the the wagon with the horse stuck in the mud and they were they were saying, "We can't we can't." And uh so the the wagon driver, who wasn't Jewish, he screamed at them in Ukrainian, "Mozhesh da nye khochesh. You can you can you just don't want to." And I was like, "Ah, life lesson." Life lesson, right? You can, but you don't want to. Aha. Aha, right? Hold on a second. How come they couldn't have learned that life lesson directly from the Bal Shem Tov? How come that didn't click for them until the Ukrainian wagon driver screamed it at them? And the answer is I don't know. But a maaseh v'rachmanus kein kashya. You can't ask why did it happen the way it happened. That's how what happened. In other words, don't ask yourself, "Well, how come I didn't get it from this source? How come I only got it from that source?" I don't know, cuz that's how God chose to deliver it to you. So, you wanted to hear it from the Bal Shem Tov instead l'havdil you heard it from a Ukrainian wagon driver. The bottom line is you heard the message. And uh I think one way of understanding this is that Hashem speaks to us through our experiences. And if we're humble then uh we can hear the truth that's being communicated to us. And we don't have to get nervous. We don't have scared. Um why didn't I learn this in a religious context? Because you didn't. Cuz you didn't, okay? Now, let me get a little bit deeper into because although it is true sometimes we hear life lessons from sources. I do want to be careful about conflating Torah with l'havdil any other ideology or wisdom in the world. There is a difference, obviously. But what is that difference? How do How do we understand that difference? There's a There's a Midrash that says, "If somebody tells you that Yesh chochma ba'goyim, that the nations of the world, meaning the rest of humanity, outside of the Jewish people, has wisdom, ta'amin, you should believe that person who tells you that there is wisdom among other other people other than Jews have wisdom, you should believe them. It's true. But if they tell you, "Yesh Torah ba'goyim," al ta'amin. If they tell you there's Torah among the nations of the world, don't believe them." So what's the difference between chochma and Torah? So I mentioned before the Rambam, in Shemona Perakim, he says, "Kabbalas ha'emes mi kol mi she'amaro, receive the truth regardless of its source." The Rambam also says a similar thing in Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Kiddush when he's talking about astronomy, about calculating the uh the new moon, and he says that he's using Greek calculations. And he says that really the Jews had their own calculations. Uh but we don't have those, but we we use the Greek calculations. And uh it's fine to use those Greek calculations because this is something he says these are concepts, meaning the location of the, you know, the moon and things like that. These are things that are readily obvious, empirically evident to everybody. What does that mean? That means Yes, I'm relying on the authority of these sources outside of Torah. But for what kinds of things am I relying upon them? I'm I'm relying upon them for things that can be demonstrated. So, in other words, if somebody makes a statement that this method works, and then they demonstrate that it works, of course I You've just demonstrated it. They're not telling me a theory. They're not telling me an idea. They're telling me how something works, and then they're demonstrating how it works. You see for yourself, it works. So, the Rambam says something like that, please do not get caught up on whether or not it has Jewish origins or not. Okay. But what then would be the limit? Like, how far can you go with this, and then at what point do you have to say, I That's the extent of what wisdom outside of Torah has to offer. So, look at it like this. Now, I heard somebody explain once that science can explain how, but can never answer why. Why is a philosophical question. How is a question of the mechanics, like how does it work, right? So, explain to me the process by which something happens, right? Take apart the phenomenon and explain it. That's called explaining the how. But the why means why should it be this way? What is the meaning? What is the true purpose? No scientist will dare answer that question. They won't try to tell you the purpose, meaning the grand purpose. They might tell you the the immediate function something has. That's not purpose. That's not why it's that way. That's just describing more of the how. So, putting this in terms of self improvement or working on yourself. A secular method can teach me how to do a particular thing. But it can't give me a reason for doing it. And it cannot provide me with a purpose. I have to come into whatever work it is that I'm doing with a sense of purpose. With an answer to the question, why does it all begin with? If I come to the world outside of Torah and I ask them to tell me what's it all about, why am I here, what's the purpose of my life? As a Jew, I'm making a profound error. You know, I I once wrote an article about this in the Questions and Answers Tommy magazine. Someone was asking about going to therapy. A religious Jew was asking about going to therapy. And one of the things I said was, "Look, if you are religious, you hire a tour guide. You go on a trip. You go to you go to you go to Rome and you hire a tour guide to show you around. But you don't tell them that you keep kosher. And you don't tell them that Friday afternoon back in the hotel before sundown. And you just hire them. They're going to give you an itinerary that is going to have, you know, countless halachic issues. But it's not their fault cuz that's not their job. They're not They're tour guide. They're not there to figure out how to avoid Halachic issues for you. You should have come in as a client said, "Here are my limits." beforehand. And even if you can't think of all your limits beforehand, when the limits come up, it's your job as a customer to say, "Oh, uh yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not going to do that because we need to be back in the hotel before, you know, whatever time on Friday afternoon." Therapy in general, by and large, and now I'm dealing with a very broad brush, is amoral. My father, zal gizen zein, is a psychologist. And he told me a joke, you know, a joke, which I never forgot. He says, "There was a guy who goes into a bar. He orders a shot of whiskey. Bartender puts the shot of whiskey on the bar. Guy takes the shot, looks at it." He tosses it in the in the bartender's face. And the bartender is soaking wet. He's got the the whiskey dripping down his face. He says, "Get out of here. Next day, the same guy comes in. Bartender sees him. "Get out. Get out." He says, "No, no, no. I'm going to behave myself. Give me a second chance." "Okay, fine. What do you want?" "Shot of whiskey." So the bartender is nervous, but he pours him a shot of whiskey. Guy picks up the shot of whiskey, looks at it. Splashes it in the bartender's face. Bartender wipes off his face. He says, "You get out of here. You're banned for life." Year later, year later, guy comes in the bar, walks up to the bar. Bartender recognizes him. He says, "Hold on a second. You're banned. Get out of here." The guy says, "Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. You haven't seen me in a year, right? He says yeah. Well, where where Well, where do you think I've been for a year? I've been in therapy. Okay, I've been in therapy for So, will you give me another chance? He says okay, fine. What do you want? He says I want a shot of whiskey. Okay, so the bartender puts the shot glass on it pours whiskey. The guy takes the shot glass full of whiskey, looks at it splashes it right in the bartender's face. Bartender says Thought you told me you've been in therapy. Guy says I have been. Now when I do that, I don't feel bad about it. Okay, anyways, that's the joke my father This is what told me. What what's the joke? The The joke is that you know, you go to a therapist and say, you know, I have a lot of uh conflict over the fact I'm throwing drinks in people's face. Well, it's not the therapist's job to be like a moral voice. It's a joke for a reason. Don't take it so literally, okay? The point is it's Real clinical detachment is amoral. Or close to being amoral. Not immoral, that's for sure. Immoral is I know right from wrong and I'm going to do it. Amoral means I'm not concerned with the question of morality. That's not my business. So, for instance I mean sometimes religious Jewish people will go to a marriage counselor who will give them advice that is actually against the Halachas of what a Jewish couple needs to do. That's That's not a bad therapist. They don't know that. That's not their job to study Taharas Hamishpacha. It's not their problem that they don't know. Just like if you would go on a trip to Rome and the tour guide didn't know that he would be back in the hotel before sundown. It's your job to speak up and to say, "Oh, thank you for that suggestion, but here's the here's the problem that I can't do that. It doesn't work for me for me because it doesn't align with my values." But they can't give you values. So, you have to come in to the therapeutic process with a sense of values already. They can tell you the how, how things work, what to do, but they can't tell you why. Why does or even why it's worth engaging in this therapy and experiencing healing. They can't even tell you why healing is worthy is a worthwhile pursuit. That's something you have to come in with already. This is a little bit of a a different subject, but you know, there was a a shlucha, an emissary, uh Chabad emissary, uh in in Cincinnati. Mrs. Sharfstein. And she became very uh versed in Montessori. And she went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and uh she told the Rebbe of her plans to introduce Montessori in her uh in her Hebrew school or nursery school. And uh So, it's very interesting. The Rebbe told her that you can use the methods, but not the hashkafa. Hashkafa is a Hebrew word, which means the the outlook or the worldview. So, it's very interesting. The Rebbe distinguished the two things. Like, Montessori has two things. There are tools, right? Methods. And either the methods work or they don't work. And it's demonstrable. You can see if they work, right? So, that is Kabbalist Emes M'Yishai Emes. Just accept the truth from someone who's saying it. That's like taking astronomy from Greeks. You can see that it works. All right, that's the tools, the methods. But, the hashkafa, the world, you know, Montessori comes with a worldview. Don't take your worldview from that. You as a Jew have to come in with a worldview. And in the end, what she called it, she got approval from the Rebbe to call the style of uh school, she she called it individualized instruction using Montessori materials and methods. It's very long-winded, but necessary. Necessary cuz you're not following the worldview of Montessori. It's using individual- individualized instruction using Montessori materials and methods. She's using their materials and their methods. Again, Yesh chochma bagoyim, ta'amin. Wisdom is telling you how things work. Believe them. And if the tools work, use them. But, Torah Torah Torah lies something is worth doing. Why we do anything. The purpose of life. You have to come into the process with that already. In other words, let me give you another example. Let's use Montessori as an example. I'll give you another mashal, another uh analogy. Give me another analogy. Today, this is just a pet peeve, so I'm just using the opportunity to gripe. Um you see, because the world right now is very polarized, politically polarized. So, even profoundly religious Jews, who you would think their worldview would be directly from from Judaism, they get baited and they've fallen into partisanship. And you know, whether it's conservatism or liberalism, those are the two, you know, chocolate and vanilla of today. You know, 100 years ago, it was you know, communism. Uh, you know, Jews always had, you know, the foreign isms that were out there. And it's always a dangerous thing to to to embrace any ism. Cuz an ism by definition means a worldview. An ism or an alogy. You know, it's like we don't want the isms or the alogies giving us our worldview. We can borrow their tools. We can use what works and we should use what works. But we have to come into it with our own sense of of meaning. That's why I I highly suggest to anyone who is um in some type of, you know, program of healing, recovery, therapy, that in addition to getting the proper outside help, that you have a spiritual mentor to check in with to make sure that everything you're doing is compatible with your with your spiritual needs. Really, you know, they they they have to they have to go together. Because after all, you know, let's go back to where we started from. Let's go back to the beginning. Why am I trying to improve anyway? Why am I trying to heal anyway? It's not for me. It's because my maker wants me to make the best of myself that I can. Okay? It's not I chose to do this. It's not It's not a luxury. It's a necessity. It's a demand. It's a requirement. Hashem requires me to be the best me, even when I'm uninterested. Well, since that's the whole basis, then I have to have at least some uh some basic God concept, some basic notion of service, of covenant, a contract. That there's there's there is one greater than me who requires something of me. And that in order to live up to that and thereby bettering myself right now. Another thing that means that this whole thing is predicated on a sense of duty. A duty, a responsibility to be my best self, because my maker expects it of me. And another component of this is you know, eventually life does um stabilize. Eventually things do get um normal for a while, at least, right? And that's the most as you know, that's the most dangerous time. Very, very dangerous. Because the desperation is gone. The uh the gift of des- of desperation is gone. And uh you know, when life becomes normal enough, person starts thinking to himself or herself, "You know, I could go back to the dysfunction of self-will. I could go back to the dysfunction of allowing my ego to just run amok. What the heck? Let the chips fall where they may. Was probably blow up in my face. Yeah, they probably will, but I'm kind of in the mood for some self-destructive entitlement right about now, right? Sometimes you just hankering for some self-destructive entitlement, right? So, when that idea comes up, the answer would be Yeah, that sounds great, but I'm I'm not allowed. You know what I'm saying? I'm not allowed. No one's asking you whether you want to keep your sanity or you want to lose it. It's not your prerogative. This is duty. God requires you to live your best life, even when you don't give a damn about yourself for whatever crazy reason. I'll just wrap up for tonight with a a story, a little vignette, slice of life. I once saw a couple of uh a couple of uh sober alcoholics talking to each other. And uh one of them was I mean, he's a guy who had about 20, maybe 25 years sober. And uh he said to the other guy, who was a little bit newer, probably had less than 10 years. He said to him, "If God spoke to you and you knew absolutely certainly that it was God, and he told you to would you do it?" And he said, "No." And the first guy said, "I would. And if I wouldn't, then I'm not even sober now." And that really blew me away. Now, obviously, that's a story that really, really, really mis- interpreted. If somebody is sick and looking for an excuse, that's a story they could definitely run with. But here's here's how it hit to me pretty clearly. It's not your accomplishment. Neither to take pride in nor to hold on to and covet and and and become attached to. Your life I would your growth is not yours. It doesn't belong to you. It was predicated upon self- surrender. It belongs to God. And therefore, theoretically, if God were to come and tell you, "Give it all up." You'd have to be ready to give it all up. If God said, "Take a drink." Even though you knew that would throw away everything, you have to be ready to throw it away. And conversely, the other side of that same coin is if God doesn't tell you to throw it away, you have NO RIGHT TO THROW IT AWAY EVEN IF YOU DON'T CARE ANYMORE OR don't care for the moment. Avraham Avinu spent Abraham Abraham our father spent his entire life being God's PR man. Built up monotheism by showing what a good guy he was by you know that he was a blessing to to all the nations hospitality and then God says go slaughter your son. That's terrible PR. If he slaughters his son then all these pagans are going to say, "You're just another one just like you pretended to be so so righteous." From Abraham's perspective, the test wasn't could he force himself to kill his his son. The test was could he throw away everything that he had built. Take that son that you love and sacrifice him because he's not yours to begin with. Now in the end Hashem did not ask him to slaughter Yitzchak. He wanted Yitzchak to live and to have progeny. We are his progeny. But he wanted to show that you don't have it yours. You have it because it's God's and he requires you to have it. So even when you heal and you grow and you find your new life, it's not yours to do as you please with. It's God's and therefore if he takes it from you, you give it without attachment and if he doesn't take it from you, then you're not allowed to let go of it. You're not allowed to say, "I'm done with it." Because this is not self-improvement for the heck of it, for the fun of it, for the nobility of it even. For the duty of it. I'll tell you one last story even though we're may be out of time, but I'll tell you one last story and then I'm going to say good night. There's a guy driving down the road. He's miserable. And uh he's so miserable he cries out to God. And he says, "God, please, anything, anything. I need a new life. So sick of my life." And all of a sudden, you know, he hears the voice of God right there in his car. God says, "You're looking for a new life?" Guy's like, "Yeah." God says, "You're in luck. I have a new life for you on sale today for a very reasonable price." The guy says, "How much?" God says, "How much you got on you?" Guy says, "Uh 20 bucks." God says, "Oh, perfect. Price for your new life today is 20 bucks." He says, "Well, hold on a second." Remember he's driving down the road. He's like, "Look at the gas gauge in the car. It's almost on empty. I'm going to give you my 20 bucks, I'm not going to have money for for the gas. I'm going to run out of gas in the car. Can't refuel." God says, "Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. I forgot. The price for your new life just went up. It's $20 and your car." Guy's like, "My car? Oh God. If I give you my car then how am I going to get to work in the morning?" God says, "Oh, work. I forgot you have a job. Yeah, okay. Price for your new life just went up. It's $20, your car and your job." Guy's like, "God, if I give you my job, you know, I can't make a paycheck then I'm not going to be able to pay the mortgage." God says, "Mortgage? Oh, you're a homeowner. Yeah, I forgot about that. The price for your new life today is $20, your car, your job and your house." Guy says, "God, if I give you my house, where are my wife and children going to live?" God says, "Ah, wife and children. Yeah, the price for happiness, price for your new life, is $20. Your car, your job, your house, your wife and your kids. You got anything more to say?" And at this point the guy realizes he shut up. So he's like, "Mhm. So God says, "Good. Now, before I give you your new life, I'm going to give you a new life. Let me take all that." God takes all the stuff. You can give you a new life, but before I give you a new life, I want to know if you can do something for me. Can you do something for me?" And the guy's like, He's not going to speak. He knows every time he opens his mouth it gets worse. God says, "Okay, here. Here's what I want you to do for me. You see this 20 bucks? God says, "It's not your 20 bucks. It's my 20 bucks. You had it, now I do. It's my 20 $20 is mine." God says. Um "I want you to take this $20 and spend it, but it's not yours, it's mine. So you can only spend it on what I want to spend it on." God says, "You see this car? It's not your car. You used to have a car just like this. You don't anymore. It's my car. I want you to drive it where I want to go. It's my car. You drive it cuz it's mine. You only take it where I want to go. You see this job? God says, "It's not your job." God says, "It's my job. You show up there and you do business the way I want business done, according to my rules. You see this house? God says, "It's not your house. It's my house, and I want you to live in my house and use it the way God's house ought to be used. You see this wife and children? They're not your wife and children." God says, "They are my wife and children and you look at them accordingly. Can you do all of that for me? The guy says, "Mhm." God says, "Good. Here's your $20. Here's your car. Here's your job. Here's your house. Here's your wife and your kids. And here's your new life." The difference between the old life and the new life is to whom it belongs. We start by giving away the self to its rightful owner. It was never ours to begin with. That was an illusion. The self is not an illusion. But the sense of separate selfhood, autonomous selfhood, is an illusion. So, we give the self back to its rightful And once we've done that, and the self is now a healthy, godly self, then we can improve it. So, first we turn into the flat bread in Egypt. Then we can work on ourselves. Passage of holiness, finish of holiness, so on and so forth. Then we can be a nice, plump loaf of bread on the altar in the temple. Because it's not me. It's him. It's his. It's all his. Okay. And may God God willing, we will continue tomorrow night. Um I did not respond a lot to the questions or comments. It's just too difficult to do that on the fly. But we had a many emails that came in. If you have more emails to send in, please send them in to the address that's on the information about the webinar. Um And God willing, we'll uh we'll uh deal with some of the questions tomorrow night.