How to Work on Yourself | PART 2

i think we'll wait half a minute and we'll really jump in serious stuff what's my recipe ritual can you hear a joke yeah i'll tell you a joke someone wrote in the chat they want to hear a joke uh back in soviet russia a guy calls up the kgb answer the phone hello kgb he says yeah kgb tell me a joke so the kgb officer says okay what's your address he says tells him his address and a minute later there's a knock at the door he opens the door kgb is standing there they grab the guy and they take him to prison and they send him to siberia for 20 years 20 years later a guy gets out of jail he gets on the phone first day of freedom he calls up the kgb kgb and says hi kgb says yeah kgb tell me a joke they say sure what's your address he says um i know that joke already yeah anyway maybe it has a tie-in by the way to tonight's theme made a bracha before we started by the way [Music] um you know the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results maybe that's the the tie-in anyway we are uh we're going to talk about how to work on yourself part two a lot of questions a lot of questions came in uh and i want to get to i don't think i'm going to get to all of them i know i'm not going to get to all of them but i'm going to get to some of them and then maybe after i do the questions that came in on the email i will uh try to do some questions uh live questions here um okay so let's start like this i'm gonna open up a uh a document i made for myself here of some of the questions that came in um oh this was fantastic actually this wasn't even a question this was just somebody offered me an insight which i really really cherish when people offer me insight dear rabbi tab last night you shared the parable of the two sober alcoholics one would drink if told by god another wouldn't by the way it wasn't simply a parable it was a real thing i actually saw this conversation so i i it's also a i guess that there's a lesson to it but it's not a parable it's an actual thing i saw that i saw it okay we need to be ready for chant to change direction as soon as we're told this is the person writing to me how they're paraphrasing the moral of that story we need to be ready to change direction as soon as we're told but if not told we are to can you continue in our mission yes very good yes i like how you paraphrased the point of that story and today's daily wisdom of the rabbit contains i think that same message i think when they say the daily wisdom of it ever they're referring to a maybe it's an email that goes out i think that's what it is an email that goes out with some teachings from uh from the lobby okay and so they included here this teaching from the rabbit and it's actually connected to um the parsha this week the the torah portion okay uh it says in english here it's a translation of exodus 15 22 moses had to forcibly make the israelites set out from the sea of reeds what's this describing basically after the splitting of the sea the miracle of the splitting of the sea so meisha bay know moses had to actually you know force the jews come on let's go giddy up you know let's move so here's the devil's teaching that this person sent me beautiful um the jewish people i should mention what were they doing they were picking up the jewels that were washing up on the shore the jewels from the uh the wagons of the egyptian army the chariots okay the jewish people did not terry out of greed meaning they weren't like hanging out on the beach because they wanted to get all the jewels well they were getting all the jewels but they weren't doing it out of greed they were fulfilling god's commandment to empty egypt of its wealth see before they left egypt they were given a commandment to leave with all of the wealth of egypt to take the basically the wealth the material wealth which represents the spiritual wealth and to transfer it from the evil of egypt to the holiness that basically they would ultimately use that wealth to build a uh the mishkan the sanctuary in the desert okay so they had i had this commandment to take the wealth out of egypt so and it says here the spiritual dimension of this directive was to salvage all the potentials of holiness present in this wealth from this we learn once we know what our divine mission in life is we must be so devoted to it that doing anything else seems unthinkable right so the jews were told get all the wealth out of egypt all right fine no problem once they heard that it's like single-minded get all the wealth out of egypt that's it that's all we're going to do and and you have to be that way once you know your mission that's it there's nothing else on the other hand get ready for the paradox because everything in judaism is always paradox whenever you say is it a or is it b it's always c right that's why i'm a gemini i was born in civen because and then the torah was given in sivan because it's always you know the question of uh you know is it this way or that way it's both right that's that's that's always paradox or like my uh ancestor the magala mukesh said that uh the kabbalist the magala mukesh he said that maisha is russia the name moses is an acronym for the disputes of hillel and chama in other words the point is that toyota is not it's not the the fact that we have conflict in in toyota is not a is not a is not a bug it's a feature right so here comes the paradox on one hand you have a mission that's it anything else is unthinkable so the jews were told you have to sap egypt of its wealth that's it so that's all we're doing and they were singularly focused on that on the other hand as soon as as soon as it is clear that it is time to change direction we must not hesitate right misha was telling him come on no we're done with that i know before we were sapping egypt of its wealth but now the time for that's finished let's get along we should apply ourselves to our new mission with the same enthusiasm we gave to our previous mission beautiful beautiful um and i think the person who who sent me that that's just beautiful i think there's so much there to be expounded upon um you know we were speaking about last night that ultimately self-improvement is not something i do for myself it's something i do for hashem and i do it to please him and because i'm doing it for him and for his pleasure so when you're serving someone for their pleasure then obviously you're gonna serve them what they want you know it's like the old joke about the communist is preaching and he says comrades after the revolution we're all gonna have strawberries and cream and the little jew says what if i don't like strawberries and cream the communist says after the revolution you better like strawberries and cream right so the point is when we're serving hashem it's for him we're giving him what he wants from us not what we want to give him but what he wants to get from us so um when we understand that then we also it's that interesting paradox of well if right now while this is the aveda well this is the work i have to be focused on it like there's nothing else in the world and not even a possibility for anything else in the world and the paradoxes at the same time as soon as i get the word change your avoid that change your work okay i change it in other words when i become attached to the service that i'm doing not only is that just another attachment that i should have shed along with all the other attachments that i've been trying to let go of it's actually the worst attachment and i'll tell you why because it's got a holy excuse it's jihad it's a holy war right because now i've got presumably in my own mind at least i have god co-signing the fact that i cannot waver from this path well when that's no longer the path it's time to change and to change gracefully we spoke about it last night about the ikeda about abraham sacrificing isaac you know it was about abandoning your life's work particularly a holy life's work a life's work dedicated gut to god and god wanting to make sure that even though you have been doing something holy and doing something for god your whole life you're ready to walk away from it when asked to do so otherwise you're proving that you haven't been doing it for god have you right i mean i don't want to repeat everything i said last night but we spoke about the fact that abraham spent his entire life being god's pr man you know pumping monotheism and then in the end if he's gonna sacrifice his kid it's like okay now you're just like another pagan just like us it's the biggest kill of hashem it's the biggest uh scandal right and he's gonna everything he did for god is gonna be lost and yet god didn't actually want him to slaughter isaac but he wanted to be he wanted abraham to show that he was ready even to abandon what he had been doing for god right and that's how you really show that it was for god because at the end if you say i baked you a cake but then you don't let the person who you made it for eat it no don't need it too beautiful i baked you a cake but please don't eat it right god i made this beautiful work called this this repaired life i took i salvaged this life from dysfunction and i healed it and i prepared it and look it's such a thing of beauty and you know if god says okay well drop it let it break again oh no no god all right so then who did you do it for right um now i want to look at another question that we that we got in because i think it's related to this idea that i'm speaking about right now um someone's writing here yeah i remain with this question um primary point of self-improvement of aids hashem is giving over our will to god's will to the point of surrendering self and self-effacement people who are struggling with emotional health often misunderstand this in the name of making god's will their own we negate the self entirely and never actually have a sufficiently developed healthy sense of self to give up as an example i rejoice when my son tells me his preference is in food his jealousy his anger i rejoice because he's being a self he's showing aspects of being human which i never had i heard in your lecture that some of us involved in self-improvement and healing are just perpetuating service of self rather than service of god my question remains doesn't there have to be a self first to give god what if that was not allowed to develop like children who were never allowed to know their own feelings likes dislikes telling them to surrender their will to god is easy there is no will exactly first they need to find their will talks like these are very confusing without that clarification okay well thank you for writing that and yes let us to the contrary let us let us clarify absolutely let us clarify here um you say very good zuck's um i mean as you said you have to have a self in order to surrender the self so let's talk a little bit about that you know we spoke about we spoke an awful lot last night about uh bittel um you know i was once i was giving a talk in texas and i had mentioned bittel i mean i like bitter bittles you know one of my favorite subjects and uh afterwards some lady comes over to me and she says to me be tool and i'm like okay yeah you know because i i pronounce it bitter you know ashkenazic but be tool that's like the you know you know right the emphasis on the second syllable or on the last syllable so i said yeah be tool yeah you could say it that way she says no no be tool i'm like yeah bethel be tool yeah right she says no no be too be too old be too um what what is she saying that i'm not you know what does she want me to hear that i'm not hearing so i i said yeah that's that's also a way to pronounce it so she says be tool be a tool be a tool of hashem bam wow that was so great because i realize that's exactly what bitto means bitto means be a tool of hashem be a tool of hashem now for the sake of god's glory i want god to have a nice tool i want him to have the best tool in fact the whole purpose of self-improvement was because i don't belong to me trust me if i belong to me you know what i would do with me i'd walk through the door and throw myself on the couch you know but if you belong to hashem then there's a whole other responsibility and if you are hashem's tool then you got to take care of hashem's tool so yeah definitely when we speak about bitter surrender humility we are not talking about shattered self-esteem that for sure not and we're not talking about this is a little bit different but lack of self-concept now what we're talking about is whatever self-concept you have you realize it doesn't belong to you it doesn't belong to you this is especially important after the healing begins you know we spoke about last night how we go from passover to chevous right in 49 days you go from where you have to have ego death you have to be matzo you have to be flat and after 49 days of working on yourself now you get to be a puffy loaf of bread that's a holy sacrifice that's brought in the holy temple right that puffiness represents the ego a healthy robust ego so um you know after the healing when you do have a strong sense of self this becomes a especially important because obviously you can fall in a trap where you go back to self-will so how we supposed to uh not allow our blessings to cause us to lose our blessings obviously when we're when we're humble we you know an empty vessel is able to receive but uh how do we remain humble even when things are going good so you know there's an interesting uh there's a story an interesting story in the gemara in the talmud it says was very beautiful and as such he would sit in front of the mikvah the women's mikvah i'm going to say that's that's very suspicious no he was he was a holy person he did it because when the women would see him he wasn't doing it that he should look at the women he was doing it that the women should look at him that he was beautiful when they would see him and have an impression of his beautiful uh appearance in their mind then when they would go home and be with their husbands so then they would have beautiful children anyways so somebody came they criticized him about it but not for the reasons you would think again there was nothing like at all inappropriate about it it was totally you know he was doing something very very noble but somebody criticized him nonetheless but for a totally different reason they said to him aren't you afraid of attracting an evil eye you know you're showing off your beauty and uh you're gonna you're gonna arouse somebody's jealousy and you're gonna get an eye and so he says i'm not worried about ayan hoda about evil eye because i'm a descendant of uh yasif of joseph because i'm from uh beneath a descendant of ephraim who's one of the sons of yasif and regarding them yankovino jacob our father gave the blessing video the yid gularev means they should multiply like fish um you know they should multi multiply like fish so what does it mean they should multiply like fish rashi actually even says this in the in the commentary there and and the verse in uh at the end of uh hebraicious the book of genesis he says there that the the ayan hoda doesn't rule over the fish so uh because they're down in the water so there are two ways of reading that i see this explains there's two ways of reading that one way of reading that is fish are not harmed by the evil eye they're immune to the evil eye because they're down in the water what does that mean keep a low profile right keep your head down don't attract attention and no evil lie like a fish who's hidden under the water that's one way of understanding it and and that means that basically let's say you came back from a lot of challenge and you were able to put your life back together for hashem again we're emphasizing that we're doing this for hashem but you were able to put your life back together and you are seeing blessing in your life and you are seeing success in certain areas so maybe you need to like be very very secretive about it because you don't want to uh you know appear arrogant even if you're not but you don't want to appear it you don't want to attract attention and uh you know you'll draw negative energy god forbid that's one interpretation the other interpretation is now the fish is immune to the evil eye because he's down in the water yeah that's what he said no no because he's down in the water you get it no the fish cannot live out of the water like the parable of rebbi akiva remember when the romans made it illegal to learn torah and kiva continued learning and someone said why are you doing that you're going to get killed and he told the parable he said you know once there was a fish and uh swimming in the water a fox came along and said fish it's dangerous in the water because the fishermen have their nets spread out to catch you come out of the water and come up on dry land with me the fox says right the fox was trying to catch the fish trying to con him so the fish says to the fox foolish fox i mean they say that you're so clever you're not because you would know that i can't live outside of the water the water is my life yes i'm in danger here the fishermen have cast their nets but if i come out of the water which is the place of my life i'll be even more danger and that's what ruby akiva said torah is the place of my life if i come out of that i'm not going to be in less danger i'll only be in more danger right a fish is in the water a fish is constantly in the place from whence it derives its life when you are a fish a fish means that you realize that you are completely uh you are completely uh um dependent like a fish is dependent on water you are completely dependent upon hashem not just that hashem's bigger than you and therefore you have to go to him from time to time to get what you need but literally every single second you are dependent on hashem like a fish is dependent cannot live outside of the water for a moment when you realize this when you have that attitude that there's no separation there cannot be separation i'm dependent every single second even though i have blessings in my life even though i have success in my life i'm still dependent on god every single second ah now don't worry about any evil eye because you don't even think that the stuff that you have is really yours you don't really think it's really yours and you're right it's not really yours first of all god helped you do it you couldn't do anything without him second of all it belongs to him he can come take it away like we're talking about and you have to be willing to give it to him and not tell him oh i worked so hard on this beautiful life i built for you don't take it away no you have to be ready with joy to release it to him if he wants to start you all over again from a new bottom so when you have a fish attitude that means that even when i have an active life even when i have stuff going on in my life it's not my life it doesn't belong to me remember we talked about last night the parable at the end about the 20 the car the job the house and the wife and the kids yeah i have a life but it's not mine it's hashem's life that he's letting me not letting me ordering me to use the way he wants it to be used so sense of self is not a contradiction at all to surrender sense of self is not a contradiction at all to uh bitter surrender and bittle in fact are even more enhanced magnified the greater sense of self you have because you're giving up more you are acknowledging that hashem has this this this life that is full that is that is uh rich and it's all his so it's not about being an empty person who has no uh feelings who has no preferences who has no desires it's about realizing that you don't have autonomous claim to any of it um yeah yeah okay i was going to mention something else in connection to that idea but i don't recall what it is so let's move on i see questions many questions that came in and let's see if we can get to them but i want to continue with the questions that uh came in from the email um it's on the tip of my tongue with the next thing i wanted to say related to this can't remember okay question that came in very very good question in fact this question various iterations of this question i got several people asking this question but this is the one that i'm that i'm reading what would you tell someone who's not at rock bottom but working it changing it is indeed harder i've noticed with people that i coach that they do better at changing when they hit rock bottom okay um let's talk about that let's talk about that remember last night i said that bottom is relative so maybe i didn't elaborate sufficiently but i said that bottom is a relative uh term and that no two people have the same objectively the same bottom let me let me elaborate a little bit more probably i should have because bottom is a relative term therefore not only did no two people have the same bottom but it's not set in stone it's not a fixed thing what your bottom is going to be and therefore we can raise the bottom so to speak we need bottom we must hit bottom but bottom can be raised it can be higher bottom just means when i realize i can't do this alone bottom just means that it's not that i'm not good enough or smart enough it's not that i don't care enough it's not that i'm not a decent person i'm all of those things and and more and none of it is sufficient i cannot do this thing if your life falls apart then it's pretty clear then it's pretty clear although i know plenty of people whose lives fell apart multiple times and we're still uh you know trying to uh you know trying another uh another scheme how to insist that their life was not yet unmanageable but at any rate a person who is not facing crisis can also find within themselves powerlessness and the need for surrender however i will be transparent in saying that it requires a lot more work if you understand the nature of reality if you understand that created existence is not absolute okay now i'm getting philosophical yeah what do you want from me i'm a hasidic rabbi i teach this we're gonna do a little mysticism sue me 30 seconds of it the nature of uh creation is that it wasn't always here it's not eternal what we call something was once nothing and something the real something with a capital s had to put it here god is absolute existence everything in creation including us is relative existence or conditional existence conditional upon what conditional upon the creator forcing us into existence so we don't exist on our own we have nothing not just we have no life we have no existence if god would stop creating us this second we would not only stop living we would stop existing in fact we would stop existing even retroactively in the past because we would lose everything about ourselves even our history so if you are able to meditate on these truths on the ontological dependence of everything upon the absolute one then you will be able to find your dependence you will be able to find your dependence upon hashem most of us come to this because of crisis because life is falling apart i can't manage life and therefore i become open to the possibility of powerlessness however if you are willing to do this philosophically and reach this conclusion logically as a thought experiment and and realize the truth of it without having to go through pain then yes you could surrender even when life is is stable and good and and and pleasant and easy if there is such a person who has such a life but in theory if somebody had such a life if anyone out there had such a life they could just simply they could reach a level of surrender just by realizing that by by definition all of us are completely dependent upon hashem oh and that's what i was talking about before about the ghoul arrive about the fish the fish realizing that it is constantly dependent upon its life source you can't walk out of the water for a little bit and then you know go back in we can't divorce ourselves from god for one endeavor or for one uh you know god you know what i got some stuff to do right now that i think i can cover on my own and i'll come back and check in on you when there's stuff that i can't cover no there's no existence we do not exist without him so you can reach that philosophically it's just obviously much more much more difficult um let's look at another okay i was at a froome 12-step group i'm but i'm gonna give commentary and i'm gonna assume that means a 12-step group where there's a lot of from people okay i was at a froome 12-step group by the way from 12-step groups some of them are great but a lot of them nobody can get past the first three steps because the first three three steps are about god and all these people with yeshiva training they just they go in circles with their you know yeshiva arguments about god it's like i tell from people a lot of times like please just keep it simple you know don't don't tell me what you heard about god in yeshiva obviously it wasn't working you know okay i was at a from 12-step group and after a woman shared after reading a woman shared i'm not powerless over my actions just over my thoughts and feelings okay so basically she was saying something like to um so i don't want to say against the program because i'm not like here to be the police but uh she was she was qualifying the fact that look program is about powerlessness right we're powerless that's the first step and she was saying i'm not powerless over my actions she was being medic i'm using the i'm not powerless over my actions just over my thoughts and feelings okay she was parroting what we were all taught all the other women continued in her way meaning they were like cool that's i like that i'm gonna i'm gonna say that too then one brave woman said i do feel powerless over my actions and i surrendered to god this woman personified to me what goodness lies in the 12 steps and how my own healing can move forward if i truly surrender my dysfunction and issues to god instead of sitting in self-blame and self-hate at my dysfunction and my issues but of course i also wonder if this is the truth and how it fits with from education okay so basically your experience tells you this is true but your torah learning doesn't necessarily you can't find sources for it to back it up um so you want to talk about that first of all i think it's funny that this person wanted to say i'm powerless over my actions just not over my thoughts and my feelings because according to tanya thoughts are actions in tanya you have three uh levushim three garments of the soul action speech and thought yeah thought is a behavior albeit a behavior that we engage in in our own head but it's a behavior you know i'll give you a perfect illustration of it like think the times tables right now go ahead think the times tables you don't have to do fancy ones like 11 times 12. nobody can hear you just think it okay fine you're doing it right now okay good all right i feel like dora the explorer anyway um so were you thinking the times tables just uh 10 seconds ago when i told you to do it yeah okay good were you thinking the times tables 10 minutes ago no but did you know the time stables 10 minutes ago yeah you probably knew them 10 years ago and that's my point that thought is a behavior it's something that has a beginning it has an end a duration it's an activity you start and you stop um and by the way not to seize upon words but when i said are you doing it are you doing it i use the word doing to describe thinking and you are comfortable with that because thought is a behavior so if she wants to say and be medic i'm only powerless over my actions but not my thoughts and feelings i would say well according to tanya your thoughts are actions and whatever responsibility you have over your actions you have the same responsibility over your thoughts okay now i'm making trouble but sometimes we do that we make the question even bigger before we answer what does it mean i'm powerless over anything obviously i have free will that's a a basic truth first of all powerlessness powerlessness means that even if i choose the behaviors i want to choose i'm powerless over the outcomes so yeah i can choose an action but i have no guarantee what results that action will lead to i can shoot the arrow i don't know where it's going to land so that that's first of all and that's very easy to to grasp that concept but i'm going to give you another answer as well because you're going to say well i don't think that's really what it means when uh what it says you know in the 12 steps when it talks about being powerless i think it means power powerless over our actions over choosing our actions so um you know i don't want to turn this into a webinar about recovery and maybe we need to do a webinar just about recovery i don't know if people are interested in that let me know i generally stay away from it because i've found that the subject is so misunderstood i don't even have i just don't have the wherewithal to talk about the subject so i actually don't speak about recovery very often at all at least not on purpose but i guess i am now and i don't want to talk about it too much longer here in this webinar which is not supposed to be limited to recovery but let's put it like this if you're going to talk about a loss of choice so let's put it like this powerlessness as far as um you know a first step admission of powerlessness can mean a couple of things in addition to what i said before that we don't control outcomes it can mean that once i begin to let's use the example of drinking because the first 12 step program was a a okay but it could be anything once i eat my trigger foods once i start lusting right whatever it is once i make a bet now i have unleashed something that is gonna have its way with me so my powerlessness actually followed choice in fact it was the result of a choice i chose to think that i can drink or lust or bet or eat my trigger foods with impunity like a gentleman in moderation and that part was the choice but then after i did it i lost choice like i once heard an old timer say go eat a a bottle of x-lax and then will yourself not to run to the bathroom right has nothing to do with free choice but another way to explain it yet another way the powerlessness is that um it's practical powerlessness it's practice it it's effective powerlessness in other words that if i don't keep myself spiritually fit if i'm spiritually sick then i do not have access to my power of choice right so if i allow myself to become spiritually sick and i allow the obsession of the mind to overtake me so i'm obviously not going to be making good choices so in effect it's as if i have lost my power of choice that's another way of explaining it but now i've given you three ways of explaining powerlessness which i think are suitable for any religious jew and i also think they're true and in line with with the program okay um that's that still have more questions many many more questions here to go through and new questions are coming in as we speak and i apologize there are texts here on that text chats there's chats and there's questions there's two places where i have to look where there's comments coming in um i just can't keep up sorry about that um let me let me move on to something else i want to talk about um actually it was a question this is also a question let me go to that where is it where is it in the healing world there is a talk of embracing the shadow self and finding the good there in trying to understand this within the realm of torah i wonder if this is parallel to converting the itsahara to the yetzertaith is there a limit to how much of the shadow side we can embrace is my embracing all is my embracing of of all of it problematic do we take the concept of kurdish and hoyle which i'll translate kurdish means holy hoyle means profane do i take the concept of kudish and khoyal to mean some shadow parts are not embraceable meaning they are profane and therefore off limits okay that's a wonderful question now i am going to perhaps surprise you by telling you that i've heard people use this term but i know nothing about it i know everybody thinks that i know all the secular stuff and i don't i i i really don't my knowledge of psychology of secular psychology is i've said this before in public and i've been so open about it anyone who doesn't get it yet is just you know like my knowledge of secular psychology is limited to whatever books my father's augustine had lying around the house when i was a kid okay that's that's my extent to my knowledge however you're asking me about you know the shadow self in uh you know in torah and is it compatible with torah so i'll tell you a story about the shadow self acidic story and an acidic explanation as well it's all about shadow self uh the and this is a story that the frida kadab the previously bible should have been told in a secret and then the rabbi repeated this the same story and and analyzed it and i'll give you a little bit of this analysis of the story was about the third letter oh here we go see there one second there you go see there this picture the the wearing white right there over my shoulder where there that's that's okay so the story is like this that sadik used to uh say a mimer a civic discourse specifically for working men simple jews not scholars i mean the democratic result would also say this courses to the scholars as well but he had a special thing where on the market day when all the merchants would come to town for the market he would meet in the show and he would give them a discourse before dawn why before dawn because as soon as the sun comes up you got to get to the market you got to sell you know if you don't merchandise at dawn someone else is going to sell it then you know you're going to be out of luck all day so it was very interesting you can imagine this this uh you know it's before dawn school is full of these working guys who got up before dawn simple jews who are ready to work and that's edict is saying consider this just for them just a striking image anyways that's not even what the story's about the story is that the the tamartic was saying the mimer the discourse and there was a kaiser is the like the oral scribe he's the one who memorizes what the rebbe said and then writes it down later so that we can have it preserved so the tamar said scribe in this case was a hosted by the name of rashbats rashbot is an acronym for but there's a lot of interesting stories about the life of rashbots but at any rate rashbots was the crazer he was the one who was supposed to sing to the rabbis so he was standing pretty close uh the time was sitting at a table and i told you it was before dawn so there was a candle in the room right this is before electric lights candle in the room for light and the bots was standing in front of the candle in such a way that his shadow was projected onto the tamartzadek okay so you picture this the sadiq is sitting there saying this discourse the kreizer the one who's the oral scribe is standing nearby between the temectadic and the candle and so the shadow of this heiser of this person is projected onto the tamar so at that moment said that he thought to himself that uh i should probably move because uh i'm putting a shadow on the rabbit and then he thought to him so this is all in his mind he thought to himself um well what he's done but he can handle it he can deal with my shadow you understand he's this is not only a literal shadow that schwarz was the heiser he was someone who was capable of memorizing and then transmitting the siddhis of the tsa was a very deep person so he all of the this internal dialogue he's having with himself on a mystical level as well in other words i'm projecting my shadow onto the rabbit but maybe i don't have to worry about that because the rabbit is that i'm healed with my shadow right what do i have to take away my shadow for and uh as he thought that that stopped in the middle of the discourse and all of a sudden said a shot and that means a shadow and yiddish shadow is darkness and the shadow and darkness cannot be elevated very interesting shadow is darkness and darkness cannot be elevated it's a it's a cryptic what does it mean darkness cannot be elevated i mean the question that was written here whoever wrote in the question they said is this what's meant by transforming the it's harder into the yeti and you know the nation being transformed into the to the good inclination and yeah there is such a concept obviously we know that we can transform the darkness or the idea of of zionist nasser like azakis right that from sin even his willful sin that he did it on purpose and he enjoyed it right but later on when he does real chuva real real real return you know out of the depths of his heart and out of love for god not only can he erase that past but better than erasing it he can turn that darkness into light he can turn that negativity into a springboard for extra sensitivity and extra vigilance relationship with god so clearly there's an idea of what we call ishaq of transformation of darkness to light so what was that saying that shadow is dark and you can't you can't elevate dark so i remember before that everything's paradox right that's why i told you i'm a gemini i was born in the third month in the month of seven the month of the twins everything's paradox and toyota is this or is it this you need a third hand because it's this there are two ways of looking at um it's actually a a discussion a philosophical discussion in in judaism in the classic uh sources is darkness a creation just like light as a creation or is darkness merely the absence of the creation called light a shadow is where you're blocking so it's the absence of light a darkness that is the absence of something you can't elevate it because there's nothing there it's the absence of something it's not a something it's nothing so how are you going to elevate it it's not that oh it's so powerful it's so sweet so it's so creepy that oh we dare not try no it's it's nothing there's nothing to it so there's nothing to work with then there's another way of looking at darkness which is darkness is something it is an entity it's darkness it's a thing called darkness and that we can elevate what does that mean it means that the lack of something is also a lack of potential good or bad but the presence of something even something bad has potential even to be good that's always why you know in existence we talk about the worst thing is apathy the wolf's empathy right amolek the archetypical enemy the arch enemy of the jewish people amalek what did he do he cooled you off he cooled you off on the way coming out of egypt when you were victorious triumphant he cooled you off he cooled your arter so lack of something there's nothing to work with but passion even negative passion can be channeled so that's what we can work with another way of putting in that ever says this is that there are two kinds of aveda and this is this is king david uses this formulation in his in his kilim and his psalms [Music] away or turn away from evil and do good and generally speaking in aveda in the work there is what we need to turn away from like the negation of something and then there's what we want to work toward what we're going to right that which is where we're proactively pursuing through our you know usually uh you know it means by acts of goodness and kindness the nishamah the soul did come down to this world merely to avoid evil and i'll give you the most simple proof because if the soul wants to avoid evil [Music] or let me reformulate that if god's intent was that the soul should avoid evil then god should have the soul up there where there is none where there is no evil so the fact that the soul was sent down here where there is can't be just to avoid it because to avoid it could have done it up there what the soul was sent down here for is not sumero but not the negation of negativity that sounds like a double negative but the uh pursuit of positivity oh so then why is there negativity this is what the rabbit explains the negativity exists so that the good that you do can be yours that it can be yours when hashem gets your mitzvahs he wants them to be your mitzvahs that you're giving to him not his mitzvahs that he's giving to himself the only way they can be yours is if you had to work for them so the negativity only exists in order to enhance the quality of the positivity and in that sense it has no inherent value this is the key piece here the negativity itself has no inherent value it it's only there to enhance the value of the positivity by making positivity something you have to work harder to attain the negativity has no inherent value what's the other side of that same coin it can be repurposed and reclaimed and brought over in order to have positive value not its own value but the value that it gives the side of good what is that only when there's something to be brought over when there's something there of substance to bring over in other words if there's some type of negative and you can take that drive and redirect it to the good now you're working with something now something's been accomplished but if it's merely cliche darkness in the sense of sense of something then there's nothing to work with there's nothing to bring over to the good side so to put it in in very simple terms the empty places those those vacant hallways of our of our insides they have no redeeming value they're just places to get lost in and don't go there but the twists of character and i'm going to use a word in its literal sense here the perversity perversion literally means it's twisted in the wrong way that stuff you can work with it can be repurposed and reclaimed and that indeed is the idea of a second yeti which is a refurbished yatsuhara you take the evil inclination i mean ultimately in the perfect sense we're talking about it sadik who does that who has two inclinations one which is a regular uh a regular good inclination the other one is what they call aftermarket uh he took uh he took uh an evo and he turned it into a second good inclination okay so in very very practical terms we can find the negativity that's being misused and reclaim it for god and use it properly and in fact here let me take it even further what we do find we surrender our qualities to god when we surrender our personality to god what we find is that all of our character defects were really our character assets they're one and the same you know where you see this most obvious obviously that our character defects are identical with our character assets in uh marriage problems when spouses contempt for each other and you ask them well what don't you like about him or what don't you like about her [Music] and uh you know what would always happen every single time so you let them tell you the reasons well you know she's she's as she and she says well you know he's controlling and then you know don't ask them anymore about that you distract them by letting them talk because people for as long as you let them and then after they've forgotten what they told you at the beginning you asked them so listen i mean at one time you were in love when you fell in love is the quality that attracted you to your spouse so he says you know she was fun-loving he said she was an airhead now he's telling you when he fell in love with her she was fun-loving and then you ask her what what what what did you fall in love with about him well you know he's confident right she's central now he's controlling but back then when she fell in love with him that was called confident it's not just the distortion that they're giving it there's actually truth to it all of our greatest character defects are are character assets they're one of the same we develop actions at a young age generally to avoid family fights i'm just saying most people were not raised by wolves they were raised by family and most families have dysfunction so your early life adaptations are all about how you dealt with the dysfunction in your home right so learn these adaptations so some of us learned how to be funny to diffuse the tension some of us learned how to be tough to stand up for ourselves right you want to bark at me i'll bark louder right others others of us learned you know that uh go hide make yourself invisible that's that that's what seems to work some learn to be the uh the diplomat you know to run and try to make peace between whoever is fighting right and we learned these adaptations at a very young age and they become our personalities and we can't we get to a point where we cannot even imagine ourselves without these characteristics now what happens is these same adaptations they end up becoming uh they consume us and in fact we were talking about free will before in a certain way they kind of diminish free will i don't i don't mean on a philosophical level that they take bergira away but what i mean is look when you get really used to using certain tools or even one tool you know when you have a tool kit for living with one or two or three tools in your tool kit right you only have a few songs in your repertoire so it's not that you don't have the choice to do something out of the box different than your repertoire but it's highly unlikely because this is what i do this is what i do and because this is what i do i'm actually really good at it right so it's my strong also because this is what i do it becomes my undoing it becomes that thing that drives people away from me it becomes that thing that that consumes and then takes on you know a life of its own and and it drives a wedge between me and other people but it's one quality when we heal and we surrender and we give up our personalities what that means is i am willing let's say my adaptation is being funny i'm willing to be naked my humor was my armor but you know what that armor is now causing damage in my life it's a blockage from relationships i need to surrender it and i'm accepting now in this act of surrender that if god never wants me to make another joke again i accept that i'm naked i don't have my armor anymore i don't have my adaptation i'm giving it up and you have to be sincere about that surrender like the parable last night about the guy giving up the the twenty dollars the car the job the house the wife the kids what happens er is that once you've given it up and it's not yours anymore well if it's not yours who are you to say how it's to be used maybe got back in your lap and say now i want you to use it for me what are you supposed to tell god god please that's my trigger no no that's not your trigger doing it as an adaptation doing it as a defense mechanism doing it as a compulsion or as a habit doing it because you think that's what you need to do in order to survive that's the trigger but now that you've realized you can give it up and you won't die i can give up this quality my go-to thing my go-to thing i'm giving it up and i'm not going to die because god is taking care of me not me i don't take care of me god takes care of me and now god says hey you know that you're pretty good at being funny now do it for me you can tell when people are arrested in the process of the work because they've realized that all the stuff that needs to go they need to give it up but they haven't yet received it back in a healthy form when do you know that you really have done the work when you're able to go back to those same character traits and use them in a sober way in a healthy way now i gotta clarify what i mean although this was not supposed to be about recovery i know i have a lot of recovery people listening and there's got to be at least one addict out there saying oh he said i can use again in moderation no that's not what i said that now i said your character flaws i'm not talking about using not talking about no i'm talking about your character flaws your defects of character those were all just distortions there were distortions there are warped versions of things that have a positive and like we're talking about before the darkness that can be reclaimed and repurposed is the misappropriation or the mischanneling of an energy and not only it can be reclaimed and repurposed it has to be it has to be so it's not about oh well when will i get to make jokes again no if god wants me to never make jokes again i've given it up i'll never make jokes again but i'm but if i'm fully healed what it means is i can now do that thing that i became great at and i did i became great at it right i can now do that thing not because my ego is telling me if i don't do it i'll die because i know even if i don't do it i won't die i'm okay god has me i'm doing that thing as a gift to god [Music] so the same behavior the same category of behavior you know i gave the example of making jokes fill in the blank whatever it is that you do whatever it is that you do i said different examples of ways that kids avoid family fights some some people make jokes some people try to make peace some people fight back some people go hide okay let's say you're those in hides if the only way that you can respond to any stress is hiding and it's as if you have no choice because that's your only tool and if you don't do it you're going to die that's that's a character defect but when you've given that up and you've realized you know what next time they're stressed i'm not going to go hide and i won't die because god's taking care of me and now you can do that now when god requires you to hide you know sometimes you need that you need to hide right i don't mean the corner i mean lay low be quiet don't draw attention when you can do that in service of god instead you know adaptation you've brought full healing to that quality okay i want to talk about i want to talk about a lot of other things i'm just trying to budget my time i have a lot of questions left um yeah i'm not sure i gotta fix at this point you know we've got we don't have that much time about 15 minutes left um i got a lot of things about marriage about relationships i'm not going to read them all i'm going to sum them all up i got various different variation marriage questions bad marriage uh currently bad or people who are in a bad marriage they're out of it but they don't know if they're healed enough to get remarried okay so let's let's talk a little bit about this and then there was also a question maybe i'll relate to that question somebody wrote in and asked about you know last night i said that wherever you're feeling pain that's when you need to pay attention to your own ego and you know reel it back in reduce it well what if somebody's mistreating you you know on them right like what if you're in a prolonged relationship where you're you're continuously exposed to this mistreatment so the pain is that a reflection on you maybe this reflection okay so let's let's talk about that a little bit okay first of all i think i said very clearly last night that when i'm examining the pain that i have in my relationships this is not absolving the other party of any guilt okay if they've mistreated me uh god will know that and god will deal with it i don't have to deal with it thank god i'm i'm not involved in god's uh judicial system where i have to make sure that people who victimize me get their comeuppance thank god because you know i've given them enough of my head space i'm not going to give them more by tracking them and being their parole officer um i said that last year okay um but when i experience pain in my relationships yeah of course of course i have to take that as a very very important message for me about my own growth of course i do um is it possible the other person is also unhealthy yeah not only possible probable most people are messed up to some degree and in fact not only are most people messed up to some degree god seems to be profoundly adept at matching people together in marriage who are messed up each in exactly the right way to push the buttons of how the other person is messed up it's it's uncanny the way hashem pulls that up but he pairs us with people for our growth in fact it could even be said the entire purpose is to allow us to really do the work as much work as a single person can do you know it's just there's no resistance there's not enough there are not enough obstacles to really be engaged in the work until you're in a marriage situation so what i want to say is experiencing pain in your relationship is is unavoidable and it should actually be welcomed because it's an opportunity for growth now if somebody feels unsafe that's a whole different discussion uncomfortable you know what i wouldn't tell anybody that they should avoid any amount of discomfort even profound discomfort now maybe somebody would make a choice that they're in a marriage that's so profoundly uncomfortable that they can't take it anymore they just they decide to leave and and again i wouldn't judge them for that either but if somebody told me look it's only uncomfortable but i'm embracing the discomfort i would say go for it sounds like incredible growth however if someone says they're unsafe that's a different discussion you know if you're unsafe that doesn't just mean physical abuse that that means all types of uh lack of security and uh you know that's a different discussion and i and i wouldn't subject this to a lack of safety and i'll tell you very simply why because look we're all all this growth is for hashem we're doing this all for hashem so if you're uncomfortable we'll grow more for hashem but if you're unsafe now you're jeopardizing you're putting at risk hashem's asset not really allowed to do that um now i want to go into another aspect of working on ourselves in terms of relationships okay and this could be another whole webinar we can do a whole recovery webinar we could do a whole webinar well i mean about about relationships let me make it very clear especially because i i have less than 10 minutes here what i'm going to speak about right right now is not about relationships it's about how to work on yourself which is the name of this webinar this webinar for yourself however i'm going to speak about the aspect of working on yourself which involves relationships okay so i'm i'm not talking about relationships i'm talking about working on yourself but i'm an aspect of working in yourself which involves relationships here it is and in fact this is one of the questions that i got i'm going to paraphrase because i don't have time to go look up the questions uh because i want to end on time one of the questions was well you're talking so much about uh bitter bitter bitter about surrender selflessness humility uh what about becoming a doormat right what about coming a doormat and and being inviting you know abuse for mistreatment so uh someone wrote in the in the jet webinar and trauma and healing yeah i'll get to the list yes webinar trauma webinar and relationships webinar and recovery okay god willing we'll see all right so uh what we're talking about yeah being mistreated you see a lot of times people who um they get what they they feel like you know my character defect that i need to work on is people pleasing i'm a people pleaser and so therefore what they do they say well my healing there for is to become a jerk and some of them even say that like with without irony they say my here come a jerk and they relish saying no for no good reason like they get a little hit from that you know like almost like bureaucrats you know like relish not being able to accept your form like they're happier when you didn't fill out the form properly than when you did right and and and there's no way to tell me that that's that itself is not just that same character defect flipped on its head because it is people pleasing is not a twist of character or perversion of character because because you're doing nice things for people that's not what makes it toxic what makes it tax actually and this is what we're talking about before about the character defects which are adaptations which are also our strong suits we surrender to god but then we get them back and then we can use them not as a compulsion or defense mechanism or survival uh skill we use them at you know with uh from our own free will as gifts to god all right the people pleaser the problem is not that they're doing nice things the problem is they potion they feel that they have to and i'm not using the compulsion in a clinical sense and i don't use any words in any clinical sense i'm not a clinician but they feel they have to do the people pleasing they have to be kind or they will die because if i don't get validation i will die and i have to get validation and this is how i do it another way of saying that by the way is ironically the presents that they're such a giver is not a giver at all they're the ultimate taker because they don't do anything for fun and for free when they're being kind it's not altruistic they're doing because i have to do it in order to get what i need if i don't do for people i won't get what i need god won't take care of me i'm on my own over here and my only skill for living is ingratiating myself with people and getting them to like me and that's what i got to do or i'll die so the the cure the healing looks like this when somebody asks me something nice i can do it from my free will i can choose it i don't have to say no to prove that i'm able to say no i it's not that doing nice things is a trigger for me is toxic for me no in fact do it nice but really do it nice meaning absolutely expectation of reward the toxic part of it wasn't the kindness the toxic part of it was actually the misappropriation of kindness manipulatively using kindness as a way of hoping to get your own needs met through other people but now that our needs are no longer being met through other people are only being met by god and whatever i get from him is all i need now i get to receive back my kindness which i'm probably pretty good at i'm probably pretty pretty good at being kind if um i mean if for 20 30 40 50 years i developed the skill of doing it albeit in a sick way but i developed a skill at it i'm probably pretty good at it when i'm no longer unhealthy meaning when i'm no longer self-seeking and doing this as a way getting a payoff because i don't look for payoffs from people anymore i'm only looking to serve i'm only looking to be useful to my maker and to treat his kids right so i and i'm yet to be kind again i have to be kind again i have to be kind that's one of my ways of serving god okay maybe i'll tell you one last thing yeah one last thing and uh this is this is something that really actually some someday i want to do at length and really want to develop this more properly but um you see the the altar the picture of the altar right there the alt-right helmet of the mezzation market he was the student of of the market and so this was in the mids and hundreds late 1700s there was something called the zeben yorica creek the seven year war seven year war was a world war because it was fought by all the uh empires of europe uh austria and uh prussia and russia and spain and england and france they were all involved in this and they all had colonies all over the world it was even fought in north america in fact in north america the seven years war was called the french indian war where um george washington was a british general because there was no united states of america yet um so anyways there was this thing called the seven years war and it had just happened when it came to mesrich the mezicham had a son named they called him the malach and he was rabbi ram told the arab that teresa washington is his method of of serving god was revealed to the world through the battle plan of frederick the great at the battle of leighton yes i'm going to say that again the maggid's son was revealed to the world through the battle plan of frederick the great of prussia in the battle of lloyd l-e-u-t-e-h-e-n yeah l-e-u-t-h-e-n you can go google it what happened at the battle of loyton so actually there is a um there's a document from hill parachute the hassad who explains it a little bit more and uh i actually based on this uh this manuscript from hillary potter chair i called a professor of military history point to check this and have it explained to me what did frederick the great do differently at leighton which is still studied at military academies to this day the old way of fighting the way that they fought in in those days talking about 1700s is you would have the battle line and then imagine like a football game with a line of scrimmage and you have two teams just lining up facing each other mano almato you know just like literally one across from the other and take their muskets and they would shoot boom boom they just shoot straight at each other straight across boom frederick what he did is he took his whole army and he converged on one segment of the austrians at a time so what is this it means the old way of working on ourselves was like two guys shooting at the battle line at each other if i have a problem in this area so i counteract it with the holy version of that right so if i have a a a a a a foreign love you know attraction to things of this world so what do i do i try to directly overpower it by cultivating a love for god or if i have you know fear you know fear of things of this world so i try to directly counteract it with a fear of god and you just take whatever it is and you just hit it with the opposite two guys shooting across the battle line at each other bam bam bam bam bam okay but when you take your whole army and you bring them up you pile them up what is that that's holistic healing instead of just countering dysfunctional with holy acid or dysfunctional with holy ghost now you take all your ten soul powers here all of you from from from being a dance dancer and you ignite them all with a passion to hashem and then automatically you take care of the bad guy rather than focusing on the problem and feeding into it just focus on growing the overall connectedness to god and automatically the problems will be consumed and either way or ideally be transformed be converted over to good so we don't we we don't spend an awful lot of time focusing on what's wrong and then targeting it and trying to work on it because what happens is we get drawn into it and focus and then we end up you know they say if you wrestle with a filthy person even if you win you're covered in filth so we don't do that rather what we do is we lift up our all of our soul powers we refine ourselves we elevate ourselves by connecting ourselves to god through thinking of god first being obsessed with our connection with god and then without even having to focus on the character flaws they start to fall away in other words let me just finish this this webinar similar to the way in which we started self-improvement should never become self-obsession when i'm focused on targeting my negative character traits that itself is the worst form of self-obsession and it leaves us dirty and tainted so instead focus on self-transcendence how i can surrender and give my will over to god what does god need from me let me put it in simple english what those words mean surrender what does god need for me not to what not what do i feel like doing right now what is needed for me right now to be a servant [Music] and when i'm focused on that wholeheartedly the negativity falls away without having to feed into it without having to give it attention there's so so so much to be said and i have so many questions here i see one question that i will answer which is do i do private counseling and the answer is no really this is what i do this is what i do um if anybody needs to reach me for any reason i mean you can contact info soulwords.org mail info at soulwords.org and i do have time to make time every week where i take calls from whoever wants to call and talk about whatever but um it's not therapy it's not counseling you know if you have a real problem don't call me i'm not suited to help you with it but you know you want to discuss something in learning or whatever it is you want to share an insight with me that you had you know by all means um what else can i tell you much more so much more to be said um okay we got to do more of these webinars and uh thank you so much for joining us may we all be able to have a little bit of knockouts from this project this ongoing project that we're engaged in of presenting our best selves okay be well thank you