Making ROOM for Hashem | Tanya & Meditation Part 9

okay so this is our Monday Tanya class and for the past I don't know a couple months already we went back to Chapters 41- 50 to look at the meditations the meditations yeah yes and two weeks ago we learned about a concept that is based on a verse in michley in Proverbs of King Solomon [Music] just as water reflects a face to a face if you look in the water reflected face looking back at you whose face is that it's your it's your face Cain so too does the heart of one person reflect the heart of the other and we explained this was in chapter 46 that it is human nature that the heart will reflect back emotions that it is receiving from another person it's automatic which is the beauty of it it's automatic and we wanted to sort of hack into that mechanism and use it deliberately for increasing our love of Hashem so we said like this if the heart will reflect back love that it is receiving so all we have to do if we want to feel more love of Hashem and of course we all we all want to feel more love of Hashem because that's the premise here and if you're going to say well why is it the premise well I could say well go back to the first class and I'm not going to explain it again or I could say all right I'll give you a quick one sentence answer which is it's azah or I could say when you love hem it enables you to do all the other Mitzvah properly or or I could say you're doing the mites anyway you might as well enjoy it okay so those are a few answers Wednesday and then you will love very good that's a great advertisement yes wow okay so we want to love Hashem how can we love Hashem well we had a lot of different methods we've meditated on a lot of methods but today's meditation is another meditation that's based on the same concept of in chapter 46 we introduced the concept and we said basically if you think about the love that Hashem showed us in The Exodus that will automatically trigger a reciprocal feeling of Love toward Hashem in chapter 47 we said and and if you're having trouble focusing on the idea of The Exodus because it is ancient history or you feel like it's ancient history so then think about the Exodus that happens to the soul every single time you use your body to learn to and do mitzvas that rather than your body being the Soul's prison your body becomes the tool through which you become one with God and I'm not going to explain all that again because that was last week but if you were here if you weren't here last week and you're like I don't understand what' you said that's that makes sense but if you were here last week you understood basically what I said okay okay I will take that as a uh a side we could just continue okay now what I would like to look at today is in chapter 48 it's really chapter 48 and 49 they go together so I'm going to have to figure out how to skip around because there's no way we're going to cover the text from two chapters um yeah we need more chairs no right behind that's great we're sold out standing room only you got to stand in the back row okay somebody should have scalped tickets I heard there was a lady standing out front selling tickets to the class okay this is great this is the first time we ran out of chair well the truth is there a whole okay let me just ran out of chairs there's no more chairs in the whole Five Towns standing room only yes okay okay all right so here's the deal and this this is a tough one this is a tough one I'm going to admit that it's tough because it entails understanding and thinking about some very abstract ideas but you know you came to a class like this I mean you can't really be I don't think anyone can walk out today and have a legitimate complaint and say I don't know they were talking about a bunch of deep spiritual Concepts that was a real bait and switch no one's going to say that right see you came here for the Deep spiritual Concepts right okay stay for at what stay for the jokes he stayed for the J he came for the came for the Deep spiritual coun you stay for the jokes okay all right so I'm going to just begin chapter 48 but we're going to learn the whole text and and and then I want I get into 49 we're not going to learn the whole text of that either I'm going to jump around we're and just to remind everyone we have learned the entire 53 chapters of volume one of Tanya we've done that already we're just going back through certain chapters and picking out the meditations okay so it says like this the beginning of chapter 48 when an intelligent person will meditate on the greatness of Hashem that hasem literally is just like we refer to him as endless means he who is Without End he's literally Without End there's no end it there's no end to the life force the light and the life force which extends from him and furthermore that light that extends from him is entirely one with his very essence and therefore if the worlds would have been created without the mechanism of we'll explain that one second but rather it would have been created level by level cause and effect the world would never have come out the way that it did now finite the says that from the Earth to the firmament is a walk of 500 years okay so basically what did he say said like this Hashem is what do we say about hasem here infinite and the world came out the world that we know came out finite okay so that was not going to happen automatically automatically if Infinity is spreading out it does so infinitely that's a bit of a truism so the fact that there's any place for finitude is only because of this concept called simum what is timum we've learned about it before it literally means contraction although sometimes it's probably better to understand it not as contraction but as concealment at any rate what it's referring to is the fact that Hashem is not revealed in the world his Infinity is hidden away and that allows for the possibility of finite creation existing without being overwhelmed out of existence yeah did you say that in English please yeah that was a law that was aw hasem is everywhere and everything so what allows for the possibility that anything else could exist how can anything else exist if he's everywhere and everything and he's just Oneness so how could there be anything but the one how could there even appear to be anything but the one an illusion okay even if you call it an illusion which I take exception with but even if you'll call it that and I'll grant you that how does he produce that illusion as Doug Henny he said they're not tricks they're Illusions what from the timum okay so we're on the same page that's what we're talking about symptom symptom is the mechanism which produces this effect very good and everyone follow okay all right um I'm going to skip you know what I'm gonna do okay so then he proceeds to explain at length and it's helpful for the meditation but I want to cover ground here more in detail some of the how this sysum works not exactly how it works but more of the effects that it produces but the bottom line is we have this finite Physical Realm which is the end product of Tsum I mean even the spiritual worlds are a product of symtom because even spiritual worlds have some description to them which is a function of finitude so Simpson infinite no it's the opposite just just follow even spiritual worlds would not be possible without simum because even spiritual worlds as lofty as they are and as relatively unlimited as they are compared to the Physical Realm they are still limited they have description you have an angel standing up there and the angel standing down there which obviously doesn't mean spatially it's talking about um in terms of quality degree of Revelation the point is that because descriptions can even be used to describe phenomena of the spiritual Realms that means that the spirit Realms clearly are finite description means Contours perimeters it means where one thing ends and another thing begins that's finitude so even the spiritual Realms are a product of Tsum and this tsim Tsum compounds imagine translucent curtains on top of a window until the ultimate effect is opacity if you have enough translucent curtains on top of the window eventually it's completely opaque you have the blackout curtains okay so the physical world is the end result I'm just sort of skimming over what it talks about in this chapter so you have Tsum upon simum upon Sim Tsum until finally and there are many sub degrees of timum by the way we speak about generally four levels corresponding to the four worlds and each world is another degree of simum but the point is there there are many many many many degrees and junctures of Tsum depending how you want to slice it and how you want to look at it these are all repeating patterns anyway so you can zoom in zoom out it's the same basic concept and at the end you have the physical world which is as we know a world of finitude two things cannot be in one place one place cannot have two things um can't you're you're you're limited the physical world is limiting you know if if if you eat the last brownie at the kidish I can't eat the last brownie at the Kish that kind of stuff just explaining how physics works yeah what you say oh not getting the last brownie well yeah because especially if you were raised to be polite so you were eyeing the Brownie and you were like standing away from it so you wouldn't be rude and then somebody else just like a bull they charge up and they grab it it's very painful okay all right and the the point here is what's all of this for what's all of this for why did Hashem do all of this and I'm so afraid to say this in 2024 because I feel like I would love a time machine I would like to be able to go back 20 years even 20 years like no I'm not saying a 100 years 100 years for sure but even 20 years I would love to have a time machine go back and be able to say this and get no push back it's hilarious how I am old enough now that I have seen human nature change I don't know if it's human nature but Trends have changed trends of thought even in my lifetime here's what I'm about to say and listen to everybody get all I don't know triggered from this the point of all of these Tim of the infinite allowing for the possibility of finite existence was the physical world that's the end of the line and that's the point that's the goal how do you know when you're done with ssum when you've produced a physical world okay and what is the point of the physical world to create a place this is how he explains it here okay I'm going to tell you how explains it here to create a place for the person for the embodied soul to serve Hashem that's what he says now I could have said that like I said even 20 years ago forget about 100 years ago for sure and I we get a free pass on that in 2024 what's everybody think not everybody but like half of you are thinking well I didn't ask for that why is that what you're trying to impress me you're trying to impress me that this whole project was so that I could experience embodiment thanks a lot I didn't ask for embodiment okay well I don't know what to do I could dismiss the question and say you're breaking my flow which you are but on the other hand I'm like I've kind of passed the point of no return because I myself brought it I preemptively brought it up because I knew that it was going to I knew that people would bring it up and I would have to either dismiss it or deal with it so that's why I preemptively brought it up okay let's talk about it this is not a new thing it's not a New Concept that all of a sudden we thought up and it was never dealt with before in the history of Judaism and all the thousands of years of Judaism the gamar itself says that there was a big philosophical debate and in the end the conclusion was they voted and they came to the conclusion that it is more pleasant for a person to never have been created okay so this goes back to the times of the gamar I'm talking about well it goes back to the times of the mishna 2,000 years ago we all know you're not like clever for coming up with this okay we all know it's easier not to have been created like there's no no comparison what's easier no means easy relaxing what's more relaxing to not exist or to exist no question non-existence is much more relaxing that existence you know about the two guys from kelm they were sitting hanging out discussing life and one of them said to the other says you know based on how difficult life is I sometimes think it would have been better never if to been born the other one says yeah I shoulda but how many guys do you know who are actually that lucky like one in a okay stay I've told that joke to Absolute silence many times absolute silence how did he know how many how many people do you know who are not born what is it okay but here's the deal we were created and what setting aside your opinion about embodiment and how you going to fill out the survey not satisfying not well they have the green smiley face and they have the red frowny face and they think in the middle of they like a yellow like flat you know like the the at the DMV they have the but to have like an iPad or some type of a um what do you call it like a tablet when you're leaving they have the HS but have like a thing how would you rate your experience well how would I rate my experience do I have an option for like I would love to have never been here like what even if I had a great DMV experience like in the scheme of things you think I'm like this was so good I'm going to see my friend I'm going to say you know if you've got nothing to do on a Monday afternoon you know I highly recommend if you make an appointment they treat you so much better yes yes Everything's Relative they treat you better yeah I know but they treat you better okay okay and even when they treat you the best still don't want to be there you still don't want to be there okay all right so setting aside how you would rate your embodiment experience try to forget about that for a second and just try to think about this the infinite engaged in this really massive project that we can't even adequately understand I mean I I I couldn't solve that problem someone told me come up with a way to create the possibility of finite let alone sentient existence within absolute infinite one Oneness I would be like I don't know how do you do that and even if they would tell me Well use a little tsim Tsum I'd be like what's that so for sure I couldn't come up with this so I've got to be impressed at least with the archit ecture that's what I'm saying you know at least you got to be impressed with the engineering but then if you think about the engineering and you're told oh by the way this whole structure was created for you now again it's 2024 some of you might say like well I didn't ask for this it was created for me but it's not something I asked for I get it I get it nevertheless I'm telling you a fact it's impressive and engineering and it was it was created for you you know that guy who built the Taj Mahal yeah you know what I'm talking about that guy in India it's in India right built the Taj Mahal for his wife and you know I'm sure what happened got to be she didn't like it well you know she was like okay where are we going for PESA right I think he built after she pass oh he built it after she passed away he was a smart husband then she can't be dissatisfied that's why it's so famous by the way that was a good hack he built it after she passed away and then everyone could your wife would have loved this and he's secretly like mhm yeah she would I'm sure she would have moved right in yeah did he married he was probably married to a thousand women he was a king of India I'm trying to be dum St whatever how we know what our soul wants before like we know if we wanted this or not right right now we don't want it oh we are given it okay yeah I'm not even getting into that stuff okay the question in the because if I didn't have to deal with human beings I would have a very different understanding of the text that I teach but being that I actually do teach the text to people and they respond to me I begin to learn how people are actually taking the words that I'm saying and the ideas that I'm saying don't always mean to people or even to the majority of people what I thought they meant before I field tested them and I know from experience that a lot of people are not inspired by this idea and to the contrary so as a decent teacher which I hope that I am a decent teacher I am trying to teach the student not the material you don't walk in with your lesson plan and say kids shut up teachers got to teach don't give me any problems you walk in you say okay this is what I would like to teach you but you know it's got to it's got to work it's got to be it's got to be a two-way street here so I'm just telling you this is a beautiful meditation from chapters 48 and 49 of Tanya the whole meditation is predicated on our being impressed and actually feeling loved that's the operative word here feeling loved because of the timum and I'm just bringing it up I'm pointing out the elephant in the room that I'm not g to okay I'll put it very selfishly which maybe you'll believe because then you won't think you won't attribute such altruistic motives to it um I really don't want to sit here for an hour and work hard trying to give a class and people to walk out and be like totally didn't land for me that didn't I don't want that to happen so I'm I'm anticipating what might be the resistance and and I know from experience that this is the resistance chapters 48 and 49 of Tanya say remember that mechanism when you feel loved you will automatically reflect love back okay and then we did it about the Exodus and we did it about the fact that I we have the opportunity to reunite with Hashem every time we learn T and do mitz okay so he says now I want you to take that mechanism that reciprocal love thing and plug it into a new scenario which is think about the simum think about what Hashem did because of you and how Hashem contracted himself and removed himself so to speak in order to make room for you and he did that because he loves you and then what to then serve him to yes to serve him yes correct to then serve him little manipul okay hey I did this whole thing for you so don't okay all right all right I mean not just for you individually but you and your ilk does ilk have a NE negative connotation I never heard it used positively thank you like who do you want to invite for shabas so the Goldbergs in their ilk nobody says that nobody says that scramble okay listen yeah the whole thing is set up ultimately because of hashem's agenda we know that we're going to be transparent about that we're not pretending it's for any other agenda thank God by the way I don't want a world as much as in my immature fantasy I think I do I do not want to live in a reality that was engineered to bring about my Personal Agenda okay the world as difficult as the world is and I'm I'm acknowledging that of course it was built based on hashem's agenda what is hashem's agenda from what we understand because of what teaches us it's this thing called he wants a Dwelling Place in the lower Realms he wants his infinite Essence to be revealed in the finite that Paradox that we've discussed many times okay I want to move quickly so many ideas here and there's so many places for you to get interested and stop and say oh could you talk to us more about that no no no no no just stay focused chapters 48 49 of Tanya are saying like this you again I just want to take us back okay what's the point of this chapter what are we actually trying to accomplish by learning this chapter and applying it love love that we want to feel love for hasem okay and what's the premise that if you feel loved you will feel loving great all right we've done it twice based on two different uh ideas to plug that mechanism into now we're doing it about a third concept and it's the concept is the symtom so basically it's like this this big Taj Mahal was built for you you may not like it okay I'm not pretending you like the Taj Mahal but here's the thing you couldn't build the Taj Mahal he could build the Taj Mahal and he built it for you okay so that's all I'm saying that you think about and this is an abstract concept okay don't think so much about the physical world think about as much as your mind can grasp infinity and think about how crazy it is that from Infinity we get this we get the finite and that that's a lot of work so to speak obviously Hashem doesn't get depleted it's not work in the sense of oh he's getting tired out but to the extent that and here here's the main concept that the AL focuses on that he is so to speak metaphorically obviously we're talking about hasem so with all the limitations and caveats that app he's putting himself aside to make room for your existence yes yes in the end what are you going to do with that existence you're going to serve him no it's nobody's tricking you it's not the fine print nobody's it's not to click click on the terms and conditions that nobody reads this is upfront yes in the end it is to serve him yes yes there's no hidden agenda here but the point is that he put himself aside to make space for your existence and that's just a fact how you feel about that or not maybe that's for therapy but the fact is he so to speak put himself aside so that you could exist and don't say well why are you making about me why are you thinking about me it's all of us like the says I have to believe that the and by the way that word we translate is world but it really means concealment I in mically means concealment means concealment so every for the Israelis but every is a hel is a concealment that's why we said that there are four General categories of Ts that every is another layer of so basically that all of this concealment was done for me meaning Hashem retracted himself concealed himself in order to make space for me think about like a parent who wants their child to be able to shine and doesn't want the child to be overwhelmed or intimidated and so the the parent has to make himself small and and to allow the child to feel some sort of confidence some sort of autonomy imagine you're sitting at a table uh with a father and a son and the father is very charismatic and very well known and everyone's expecting the father to speak but the father wants the son to speak so think about how small the father has to make himself to make the son feel comfortable that he should put himself out there so to speak okay so this is the meditation this is the meditation we are going to think about this and it's supposed to be automatic because remember the whole benefit of the Kam just just as water reflects a face so does the heart reflect the heart the whole premise of that is that it's just sort of natural so the point of these meditations is that we're riding the way this is something that happens on its own and we're just sort of timing it to jump aboard in the right way to take us where we want to want to go so we're going to think about theum as much as we can as much as you can think about an abstract thing like that we're going to think about hashem's um selflessness in removing himself to giving space for finite existence setting aside any feelings you may have about your finite existence as we've explained at length but just marveling at the phenomenon of our existence in light of the fact that Hashem is infinite and that he's doing all of this I say it in the present tense because it's not like he just finished and he can walk away from the project he's got to continue concealing himself he continues to conceal himself in order for us to have an existence the premise of this meditation is that if we will absorb that thought all we have to do is absorb it then it will automat atically trigger a reciprocal feeling of love as you know but a more specific type of love and that is you know love can make people do a lot of things right love is a is an engine it drives people so love will make you do a lot of things even crazy things where is this particular type of love going to drive us toward okay it's a very specific kind of love you know why pitchers from the major league they cover their throwing hand with their Mitt no idea no idea anybody us communicating with the CCH well they have signals what they communicate with the catcher yeah different like hand signals and whatever stud what studying hand explain what you mean by that hold it in place so they can feel it oh steadying it but they specifically they hide they they're hold let's say they're writing like I am so they're holding the baseball so the grip that they have on the ball they hide it behind the or a curve okay I do not understand the physics of this at all but apparently different grips there's different grips different and if you will see different spin yeah it has to do with with Spin and a lot of other things but apparently the if you see if you're a batter to me the whole thing's happening in a fraction of a second it wouldn't help me anyway but if the batter sees the grip that the pitcher is using like this or on the seam or against the seam or I don't know fingers together whatever if they see the grip that the pitcher is using to hold the ball then the batter is going to know how that ball is going to leave the pitcher's hand and he could get ready for it again I don't really relate to this but I'm just telling you what they say okay so that's why you if you watch they the the pitcher will take the ball and put it behind his mitt and then grip it and hide it so that batter can't predict it okay why am I telling you this I'm telling you this because the way that the love is pitched that's going to determine what kind of result this love will push us toward so shoulding is selfing or self sacrificing for us we can so you say 100% correct however I think you're taking for granted some words you're 100% correct what you said but you got to unpack some of that stuff because like what you said was oh well it's logical to me that if God is sacrificing for us this is going to trigger Us in kind to sacrifice for him you're 100% correct I just don't know if that's going to land immediately to make a statement like God is sacrificing I don't know if people will read it that way or understand it that way so that's what you said about the simp yeah I know it's what I said I'm just impressed that's what you heard I'm not sure if everybody heard that us allow us to live yeah well that's why we only heard the first two Commandments also we didn't hear the the other eight but let's talk about this word sacrificing because I'm not sure if it really feels that way everybody but it's correct it's 100% correct when we think about simum in a mature way in a in an emotionally intelligent way we should appreciate the fact that for Hashem it's an act of sacrifice yeah I know in the end it's all for him and he gets his agenda granted from it but also is it motivated by his love for us and then you could even Trace that back and say well why does he even have that agenda I mean really it's what about it being rigged like we Lear no no no don't bring in stuff from Wednesday don't bring in stuff from Wednesday okay it's a different class not everybody knows about that I think that the parenting example FS exactly like this sacrifices out of love right so ultimately you can trace it back to hashem's love for us but the point is like this he is and we're going to use a term that might sound shocking he's sacrificing for us and sacrificing the sense of putting himself aside so what we want to try to do I want to try to get into this as a meditation here we're contemplating hashem's self- sacrifice we're contemplating how hasem holds back holds back you you're thinking about how he holds back like Divine Justice and he doesn't mix in and just force everybody to be good I'm talking about something much more essential than that which is the world could come if world what world the fact that there's a world itself is a completely crazy thing if if it wasn't held back the world wouldn't exist the world would not exist yeah there would be no nothing but Oneness forever and ever and ever and ever and everywhere so the fact that there's even a world is an incredible amount or I would even say an infinite amount of self-restraint so we're thinking about the self-restraint that Hashem is engaged in clearly evidently right now because there is a world and we do exist and he's doing it for us all of this engineering is for us yes for him for us what's the difference point is is a project that we're working on together so what we're trying to do now is to feel that love that's driving Hashem to make space for us and automatically what kind of love is it going to trigger in us we're trying to feel the love that Hashem feels for us that causes him to make space for us making space for him it will trigger a love causes us to want to make space for him and as he explains maybe even I'll jump over to chapter 49 where he spells it out so he says just like water reflects a face word is k k means not really but it's the best we can say with language just like the Holy One he leaves himself on the side he departs to the side so to speak metaphorically his infinite light he puts his infinite light to the side and he in inter them and hides them in three different types of tum but it's all for the sake of the person down here to be able to elevate all this back to Hashem because love pushes the flesh what does that mean well the source in the gamar is talking about something very very literal but you know how many people can sit on a couch depends how much they love each other so literally when there's love right if there's room in the heart there's room in the home that love will cause you to make space for somebody else so he says so how much more so magnified should be in reciprocation a person should be moved to surrender all that is his to set that all aside so this is the love Hashem puts himself aside to give us space we should put aside whatever is important to us to give Hashem space so what does that mean that means whatever agenda is driving us whatever we think is super important whatever it is oh I have to take care of this hold on a second yeah I hear you that's important to you but how about a little sacrifice how about making room for hasem how about prioritizing doing things that he wants you to do even though you feel that you urgently need to take care of other things so that's the love so let's think about this let's think about this and by the way that was two chapters of Tanya right there amazing okay think about the infinite and the infinite clearing space so to speak and creating room for worlds first spiritual worlds and increasingly less spiritual worlds what does it mean less spiritual we're talking about worlds that become less and less transparent the first world is so transparent it's hardly a world it's hardly a creation the Creator is more evident than the creation but as you go and as theim Tsum culminate and compound upon each other you have more and more creation and less and less Creator not really but the appearance the effect is that there's more creation less Creator until finally you have the physical world the world that we're so familiar with where it's all creation and hardly any Creator you have to have faith you have to believe in it to find the Creator but if you look around what do you see you see a bunch of creation well that must have been or must be present tense pretty uncomfortable so to speak after a fashion metaphorically for the infinite you know tell the infinite could you scooch over a little can you scooch over make a little room parking for the the yeah well the couch the couch yeah that's what I was thinking so the infinite one is scooching over creating the possibility for all of finite existence so that we would have a place to exist and he's doing this all in pursuit of this unique intimate relationship with us yes it's his a his agenda but at the end what what's his agenda is to have this unique intimate relationship with us and how can he have a unique intimate relationship with us when we don't have any distinct identity so he has to create separateness in order to create the relationship it's all really romantic and beautiful okay so we're contemplating this concept and what's going to happen and don't say well it's not happening yeah because we're sitting in a class okay but it might happen for some of you right here some of you might just like have a a pop right here it happened okay others you're going to have to meditate a little bit more than just what we can do here in this room but what will happen What should happen is that reciprocal mechanism is going to get triggered and it's automatic the penny will drop and it'll be like hold the phone he is putting himself aside in infinite ways that I cannot even fathom for me I genuinely feel and this is the important part I genuinely feel it's not intellectually appreciate how it makes sense or it's the it's the decent thing to do it's supposed to trigger an emotion triggering an emotion means I will genuinely feel motivated I want to do something right now I want to do something right now for him that will show that I making his agenda more important than mine I want to do something I want to do something that shows some self-sacrifice right now I want to I have something important that I need to tend to right now I want to do get not do that thing and I want to do his thing I have some something in my life a resource uh an opportunity that I could use in a way that I want to use it no I'm going to specifically not use it that way I'm going to use it in the way that brings glory to him not because I not just cuz I think it's the right thing to do I literally feel that way why because Kam upon Him upon him it's the reciprocation he's doing that for me right now I want to do I genuinely want to do that for him right now okay so all of us angsty 2024 people who are annoyed with Hashem for making us exist we were still able to connect to the basic idea I think so right yeah yeah okay