Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #14

i'll tell you something interesting at least i found it interesting is that the last time we went through tanya it was a little bit different style of a class um we weren't reading every word inside but uh when we came to chapter seven we did chapters seven and eight together in one class so we had one class where we condensed seven and eight and i put them together and basically said these are the classes about clipper and uh why prolong it why do i speak about clipa longer than necessary it's interesting because today we're starting our third class just in chapter seven so we went from last time putting seven and eight both into one chapter to uh chapter seven itself on it on its own taking three chapters that's the three lessons so just to to review we were talking about clipas noiga about what literally translated means the luminescent of the shiny husk it's shining because you can see the godly spark within it that can be accessed and what we're really describing is everything mundane that can be channeled to some type of godly purpose okay so we spoke about when that opportunity is squandered and when we engage in mundane things without any intent for the sake of heaven and how it actually causes the experience to become um lower than neutral and how it becomes animalistic and i think that's basically where we left off yeah is that where we left off oh and we spoke about the the terms osser and mutter that was an important concept yeah yeah tied down and untied right so the things relationships right we spoke yeah we spoke about food we spoke about relationships there are things that can be elevated that's right that's right this we could call this whole time you shared that what you didn't learn in bass rifka okay all right so uh so we said yeah yeah so just to to back up and the the last line that we read we said when something is user forbidden it's tied down remember we gave that whole long marshal about is it tied down because it's forbidden or is it forbidden because it's tied down and it caused a little bit of confusion but just for the sake of uh hopefully confusing you more uh we concluded that it is not tied down because it's forbidden it's forbidden because it's tied down in other words it is intrinsically tied down it's intrinsically uh useless it can't be elevated therefore hashem saves you the heartbreak and the wasted time and energy and resources and tells you sweetheart leave it alone walk on by okay so we said these things that are also that are forbidden and therefore um what we know about them is that they are intrinsically not able to be elevated that they're not gonna they they're gonna just sit there until we said until hashem will remove the spirit of impurity from the world hashem says i will remove the spirit of impurity from the world we will not be able to do it we can only elevate the mundane but we can't elevate that which is uh off limits okay so that's where we left off yeah so in that case what you ate did not become elevated correct right so we did have a little bit of a discussion last week at the end of class where we were asking just to refresh people's memory what's the status of food that was consumed to save a life unkosher food non-kosher food that was consumed in order to save a life yeah so uh yeah it's it's a little bit uh complicated but let's simplify it by saying in that case it is not us sir i don't know how yeah so in an indirect way it is elevated and by the way the these these concepts are not as simple as we present them i mean elsewhere in citizen talks about you know you can't eat a horse but you could ride a horse to go do a mitzvah [Laughter] so it's not it's not it's not quite so simple but for for our purposes here and again remember that lakutayamarim the first volume of tanya is not its job is not to explain exhaustively all of these mystical concepts it's it's here to give us um enough information that we can navigate our own personal growth so a lot of these concepts are not developed here in tanya fully they're developed in other places in cities so the question of the status of forbidden food that becomes permissible in a in a pickup netflix in a life-saving uh context it's uh it's a little bit uh not not not so straightforward we can get into that discussion but uh i wanna i wanna focus on the next thing he speaks about because it is it is very very important in fact i might even say it's probably the most important question in terms of understanding our relationship with the forbidden and and that is after the fact retroactively is there any way to [Music] redeem that which is technically irredeemable so i i want to focus on this idea here the the last thing we said as i as i said but i'll repeat again is that there are certain things they're just irredeemable that's what's called us forbidden literally tied down and we can't deal with it at the end of time hashem will come in he'll clean up that which we could not clean up fine now the next line he starts he says i or alternatively he just said there's stuff that's irredeemable there's no way to elevate it only hashem will come and clean it up when meshiach comes or or another possibility he does chuva that is so great how do we translate chuva penitence but really its return returns to hashem in such a great manner shiz dennis nasa like kazakhstan that his sins there are different words in the holy tongue for sin this dynasty is probably the worst word for sin it means wanting sins purposeful sins sometimes you made a mistake zdinas are not mistakes mean i knew what i was doing i did it out of spite it's the worst kind of sins yeah what yeah the worst type of sin and even those sins can become merits now what does this mean that the worst kind of sins can become merits i understand that it gets expunged from the record it won't be held against you i understand that it can be uh that the negativity could be overlooked or even wiped away but to say the negativity can become positive how does that work and it that is what he's saying so how does that work so in other words we've been discussing the prospect of gamoclippusatimaeus the irredeemable utterly unclean clippers and we said sort of categorically hey the definition of them is that they're irredeemable so if you get involved with them nothing's nothing good is going to ever come of it but then we said this big asterisk like oh hold on though there's there's one caveat yeah retroactively there is such a thing where there's a chiva not a regular chiva but a really big chuva that could go and redeem the irredeemable and turn the negative into positive to turn the wanton sin into an actual spiritual plus okay so this is what we're discussing now how does that happen okay let's continue first of all as he begins to define this chuva he says it's a chuva me ava it's a chuva that comes out of love as opposed to what fear obviously there are different motivations for chiva but the two general motivations would be and the two general emotions like we spoke about in chapter three the two general emotional axes the right and the left love and awe so the two general motivations for for chuva would either be out of love a desire to come closer to hashem or out of fear fear of punishment fear of judgment ultimately the deepest fear fear of separation here we're talking about the chiva that comes from love desire to become close to hashem or to get closer to hashem moomka daleeba from the depths of his heart with abundant love and yearning pining the nephesho and a soul that is longing ladovka is barrack to cleave to hashem so that the motivation for the chuva is i want to get closer to hashem i'm yearning to get close to hashem this thing this blot on my record this is a separation this is keeping me away from hashem i don't want to have it intercede between me and hashem and so my incredible love for hashem is causing me now to reassess my feelings about this sin what happens here it's it's a remarkable concept obviously i did chiva i'm not going to sin again i'm done with that not only i won't do it again i regret that i ever did it right because you could say i won't do it again but i'm glad i know what it's like this says no i wish i never did it but it's even deeper than that i wish i never did it and i'm in pain right now about the fact that this past experience is coming between me and her shop not guilt pain i want to be close to asher and i know that i did something that rejected that relationship i told hashem get lost even if it was for one second i told him hey get out of my life for a second i got to do what i want to do well i hate that i hate that i have that in my history i hate that i have that in my story not because of guilt not good because that that moment represents a moment of separation a moment of of rejecting the relationship and i want to be completely close to a show so now how do i feel about that spiritual failure that moment of spiritual failure how do i feel about it well i i i feel like i feel like it's a it's a threat to my present closeness with asha and when i think about it it instills me with a feeling of a need to push to get closer to hashem and therefore here here's here's the pertinent idea the practical effect like the the bottom line what is the sin it is you have to be very careful here because we're not justifying the sin we're not glorifying the sin what we're saying right now at this moment in the present what effect is this sin having on me the practical effect is it's actually spurring me on to desire closeness with hashem even more than had i not had that experience so was it a positive experience or a negative experience it was a negative experience but but it causes me well it doesn't directly cause me to come close to hashem but it causes me to feel a greater desire or a more intense desire to fight that overcome it and come closer to hashem and the way he describes it is thirst he calls it thirst if we continue here inside but hashem it's like a person in a parched who's thirsting his soul is thirsting for our shape can anyone have that experience with hashem then they sin you're asking if there are prerequisites on this like only certain people could even have this experience have we all had that experience to some degree yeah yeah i mean look he's describing a category here he's talking about a not just a regular trivia he calls it a great chuva so there are two ways i could teach this one way i could say is this is describing something that you you've never experienced maybe someday you'll experience it the other way i could teach is i could say it's on a continuum and great is a is a qualitative word and uh as good as good as basin especially you know it's i i prefer to teach it the the latter way so instead of saying i don't know this is some type of a category that we're going to learn about but not necessarily uh relate to let's learn it like this we all know what it means that a moment of of failure becomes a motivation for greater success we all know what that means so that in in the end and in the end analysis you look back and you say well was that was that a net gain i mean at the moment it was a loss but in the big picture it was it was productive so i think we can all relate to that experience i don't feel okay so you're making a very valid point which is that if somebody's understanding of chuva is guilt-based they may not end up coming to this kind of chuva now yeah yeah i would i would yeah i would agree with that so so it's important that we're learning this right it's important that we're learning this and it's important to understand that there are different types of chuva and like you say if a person doesn't feel that the relationship with hashem is based on love then where would they even get the idea that they should return to hashem out of love yeah from from a context of love isn't the notion isn't the notion of real to sugar the fact that you understand you've done something wrong you've given another opportunity to do the same thing don't do it and because of your love for hashem and and then you move on that's the only way that you can really be no you can be forgiven even if you don't do chuva out of love see see that's the that's the point let's go back let's repeat this this dinos negative the the negative uh occurrence the moment of sin not only is expunged erased cancelled out that you could do with regular chova no it gets repurposed and transformed into an asset into something positive because remember the context we're speaking about here how to redeem the irredeemable so he said you can't that's the whole purpose that's the whole that's the whole meaning of irritable means what part of your redemption but they did not understand here the only means it's irredeemable it's not it's done it's done you cannot redeem this if hashem says that this is us it means tied down that's it there's nothing can be done with it except after the fact and you can't engineer this and you can't do it on purpose and call me shayme anyone who says i'll purposely sin and then do chuva it won't work for him but after the fact now he fell into that which is irredeemable if it so happens that his feelings about that relationship with the irredeemable becomes a driving motivation to have an intense relationship an intense and loving relationship with hashem today well then after the fact what was the was it a net gain or a net loss it was a net gain because it spurs you want to do because it spurs you on so he call he calls it thirst he calls it thirst he says like a person in a parched desert who feels thirsty let's continue yeah yeah but at the same time we gotta talk about it so your brain should know about it too okay what makes you able to love hashem your soul it's embedded in you it's it's it's your hard wiring what increases the odds that you'll actually act on that your education the fact that you are told that it's possible okay there's musical talent and then there's music lessons so the fact that you come to this class already within the shama you already have the ability for children ava but the fact that we're talking about it increases the likelihood that you'll actually do that two things okay so he describes he describes it as a thirst and now it's almost continuing the metaphor until now his soul had been in a parched desert a land of death spiritually which means the other side which we defined in chapter 6 as anything that's not for the sake of hashem utterly distant from the light of hashem's face so the sin is being distant putting oneself into a position of being distant from hashem removing oneself from the light of hashem yesterday and now his soul is thirsting for hashem with greater intensity than the souls of the tadikya so ostensibly at sadiq has a great desire for hashem and we haven't really defined sadiq yet we'll define sadiq in chapter 10. but we spoke a little bit about sadiq in chapter one but we didn't really explain who they are but we know they're pretty a pretty big deal so ostensibly that sadik has a great desire for hashem and what we're saying here is that the person who was in a spiritual desert and becomes aware of the fact they're in a desert and there and they're thirsting for reconnection with hashem their desire for closeness with hashem becomes more powerful than even that desire for closeness with hashem that is felt by the tsaddiki so then you have to ask yourself a question again i mean i'm repeating the same point over and over but what was what was the effect of the sin you take that sin out of his story of course if you would ask him do you wish it never happened yeah i wish it never happened i hate it i hate that it happened okay we're gonna take it out of your story it never happened ah but now there's no parched desert there's no thirst now you don't have that intense longing that desire so it's this irony it's this catch-22 i wish that it never happened but in a certain way it's the greatest thing that happened to my relationship with hashem because the net effect is that's what's spurring me on to desire with such intensity to be close to a shot well it's a very specific kind of pain it's not just any pain pain it's not any pain it's a very specific pain it's it's it's the pain of feeling remorse it's not just remorse because you could do that without love you could have remorse without love it is specific it's not just regret no no it is specifically the pain of separation from my beloved so love means a desire for closeness if we could simplify what is love love is a desire for closeness this thing is the opposite of closeness i had an opportunity to be with my beloved i told my beloved go take a hike while i go have some fun and at the moment i said it it seemed to make sense it seemed to seem to be a good idea at the time and then afterwards whether it's immediately after or it's years after i look back and say why did i do that why did they tell my beloved go take a hike while i could go have a fleeting experience that has no value to me now and it's not just the remorse the regret ah what a waste of time it's more the uh the pain of and and and even if i'll spend every moment now with my beloved i will never get back that squandered moment where we could have had a moment of closeness and we'll always have as part of our story that i rejected my beloved and it it it gets to me it's hurting me i don't want that what can i do about it there's nothing how do i take it back and i said it happened it's done already it happened i hate that moment of of of distance so the fact that i hate it and wish it never existed is causing me now to have a greater intensity to want to be close to hashem so that if the irony is if my wish were granted and you were okay fine we'll take it out of your story it never existed but then i wouldn't have the intensity of desire to be close to whichever that i have right now person feels that hashem created the guilt the distance oh that's a different that's that's different that's different you're talking about a person who feels you you're talking about what up when a person feels where was god during this moment of when i was going through my hardest time and i felt you know hashem was hiding from me yeah yeah we're not talking about that right now [Laughter] look this this is like this is like marriage therapy right now we got to take one thing at a time okay right you know the sometimes we're going to talk about what he did sometimes we're going to talk about what she did right now we're talking about clear instances where there's no question that the distance was my fault i caused the distance now you're raising a very good point sometimes i feel this distance in the relationship with hashem and i look at him like hey i wanted closeness you didn't return my call you didn't call me back okay we'll talk about that later chapter 27 yeah a yeah i mean you're speaking i'm not sure which you're saying this as a metaphor for closeness that we call i mean distance that we caused or distance that he caused yeah that's true too okay let's not get too philosophical here okay we're describing here what is actually a psychological phenomenon it's not it's not that mystical it's not that hard to wrap your mind around um i had a negative experience but the net effect of that negative experience is positive on a practical level yeah yeah all right to my mottom zal let's continue like the famous saying of our sages in the place where penitents stand even the truly righteous cannot stand what does that mean that the intensity of desire of longing for closeness that is caused by the past separation causes the the balchuva to have a greater yearning for hashem than if he had never had that that that separation in his story and the titan don't have that we say that the past misdeeds become merits not just that they're erased or canceled but they become transformed they become merits because they bring him to this intense love so far so good okay avo however me ava zoo shiva that is not coming from this kind of love although it is proper meaning it's perfectly acceptable and hashem will forgive him meaning it is erased from the record they're not going to bring it up in court anymore because nicely it doesn't turn the sins into merits just erases them it cancels them and that negativity won't be retrieved from its place in clipper until the end of time when hashem gathers up all the irredeemable stuff that we were talking about before that's how we started we we started by saying there's stuff that you can't clean up you can't deal with hashem will deal with it at the end of time so now we're back to that idea again if it's regular trova then okay fine so it's expunged from your record move on no one's gonna hold it over your head but as far as the the negative you know the spiritual uh loss that was entailed the only one who could repair that this hashem and you know he'll do that when meshech comes you you just move on don't don't look back we're done just move forward all right now in case you didn't have enough of this last week this is more of the the stuff that they skip in base rifka the vitality that is in the seed that is that is yeah that is issued in vain although when the uh the seed is issued in vain so what happens to that highest to that vitality it's it's a very powerful energy i mean it has the energy to to give life to create a baby and now it's wasted so that energy becomes captured within shaolis clippers of timaeus yeah within the irredeemable clippers but you could get it back just with regular chuva you could redeem that that energy so the seed was wasted and the energy becomes captive to the shallow clippers of the mayors and the person who wastes the seed does chova nachina just regular chiva regular chiva means that's not good i'm not going to do that anymore regular chili want to get into the technicalities of uh what this is ignorance of the law is not an excuse okay everyone i mean without me being explicit everyone understands that we're speaking about something that is a uniquely male biological phenomenon right now yes right now yes so uh he took the this amazingly powerful spiritual energy that's in the seed and you wasted it so now that energy becomes relegated to the shallowest clippers of timaeus how do you get it out of there chuva what kind of sugar regular chuva regular chive is good enough also intense kavanaugh during krishna shala lamita when you say bedtime shma again this is male stuff this is not the guys well this is on the guys yeah yeah there's not the guys but why is it only on a man if a woman's participating in this not they're not always participating okay so this is so this is specifically where where there was not a woman participating and we'll speak about when there is a woman participating it always astounds me by the way how people can get through the system i'm saying in khabad where they learn tanya and not know how to deal with this aspect of the human experience because it's dealt with so [Music] like openly in either they skip it over or they they they just go really fast okay so a male wasted seat that's a terrible um misappropriation of of of spiritual potential this energy is now being given over into the hands of the clipper it's a terrible thing okay how does he get it back out after he realizes shouldn't have done that so the alternative says that means just i wish i didn't do that and he should have intense cavanaugh when he says the bedtime shema the arizona talks about it um hints to it very intensely it's like he's holding a double-edged sword to you know get away the bad guys you like that mike depiction of the sword okay look at my dungeons and dragons i hold this forward hold it up yeah you gotta hold the cylinder to kill the bodies we're not talking about physical bodies here but the you know there's iron cleave there's light and vessel to to kill the bodies of the hussein of the extraneous forces of ush the highest shiba tipus that became a lavish that did that enclosed the vitality of this seed and then the the highest the vitality is able to be released and to to go up um like those who know kabbalah understand therefore here's an interesting concept where is the prohibition of wasting seed stated clearly in torah clearly nowhere forbidden relationships are listed forbidden relationships are listed but it doesn't specifically say the wasting of seed outside of a relationship with anybody else so he says that's why wasting seed isn't mentioned along with the other prohibited relationships you know why because it's in a different league in certain ways it's worse in certain ways each one has an aspect which is more egregious than the other in different different perspectives which we'll speak about momentarily af wasting seed is actually worse in some ways in some ways than engaging in a forbidden relationship the goddess volume wise the amount of negative spiritual forces that are put out through wasting seed are are greater than when engaging in forbidden relations yesterday it's more than forbidden relations so you want to talk quantitatively what causes the greatest amount of spiritual pollution wasting seed and that's why it's not even listed among them because it's so much worse quantitatively speaking watch how he explains the difference okay rock forbidden relations adds vitality to a greater clipper a worse clipper that means qualitatively okay what does that mean that it's a qualitatively greater clipper he explains regular can't pull it out can't retrieve that highest so here's the difference you have the the life force that that is wasted through the emission of of seed in vain that actually causes quantitatively much more spiritual pollution but qualitatively it's not that hard to get it back how do you get it back you just realize i don't i don't want to do that anymore i feel bad that i did it i'm done you say a good kris michelle alamito and you can get that life force back but when there's an actual forbidden relation where you have two people who are forbidden from each other actually acting in an intimate way now qualitatively it's worse and how does that express itself that regular chuva can't get can't retrieve the the vitality that's in the seed yes it's dangerous unless he does that level of trivia that we just described earlier where it's the level where sins become merits but regular trivia won't work with wasting seed regular chivalr will work with giving seed over to a forbidden partner regular chiva doesn't work will work silva malva will work because chivame can turn the negativity into positivity so the person could say that that relationship that he had where that moment of of of acting that way separated him from hashem and now that that separation from hashem becomes the impetus to this constant yearning for closeness to hashem so then again it's a net gain what causes him to yearn for closeness with hashem is that is that forbidden relation that he was involved in and now he explains the mechanics of it i don't think it's that difficult to grasp this at least on one level why is it irretrievable or so difficult i shouldn't say irretrievable but barring chuva mahava why is it so difficult to redeem that experience even through regular chuva he says nation nicola to be a say denuclear declipa don't be scared by the kabbalistic terms yasoid de nuqva de clipper that your sight is the ninth sphere nukfa is the feminine aspect clipper is clipper you know negativity so what happens in forbidden relations there's a spiritual uh entity called you say the nook for the clipper you say just means the interface it's how one thing sort of latches on to another thing you say it's also called khabros or connection at any rate when you have forbidden relations so the seed was received and absorbed by not just physically but spiritually as well there's two parallel things going on right now there's a spiritual and a physical thing so in forbidden relations so the seed was received absorbed by this what we call usoid the look for the clipper i'm a cabela's vaquelette and it it receives it and it absorbs it and now you want to go get that that that vitality back but the clipper is holding on to it machine can visit not so when the seed was simply wasted nook for the clip because there's no spiritual recipient in that case again you could understand this purely spiritually or you could understand its physical parallel i don't think it's that difficult to understand what he's describing here if the seed was wasted in a way where there was no recipient so in a certain way it's worse the quantity the volume of pollution of spiritual pollution is greater but qualitatively it's not that hard to get it back you just do regular chuva and good kavanagh if however it was forbidden relations so actually volume wise quantity wise it's not as bad as wasting seed but qualitatively it's much more difficult to do anything about it after the fact because there's a recipient that absorbed that energy and now you can't just go and get it back didn't absorb it it's hovering over it physically the way i mean obviously these are we're using physical words to describe spiritual phenomena but in zero voltolo the clippers relationship with it is its mock if it's hovering over it when there's forbidden relations then it's not hovering it's a it's it received it it absorbed it rather what happens with zero levatola is it says that the powers and the forces of the clipper they surround it they're maubish the highest of the tippas they're surrounding it as opposed to it being absorbed within within them what is a crooked thing that cannot be made straight zesha bala herrera moms or somebody who has forbidden relations and they have offspring from the forbidden relations because then even chivame is not going to work anymore you have shalaylahal is the highest dosha because you can't get the highest back why not because that energy already became materialized as the body of this offspring so when it was just in a completely spiritual state it sort of influx and you can you can deal with it through emotional rearrangements that happen inside of your heart you felt this way about the experience now you feel a completely different way about the experience and that's sufficient to change the location of the energy to take it back to redeem it but when the energy already materialized and became you know the life force from this seed became this child how you're gonna get it back so then it makes it a little bit more difficult to say the least okay anyhow is this stuff uh it's a tough glass understood yeah it's tough yeah last time no no we didn't learn it in detail now i said at the beginning class last time we went through the tanya we did seven and eight in one class and at this time we took three classes just to do chapter seven well look at this class look at this class yeah anything else about this yeah so it's completely irredeemable at this point there's nothing you could do to redeem that it's not like the the never say never but i don't know if i want to get into the uh the improper relationships not the um you know the the scene in the veins right yeah that's the difference yeah anything else we're good for now yeah but only if it is