Text-Based Tanya—Week #71

all right weekly text-based Tanya Which chapter are we in 41 okay and we were speaking about how gracious the beginning of service of Hashem and it's root and its source is what ah very good even in the doing because normally love is what propels you to do and awe is what propels you to not do but even in the doing there has to be a basis of awe and where does this all come from it comes from a meditation we went through a meditation you should think about Hashem is filling all worlds and transcending all worlds and yet focusing on the Jewish people in general and and you in specific and peering into you and checking you out and it's supposed to fill you with the awe that you then transfer into your performance of mitzvahs and we mentioned a couple of instances where you might Ponder this all we said like when you're learning Torah or when you're putting on Talus and filling and that's where we stop we stop right in the middle with the words right where is it in the thing in the original original page one top yeah yeah which is where uh uh where is it it's like something you made a mark oh yeah you did it's one two three four five six seven eight nine lines from the top right in the middle of the ninth line now I got it okay all right so there we are Delon specifically when you put on filling you should think about this all the bottle over here that you are nullifying your hochman Bina of your brain of your nephe Charlotte kisses brain you're aligning your intellect with the Divine intellect why you think about that when you're doing film because the Partiers of the philan the paragraphs of scripture that are included in the philan represent specifically the parshaft Kadesh and the Parsha of represent respectively and when you wear the villain it has this effect of aligning your Hoffman Bina with hashems is in other words what it means is you're making a commitment not to use your hochman Bina for any other reason than for the service of Hashem so to align your hashems really means to dedicate it to only be used for Hashem but also you're aligning or nullifying your Das with hashem's dance and thus as we know although it's an intellectual faculty it is the bridge between the intellect And the emotions and that's why Das contains within it the two axes of emotions which respectively referred to love and all hasid is love and is we're talking about Das which is above the Midas and it contains both extremes of the Middle East and that in turn is invested in the other parshas of Shema that are in the villain so at any rate the point is you got in the villain you have covered the BINA which is four not three because Das is a double header no no you get it it splits that's why you have the four chambers within the throne yeah so it splits off into both directions why is right the Parsha Shema is it represents khasid that paragraph because it has like scary stuff in there has consequences in there so yeah yeah it does that's good yeah yeah yeah yeah whatever yeah okay okay at any rate the point is the point is we're not learning about filling right now we're learning about all meditations and he's mentioning to you that when you put on fill in you should have in mind that you are aligning your binadas with hashems which means you're dedicating it to only be used I don't know I learned mitzvah's the kohanan perform I don't know I never complained and said why am I learning what happens first I'm just saying okay I don't know I don't know okay okay let's not get bogged down it's just an example he's just giving an example the high no commercials when it describes what is the kavana of villain it is to subjugate the heart and the mind so that's what that means the point here is not filling the point here is about villain is an example of when a person is mindful in doing a mitzvah the feeling of awe motivates him to surrender himself and align himself to God that's the point it's just an example here's another example what about when you put on cities your Calvin commercials your intent should be when you put on since you're drawing upon yourself God's kingship uh hashem's kingship is the kingship of all worlds for Zoo and that you are connecting yourself or rather he is connecting himself to us through this Mitzvah says which is connected to also the idea of the myths of having a king refers to the actual myths of having an actual King a Jewish King but also you know in a figurative way it refers to accepting God's kingship when you put on Talus when you put on the Talusa is now if even when you think all this stuff it doesn't cause you to have an acute sense of dread revealed in your heart meaning ideally it would when you put on the throne when you put on the towels and you think all these things that we've been thinking about wow it should be really overwhelming but let's say it isn't let's say you don't have that reaction we call Malcolm nevertheless as long as you're accepting hashem's kingship um and you're you're you're drawing upon yourself the awe of Hashem in a way that's revealed at least in your thoughts and in the will of your mind he's just he's contrasting something that would be revealed in your heart meaning it's a full-fledged emotion and something that's more of an abstract notion it's in your mind it's in your will nevertheless he's saying it's that's also okay the kabbalahia meet us please because it's sincere without any doubt it's it's it is it's real it's true because it is the nature of the Jewish people not to want to rebel against Hashem so don't ever say well maybe I'm faking it no you're not faking it it's real that's your Tava the nature of the Jewish Souls not to want to rebel against Hashem so even though you're you're your hope your your goal was to get this feeling to come out in a real visceral way and feel it palpably in your heart and you didn't accomplish that but at least on some abstract level you have this appreciation for the idea of being you know of Hashem and you want to therefore accept his kingship so that's real we're saying that's real limit so then if you have that mindset then the tighter that you learn as the expression of that mindset or the Mitzvah that you do based on this acceptance of hashem's authority um based on your accepting this this all of Hashem into your mind so the theory you're learning limits as you're doing with that level of kavana it's called a complete service in other words don't feel like chopped liver just because you're not able to get that full-fledged intense emotional experience it's okay as long as you have a sincere desire to accept hashem's Authority and you do have a sincere desire Because deep down that's what every Jewish Soul wants so that's enough to be called an Aveda shlema a complete service just like any service that a servant does for his master and for his King okay so he's in a certain way lowering the bar here for us and making the goal attainable he's setting a goal we do have to meditate we do have to get ourselves into a era frame of mind but it doesn't have to be so intense and it doesn't have to reach all the way to our hearts it could just remain more intellectual that's not the goal but as long as you try and you do the meditation then even if all you're able to manage is just a sort of an abstract notion of accepting hashem's kingship so that's enough that if you go then and take that attitude and apply it to your Torah study and you're doing Mitzvahs then the third study you do in the Mitzvahs that you do are called Aveda shlema a complete service okay not so however mitsubish if you only learn Toyota or do Mitzvahs with a motivation of love that you want you love Hashem and therefore you want to cleave to him through Taylor and Mitzvahs which is a beautiful thing but it's not an Aveda shlema if that's your only motivation hear what we're saying it's a beautiful thing to love Hashem no no no I'm shutting down all questions because I know what you're asking so I want to reiterate because I know these things that are hard to understand so I'm going to say it again it's a beautiful thing to love a chef and it's a beautiful thing that your love of Hashem is making you want to do Mitzvahs because after all if you really love Hashem the only the only legitimate expression of that is to learn to do Mitzvahs it's beautiful however if that's the only motivation and there's not also a sense of awe then it's not called an Aveda shlema it's not called a full or complete service you must have the ah everything we've been talking about everything the world no no just just what we're talking about Josh what we're talking about thinking being conscious about hashem's Authority and that he's focused on us and we're trying to align ourselves to his authority these ideas the ideas that we've been describing those are the awe meditations I know all you need is love right yes right yeah it's not what I think it is surprise me what is it um like that feeling that's already there right you're saying we said before that if you have a sense of awe even if it's not a full-fledged emotion even if it's more of an abstract idea but it is sincere because after all that's what every Jewish Soul wants so therefore you're asking a very clever question which is so therefore if you're saying if you're claiming that it's present in the soul already then what's this scenario you're describing where a person is only serving out of love you just told me that the awe is always there at least on some level right that's what you well yeah you surprised me that this sounds like a very like backhanded compliment but I'm yes that's a very good question okay no I'm not surprised I'm not surprised that you asked a good question I'm surprised that anyone asked a good question at that juncture because because I know what the elephant in the room is that gets people distracted but okay so but your question was not about the elephant in the room it was it was actually it's a very subtle question all right so the answer to the question is even that innate natural awe that the soul has embedded within it has to come out to some extent what he was describing before he was saying even if it doesn't reach your heart it's okay as long as it reaches your brain so that is some that that requires some active deliberate well it requires meditation that we're talking about okay so and if you wouldn't meditate then it would just be totally subconscious so when we're talking about a person has only love as his motivation you're saying but hold on he has to have that all the awe is always there yeah but it's totally subconscious he didn't do anything to bring it out not even to an abstract intellectual level does that answer yeah okay great the latent love yes it's the same concept that we learned about in chapters 18 and 19 yes okay all right um so yeah if you don't have the ah if all you have is the love it's not called The Vedas [Music] it's not called the service of a servant of the servant yeah okay fine so it's not and then he says but Taylor says and you should serve Hashem your God and it says and you should serve him so serving is a word in English it loses its a lot is Lost in Translation but serving Avida or avid aveda's service Avid is a servant no it is but what does it mean to serve it means to be subservient it means to be to subjugate yourself it's not just to do nice things or to even fulfill the will of somebody it specifically means to to surrender yourself and that is generally described as a function of awe of Hashem so a person who says well listen what do you care if I have all or not I'll do I'll learn all the Telly I need to learn and I'll do all the Mitzvahs I need to do and I'll do it completely out of love without any awe so we'll say to him well that's wonderful and from a practical standpoint maybe you're making a good argument you know you're doing the Mitzvahs you're learning the third you need to learn okay but there's still something lacking because Hashem isn't just saying do the Mitzvahs and and learn Toyota Hashem is saying be an avid be a servant and you can't be a servant if you don't have any awe so it's not enough to just have love as your motivation so it's questionable if it even really exists if if a person who has love and says but I have no awe so then it's questionable is the is the love even legitimate that's a whole other discussion that's a whole other discussion but let's not get into that right now okay but in theory if somebody were to say my my sole motivation is love we would still say to him but Hashem wants the awe as well why well you didn't ask me why he wants the love the love you're not asking why he wants the all you're asking why he wants no everybody need love does it bother you the love or the awe or the awe or the love or neither or both yeah we don't like the word Avid especially yeah Hashem is our father he's also our King so we're we're born in and we're about them yeah it's a very complex relationship others the other yeah yeah that's what I said I don't want to get into it's a whole discussion but yes 100 correct yes is self-containment if you don't have self-containment and even when you're loving it's it's it's a form of self-love okay no no identified it's not possible compliments each other when we're talking about oh we're not talking about an a it's not an unpleasant feeling it's not like oh no look who's calling I don't want to take this call I don't want to speak to so and so oh yuck that's not what awe means amazed yeah call it amazement call it wow what would that look like yeah okay but you know what I don't want to dwell on this especially because in about half a page he's going to play the other side of it and he's going to say and by the way in case you think you're going to serve Hashem only with awe you're not allowed to do that either so let's just finish the chapter and get the full rounded version okay okay yeah all right okay like it says in the Holy zoehire purchase like that ox yeah oxy oil because that you put an uh an oil a uh yoke on his back before you're able to extract any productivity for the world from him he's useless the ax is useless until you put a yoke on him [Music] so to a person needs to receive the Yoke of Heaven on him and if that is not found on him meaning he doesn't have the yoke there will be no dwelling of Holiness upon him foreign both the servant and the son you can't just be a son who loves you also have to be the servant who accepts the authority of the master however now there is a scenario of a son who's also a servant age that's a very high level where a person has come to the level called the higher level of Europe that our levels of Europe so the only way to have a son who is a servant is that he has come all the way to the highest level of Europe however what about a person who doesn't have in his mind or in his thought any level of yira or or busha shame and I don't mean like toxic shame I mean healthy shame and the reason for this that he doesn't have this awe or this shame is because he comes from an inferior level from The Source from which he is hewn he's coming from a lower level of the utsavirus Asia the lowest world so what are we supposed to do about this guy he's not feeling anything nevertheless since he intends through serving Hashem to serve the king meaning he wants to have this feeling it's called complete service because in the 613 and one does not prevent the other one's not and that's one does not necessitate the other so interestingly here he says and if worst case scenario a person will not be able to muster even a modicum of yira well okay so he'll do Aveda and he won't do yira they're two separate mitzvahs they're two separate Mitzvahs that's his first answer you'll see what he the answer evolves over here but furthermore but you know what the truth is I'm going to give the guy credit for having you to that he does draw upon himself a certain amount of Judah just by thinking about it I'll go upon him because at least at that moment the fear of Heaven is upon him I'll go upon him at least at the moment at least to the degree where he's self-conscious in front of a human being who's looking at him meaning not even a king but just a regular person is looking at him so he's self-conscious and he inhibits himself and he behaves differently because someone's looking at him so a person who's doing what Hashem wants because he knows Hashem is watching him all right so fine he's not having such a deep level of kavana but you know what I'll give that credit I'll call that year as well he prevents himself from doing anything Unbecoming in front of that person so if a person has enough inhibition to not do an Aveda just because he knows Hashem wouldn't like it so you know what that's like that's a certain level of self-awareness and well you know we'll call that yira as well foreign I have a prayer for you guys may it be hashem's will Ingham that the heaven the fear of Heaven should be upon you like you fear human beings and they were surprised they were like well shouldn't the fear of Heaven be upon us much greater than we fear human beings and he said no today because when a person does a sin he says oh I hope nobody sees me so in some ways people fear humans more than they fear God although he says I do have to qualify and say this level of fear is a lower level fear and it's called fear of sin and it comes before it's not a product of there is a fear that comes from when you have a certain wisdom certain insight into hashem's greatness and then the fear that ensues from that is one level this is a lower level of fear the higher level of fear we also call shame-like fear that's where it's not even about I'm afraid to do anything inappropriate in front of Hashem it's more like I'm self-conscious of the fact that I exist as something separate how can I exist as an independent entity when Hashem is everything that's a very lofty level so that's the high level of fear there's one kind of fear and there's another kind of fear there's different levels okay so basically what we did is we said there's a guy who's not even really able to reach the level of year in his mind like first we said you can't do it in your heart so you do it in your mind and then we say well this guy can't even do it in his mind and then we said you know what though but the fact that he's even inhibiting his behavior and doing anything different than differently than what he would normally be doing so to some extent you can call that you know and I'll give him credit that he's having you know I have obligia to Clow however without any you know whatsoever like not even that which which we just described with the outfit I was giving credit for and calling that you know but if you don't even have that your Mitzvahs can't fly up with just love commercial like a bird Can't Fly With One Wing we've had that metaphor before about love and AWS the two wings commercial says that love and awe all in love are like two wings so he's giving a very very liberal definition of yira that pretty much anyone who's willing to think consciously at all will be able to to live up to but he's saying but if you won't even do that then I'm sorry then you're trying to fly with One Wing okay yeah then we started talking about fear so fear and all are very related respect uh is another way of saying it these are all related that we while there's many more than two levels but we spoke about two levels yeah so the higher one right is is the embarrassment right but not embarrassed like oh I did something bad the lower one I'm afraid to do something bad because afraid of the punishment or well that's even lower afraid of the punishment's even lower more like I don't want Hashem to see me doing anything bad is a lower level then a higher level is even if I don't do anything bad even if I do everything right why am I existing is a separate entity when Hashem is everything your lofty level why like I mean we're not strive to but that's very ingrained which level if you have punishment it's even lower right yeah no he's just comparing it to fear of others with the alternator says that that's a level of Euro um the fear of punishment um it's a good question whether that would count I think so because he said if it gets you to in if it gets you to change your behavior like so then it counts yeah it might be a lower level of the lower level but um well if you're not even on the lower level of the lower level then you could aspire to that right right you could always aspire to something higher right you're no wings at all nothing no that's not true like is this all banoni levels or is only the highest level being on eBay no no no no okay so you're asking a good question because we haven't spoken about the beginning in a while yeah okay abandoning certainly is going to have these abandities going to work a lot on these emotions certainly but nothing here up I'll put it this way nothing here requires that you be abandoning me already to experience it accept the stuff where he says like it's a very high level like you know bushes where there he's he's presenting it specifically as a very high level um so what are you really asking not sure yeah where is here you see the one who feels the embarrassment or is he the one who has which which one is a banani there could be someone who's obeying even with the lower level of fear and that works for him to because remember the mainly at the end of the day is a is a behavioral definition and there's so many levels within the bank and there's so many levels of the bank yeah that's right there's so many levels within beginning well the actions are the outgrowth of the meditation the actions are now that you meditated okay so now what are you going to do with your feelings you go and learn Toyota and do Mitzvahs with those feelings you're meditating to create kavana cavana means emotions that you imbue into your mits of performance or your Torah study okay now remember I said to you before that he's gonna Now flip it on you and be like here we go okay so you can't just ever Hashem with only love you have to have all you have to have all okay fine now watch what happens but also flip it whatever you want to service him with only off icer that's also called One Wing It won't fly this Avid even though it does meet the criteria of avedis avid okay so you're you're doing avedis evid but now what are you lacking you're lacking the other row which is you're not you're doing the Avid part but you're not doing the bend part but in his band you also have to be a son to the guy who's only being a son and not a servant he says you got to be a servant to the guy who's being a servant not a son he's telling him hey you gotta also be a son and what does that mean to be a son to at least arouse your natural love for Hashem which is hidden in your heart that at least it should be on a conscious level in your brain why do we say at least in your brain because it's only in your brain and it's not all the way into your heart and he describes what is this basic level lower level of of love it means it means just to remember I love how he calls it remember your love of Hashem the one God that you have remember that and remember in your thought and in your will that that's really what you want you want to cleave to Hashem so it's already there you just got to remember it is and that should be your kavana when you're learning Torah when you're doing a mitzvah well Hashem to attach your Godly soul to Hashem as well as your animating soul and its garments as we mentioned above that when you do a mitzvah your connecting your soul garments your thought speech and action to Hashem okay thought speech in action that's those were the early chapters of Tanya okay so I'm tired somebody who was here in the first four chapters what does it say in chapter four okay great so when you do speak or think potato mitzvahs you are okay excellent that's great you remember something from 37 chapters ago I mean it's a recurring main theme of Tanya but yeah yeah and as to why they're called garments that's a longer explanation um that we speak about at length in chapter four but they're forms of expression it's not the soul itself but it's forms of expression okay by the way all this stuff is recorded So if you want to find something that was said in class 4 or it's not class four chapter four it's all recorded we can go back and play back the tapes and get even if you were here for chapter four you can go back and and re-listen okay omnum however do not exclude yourself from the general rule what does that mean s foreign [Music] don't exclude yourself from the big picture what does that mean it means don't just think about you it means you should intend to unite with Hashem not just for you but Hashem is the source of all Jewish Souls which is referred to as his speech or the breath of his mouth it's also called the Shino which dwells within all worlds Hashem speech is actually then reflected in your speech like also Hashem is then reflected in your actions when you do a mitzvah so you are uniting with hashem's shrina which is his outer expression by aligning your outer Expressions your your speech and your actions you're uniting that with his will and that has benefit not only for you but for all the Jewish Souls who also come forth from that shrina way like is that part of it so it begins to come there's that there's so rape there's different there's elevating our soul that we will experience reward in the world to come that will be our experience right you're asking you're asking a good question which is okay remind me why this is important you said it more politely but that's what you're saying you're like all right you're in you okay so I'll put it like this um the point he's making now is that all of this spiritual stuff we're describing you could start to think about it in spiritually selfish ways oh I have so much on love of Hashem and I am connecting to Hashem all right but don't forget the big picture the big picture is that your Torah study and you're doing Mitzvahs actually is bringing more godliness to all of the Jewish people so that's the point here is how your particular behavior is bringing godliness into into all of the Jewish souls in a revealed way well in turn it comes back and it does benefit us well every ultimately everything's connected to Judith yeah yeah I mean that's the underlying motivation for everything as he explains in chapter chapters 35 36 and 37. Dwelling Place in the lower Realms which we described before was hashem's underlying motivation for creation let's see how much further we can get we don't have much longer I'm a just a review the beginning of the chapter we said it's not enough to just have love you have to have all and you have to accept the shem's authority upon you and you have to think about Hashem is examining you and that should give you this feeling of awe then and we spoke about that at length you should think about it when you put on fill and when you put on towels when you learn Torah okay and then we said but you also have to have love you have to have love you have to have both wings and now we're adding like a third dimension which is it's not love it's not all it's it's its own subject I would call it maybe maybe call it altruism it's called Le Shema doing Mitzvahs for their own sake and in this case the the aspect of that that he's bringing out is how your service of Hashem benefits other Jews means you're doing something selflessly or altruistically you're not doing it for your own benefit not even your spiritual benefit s it doesn't have to be for the sake of the Mitzvah can mean doing this doing the mitzvah for the intrinsic value that the Mitzvah has and it happens to be the aspect of that intrinsic value that we're speaking about right now is how it benefits the entire Jewish people okay all right um and how do you create this Oneness between the Jewish people and Hashem is through learning Terror and doing mitzvahs you know this carvings and you have this in mind that this is your intent that you're drawing down the light of Hashem and the source of your soul which is also the source of all Jewish Souls and causing them to be United with each other and with with him like it explains this Oneness at length elsewhere it will explain so we didn't get there yet this is also what it means when we say before we do a mitzvah or we say it before we say Baruch in the morning davening and then it covers all the Mitzvahs we do all day we're doing this for the sake of the unification of the Holy One and his indwelling presence in the name of all Israel meaning to say that is the intent now that we're focusing on how how our Mitzvah is causing this Oneness is oh wigam are you there is a foreign there's another benefit that this has which is it sweetens the Veris in the khasodim automatically by causing the Middle East to become inter-included with in one another this is going to take a lot of explanation uh let me finish the sentence and then try to explain it either oh yeah we're we're yeah this is a good place to stop this is a very good can I have your pen this is a great place to stop thank you great advice okay all right so we'll continue next week thank you