Bitachon 60 - Looking for His Guidance

you're listening to the 60th edition of the vitacon podcast and you'll notice that i don't have a safer with me and there's a few reasons for that the first reason is i could not find the safer that we're reading from hashem but i had a second saver which i was actually here yesterday in this exact location ready to film and record this podcast but the battery of my of my video camera was running very low and i was afraid i would start and i'll get back to yesterday soon but today i left the safeway that i was planning to use at home i got to this location i have a limited amount of time to be able to record this i decided you know i'm going to talk about a specific topic in bitarchan which has to do with looking for the signs of what it is that hashem wants from us not always clear not always easy to see often blurry often could be multiple ways of going multiple paths see the path so i'd like to talk about this topic in vitacon what does it mean to have trust in hashem to kind of look for try to discern where it is that hashem wants us to go and in thinking about this on the way here which was about a 13-minute walk so i'm reminded of jose watson he faces his brothers there they are he is now the ruler of mitzrim right he recognizes them but they don't recognize him and yosef proceeds to run them through a very difficult challenge and pretends to be he doesn't say who he is presents to be someone else wants to get benjamin to come down paul before she explained but there's you know it's hard to understand what yosev is doing why is he doing this to his brothers but if we think about this and could be we've spoken about this in the past if we think about it clearly we can see that yosef understood from the fact that he recognized them but they didn't recognize him he understood that there was a reason for it there was a reason for it right yosef is the one who first of all is constantly talking about hashemis constantly hashem's name is always on his lips right who is excuse me there's some flies and mosquitoes around right so yosef is somebody who is constantly looking to discern the hand of hashem guiding him and when he sees this unusual thing that he's not recognized even though he recognizes them he sees it as a direction from hashem that this is something that he needs to do he needs to put them through a situation he needs to use the fact that he's not recognized in order to accomplish something for his brothers which as i understand it is to create a tikkun rectification for the sin that they had done selling him and that is by standing up ultimately for binyamin when yosef brings them back down now when we look at that we see that hashem was guiding yosef hashem was in yosef's life but it's not just yosef it's every one of us it's every one of us hashem is constantly showing us signs what he wants us to do it's not always crystal clear like that situation was very very clear but i'll give you an example that happened to me yesterday right here in this location besides for the fact that the battery on my camera was running out which was hashem i recharged the battery so now we're we're good to go besides for that so i'm sitting here actually i was planning to do it in a location not far just right over there but here i wanted you guys to see the beautiful path because it's part of my story i was sitting there and um i'm hearing like weird noises like that that kind of noise i'm like it doesn't sound good like there's people around here usually i'm here i'm alone there's nobody else around go for a walk you know you have to be concerned sometimes for unsavory elements i don't want to meet over here so i heard that noise i'm like my gut was telling me this is not a good idea you should close up shop also i had set up this camera actually pretty much in this location like on the road and i was i had it facing in that direction and uh so i was like what if people come through here knock it down it's happened to me before what actually did happen right afterwards but i decided to move my camera over and then i decided you know what i think i should get out of here but before i did so first of all a guy walked down through who looked a little unsavory his head was covered with like uh some kind of cloth and was hanging down okay people dressed that way to protect themselves from the heat but i keep hearing this noise ah wow and anyway i debated what to do i was getting ready to go and then i look up the i look up the road and i see that uh there's a shepherd coming down with his flock of goat goats and there was a horse and there were a few dogs and and this whole flock just basically came walking through this area eating up all the stuff on the side anything green any foliage and walked on through here and i'm sitting over here and as the arab shepherd walks by i asked him you know is it okay they were all the animals like surrounding me almost i said do i need to move should i be out of their way and he's like no no you're fine no they won't bother you and animals didn't bother me i just watched them pass by a massive trail of these animals and just watched them eating stuff and they went by and went down the went down the road and uh one of the things i felt from experiencing that and i was thinking about it i'm over here now was that you know you got to trust your intuition sometimes your intuition says don't put the camera in the middle of the road today my intuition didn't say that don't put the camera in the middle of the road listen to the intuition i had an experience before where i had set up my camera one of the other podcasts and indeed a shepherd and his flock passed by pretty soon after i was done recording my podcast but they could easily have passed by while i was in the middle of the podcast so i had that experience i looked at the past and i had a certain feeling about the present same thing when i got here i got out of my car and i realized i hadn't bring i hadn't brought a safer i planned to bring to use for this podcast and i said you know what what's hashem saying to me do i have what to say i'm sure that i'll have what to say i have something to speak about and here we are talking about this topic and it's an important topic because hashem guides us sometimes it's very clear like with yoga if it was very clear to him something was really unusual that's going on here all right we can see it in our lives we can look around in our lives we can see something you know right now i was asked by a radio station in israel to create a music show for an hour a day four days a week from sunday through wednesday very popular kharadi station called coldplay i was debating should i do this it's not a paying job but you know you're in front of a very big audience get seen you get heard you choose the songs i can say whatever i want i can choose the songs let's say talking about be talking i can stick in a word here a word there on topics of physic and you know i can say whatever i want so it's a very interesting opportunity and i wasn't sure what to do and i'm always looking i'm always my eyes are always open looking okay what does hashem want me to do what is what is where is hashem guiding me and can't speak about the specifics of it but it started to become clear that this seems to be what hashem wants me to do and it's like you're walking down this path i'm walking down the path of life and you're walking and you're walking and you're walking and all of a sudden you see hey where am i going and you know the animals in the back the sheep the goats or whatever the horse in the back the dog actually was all the way in the back the animals in the back don't see the shepherd they don't necessarily know exactly where they're going they don't need to know that's not their job animals don't need to know as long as there's a shepherd right so but the animals in the back follow what's going on in front of them that doesn't mean of course wherever the river flows that's where i'm gonna i'm gonna go that's not what this means but what it does mean is that if a person is striving and looking for and trying to find where does hashem want me to go that's the question i'm always asking where does hashem want me to go and i'm not talking about an obsessive question like what am i supposed to do now what do i do now so there are answers to that kind of question as well you know working now with a with a coach and uh we're writing out i was asked to write out lists of things lots of things to do list of things that i would like to accomplish right there's a place for that as well of course and we need to have a broader vision for ourselves we need to know more personally we want to go we need to have goals these are all important but then the question is also where is hashem bringing us because sometimes what we think is good for us or what we think is right for us or what we think we want hashem says no it's very interesting i had an experience this morning in shul with davening in the show called masses mordechai which is like happening one after another and in the middle of an estuary you're yelling outside of the door there's yelling someone's yelling at the top of their lungs ah yelling what's going on it wasn't clear to me i don't know and i'm not going outside my middle of dominating once twice three times a few times during tournaments when yesterday the guy was yelling and after davening this guy comes into the room there's a piece of paper in his hand and he's trying to convince people maybe legitimately so there's a particular grocery store in our neighborhood some of the grocery stores employed jewish workers this particular store employees hired workers and the arabs who work there are not exactly you know the highest class citizens and uh with what's been going on in arts israel of late so there's been an unruly element someone told me they heard first from from someone who was there so i'm third-hand but heard it from the first hand that somebody from this particular grocery store was removed because he was planning to do something there's been all kinds of weird things going on but this guy who came into school was yelling outside of the shul for a while already a month or maybe a month and a half has been trying to convince people not to go to the grocery store don't go there he hasn't been able to convince and if they're abundant to sign on to his thing he has two people who i think are not in the community doesn't matter not the point what is the point is that i what i saw in this person was that and he explained why didn't he yell he wanted to get our attention he felt like the only way to get people to to listen to what he had to say was to yell outside the door at the top of his lungs that's the only way that he had to yell and i was discussing this with somebody else right afterwards and they were saying how this person until recently when he became very concerned and uh trying to do something about the situation he was a regular guy regular guy but he became seems he became obsessive about it i was thinking about like what's the idea of that how does that happen and i think that comes from us trying to control a situation that's really out of our control this person has been to the owner of the grocery store trying to convince him to get rid of his arab workers etc and but but it became an obsession it became like he needs to he needs to fix this problem of course we need crusaders we need people who are willing to take something on but the mistake i think and this is an important point it's connected to what we're talking about the mistake is who's in who's in charge of this am i in charge of this is a shaman charge of this who's in charge of this once had a a situation that i was dealing with a particularly difficult uh situation with whatever the exact circumstances are it's not important i was dealing with a difficult person who had a position of power over me and it was in my opinion abusing that power and i discussed it with a certain rev who agreed with me a few other upon him agreed with me but there's nothing to do and he said you know part of part of what the jewish people has to go through in golis is dealing with difficult people difficult challenges and we need to know part of what we have to go through in life will be a challenge or a difficulty and there's hashem shows us hashem looks at us and or we need to look at the situations that we're in and we need to ask ourselves why am i hitting a dead end why am i hitting a brick wall what's that about that's a surefire sign not always but it's a good indicator that that's not where hashem wants me to go that's not where hashem wants me to go hashem has a different plan for me hashem wants my daughter to be not in that school but in a school that's better for her which is what happened so we don't know where we're going exactly but hashem shows indicators when there are certain things that are unusual certain things that are like what's that what's that about that's a good sign that's a good sign it's like the story that i that i told you guys about one of the one of the members of our we talking group the latest group who was debating what to do should her son go out with this particular girl and she turned on the thing she turned on the on the vitacon podcast and there was there on the was the story about her son inaudible that i happened to say because as i've mentioned before as because the first time the camera wasn't on and the second time this story came into my head it didn't come in on the first time so signs like that that's hashem showing me when something is unlikely when something happens it's something like that you see what sadik sees it doesn't make sense that his brothers don't recognize him he looks exactly like them looks like vinyam he looks like his father he doesn't reckon they don't recognize him they don't some that's an unlikely scenario is a good symbol that this is not this is or is not the way to go you you're hitting a brick wall maybe that's not the right way to go of course it's a good idea to discuss these kinds of things with rabonim with his mentors with spiritual guides but we also this is something that i've heard from irish yeshiva many a time we make we make our own decisions in life even if we get advice from others we make our own decisions in life we are accountable for our decisions can't blame them on anybody else we make our decisions and we ultimately have to look and see and try to determine where is it that hashem is sending us what is the direction that he wants me to go if i only have a certain limited amount of time to work on this podcast and i couldn't find the safer the safer that i planned to bring i left at home there's not enough time for me to go back there and get it do i do can't give up on the slot today i'm filming this this it's tuesday trying to film it by tuesday get it up and um so what is hashem trying to say to me maybe i'm saying to me talk about what's going on talk about what you're experiencing talk from your own heart maybe that's what people need to hear maybe that's what you need to hear today i was grateful to experience today i picked up my daughter which i don't usually do my my wife usually does it but my wife's involved in something else so i went to pick up my daughter from a tutor and one of the people who listens i didn't know one of people listens and watches this podcast uh is my daughter's tutor's husband and i really appreciated it i didn't know i had no idea but i really appreciated when he told me he gave me the feedback that he gains something from this podcast that is always you know that's just a little thing but that's also a reminder for me hey i got to do this podcast this is something that's important to me i know this is something that's having an impact on others so there's so many things to look for so many ways that hashem guides us and sometimes it's just really simple i feel this is right for me this is this feels right for me feels right for me to do i'll be talking podcast once a week it feels right for me to do a partial podcast it feels right for me to be learning gemara in the morning to be working on music creating music it feels right and even the things that i've resistance to like let's say doing a radio show four days a week even something like that the circumstances around it might be saying hey this is the thing that you're supposed to do someone just told me how they moved recently five weeks ago they moved to six weeks ago as of today because i had this conversation a week ago almost they moved to ramapi chemist to my area from somewhere in canada and they came in they had no idea what to expect and they're seeing where to go they they planted themselves in one location and they had to move on to a different location they thought they were going to go to that location but in the end they ended up somewhere else but i saw from speaking to him that there was a sense that hashem is guiding you don't know why you don't know exactly what's going on you don't know exactly of course it's not clear but there are hints we need to look for the hints we need to ask hashem to show us what is it that you want from me and if this is what you want from me show me how to do it help me succeed at it if you want me to do a radio program help me do it right i'm going to ask you hashem i'm going to pray i'm going to darwin please help me do it right and someone in the talking group said this is an opportunity to hashem through this talk about be talking play songs would be talking on the radio you know this is an opportunity how can i serve hashem in this what does hashem want for me in this situation that's a question i need to ask myself and with that we're almost at 20 minutes but i want to say i try to keep this 20 minutes to be talking about yes but i want to say just one last thing and that is the power of the group i want to remind you the importance and the power of a group working on bitaken there's a ladies group which is meeting every single week join the group there's a men's group if you can join us we're working on it together there's so much to be gained by being part of a group thinking about talking about it's on our minds discussing it there's also a whatsapp group for those who are part of the the uh the for the zoom group i don't know if the women have done something like that but there's a whatsapp group and this is something that we develop a sense of be taken of faith in hashem a sense of where is hashem guiding us where's hashem leading us it says something this is something that we develop by talking about it by experiencing it by reviewing it by talking about it by experiencing it by reviewing it and that conversation is what brings us to our to our next level and we're talking so i invite you you can send me an email to ari goldwag gmail.com or to the talking group gmail.com i check both of those emails and if you want to be in the women's group we'll send you to the women's group if you want to be in the men's group i'll respond to you and i thank you so much for listening see you again next time