Connecting to G-d through Prayer - Rabbi Yaakov Altman

[Music] a fundamental part of life a extremely important part of life is what they call the attachment theory attachment theory is a much where that's 100% true but it's an idea that I think is accurate in life which is attachment there is you need to have someone specific like a husband or a wife that you feel very close to a need for love it's definitely we spoke about this in the past is one of the six human needs is the need for love love and connection now there's three different basic ways you can connect you can connect to others you can connect to self and you can connect to God so I want to speak a little bit about the connection to God a little bit just a little bit of a brief way of doing this now here's the thing you can see the need to connect to God from your own soul hopefully a person realizes there's something inside of them that's not being fulfilled but let's give you a source in the Torah the Torah says the world stands on three things it stands on tyro on avodah which means service of God we'll talk about that second of all done and kindness Kassadin kindness now so what says the world stands on Tyrel avoided which means the service of God and kindness which means giving bestowing kindness and other people that means that the world was created for the purpose of every individual getting these three inside of them you need to have all three if you don't have these three in some degree to the extent that you're missing payroll or you're missing a Volvo which is service of God or you're missing kindness some place in you that you're not complete assembly you need your heart and you need your lungs and you need your brain you need all three of them if you don't have any one of those things you love your stomach you can't function it's the same thing over here now Tyrel means learning Torah the law the law of God kindness is pretty self-explanatory you do time kindness to yourself and to others that's for sure yeah a Volga's little hearts on the stand service of God this little heart of this then what does this mean so let's just do it like this they're basically three columns these are very fat columns but nice and wide but yeah three columns for anything to stand at all you need to have a combination of three things you can't yeah any depth at least three like you said we stand on two legs but it's not exactly true we don't stand on two legs we stand on two surfaces your feet are actually a surface right which means each one is like basically too little too little yeah it's a surface right pretty clear right when you try to stand on two it doesn't really work a personal on stilts constantly has to move you stand walking on stilts because you can't stay Phil stability always comes with least three four of course is better but three is the minimum now in today's world we have Tyrel we have people learning we also have kindness now do we have people serving god yes we do but this column is split in half half in this column is I'm just gay I'm not gonna write it now but half the column is the sacrifices that we once had in the temple and the holy temple that existed twice the base of mikdash in you shall i am in jerusalem is half of this the other half is prayer now picture the scene depending on whether your boy or girl might be slightly different but yeah a boy that's taking his driving is left driving lessons trying to get is trying to get his license so in at least in certain place in the united states you have to take drivers ed driver's education so when you take driver's education the whole time the instructor tells you have to put your hands at number three o'clock and number and nine o'clock right or to intent right first time you get your license what do you do six twelve right driving like that 17 18 years old you feel very cool with your friends right fantastic now the ID license for three weeks everything is wonderful right but now it's a snowstorm there's ice on the ground is cross winds blowing 50 miles an hour the cars going all over the place you're holding the first time in your life you're holding the car to attend to attend the first time since you're late you're right fantastic in the car your entire family's in the car Koby it's your husband and your kids could be with since you just got a little you got license could be a little younger maybe it's your sister and her kids whatever it is there's a little baby in the back also and it's the snow is coming down the ice the winds is terrible so you driving like this 100% focused and sudden you remember my brother borrowed the car last week he had a flat tire and he switched the tire from one of these nice thick tires to an emergency tire this big donut tires but it's much smaller do not exceed 30 miles 40 miles an hour all right one of those things emergency thought now you're hoping at that point that that tire is giving its all for you and your family why because the other three tires are doing really great but this one is tiny and very small it's the limiting factor okay today we don't have the car bonus in the base in English we don't have these sacrifices in the temple anymore all you have is this column the middle column is halfway if everybody on the planet prays as much as they can pray all you have is 50% that's the maximum so it's the it's the third leg which is elite the weakest of the three so when you begin to pray in any form it's very important to say to yourself wait a second I have to get this right there are people praying but if everyone prays together as but as best as we can it's still only fifty percent so you have to give you all when you do it that's the first thing it's extremely important now that's as far as the world goes but yourself is even more so in order to be effective you have to have a balance as a famous book everyone saw this book called the seven Habits of Highly Effective People was very was a hot thing about 20 years ago so he talked about PPC the PPC balanced production and production capability how much can i how much am I actually producing what am I making out there in the world and how much of my capable of producing you know if you make your chicken lay eggs two or three times a day eventually it doesn't lay eggs as well so now in order to be successful and happy as a person you have to constantly have a flow of feeding your mind let's do this properly these three are parallel to the three parts of a person there's mine there's heart and there's body or possessions whatever okay get the point now taurah is mind it's usually you have to challenge your mind is develop your mind feed your mind our mind is being fed on a regular basis positive and negative all day long it happens all the time so if I don't feed my mom with things that are positive and eventually in mind gets filled with things that are negative and it breaks me down breaks down my mind a vada is done with the heart to pray to have a relationship to talk to God is all about the heart I can have my mind and I do use my mind but if I use only my mind then my relationship with God will be robotic it'll be at best maybe like a slave it won't be like a relationship of love there won't be real every relationship where you really want to do something you really want it to be alive you have to have heart you have to have emotions in there otherwise it doesn't work and of course kindness I can do kindness with my body and I can do kindness with my possessions you can even do kindness with speech that's also there as well right now if my mind is not being taken care of even my heart is then it's no good if my heart is me take care of my mind isn't fill they around no good I need to have all three of these now here's the thing my personal opinion could be this is wrong then in Western society is this is totally acceptable and this is totally acceptable to be doing things with your body and your possessions and maybe even your speech is fine to develop your mind is fine but if you develop people speak about developing their heart they're seen this a little bit flaky sometimes in business for sure this is necessary but it's not openly discussed yeah you don't go to a person say listen I know I know I put my product is a little more expensive but I'm really addressing your heart when I do this the truth is the people that are successful actually do this but they don't make it open for some reason it's not the case now Maya theory is the following that the the card gulls that were in the GAVI exile the were in is based on ace of a sub Esau I think they say in English the the Meldrick tells us the the Taira tells us that when he was when he died something rather miraculous it's not a casual thing he was a tremendous mind but what happened to him was his mind was so disconnected from the rest of himself from his heart and the rest of him his mind knew what the right thing was to do it is hard to implement it so when he died his head was separated from his body and his head miraculously rolled and was buried with the father the forefathers with Avram use with Nico he had the mind of a giant but he couldn't implement into the rest of him he was a disconnect between the mind in the heart because this is disconnect in the mind in the heart my opinion is quite a perfect time yet because that's the case this heart is difficult for us we're in the same exile as Asaph so this part is hard for us it's not as accepted as much so people speak about developing the heart and developing the heart the emotions it's seen as flaky it's seen as weird but it's not really openly accepted and maybe even we're a little bit underdeveloped in this area so it seems to me one of the reasons why prayer is so difficult is because it's harder for us to access the heart I'll say another reason why prayer is difficult because besides the fact you can't see God you can't touch him you can't hear him you can't feel him it's not as concrete as we're used to being in other play and all the situations right but in addition to that it requires a regular investment of the heart like you know sometimes you listen when you listen to music that maybe affects your heart in a certain way but you listen to it when you want if you had to have set times to listen to music you'll be much more difficult so this brings us through a very fundamental idea but relationships are prayer really is a question of relation relating to God a relationship is even when you don't feel like it Acy I don't feel like it I'm not even oh that's you know it's a question of giving it's not just a question of taking that's a relationship it's oh that's hard to say okay after Davin have to pray the certain time in the morning in the afternoon in the night at certain times how do I get my heart involved in that well when I think about myself it's hard to do it if I think about what does he need in this case is God or God doesn't need anything boy does he walk but make him happy so to speak yeah he wants me to speak to him I'm thinking about what he wants I care about him then I can get out of myself and it's easier to pray much easier like what do you want I want to give you not how to make it happy I'll give you an example what I mean to make a little more real sometimes it happens in marriage where there's a lot of marriage difficulties like the husband wife are fighting usually that happens because each one is thinking what what are you giving me what are you giving me but it happens that circumstances change sometimes it's a car accident god forbid or something else a sickness god forbid and all of a sudden the spouse has started thinking about each other instead of thing about themselves and then then the marriage changes becomes better it often happens that when there's a sickness in a marriage cosmos all shouldn't happen yeah very often like when there's a lot of my focus before a lot of fighting it stops because now oh I care about you I care about you I'm thinking about you what do you need you're in the hospital you're sick you're scared you're worried or the person who's sick says I don't want you to lose your spouse I feel bad about what are you gonna do when I die I feel bad they start warning almost of their marriage becomes better so prayer is the same way when you want prayer to be better you have to activate your heart by thinking what is Hashem want what is God one how can I make him happy what has he done for me and what can I possibly do for him when you wake up the lathe the heart a little bit everything changes everything changes now you