Unpacking Our Secret Teshuva Weapon - Rabbi Efraim Stauber

[Music] welcome to spiritual youtuber which is where we're going to realign teshuva with its real goal which is do Vegas the pleasure of the Vegas and spirituality the point of this short series of lectures is to be a guide from the first stirrings of Chuba like ello like oh no ellos here rashon is coming maybe feels kind of like a stomachache ah what do I do now to a sense of no I can do this I'm excited to do it I'm inspired to do it I want to do it the next level is okay well let's learn about let's get good at it let's their in formulas strategies techniques principles let's educate ourselves let's become masters at Yuba the next step it's gonna bring us to practical okay so what do I do how do I do it charts and make it applied and real and finally - you're on a roll you're rocking you're doing - but you're feeling good and confident that you're living in line with yourself and with the Kurdish ballclub so without any further ado let's jump right into it the first obstacle I guess that many people have been doing to it is this theorem in a obey the innate paradox of Cuba what is that well why would I do Childre in the first place well maybe just because we're sean is coming and I want to get a good year but beyond that if you want to be an honest person live with integrity well you want to live in line with your morals with your ethics and you want to be a good person no the problem is that if you're a Jewish person and if you're religious well you did that last year every elbow we do this and if you come back again and again how honest is it to stand in front of God and say I'll be a good boy I promise no no this time I really mean it well last year you meant it - and year before that and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that it's starting to Welsh em let's try a double mean it I triple minute I quadrupled it you're gonna run out of things to say Mark Twain said it best when he said stopping to smoke is easy I myself have done it thousands of times that's that's it that's it that's the innate paradox I'm trying again and again to succeed I know you're gonna fail so how on the world that we start to achieve uh we feel like hypocrite who wants to fool themselves or Hashem believe it or not there's an answer to this question the problem is I'll warn you before I tell it to you that it's very cryptic in order to understand and personally I spent years not getting anything from this answer and what I want to share with you today is what I believe is a liberating an amazing explanation to this answer now the answer is very simply what all this firm teach us is that we need to have Emunah we need to believe not only in Hashem infinite ability to accept our teshuva but also in our own teshuva an emergen Shapiro's that tell you to talk about this all the time and he would bring my favorite hint that he would bring was the Parekh of the home that we see every day in the Montebello lava - M Riviere XI and it ends off with Liliha Montiel irrespective of Shem so the bowel term says that the word Lulay if you switch it around spells the word ll so now if you read the sentence it's ello and monty li respect to Hashem our avoid Iran ll is to believe is to trust that we will be bro err bit of a sham we're gonna make it guys we're gonna make it to Russia shun on Yom Kippur we have to have a moon in that the question is how's that work with even mean how do you trust in yourself because you know God is infinite and that's easy to trust God's love is infinite and his he's gonna he's gonna accept our repentance yeah but guess what my ability to fail is also infinite so you have to put you know you won't you put me a regular old person into the equation how's it gonna work okay so this also has an answer and unfortunately it's gonna get worse before it gets better but this is what I want to share with you today and I don't start with little riddle what Mitzvah are we so bad at or even worse at this Mitzvah then we are a tuba in case we're about it she was we just explained but there's another Mitzvah that we just were just we just terrible at it and that is of course morning to basem if - now you can tell we're bad at morning debate Simek - what all the names of the classes that you you know they're advertised is you know this year it was why we weep understanding our loss how can we cry about to me Simic - maybe you could take some garlic stick it in your eyes do something to cry right we're not good at crying but the business based on Mick Dutch we don't know what it was it's not part of our lives we're bad at this Mitzvah guess what that's the Mitzvah that precedes ello the month before ello has got you know this avodah of mourning the base hammock - but wait that's not all it gets worse because not only are we just bad at this mitzvah think about the timing of this Mitzvah when the month of ops Mac in the middle of the summer the kids aren't camp call of war paint your face red paint your face green well crazy adults aren't some crews somewhere having a great time for the summer vacation relax enjoy yourself suddenly it's fish above okay we're religious people we follow the Torah so we get that on the floor we stop the party and we start crying or we try to cry we mourn we get sad and then this was over so ok strike up the band guys party continues no let's face it isn't that just a little bit awkward like is this a house of mourning or just a party we're just going to stop the party for a minute mourn and quickly start partying again so I think it's like the elephant in the living room this is an awkward part of our religion but that's not all it gets even worse than that yay yeah here it is you see we're not even really supposed to be done with mourning the base emic - after tisha buff because in every show the meaning is that we read a special half attire read from the prophets after we read from the Torah and for seven weeks following tisha bub all the way up to Rosh Hashana right seven weeks will take you all the way to Rosh Hashanah we read from the Navi Hashem consoling the Jewish people over the destruction of the base hammock - na Camus Nakamura me is pretty famous but after that is the next week is about a merit seein as Avani Hashem Hashem has forsaken me and he has forgotten me no shrimp says no I haven't forgotten you and I shouldn't comforts us every week and the question is we're not really mourning anymore i Shem is coming to comfort us but we're long moved on to something else and it's really awkward someone comes over to you and says you know it's okay it's gonna be fine you're like what what's gonna oh alright the basin Mick - yeah tisha Bob oh about that yes yeah sure mm-hmm yeah that's the pickles well yeah we're really not there we're not emotionally morning and as shemin's coming to comfort us that's really you know if the first thing was awkward this is absolutely off to social spectrum yeah imagine if you you have a friend and you're at some kind of public event and he's speaking and you have to learn from the crowd and you embarrass him and he turns like all white he gets all embarrassed it comes our reactor words and your politic oh my gosh I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that and and you laugh about it he forgives you and you move on imagine a year later you're at a barbecue chillin havin a good time he comes over to you and he says can I talk to you know that can you talk to me yeah I mean go ahead no no I mean I really need to talk to you like dude dude we're Millennials you know send me a text message okay and he's like no no this is this is big okay see pulled you to the side and and he and he hugs you he just does that you know and you're like okay what's going on he says I want you to know ever since that event like all year I know how hard I know how bad you must be feeling about this cuz it killed me but I went to therapy for this and I've been working on this and why don't you know but I forgive you man it's all right like what what's he talking about I'm gonna forgot it all right last year I'm he's still thinking about that but we drank a beer what's good I guess it wasn't oh man we're so out of sync that's us and Hashem in the base and make does Evan still trying to comfort us the basin mcdo is just okay we're gonna be great again and we're like oh oh yeah all right so what am i doing I'm making things worse right first we're bad at Juba another saying where you've been bad at this next myth so of mourning the base emic - but that's just said guys that's the secret what cause are teaching us is that the key the secret key to succeeding at chuhwa is feeling experiencing the actual pain of our own broken relationship with the base of mikdash with spirituality with hashem why and here's the secret guys because the same heart that can experience authentic sadness will also be able to experience hope and that is what's crucial you see the mind will paralyze us and so you can't do this I will prove it to you and we'll yell at you and the voice of guilt and the voice of shame will shut you down give up can't do this because you know what the brain is right we really we don't have an answer every year we fail again and again at the same things there's no answer we're ashamed we're embarrassed we should shut us down we need to escape that the key to escaping the paralysis is induced by the mind are the emotions because get this while you're having a visceral emotional experience any of any emotion sadness when your body is experiencing sadness your mind is not yelling at you and when that happens when your mind quiets down and your emotions are is what you're experiencing in your body then the first stirrings of hope can start to be experienced and hope robindira teaches us is the first glimmer of faith what is this mysterious thing called hope I don't know I can't explain it but I hope it's the beginning of faith so what cause all want us to do is when they know we're gonna get overwhelmed they know for thousands of years this is a problem but you wish people have to do teshuva but we can't do Chuba we're too honest to do - but we're German we do a chore for this what cuz I'll know is that we need to escape the mind and that's gonna be through a visceral experience of emotion that will shut the mind quiet it down so we could start to feel and access the real power of our soul because there's another little secret for you teshuva is not really powered by our minds by our honesty and integrity we're not so good at integrity that's not humanity strongpoint our strong point is our souls infinite desire to return to God and that is what will power us that is what will give us hope so I'd like to invite you to spiritual you teshuva kabura you could send an email to the Torah Center at gmail.com to join us where we are training our hearts to feel instead of just think about do teshuva so we can access that infinite power our own souls come join me [Music] you [Applause]