Your Soul Is Being Hijacked

A Torah Anytime original series. When thinking about our lifelong battle with the Zorhara, we often conjure thoughts of getting tempted [music] to say something we shouldn't say or look at something we shouldn't look at or close our Gimbar when we shouldn't or badmouth our [music] competitors in business and so on. Rarely do we think of the tactic that is used by Dateshara. perhaps [music] far more often with far more success. The vast majority of Tyra Jews do not struggle whatsoever with holding ourselves back from murdering someone. The same is true with bank robbery or idol worship. The Sahara doesn't waste time exerting energy trying to claw us away from Hashem by tempting us with those sins. The Yates uses a far more successful tactic to claw us away from Hashem. It's called the power of distraction. The average Torah Jew has a pretty solid defense mechanism against sin. But few of us have won against distraction. Bates exploits this greatly. He makes us so focused on anything and [music] everything that we design our lives leaving little time left for Hashem. Sinning is not the opposite of getting closer to [music] Hashem. Not getting closer to Hashem is the opposite of getting closer to Hashem. The way to have a great relationship with Hashem is not by merely living a life sin-free. The way to have a great relationship with Hashem is by having a great relationship with Hashem, with dav to Hashem, [music] with thinking about him, by talking to him, by crying to by learning his wisdom. Much like the opposite of a great and loving marriage [music] is not a scandalous marriage filled with abuse and leading up to some messy divorce. The opposite of a great marriage is a distracted marriage where each spouse is distracted by all the glittery things in life that relegate one spouse to second fiddle. It's the same way with Hashem. There are several ways to distance oneself from Hashem. Sitting is certainly one of them. No question. But chief among them is giving up all our mental space to anything but Hashem. taking the precious real estate in [music] our minds and then just giving it out to the buzz of the world. That is what takes us away from Hashem. The majority of us are good people. Some of us are great people, but we also like food. Most of us love food. We also love our homes. We love remodeling them. And then we love talking about the renovations we made and then we remodel them again. We love sports, so we talk about them and we listen to them. We play them. We love swimming without working out. We love clothing. We love keeping up with the music world. We love the seemingly neverending stream of [music] increasingly fascinating news. All of these things are inherently harmless and most of them can actually [music] be used at times as great outlets refreshing ourselves to remain energetic in our service of Hashem. But sadly, they can also become huge distractors in our [music] spiritual climb, often hindering hindering our growth without us even realizing it. The danger of obsessive indulgence is that it masquerades itself [music] as innocent, permissible activities. It's precisely the permissibility that makes it so dangerous. For far too often, the obsession becomes this addictive monster that just chokes a person's godliness right out of him. Not that overindulgence makes [music] us have a bad relationship with Hashem. It just makes us not have one at all. Which is exactly why Typhus exubus says the medish with he brings the medish which says that before one davins that he should excel in tyra learning or ding you should dab in that you overcome your temptations to overindulge in the world that's more important because the reality is that [music] it's extremely hard to focus excitedly on spiritual pursuits when you have Yankee tickets in your pocket. It's immensely hard [music] to carve out space for Hashem in one's mind. If one is far more interested [music] in food and clothing and home improvements and vacations, you can make a pretty good argument. Then more than the damage done to the Jewish people by overt sin [music] is the damage done by well-meaning people letting life get in the way of life and allowing the indulgences of the world to pull them down from the spiritual mountain that they [music] could have been on.