Living With Emunah (Part 241) - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

okay good morning bogertov welcome back to living with emunah i want to thank as always our generous series sponsors for the year avian bella morgan in memory of rabbi dr brian galbert as your outside is coming up next week and in memory of bella's mother ellen schanzer very grateful to the morgans for their generous sponsorship there's always the opportunity to sponsor individual she room as well and we certainly welcome your support and help in sharing our torah this morning she was sponsored by rachel ginsberg in memory of dr jacob m hiller who exemplified and modeled how to live with simcha sachin which is what we spent so much time talking about recently very grateful to uh ginsberg thank you very much for your generosity and sponsorship we completed our study of simcha you're never done studying simcha certainly never done living with and practicing simcha but we completed that section by um about simcha we're moving over not only to a different section frankly we're moving over to a different volume there are several volumes of morgenstern's wonderful set of swarm insights and this one is the safer on pesach and spherus omer so before any of you break out in hives it is not erev pesach it's above so why are we why are we learning a section from their face it happens to be there's a high correlation between pesach and tish above they always fall on the same day of the week we eat the egg at the seder there's all kinds of correlations that is not the reason the reason is because there's a chapter in here which i think is very relevant it's relevant to the time of year in which we're in it's relevant to the way that i think many people have been or are feeling and i wanted to go through his words because i think they're very insightful inspiring and they are very uplifting aposic omer there are handouts if you didn't get a copy please uh feel free to take of course buy the safer for yourself and support uh ravichamyer and his torah hapasa gomez in life there are two phases or stages or two feelings that we can have we talk about and and we're now up to i don't even know what number shear of living with ammuna but we talk about amuna like it's binary you either don't have a muna you're either some heretic on the street reject atheist with no portion of the world to come or you're sad you're perfect you feel hashem's presence all the time just like click the switch just turn it on it's binary either without a muna or you're with a muna but the truth is that all of us fluctuate in life all of us have ups and downs all of us have periods where we feel closer to them periods where we feel more distanced periods where we have confidence and certainty periods where we have doubt and uncertainty and confusion we have all of us go through phases and periods of our life we have ups and downs in our lives in fact in the one-on-one campaign if you're not yet a member you should be which is a dollar a day of stockholder and a minute a day of total learning in the merit of st moscow esto tila basari el tipouran please say afterwards so say tell him for her so recently uh weberman friend of mine had his one minute and he shared an insight from a bob i'm sure that bears repeating it was brilliant he said you know somebody goes for an ekg what does the ekg show there are ups and downs and ups and downs what happens if someone's ekg shows a flat line you're dead if you're living a life which is a flat line either noah muna flat or perfect demon not flat if you're living a life with a flat line you're dead you're dead if a test or an evaluation or something that would show your life would show a flat line it would show that you're dead spiritually physically it's the ekg that's ups and downs that shows your life so we tend to live life thinking i wish i had a flatline i wish i had a flatline like even steven even keel can't everything just be like my health my finances my relationships i just want to ev i just want to flat line i want to live life a flat line but that's not life just like on an ekg a flat line would show that you're dead spiritually if you're flatlining in life you're dead you're dead you're checked out you're tuned out you're hopeless you have despair you're not really a feeling person if you have a flat line you're dead so there's ups and downs there's means behind us and in front of us or the lashon of panam there's there's our face and there's our back on the one hand you have this notion of when you feel entirely plugged in connected certain confident there's a hashem he's involved in my life i see him everywhere i'm grateful to him i know it's all for a good reason calm cool collect tranquil faith connection emunah that's kadam i see is i see in front panim i see his front hashem is guard of megalos or panath hashem is revealing the light of his face but sometimes in life we're going through a different period sometimes we're in a different place hastara spanish barack sometimes you say where are you where are you i'm looking everywhere and i don't see you i'm desperately trying to hold on i'm looking for a connection i'm trying to feel something trying to plug into my davening or my mitzvos or my yantif or my moon where are you where are you i'm trying to connect to you and where are you and there's the notion of accords as if hashem is so to say turns his back all we see is his back we can't see his front we don't see it's not a face-to-face conversation it's a face to back we're chasing we're pursuing we're looking but there's doubt there's uncertainty and there's confusion and there's even anger there's anger as hashem an anger hashem i think is a legitimate emotion it's not one that's a mitzvah it's not one that we encourage but anger at hashem is also an expression of faith we've shared many many times but the person is angry or disappointed it's better to scream in hashem than not talk to hashem a person who doesn't talk to hashem is checked out of a relationship if you don't even talk to him if you're done with him if you have no conversation ongoing conversation with him you know you're checked out of a relationship i do a fair amount of marriage counseling not professionally i always refer to a qualified competent professional but rabbinically complement it with rabbinic counseling and i can tell you that when you sit with the couple and you learn one of the problems so the couple who says we fight you know we love each other tremendously tremendous energy and passion and then we fight with energy and passion and then you have another couple who says you know we don't fight we're just we're just like roommates we just overlapping the house we don't even talk much we're just in the same space but we're not even connected so if you're not even talking if there's not even screaming that's when the that's when the relationship's in the icu a relationship's in the greatest trouble when there's not even anything when there's no conversation if there's screaming if there's anger if there's disappointment if there's feelings if they're trying to navigate then then the relationship is alive there's something to work with and the same is true in our relationship with hashem the person who's checked out is quiet a person who doesn't talk to him doesn't listen to hashem talking to them the person who says yeah am i angry i'm not angry at god i don't know if i'm an atheist i didn't really give it enough thought to decide whether i believe he's there or not i just i don't really i don't really have a relationship with him i don't talk to him i don't hear him talking to me i don't think about him much i'm just living my life that relationship is much much more in trouble than the person who says god where are you and i'm angry at you how could you do this and where are you and why aren't you answering me so to scream at hashem is a certainly a greater expression of faith than to not talk to hashem a person who doesn't talk to hashem you know maybe you'll think at least they're not chutzpahdekarood or brazen to hashem but they're actually checked out of the relationship it's much more on life support than the person who screams or yells who's angry he's disappointed he's frustrated who says to hashem where are you and what's going on i've told you a million times the story of the holocaust survivor's funeral i did i'd never met the woman but we're meeting with the family and i asked what was her faith like after the holocaust and her son-in-law said to me you know she wasn't a practicing observant jew he said but she was angry at hashem she was angry at god ever since she lost everything she lost in the holocaust and then he said to me one of the greatest lessons of a moon i ever learned he said i guess her being angry at god was a really powerful form of faith because you're not angry at someone that you don't believe exists you're not angry at a figment of the imagination you're not angry at something which is theoretical or conceptual you're angry at your mother or father who you expected more to protect you and they disappointed you so that's not it's not good it's not the model of the relationship that we're striving for it's not what we're teaching but it is a relationship it is a relationship so scenario if we're honest with ourselves if we have a flat line in life we're not a life if our spiritual existence if our spiritual existence reflects a flat line we're not alive if it has ups and downs like an ekg that shows we're alive there's panam vacher there's behind and forward there's our back and our front hashem's back in his front so sometimes we're on fire we're plugged in it's clear as day we see him we feel him we're talking to him we're talking about him and other times like where are you what is going on and why is this guy feel like it's falling how come i keep asking you and turning to you and reaching for you and you're elusive you feel like you're not there is that i want to talk about this because now we're in the three weeks soon we'll be entering the nine days in tish above and this is the inverse you know the high holidays is all about hashem ello anila da div adodi lee hashem reads flowers and cards and chocolates and i'm in love and you're in love and i see you everywhere and i'm working on it and i'm putting in time and we're having date night all the time and we're going to come to rosh hashanah yum kipper it's going to be amazing the end of yom kippur we're going to have an illa you know lock the door of shalom is beautiful inside and ela is not god's locking us out and is we're going to go into a room with god and lock the door behind us by the time we get to the ila the goal is we're going into a private room with hashem we're going to lock the door behind us so that's love and romance and energy and confidence and certainty but this is destruction and exile and tragedy and sadness and pain and suffering and crying where is hashem in that what does a relationship look like in that what do you do about your daughtering when it's not flowing should a person just just close the city like what am i doing it's not it's just not flowing i'm putting in the motions uh you know at the end i think i read the words i don't even know i'm not even sure i wasn't really paying any attention just showing up but i'm just doing it because supposed to just going through the motions so is that a relationship is it better than not davin than to have an inauthentic dominant is it better to skip davening than having a dominant where you're checked out or what's the value of a checked out angry doubtful davening what does it look like so that's that's what i want to talk about through the prism of beyond there's also a beautiful peace and revolt but maybe we'll do that next although i don't want to get too depressing by the time we get to it we'll probably be an elo we're supposed to be on date night with hashem but revolver also has a beautiful piece about yemen days you love hashem and days of sinner we don't love judaism and days of yesh days of like i give up i give up i've spent a lifetime trying to connect to this mitzvah or this davening or this part of our religion and i give up and what drives a lot of people to give up me included they don't they want to give up in judaism because of the jews a lot of people want to walk away not because of god but sometimes the very people who claim to most represent god most turn you off to god sometimes it's hard you know the old adage don't judge judaism by the jews don't punish god because of his children but sometimes it's hard to differentiate and separate them out sometimes so this is kind of a down topic but i think it's a real one and a moon shirt that only talked about like oh we're on fire and i mood let's make brachos let's answer i'm mean to each other like okay yeah there are times there are moments that's great that's what we're striving for but if we flatline with that then we're fake we're dead we're not we're not really living a real life a real relationship every real relationship has ups and downs so how do we navigate that place how do we navigate icha how do we navigate a relationship with hashem when we're sitting on the floor how do we navigate a relationship with hashem which is baina matsaram saram says that between the straits so the name of these three weeks the nine days tish above this unit this period of time it's called bay namitzaram so the valley most of them are the the rabbis all say read that passage differently ko wrote fella if you're chasing hashem he said you know where you can catch up to him sometimes it's in a lonely place sometimes it's in a down and out place sometimes it's when you feel beaten up place sometimes that's when you're actually most best positioned to find him to find him so there is a relationship to be found even in this state even in these moments even in this place and that's what we're going to look at the asthma mata zash means you can't see my face all you see is my back. i'm going to provide for you i put money on your debit card don't call put money on your debit card but don't face time don't visit me she's a murderer make sure it's pretty much it's like a person who throws a coin over their shoulder right so the poor person is chasing them a child is chasing you abba i i need money i need i don't have a roof over my head i don't have food to eat i need money and you know what you do without even turning around you throw a debit card without even turning around there's a hundred dollars that even turning around here's a check the child is saying is not only do i need money to pay the bills but i need you i need your comfort i need your embrace i need your support i need your kind word and sometimes there's a feeling of you know i have the roof over my head i have food to eat i don't want to be cuffed over i don't want to be unappreciative of that but hashem i don't just want you to say yes to the roof and the food and i woke up this morning and i'm breathing i want that relationship i want to see you i want to feel you i want to know the certainty that you're there. sometimes it feels like he's not with me sometimes it feels like where is he just not flowing the avenue's not coming this mirrors the shabbos the mitzvos just checked out and tuned out it's just not happening we have additional names to describe this phenomenon for example the nephesh adam when it comes to our soul hey crime godless sometimes we have periods of greatness of largeness and sometimes we have periods of smallness i don't even know if there's proper english but that's how you translate it godless and katniss we call it godless the mohan and katniss means more than what i'm going to say but means a mindset a perspective an attitude a feeling this godless democrat sometimes your mind is just expanded it's just on fire it's just perceiving and seeing everything and everyone and hashem in in everything and then you have mohan de katniss we just don't want to get out of bed where you see yourself as small and everything is small or your ambition and your drive is small where your feeling of connection not only to him to people to loved ones is small godless manchester united um godless is i see the greatness in me i see the potential for greatness in me i see the greatness of this world it's awesome and i want to consume every part of it it's delicious it's just amazing it's smacked to be a year i'm just singing and dancing through life and i see him everywhere i can't wait i've had periods of life where you can't wait for the next opening davening is so on fire and so connected it is such an anchor and such an inspiration that you're like what chakras is over i guess i have to wait for manifold i can't wait to take those three steps forward we've been talking about insider snippets we're doing our introduction to the amiga now i can't wait to take those three steps forward and to transport myself to be in the presence of hashem and just to lose myself in conversation with them shannon listen to this you won't believe what happened and thank you so much and you're amazing and please i need your help with that and also the and you're just ah i can't wait you have other times it's like ah it's i guess i'll do my three steps forward say the words clap my chest it's just very hard it's psychologically in psychology you have this there are periods that you're awake and ambitious and inspired and very and very uh conscious and there are moments that you're we call it quasi-depressed depressed whether clinically depressed or just kind of out of it burnt out burnt out emotionally drained we all go through this and you say i just there's nothing in the tank i just don't feel connected i just don't feel like doing it i don't feel like getting up i don't feel like going out i don't feel like talking i don't feel like doubting i don't feel like sitting at the shabbos table i don't feel like it katniss i don't see the greatness in me i don't see the greatness of the world i don't really see any reason to connect i don't see anything to connect why is it called mohan the godless and mohan de katniss with no insult to young people and here we're talking about really young people katanam thanos because this is the difference in maturity sophistication intellectual growth between a child and an adult right the child lives a life i have the bengal the difference between an immature and sophisticated undeveloped child and hopefully an adult is the notion of how how deeply we understand how insightful we are how capable we are of feeling genuine authentic true feelings not only the pleasure of the moment of havana of a deep understanding of penetrating analysis and understanding of the world so sometimes even as adults we feel like little children who want to crawl in a bowl and stay in bed and sometimes even a child could have mojan de godless and see the potential and strive for greatness and be tuned in and tapped into the world of the show so this is called so now we're coming up with our fourth name for this phenomenon so far all we're doing is naming it and by the way there's enormous validation in naming it i don't know how you're feeling listening mostly because i'm positioned weirdly today and really just looking at the bookcase and the camera and you're all the way over there now i'm giving sight out of the people watching online but anyway um i don't know if you're connecting to this at all but sometimes just feeling validated you know you could go to live you could go through living with emunah you could be teaching living without muna and you say i'm supposed to be on fire every week when we teach this and talk about it and give different examples and parables and metaphors for it but i don't feel it you could be in a week where you say i'm drained i'm exhausted i got nothing left i'm broken and i'm not feeling it i'm not feeling it so just naming it just naming it enables us to deal with it and to navigate it and to make sense of it and to figure out a way to break out of it and to figure out a way to grow in it and through it so naming it is important ah and godless and now the fourth name is the show ruts of the show again if you don't have associate you want there's a pile right here there's plenty we're about to turn the first page like supersonic speed today in the world of avodah of of personal growth of working on a relationship with hashem it's called the rats of the show the rats of ashoves is is running forward and then retreat advance and retreat advance and retreat which is the other way we speak about it in life right people will tell you sometimes it feels like i take two steps forward and one step back you ask how's it going how's it going with your child how's it going in your marriage how's it going overcoming that addiction how's it going with your health and wellness how's it going with people will say you know i tell you sometimes it feels like i take a step two steps forward and one step back they can advance two steps forward then one step back kasha merlot duratso sometimes we're in a state of ratso ratso means progress advance ratso from rats running sometimes they're running and running and running i'm in it i love it i'm running i'm doing it i got it rasa the word ratso rats means to run but what other words does it relate to razon what is razon will desire drive razon mishna pekieva says that a person has sailors like so no make your drive your ambition your will your want conform to his don't make god's want and will conform to yours make your will and your want conformed to his razon rotson ain't over but i don't think it is there's nothing that stands in the way of razon what's razon will nothing stands in the way of true will desire what is will what is razon from the word rats why because you run to the things that you want to do you run to the things that you want to do and what happens when you run if i had the bookcase in the back if i run to it versus if i walk to it does it make it any closer no physically it's the exact same distance from me so it's 30 feet from me and if i run it doesn't make it closer but what happens i get there faster why because i ran so when you have a rut zone for something you get there faster when you have a ruts on for something you're quicker you're faster you get there you get there faster you get there faster so that's that's rutzong rutso rats to run to run so richard meyer is describing sometimes when we're in the two-step forward phase right of our life in relationships professionally in our career in our spiritual health emotional physical health we're in a rut zone that's my will that's my drive i was burning i'm in it that's it i'm ruts i'm running to it and it's my ruts on it's all i talk about i'm almost obnoxious because that's all i talk about all i talk about is my how much i ran or exercised how much weight i lost or all i talk about is my career how much money i made revenue profit new clients i have or my ruts own hopefully all i talk about is how many dapham i've learned i'm in this farm how many great new shiram i'm listening to when we're in the rut zone phase where ruts we're running we're running we're so we're advancing but then the light goes out the light dims it feels dark shall shove all of a sudden we're listening to a few less torah podcasts all of a sudden we're nibbling a few potato chips late at night all of a sudden all of a sudden we're no longer patient and kind we're losing our temper haines adam shaw of the jose lemkomo you feel yourself not in a state of advance of progress of running but of retreat of going backwards mito havana because because we've given up on our greatness and we have a little sense of despair so this so far we've just named it we didn't just give it one name we gave the phenomenon no less than four names goddess and katniss rats of the show so they're coming from four different angles but they're all describing the same thing four different perspectives but all describing that same phenomenon of sometimes i'm connected sometimes i feel disconnected sometimes i'm in fire sometimes my my fire has been put out been extinguished sometimes the light is on sometimes i'm sitting in darkness you call it whatever you want give it whatever name but we've all been there we all know it we all know it let's start the next section so what do we do when you're on fire okay good you could use some direction but you're good what do we do and how do we get through when we're not in relationships and in our relationship with hashem eno navas big glass so the first thing is to know that even when we're in that back place that dark place that state of retreat why are we there how did we get there are we there because we've done aderos person who says i'm out of energy i'm not connected to my dominating i'm not connected to my mitzvos i'm not on fire seeing hashem everywhere why is it because they've become a lowlife is it because they're consumed by doing adveros no no god forbid el azao davar hamushra this is the most validating thing you're going to hear all day says richard meyer you know why that happens that is part of the creation of the bria that was built into the design that was built into the definition of a human being should call me or yes because anything that receives light will have time that the light is revealed and times that the light is hidden now this is true not only for the human being this is not only true for a human being this is true for anything that has growth to any animate object take vegetation in a field there are periods of blossoming and flourishing and growth and there are periods of decay and death and rejuvenation there's forward and there's back there's light and there's dark anything anything from the vegetation world to the human world anything has forward and back light and dark there are cycles to our life and a rhythm to our life so he says it's so important to know says richard meyer don't blame yourself and don't get stuck and don't beat yourself up in those moments first of all that'll compound it and make it worse and make it harder to climb out of but it's also not your fault it's the nature of the world again go back to that great insight by revolving shore we want to be flatlined we want to just move that line up i want to be steady at e-flat line i just want to move the line up in my amuna and my career and my relationship with my everything but that's not life to be alive the ekg shows that you hope you want that you're trending upwards so it's ups and downs right any over any extended period of time the stock market is up but in between right now we're at uh but we hope soon there's ups and downs if you're alive if you're engaged if it's a vibrant active dynamic market then there's ups and downs and that's our life so says richard meyer it's critical to know first let's name it this is a phenomenon it happens you're not the only one don't feel guilty or shame don't you're not the only one that happens it happens to all of us number two would happen not because it's your fault it happens because that is the nature of the world that's how hashem created the world so hashem designed is talking about celestial angelic beings and even among them there's forward and back there's progress and regress there's light and there's dark so that's true for the angels who are pre-programmed for perfection then all the more so it is certainly true for us for us as well it's true for us as well so don't know that you're not alone know that this is a broad general phenomenon know that it's not your fault don't beat yourself up feel regret or shame know that it's natural it's part of the world vare is angel celestial beings don't have free will so there's nothing they could have done wrong to have made darkness instead of light ala mukherj there's revelation and there's hiddenness there's light and there's dark there's two steps forward and there's a step back to ellis now why why did he create the world that way can't we just have steps forward and no step back can't there just be light and never darkness can we only see his face and never have him turn his back why why does it have to be this way and the answer is come back next week 8 45 and we will continue but i want to get to the practical which we will is it worth davening if you're disconnected is it worth going through the motions when you're not finding meaning is that an inauthentic religious life or is it authentic when you're going through the motions without meaning when you're davening and you're disconnected is that authentic or inauthentic you could try to keep doing it just to keep that habit going so hopefully when you're in a better place but what about in that moment should you feel inauthentic what am i doing in shul i'm not even sure you exist i don't really see you i'm actually pretty angry at you i don't really feel like talking to you why am i here what am i doing is this real that's what we're going to go with this and continue this conversation next week tonight we continue behind the bema cliffhanger exactly gotta bring you back next week uh tonight behind the beam of dan grunfeld the son of ernie grunfeld penny got bob to listen the great new york knick player executive and radio announcer do you know that he was born in satmer came to america was eight years old even speak english word the number eighteen because i'm sorry find out tonight more find the beam at 9pm until next time stay happy stay healthy