MIndflex- Kabballah- Quantum Mechanics of The Spiritual World- Rabbi Adam Jacobs- Part 2

30 40 minutes but anyway such as the times um the name of tonight's talk is seven things that everybody wants and in order to start talking about that i would like to tell you a story when i was living in israel in jerusalem i attended a shiva a place for jewish learning called aish um and it was right across from the western wall and amongst the many great things about it was from time to time actually very often but visitors would stop in because we had a great view of the western wall um and they would check out the facility which was very cool and very modern and and from time to time they would strike up conversations with you know the locals the guys who were in the yeshiva and by and large engaged in this judaic learning and once in a while really interesting conversations would ensue and i remember i was studying by myself and i had my book and i'm looking at it and right next to me was a like rasputin length bearded rabbi and across from him was a quite secular israeli soldier and they were having a conversation and it was a really interesting conversation i have to admit i was eavesdropping a little bit and um eventually it got a little bit more heated and the rabbi said to the soldier you know what what exactly is it that you want from life why are you here what's what are you looking for and the soldier said to tell you the truth rabbi i'm basically looking for three things i'm looking for sex drugs and rock and roll there's a little pause the rabbi said that's great because that's exactly what i'm looking to give you so soldier's a little taken aback you know it says okay what do you have in mind rabbi and he asked them the question well what is it that you like about drugs to which the soldier thought about it for a few minutes you know what do i like about it well it's this feeling of being beyond yourself and being united with something higher the rabbi said ah it sounds to me like you're looking for transcendence and unity and he said oh i never really thought about it like that i suppose you're right you know that's interesting and he said what is it that you like about rock and roll and he said it's you know the power of the crowd and everybody rallying around something again the rabbi said it sounds like you're looking for power sort of a kind of power and you're looking for unity again you know and he said oh okay he said so if i could show you how to get those things without some of the costs that go along with some of what you're doing would you be interested and the guy said yeah and so conversation kept going and uh i learned a lot from those few minutes and thought about it i'm still talking about it now 20 something years later and i started asking people the question what is the most spiritual experience that you've ever had and i started writing them down and i asked them in class settings and personal settings and you know i started doing like a little a little collection of adjectives and what i discovered was that there were patterns and over and over people were saying the same kinds of things that they were when they identified as having a spiritual experience there were words that went along with it and even although some people said of course that they didn't have a spiritual experience ever to which i would ask them what was the happiest experience you ever had and that would be something close and i boiled down all the adjectives that i got to seven it does not mean that there aren't one or two more or one or two less there's nothing scientific or definitive about this list it's just the list that i discovered and those seven things are taken one of three of them taken from an elvis costello song which is called peace love and understanding those are the first three and i have an acronym for the last four which is j-hut's joy harmony unity and transcendence and in my subjective opinion that's what everybody is rooting around for 24 7 all the time all decisions are focused on whether or not you will increase your quotients of one of these things so what do i mean by that take for instance a football game why do people attend football games yes there is something interesting about um the skill of the players and you know the march up the field and you know the two sort of armies pitted against each other and you're seeing whose skill is greater and who has a better strategy and there there's definitely something to that but i i was never a gigantic football fan speaking of gigantic things i went to see the giants a long time ago new york giants and um you know i was a passively interested and watching the game and it was one of those games where our team the giants were down by a little bit with short time left on the clock and i remember very well that something happened the ball was handed off and uh the guy breaks one tackle and then another one is one of those situations where the running back is headed straight up the field with other guys trailing behind him and the crowd is on its feet i find myself standing on the armrests of my chair like caught up in this whole thing screaming for this guy that i you know didn't know and didn't really care about and um and when he broke through into the end zone and this eruption from the crowd occurred i mean i was like in a euphoric states and this literally happened i look at the stranger next to me and we just embrace and and in that moment i love that guy because we were bonded over this goal and although i didn't make much of it at the time although i thought it was kind of fun i realized that having this common goal actually generated love between me and the people that were there as short-lived and somewhat artificial as it may have been there was also something real about it there was and and then i realized that that's why people go to football games is they are looking to be part of something much bigger than themselves i am a giants fan and being in giant fandom has a whole host of special privileges you know you get to belong to something that's important something that's beyond just you and me um there's merch that goes along with it and you know and following stats and players and management and you get to be part of a world you know and and even though i don't personally think that that world is extremely valuable to be part of them perhaps or other worlds that are more beneficial it's it's still good because it promotes this other thing which is unity transcendence could be love um and that's really what the fans and probably the players are really looking for it's just totally arbitrary to carry a football from here to here or to go across this imaginary line it's just made up and um it doesn't the game itself doesn't have any actual value it's just whatever we've ascribed to it and therefore what i surmise is that in situations like these there is always a goal beneath the goal it's not the game that we care about it's the trappings of the game it's the what's rooted underneath it that's what we're ultimately looking for and that's what we're looking for in the vast majority of our experiences so that's important to know why because when you know this you can focus on getting the most distilled version of these experiences that you can if you know you're looking for love you're not going to play around you know in things that aren't going to provide you with um the most undiluted experience of it you're going to go right for the mother lode you know you're going to you're gonna know how to avoid the pitfalls of searching for something in the wrong place added to that and this is also part of a very well known age type of talk which is called the five levels of pleasure these are all pleasures right and people are always looking for pleasure this just happens to be a high level of pleasure um there are counterfeit versions of each of the seven things that everybody wants and one famous example from from the five levels of pleasure is love everybody wants it everybody needs it it's one of the ultimate driving forces of life and humanity and yet people settle for counterfeit versions of it um the most famous of which i would label lust which is the belief that you are getting love it's possible to convince yourself that there's love involved here when really it's just a more physical manifestation of it that is going most likely going to be short-lived and not paid the dividends of actual love and therefore will ultimately prove to be unsatisfying and all these things the soul needs and when it doesn't get them it's frustrated and despondent and and we don't understand how to get along with people properly when we don't understand that they too are looking for these exact same things so when for instance a husband and wife are not providing these experiences within the context of a marriage it's going to lead to conflict it's going to lead to pain most of the fights that couples have can probably be boiled down to you are not giving me for instance understanding which i find to be a very interesting one how many times have couples said to each other you don't understand i listen and you don't understand me right why is it so important to be understood artists want to be understood musicians want to be understood go check out a talk that jodie foster gave on the occasion of her 50th birthday remarkable public talk that she gave where she she basically boils down her entire career and thinking forward into her future she says i want to be understood deeply that's it that's why she acts that's why everyone does what they do one of the reasons one of the seven reasons but who cares who cares if you're understood why does that matter how does it help you to thrive in this world to be understood so someone gets you well what happens if they don't they don't get you why can't you still get what you want out of existence and that's one of the fascinating things about this entire concept is that these seven things that everybody wants and needs and pursues all the time are not a biological or evolutionary necessity you can eat perfectly well without having love you can have shelter and reproduce and everything without having peace without having transcendence you don't need it you can you know it's not like mosquitoes aren't you know uh pining away for for understanding you know what does this mosquito understand me and this mosquito under like it's just there there isn't part of that um you know i don't know what love or or understanding or even joy salmon have and they they they do great you know they're in the water they're reproducing they're you know if that's what it's about we've been told you know that's part of what life is about is this struggle to survive like a struggle to survive for what life becomes meaningless without having these fundamental properties these fundamental experiences which do not contribute to your physical well-being or your evolutionary success yes i acknowledge that there are evolutionary biologists um and others who would suggest that onset somehow yes it does that would be a fascinating longer topic of conversation i i i dispute it i don't see how it's possible don't believe it and therefore i'm forced to conclude that these experiences are spiritual in nature and not physical so that when you have an experience of love or transcendence transcendence by definition is beyond yourself you are actually experiencing what i'll call a higher plane of existence you are for lack of a better term tapping in to the spiritual reality to a non-physical or metaphysical transcendence aspect of reality it's not made up it's not fantasy it is part of reality but one that is not measured by scientific instruments maybe someday it will be i think i quoted maybe last time noam chomsky who when asked what the definition of metaphysical was basically and gave an answer that i love which is you know all things that we understand are called physical and all things that we are yet to understand are called metaphysical someday metaphysical things will be simply called physical things and we'll have a greater understanding of them which i think is the direction that humanity and science is going in that was last time's conversation okay but now the reason why these seven things are so powerful the reason that they are the ultimate drive and destination for humanity is because we come from that spiritual world from at least from a judaic perspective and actually from most religious systems a human being is a combination of a non-physical component sometimes called a soul a physical component a body those things are in conflict um you're getting pulled one way by one and another way by the other and our decision making whether to think more spiritually have more spiritual experiences pulls us in one direction and if we because we have more bodily focus we're going to become more corporeal more bodily and our level of spiritual interface will become lower denying us the type of pleasure that comes from these higher levels of consciousness so what does all this have to do with kabbalah so let me see if i can share my screen with you for one moment hope i can there's that that doesn't help anything there we go okay so um this chart is known in in kabbalah as the tree of life it's a additionally fascinating reason why it's called the tree of life perhaps you're familiar with the original description of the tree of life from the garden of eden i would suggest that kabbalah would suggest that there is a direct connection between this and that which is some food for thought for you as you see there are 10 circles here or spheres these are known as the 10 sphere roads and in kabbalistic thinking these are the 10 energy structures that undergird the entire universe yes which is a grand claim um much of judaism is built off of this structure even though most people don't know about it and in order to explain that let me quickly explain um that there are three higher spheroids and seven lower it's usually broken up into a system like that um and i should also mention that sometimes there is one in the middle i don't know if you can see my cursor there sometimes there's one here which is called dots and um so ultimately sometimes they're it's considered that there are 11 spheroids which is which is a fascinating thing by itself for another thing for another time but anyway when ketter here is turned on catcher means crown this one which is not being shown currently is active and and so too vice versa but be that as it may i'm sorry if i couldn't find one with english but it's the word is which means wisdom which means discernments and dots which is not present here comprise the upper three generally and that is also an acronym for chabad which is where that organization takes its name from to from the upper three intellectual spherotes and then there are these lower seven which are known as the emotional spheroid or sphero of action um so i mentioned that there's an upper three and a lower seven um there's many examples of this for instance um in in the book of exodus there are seven plagues which are visited upon egypt and then there's a break the torah portion ends and the next torah portion has the remaining and most intense upper three plagues right this moment we are in a period of time known as the seven weeks of consolation which is leads right up into rosh hashanah of course preceding the seven weeks of constellation is the the three weeks which is a negative period of time between two fast days and so there you have it again you've got the three separated from the seven on the seder plates if you look carefully you'll notice that there are six items on the top of the cedar plates for various reasons the seder plate itself is considered seven and of course separated from those seven things is the three matsot three matzahs there you have it again seven three and the list really goes on and on and on and um so my point is that judaism is really repletes with this concept it's a fundamental kabbalistic concept okay so in thinking about the seven things that everybody wants um i discovered a connection between these seven things and between these seven lower energy structures of spheroids spheres and although i this does not exist in as far as i know in any type of kabbalistic book or any judea work um so i i maybe i'm the originator of its therefore i can't vouch for it but i do think it's interesting and still it is a good teaching tool to understand these concepts so i'm going to go ahead and assign one of these seven things to one of the seven lower spheroids and hopefully we will come away with some understanding of both starting down here this sphere is called and it means loving kindness most closely associated with the patriarch abraham it means to be expansive to give to be concerned for others and therefore it would make sense to me to assign that with uh with love love and go hand in hand that makes perfect sense okay so moving across this way the opposites of facet is which means strength or discipline and i associate that with sometimes by the way gevorah is associated with this sphere that's just above it which is known as beena that all the spheroids on this column are related the ones on this column are related and the ones in the middle are related as well so there's a connection between gevorah's strength and bena understanding or discernments so therefore gevorah to me is associated with understanding so here we have love understanding and now right in the middle balancing between these two forces is something called tifaret and tifarit means beauty or splendor and i associate that with the one of the seven things which is harmony it makes perfect sense balanced perfectly in the middle in the middle of everything see how it's harmoniously blending all these spheres around it so love understanding harmony moving down here netzach means victory or eternality and to be eternal right to go beyond your boundaries or to experience transcendence so i associate nets with the transcendental uh going beyond your capabilities and there's all kinds of things that can be said about this it's fascinating that's and then moving over again in this direction hode associated with uh aaron the high priest associated with humility aaron was known as a rhodef shalom somebody who pursued peace and made peace between people that's what he was about and therefore what could be more perfect than peace right so now we've covered peace love understanding harmony transcendence leaving us with two more um this one asso this is called yasod and it's associated with patriarch joseph joseph jacob's son joseph was somebody who saved his family he uh prepared the way in egypt and and uh and saved the entire world actually um and i associate him with unity yasod is means foundation it's unifying all of these sphero that came before and sort of preparing it for its final destination but if it was any sphere that was the unifier it would be this one you sowed and so unity makes perfect sense to me here and then finally the end of the entire structure and process here brings us down into mahkut means kingship um it also is the the moment of implementation it's the execution of the concept of the idea of all the waiting and processing that's come before and therefore what could be more joyous than when the plan is finally put into action and therefore i associate mahouts with joy and that is the summation of the seven things that everybody wants i find them to be presence kabbalistically in all of these structures these very famous ideas of which as i mentioned judaism is literally built off of and i actually encourage people to take the time to understand um these concepts because it is so fundamental so part and parcel of what judaism is about and i i often find them i'm surprised that there's not more interest in seeing how these things are to be found in normative judaism it's so interesting and so compelling suffice it to say there are many great books many great websites you know to to pursue your kabbalistic understanding yes there are also websites that are not so good you know we could you could be led astray a little bit and find information that's not 100 accurate 100 percent um conveyed well but you know if you want to email me find my email my email is ajacobsadh.com you want to email me i'll put you in the right direction um and those are my thoughts on on the seven things that everybody wants i i think it's very important um to understand them and to try to ask yourself what's my motivation when i do the things that i do when i make the decision that i make why am i doing it what's the real reason deep down that i want these things to happen and i think if you scratch the surface a little bit you'll discover that one of these concepts is in action and the more you come to understand them the more you can utilize them well the happier you'll be the happier you can make people around you and and truthfully the more harmonious the world would be if we were all living these a little bit better um and um hope you've enjoyed exploring it thank you for your time i hope you have a wonderful evening and a wonderful week and thank you so much for listening