Powerful SPIRITUAL tools for EMOTIONAL WELLBEING

so first of allash it is an honor to be back in Lakewood speaking to this and uh you don't realize or maybe you do because you live in Lakewood you don't realize how far it is so in the three hours I just spent coming from uh the five towns I had an opportunity to rethink about four or five different times what it is I'm going to speak about tonight so this is like the fifth version the fifth draft already because the topic tonight is uh amona and anxiety oh we have a cup like like what they brought me it's like a soup bowl like what no no it's yeah it'll work yeah it'll work yeah sure it's like a soup bowl look at this I'm going to try I want to make a though at least okay it's probably the last that I'm going to use that big giant Cup tonight okay so we're going to talk about IM Moon and anxiety and it's wonderful to be intro the way that I was just intro to find out that the shear that I gave in Shen was being used for somebody else to give a she and that you I'm correct you just made a in the entire of which is an incredible thing and um yeah that's to me if you want to know the most gratifying thing for me personally is teaching so that other people can teach that's to me the the greatest expenditure of energy and time is investing in something that's going to be Amplified because whoever it is who receives it is going to go and take it and spread it to others so the fact that I recorded this year sh and you took that shear and you used it as the basis to give a Shear here in Lakewood and you finished sh that's like the greatest news you made my day now having said that I want to let everybody know something I'm very very serious about this this is really my my uh my passion in life so I want you to know for full transparency that I do expect completely sincerely honestly I do expect that everybody sitting here will also try to take what they learned tonight and teach it to others because really the impact of an evening like this is not just the couple of hundred karbo people who are sitting in this room but the thousands of people who will be affected when each of you goes out and acts as a mashia to influence others for the good so please uh try to at least listen for one nugget one idea that you can internalize and make your own and uh share with others all right so let's talk about a amona and anxiety there sort of opposites because I mean you got that that was the point that Tamor the anxiety but the truth is it's not 100% accurate it was a title you know titles you have to be short and sweet and I think also the alliteration amuna anxiety you know that sounds good but the really technically speaking if we're talking about the antidote to anxiety or the opposite of anxiety we're not so much speaking about imuna as much as we're speaking about B and I want to explain the simple difference between the two how they're different but also how they are related to each other because obviously they're very closely connected there's a mhel from the the ramban who wrote a count on amuna and B and he explains it very very simply he says is like a tree and its fruits not all trees have fruits but all fruits have to come from a tree so what does this mean not all am leads to but all comes from am let's break it down further is belief I believe but belief can remain intellectual it can remain an idea when we take that belief and we bring it down into our heart and that process is called VI you should know today and you should place it upon your heart so there's two things there's the knowing and there's the emotional integration so when you bring it down from belief from the abstract from the the idea to the feeling and maybe even deeper than just being an emotion it can even be a sensation something physical something sensorial something in your body literally a feeling of I can breathe that's called B so it's like the trees and the fruits a person can be a tree he can have a Muna he can believe in Hashem Hashem created the world but he's not feeling it and he's not living the way you would live if you really really felt that Hashem is the balos and is directing every detail of our life life so he has the tree but he doesn't have the fruits at the same time however although not all trees have fruits all fruits have to come from trees so if you see someone who's got the fruits meaning somebody who has what the calls the that comes from B he has that state of Tranquility that state of Serenity so that has to have originated in AA the is the it's the litmus test it's the it's the proof is in the pudding but where did it come from originally it came from am so we need both we need both so we're going to talk about both of them tonight we're going to talk about the am and we're going to talk about the so what is the amona yeah we know there there's there is a God Hashem exists but it's much more than that it's understanding the personal Hashem it's understanding that my life and every detail in it is communication from Hashem it's understanding that everything that happens to me even the painful moments especially the painful moments have purpose and are by by Design and I'm I would never be put through anything that wasn't necessary and that ultimately there's a plan and it's not just for the good of the greater picture but it's for the good of each individual this this is the AL internalizing it so that we feel at peace with the details and the facts of Our Lives that's the so I I mentioned earlier there's this idea of being the intellectual phase and being the emotional integration so obviously that's a from Kish but also it's the opening of not sh but sh which is the second of T the Al wrote A T the first of T the 53 chapters are very famous as a guide book a manual for oh you mentioned you also learned Matan here okay very good and uh it's a guide book or it's a manual for navigating the conflict between the two Souls the the ne theam The Godly Soul the animal Soul that's the first volume of T but then there's a second volume called the Gate of Oneness and faith and it starts with with this [Music] posk of a year Hashem as he is was will be meaning Transcendent of time and space Supernatural miraculous Eternal and that is identical with Alim which means nature which means the predictability of this world and it's really all one and therefore even this world that we seean Helen you know what a world is a world is an is from the word Helm so the world is a is a concealment a concealment of what of the truth that really the creation is only a lush it's only a garment with within which we can have a relationship with Creator is set up that we see creation as if KAS it's independent as if it operates on its own as if it's random but the reality is that the creation itself is an expression of Creator so we have to see through the helm ofum and we have to realize that hav is Alim that even in the predictability of nature it's all miracles it's all godliness Hashem is running the show okay but again this is this is the beginning of sh the process is the the knowing and then there's putting it on your heart internalizing it emotionally so I'll tell you a story where I really finally grasped what this process looks like and since the time that this story happened I've been able to use this to communicate the idea to many many crowds all over the world but the I have to I have to start with the whole background okay so I'm trying to figure out how long ago the story is because in the story my son who got married last year was eight years old so this this story is I don't know maybe 13 years ago um I was writing a translation in English of and it was taking me forever like years it was literally taking me years and I needed to turn it into the publisher so my son think who was 8 years old at the time was going to a special Camp a winter camp it's called the aslen Winter Camp what it is it's children of schlim emissaries of the La by the way the K is this week in Crown Heights and they have a camp most of these kids are growing up in far-flung areas in remote areas they don't have AER to go to they don't have friends and once again year they have this winter camp where they can get together and so my son was enrolled in this camp and the camp at that time was in Oracle Arizona where is Oracle Arizona it's like in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere really hours from the airport um so my wife said to me our son is going to camp in Arizona see if the camp director will let you go with him and go on a writer's Retreat and you'll be in the middle of the desert and you'll finish the translation of sh so I said you know that's not a bad idea so I asked the camp director if they would allow me to bring my son there and stay there for the 10 days and uh they said yes and I said but I just want to make it clear what I'm asking from you I'm asking a big favor I'm not there to speak I'm not there to do anything else I'm just there to focus on translating this very dense book of mystical Concepts and I need to really focus completely they said that's fine no one's going to bother you and uh they didn't bother me and it was amazing I was writing in the desert and in 10 days I was able to finish the entire project I finished probably in 10 days what it would take me six months at home to write and on the last day I was so relieved and I I said out loud wow it's amazing I'm so w I'm so glad to be done and the camp director heard me say that he said oh you're done would you speak to the kids so I said you know I'm not really a kid guy you know I'm not like camp counselor type they said it's okay first of all it's like the end of Camp so you know it doesn't have to be that great um I said to them listen I've been spending the past 10 days totally immersed in on a regular day I'm not like the guy you want to bring up to speak to a bunch of children but now right now my brain is totally into this sh saying that's fine you could talk about that so the guy I mean he really didn't care obviously or he was really desperate so he puts me up there and there's a room full of kids 8 9 10 11 I think 12 years old is the oldest in that group and these are all kids growing up on SCH from far-flung remote areas most of them so I'm I get up there and I I tell them you should know today you should place it upon your heart and I'm trying to think how do you say say this in children's language so I I I realized as I'm standing up there I said to them if your five-year-old brother or sister asked you remember the youngest ones there are eight if your 5-year-old brother or sister ask you where is Hashem what would you tell them and they all shouted out everywhere right hasem is here hasem is there Shem is truly everywhere up up down down right left all around here there everywhere that's where it can be found it's a song well to me that was basically in kids talk the concept of is the whole idea of it's really all there's nothing else it's all elus but how do you say that as a child Hashem is everywhere that's that's how I translated it okay so I said to them excellent you all said the right answer that's right Hashem is everywhere now here's another question and I knew this was going to be a challenging question wasn't sure how challenging but I knew this would be the challenging part I knew that the original question what would you tell your 5-year-old brother or sister if they asked you where where is hasem I knew that would not be a challenging question but I knew this would be a challenging question I said to them the follow-up question which was how does that make you feel they didn't have an answer how does it make you feel I mean it's just it's a thing that you know right it's something that you know what am I trying to do with them I'm trying to get them to feel it so I explained to them I said you know it's okay that you don't have a feeling about this piece of information because you don't automatically have a feeling about something just by knowing it in order to have a feeling about something you have to actually go through a process I said to them I'll give you an example and again I wanted to give them an example they could relate to so as I told you these are little children of schim and most of them are growing up in far-flung areas I told you they don't have a to go to they also don't have kosher restaurants because their kids all they eat is whatever their mother cooks they don't have the experience of going out to the pizza shop that doesn't exist except maybe once maybe twice a year they'll take a family trip and they'll go to Brooklyn and that's like for them the Highlight is they actually have food options right so I say to them imagine your family's in Brooklyn and um you want to order dinner or you're going to go out for dinner and you have to agree so it has to either be milk s flashic it's going to either be pizza or Chinese food and so all of a sudden your older sister your teenage sister starts running like a city council meeting and she's taking votes and polling everybody Pizza chinese pizza right and you got to vote now the pressure's on you got to say which one you want right and they come to you which one you want we're voting Pizza are Chinese and you say give me a minute why do you need a minute I asked these kids why do you why do you ask for a minute like you don't know what you want you need a minute to figure out what you want actually no you don't need a minute to figure out what you want because if you wanted it you wouldn't need a minute to figure it out you would know it already and yet you do need the minute so what's the minute for if it's not to figure out what you want the minute is not to figure out what you want the minute is in order to want there's a difference so you know what pizza is you know what it is you've known what it is for years if I would ask you to draw a picture of it describe it you know what it is up here you know what Chinese food is same thing you could picture it you could describe it up here but emotionally you're not really feeling anything about either of them right now so you say give me a minute and in that minute what do you do you think you think about the pizza you think about the Chinese food and after a minute of thinking it's not just ideas anymore it becomes a feeling at which point you turn to your sister and you say I feel like pizza see a minute ago you knew pizza now you feel like pizza and in that minute you were able to take something that was up here and you were able to put it down here so I told him there's an official name for that by the way it's called hbos hbos we could translate it as meditation but they wouldn't know what that word meant so I just told them it means thinking about something deeply which is what it is since you're adults I'll tell you even more his BOS is from the root Bina Bina is a type of thinking it's a different way of thinking there's and there's BMA is the father Bina is the mother so is the original information Bina also related to the word b to build it's like the mother within whose womb the baby grows you take an idea and you think about it and you expand it and you bring out the details that's called Bina that's called the mother it's actually a feminine way of thinking that's why tell us that women were given an extra measure of Bina HMA and Bina is the original idea that's the kma and then what you turn it into how you develop it through metaphor and Association and storytelling and descriptions that's the feminine style of thing that's why by the way I hope this is okay to say this this is just my personal observation but like as a as an educator the difference between learning with a group of men and learning with a group of women is that if you try to get men to respond to something you say to them okay that's the concept who could relate to that in their personal life do you know what it's well you know if you're married you probably know what that would be like right when you ask a man could you relate to that and give me a personal story you you don't get anything but you have a group of women and you say well you don't even have to say actually because they rob robab robab hold I have a personal experience I want to share right go ahead and then you have to be careful because once the women D see that's the beauty of Bina it's it's elaborative thought its stream of Consciousness thought so you can build one Association to another Association to another Association to another Association and it literally can go on infinitely until finally say let's bring it back to the original point which means the it's called a point of it's literally called a point it's like a little dot the is just a little dot the Bina is is again it's like the the womb of the mother that turns the baby into a into a human being so his BOS is this place we go into in our mind where we take an idea a little idea and we think about it elaborativeness [Music] es one concept and we try to look at it from different angles so that's what his buiness is so I I say to these kids you know that Hashem is everywhere but you don't feel anything about it so what are we going to have to do and they all knew the answer they said we're going to have to think I said how long are you going to have to think about it they also knew that because I had set it up they said a minute I said yeah it only takes a minute now obviously the more his b us you do the longer you think about it then the more associations you'll build which means the more deeply the emotional integration will take hold so the more you do the more firmly you'll connect to the concept but yeah even a minute I mean you all understand the power of your brain to create emotion right I mean think about being up in the middle of the night 3 in the morning all of a sudden your mind just somehow ends up on some some thought some worry some thought and then what do you do you start to meditate on that thought I mean that's what worrying is worrying is you take one idea and you think about it over and over you cogitate you turn it and turn it in your brain until all of a sudden it becomes an emotion it's not just an idea anymore now you're feeling it and even deeper than an emotion it can actually become a physical sensation like literally you're lying in bed and you're sweating and your stomach is cold and nothing's actually happening except for the fact that you're meditating your brain is that powerful or you know that's that's thinking about the future you could also do it about the past you can get a resentment you can think about some hurt that you experienced could have been years ago could have taken place miles away from here it's over and yet you revisit it I call it visiting the museum you go to the museum it's the worst Museum it doesn't even have a gift shop and it's but it's the Museum of your suffering right and you go to You're the curator and you're the only visitor and and and you revisit your suffering and you re-experience it and what happens this one memory up here it's just one memory but you think about it think about it think that that his vness is powerful and it grows the emotion grows and it becomes more and more Vivid and more and more real than when it happened in the first place right so that's the power of the mind to create create these emotions we all do it I we do it without thinking without trying to do it whether we're worrying or we're we're falling into resentment but the point is just like you can accidentally do it and sabotage yourself you can purposely do it and uplift yourself so I tell these kids still telling the story about the kids so I tell these kids I tell these kids we're going to think about hasem is everywhere for how long H one minute do you know how long a minute is you think a minute is not a long time a minute is a very long time it's such a long time that when I first started sharing this technique with groups I would actually invite them to think for a minute and then I realized that it was too risky because most people can't do it they get distracted or I should say more accurately they distract themselves and and I think the reason is one big reason is because we don't know what to do when we get um when we have foreign thoughts when we get the thought that pops up that not not the thing that we were trying to think about and we don't know how to handle that and uh that's uncomfortable or maybe we feel like a failure or whatever the case may be and then we just kind of forget the whole thing but the reality is when you're doing his binus I mean look if you were doing the the pizza and Chinese food meditation and all of a sudden you start to think about something else I don't think you would get too intense about it you would just know to ignore it right you just you wouldn't take it too seriously you would just oh well that's all of a sudden we think about birds but I don't want to think about birds right now when you would just let that move past you and you go back to think about pizza and Chinese food but for some reason when we're thinking about serious things um yeah we get really we take it really to heart we get all nervous Oh no I got distracted and really the skill is just ignore it don't don't engage it and just get back to the thing you were supposed to be thinking about so at any rate yeah I found that it's very risky with adults to to do it for a minute but with these kids um they did it and we had a timer we had a watch and I told them to think for for one minute and at the end of the minute I said you just thought about Hashem is everywhere for a minute I want to know how you feel so the first kid who raises his hand sitting in the very front off like in the left side that was just the first kid who raised his hand so I called him go ahead he said I remember these kids were all 8 9 10 11 12 years old he said I felt calm like wow that's beautiful okay who else figure I'll call on maybe two three kids and be done with it the next kid is the kid sitting right next to him so I said go ahead he says I felt happy W that's beautiful happy what happened is I guess they thought that I was going to go one by one and every kid gets to say his answer which was not my plan because there was like 100 kids in the room but that's what happened and I want to tell you something I would never have done that on purpose but it was beautiful one by one the these kids I felt calm I felt happy I felt strong I felt relaxed I felt safe like this is so beautiful and I'm thinking to myself you have a roomful of these kids with these feelings calm and happy and safe and strong and secure if you could take those feelings and bottle it and sell it to the pharmaceutical industry you could be a billionaire you could be a trillionaire literally and yet the biggest joke of it is you don't need to sell this to the pharmaceutical industry you don't have to buy it from the pharmaceutical industry because literally this is something that everyone can produce in their own head including a little child for free in a minute so you know that you're able to use that amazing powerful computer to create emotions because you all know how to worry and you know you all know how to cringe out on some some some terrible shameful memory and you all know how to get a resentment and to feel that indignant anger we all know how to meditate ourselves into those intense emotional states we do it all the time the only thing we're missing is take a minute and be misb about Hashem and it'll start to create emotions and you don't have to be an expert you just start so this was was a life-changing experience for me after I had this experience with these these kids because I realized that and idea and emotion theory and practice this can be achieved really virtually by anyone who's willing to just think for a minute you don't have to be some scholar you don't have to be some Mystic anyone who's capable and willing of thinking can produce real emotions for Hashem and then you have the Tranquility the serenity the peace of mind to live life not just with the amuna with the conceptual belief but with the real emotional and even visceral and and sensorial sense of peace that we receive from truly feeling that Hashem is conducting Our Lives the balant says on the he says sh shave so shave means equal means I have placed hasem before me at all times what does it mean I've placed Hashem before me at all times means I have a sign that says Hashem on it in front of me I've placed Hashem before me at all times means I think about hasem I'm thinking about Hashem the B explains equal and proceeds to explain what that means that if takg Summit if you are thinking about Hashem then what's going to happen shove it you will achieve equilibrium you will be emotionally stable even Keel as opposed to what the roller coaster of reactivity so let's put it in simple terms I'm thinking about hem that means that I'm God conscious put it in simple English but if I'm not proactively purposefully thinking about Hashem and putting Hashem first then the default is I'm not going to be godc conscious I'm going to be self-conscious we got this from adum and when they ate from the atadas they became self-conscious that was the first thing that happened to them and then they experienced shame so the default mode of humanity is self-consciousness crippling self-consciousness and when you are self-conscious then what happens you are hyper aware of all the ways in which life is treating you is it good is it bad is it what I like is it not what I like you become focused on what you're getting when you're self-conscious you're focused on how you are being treated by life or how you feel that you're being treated by life and therefore you become a victim inherently automatically because now your emotional state is tied to things that you cannot control right because whatever way that life is treating me which I cannot control that's the way I'm G to have to end up feeling like the G says everything's in the hands of Heaven except for one's awe of heaven so I can control my awe of Heaven which means my emotional state but I cannot control anything outside of me people places and things what happens if I am tying my emotional state to the things outside of me that I cannot control to the people places and things so then I go on that emotional roller coaster and I have no say in the matter as opposed to what instead of being self-conscious I'm godc conscious self-conscious is I'm thinking about all the ways that I feel that life is treating me and I'm making a decision whether I like it or I don't like it or turn up the the Heat or turn down the heat or fluff my pillow or God conscious I'm not thinking anymore about how I'm being treated I'm not thinking about how life is treating me I'm thinking about service I'm thinking about usefulness I'm thinking about what I am giving to this world in which Hashem put me how am I ser serving Hashem right now and now I have power because I have no control over the way life treats me but I have perfect control over how much of an I want to be at this moment and no one can ever take that away from me I can always choose to be useful to my maker at any given moment and if my emotional state is tied to that now I'm locked in I'm locked in there's no more up and down there's no more emotional roller coaster it's the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat you know the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat some people are like thermometers some people are like thermostats huh oh so I'll skip it CH oh that I said it oh I missed that what did I miss said that it changed your where who you spoke with th in third set for you and there was a few minutes of shared the letter so you said the whole thing Paras you paraphrased it it was two years ago so I'll say the the one liner say the whole thing it's very simple a thermometer and a thermostat they both have to do with the temperature right okay but the difference is like this the thermometer tells you the temperature in the room the thermostat tells the room the temperature so if we have a thermometer relationship with our own emotions that means the self-consciousness of being totally reactive putting ourselves into a victim role where we only get to be happy if we like how life is treating us and if we experience hardship then we have no choice but to be sad if we're in the thermostat mentality then yes we may also experience ship but it doesn't mean that we're going to be sad tell you a story there was Aid Rael futas and did you tell this also the story of rendel but you remember the story of rendel in the gulag remember the story I'll refresh your memory so phas was a he was sent to a gulag to a work camp in Soviet Russia and there was a professor there see in the Soviet gulags there were all types of people some of them were like am menal like political prisoners dissident uh some of them were intellectuals because the the Communists were very suspicious of of people who knew how to think for themselves and a a lot of them or maybe most of them were just common criminals so this professor says to R Mendel he says I'm observing a very strange phenomenon I see young healthy men who in the morning when we they tell us to get up for our day of Labor slave labor they would chop wood they they say they they're not feeling well and they can't get up and then at the end of the day when we come back at dark they're dead in their C these are young healthy men and and I realized it's CU they've given on life and then they physically they they languish he says I'm watching you and I see that you have this certain zest for living and that you actually of everyone here you're you're full of the most energy like you're you're the most robust you're the healthiest and and I'm trying to like create a theory to explain the difference so Reb mendle says to this professor it's very interesting by the way because if you know anything about Victor frankl's logo therapy it's very it's uncannily similar to that whole approach and I'm not sure if man search for meaning would have been available in the Soviet Union at the time when this story happened or if it was a case of parallel thinking that this professor sort of arrived at this observation on his own or if he was inspired by Frankle but either way um the mendle says to the professor he says well let me explain something to you these guys that you see dying these are kexs what's a KAC KAC is a he's not these are not classy people he says for a CAC life is three things a horse a rifle and a bottle of vodka that's life now when they get sent here they lose those three things they lose their horse they lose their rifle they lose their bottle of vodka and if those three things are life and those three things are taken so basically life was taken from them it's only a matter of time before the body gets the memo from the mind and they drop dead he says but I want to explain to you something about me about my life my life is not that different here than it was at home what does I mean it's not that he's a he's a slave in a labor camp they're pointing guns at him he's chopping wood all day and he's saying my life is Not So Different Here than it was back at home but he he proceeds to explain he says listen back at home I had an office and I would work in my office and when it would start to get dark you uh get up from your desk and you go to SCH and you D in m he says okay so here it's very similar um it's not a desk it's the middle of the forest I can't actually stop working or they'll shoot me but as the Sun starts to set i d now there's no minion there's no sh I can't actually uh say the words out loud because they'll shoot me but I'm I'm daving m in my head as I'm chopping wood and in fact not only is life not that different if anything in some ways it's better because when I was back home and I would DAV I'm in a sh full of people they're also DAV and this is a sh where every day people DAV and for years they've been daving M when I'm out chopping wood I think to myself as I'm daving M I bet you in all of the years since Hashem created the world nobody has yet yet stood on this exact spot and said hashem's Praises so in that way my life is maybe even a little better this is the difference between godc conscious and self-conscious God conscious means my quality of life is determined by my ability to to to serve and I can always serve because there's no situation Hashem puts me and that I cannot be of service and even the hardships and especially the hardships are are are opportun ities for service the self-conscious model is my quality of life is totally linked to how I'm being treated do I feel like life is Pleasant do I feel like it's easy is it comfortable you know it's bad enough that I'm going through difficulties but then if I'm emotionally tied to that now I'm going through difficulties and I'm sad you're going to say of course you're sad you're going through difficulty stop that you're thinking like a thermometer you don't have to be a thermometer you can be a thermostat you do not have to link those two you can be going through hardships and not experience sadness pain is not sadness and pleasure is not Joy they're two different things there's a there's a saying that pain is unavoidable suffering is optional or some people even say pain is unavoidable suffering is self-inflicted what's the difference between pain and suffering pain is something I cannot control there's no free choice there's no whether it's physical pain or it's an emotional pain a certain stimuli that hurt and there's nothing I can do about it and it happens in an instant that's pain so imagine you get up in the middle of the night and you're walking across the carpeted floor you'll see in a minute why for the purposes of the story The Floor has carpet and your kids were playing during the day and they were playing Lego you know where I'm headed some of you are are wincing already your kids were playing Lego and you told them to clean up and they didn't clean up it's the middle of the night and you're half asleep and in your socks you step on a Lego in the carpet and you say that's pain a second later you say why do things like this always happen to me that's the suffering bre see the pain you can't do anything to stop the pain once you step on that Lego that's it surrender because it's just you have to just go through it it's there's no way to stop it but the suffering was totally optional you know why because the pain does not require a thought a conscious thought the pain is just sensorial and the same thing by the way with emotional pain if somebody you love let say betrays you or or says something cruel to you that IM that immediate shock that you feel the the physical shock that that that's pain you cannot control that you didn't have to think about it in order to feel about to feel anything from it it just it's an immediate response but a second after that when you do go to your brain and you start to think about it and tell yourself a story particularly a victim story and you start to say why did Terrible Things always happen to me and then you do theb the the building and you start laying into it and the the the tragedy here the irony of it I work to pay for those Legos The Very Lego that now and I slave to make dinner I served food to those children and I brought them to Legos and I and I'm only up in the middle of the night cuz I'm making their lunches I'm packing their lunches the irony the tragedy so now what you're doing is you're expanding the original pain that's the suffering you do not have to go to your brain and start telling yourself an elaborate story about your pain I'm not telling you that you won't feel pain pain is part of life what I'm telling you is that you have the option of not going to your brain and meditating on it in a way that will actually create greater intense emotions about that pain so so pain is not sadness I've never had the personal experience but anyone who's ever given birth will tell you that it's not sadness when you're accomplishing something when there's a purpose yeah it may be painful but it's not sad conversely I told you pain is not sadness pleasure is not joy we make that mistake too we think pleasure is Joy pleasure is not Joy there is no amount ount of pleasure that you can ever amass that will ever equal one iota of joy we think it will when you're standing in the refrigerator at 3:00 a.m. after you're stuck on the Lego and you're comforting yourself and you see that there's cheesecake left over from chabas and you say how much of this cheesecake will it take to be happy and first didn't do it it tasted good it was pleasure you got pleasure I'm still not happy though maybe it maybe it's maybe the happiness isn't the second piece you eat a second piece of cheesecake and a third piece you can eat cheesecake all day you're going to have pleasure until finally you'll make yourself sick and then you don't even have the pleasure anymore either but you'll never have joy from it and in fact not only does pleasure not equate Joy but as human beings we can even be in the midst of experiencing profound pleasure and not only not feel Joy but be very very very sad that's one of the most tragic things is that when we think that something will bring us joy and we indulge in it and then we come up completely empty and degraded and not only is it disappointing it's humiliating but we have to know pleasure is not Joy you know why because I cannot receive Joy I wasn't built really to be a thermometer I wasn't built to be reactive I'm not an animal I was built to be of service my joy comes from how useful I am not what I get out of life but what I put into it and that's precisely why I can be in the midst of a painful experience and have joy and in fact in some ways not that we want this to be the norm but there are times in our lives when we are experiencing serious pain even prolonged pain from a real Nan and yet our our ability to be of service and to be useful in spite of the pain or sometimes even because of the pain when we figure out how to use it to help others to be an impetus to to growth so then we're in the midst of pain and we're experiencing Joy because again my emotional state is all based on how I think my thinking creates my emotions now pain and pleasure that's the body and there's no so stepping on a Lego is pain and eating a cheesecake is pleasure but being happy that is completely something that I can control and the way that I control it is by going to this amazing machine and thinking for even a minute takes just a minute now how we doing so far following you expected something a little different this is different people know me from different contexts so sometimes they experience a little like bait and switch and they're like this is not what I was expecting if you're okay with this I just want to talk about another concept connected to amuna and anxiety a very important concept actually it's two concepts but they come together in Mish he speaks about anxiety he refers to it his daa and he says literally means smush it down now you know there's no in tanak and that's because very good example of by the way is and is so you can have one word in and the which is the feminine will come and be will build will flesh it out and bring out different meanings from that one word so in this particular case we have a where we have a regarding how to read this word what you're supposed to do with the da what are you supposed to do with the anxiety so it's a and so the gar says means avert your mind from it forget about it the other one says speak it out conversation speak it out with others so I want to talk about this because we have the tool of his Bess of thinking that we spoke about but I want to talk about two more tools here and so let's talk about we'll go in order so the first opinion is remove it from your mind what does that mean why should you remove your mind from it so sometimes what happens is I like to make meaning of things the human mind likes to find meaning and in order to find meaning we like to tell stories stories are a way that we organize events and try to make them meaningful so sometimes I'm experiencing a feeling or a sensation of distress and I need to figure out why and it's not a conscious process I actually do this quite automatically I start to make up a story to explain why I'm stressed oh I know why because I need to pay my credit cards today and I I don't have the money yeah but then you realize is if you're honest with yourself that that's not why you're stressed because very often what you'll start to do is something called stacking I have my credit cards to pay today and my kids's teacher just called and said that she's gonna be kicked out of class and um my Scher uh told me that I didn't serve the right salad at the chabas meal and uh my neighbor is a is a nudnik and uh you start I know your life I'm telling your whole life here okay these trust these are just random theoretical examples and you start stacking and St so the reality is you're not stressed because of these stories you're telling yourself these stories because you're stressed and that is why in some cases the the sound counsel and advice is just stop it already stop convincing yourself to be stressed stop giving it a narrative if you're stressed okay fine so go sit down go relax maybe you need to drink water maybe you need to take a walk usually we we need to do both of those things maybe you need to cut down in screen time maybe you're watching too much news that that's for sure today being exposed to news there's no purpose in being exposed to news other than to get yourself full of scary stories that you can pick from next time your body is stressed out and you can just use those stories to justify being stressed so the first advice is just stop it stop telling yourself the stories it's not productive it's called rumination now unfortunately what happens is sometimes we really really buy into those stories and we make those stories like the end all and be all and then this becomes like the organizing principle of life and people go off and they make rash decisions and just to to to to live out some type of or attempt to live out some type of resolution to some type of story that wasn't even really the reason why you were stressed you needed to drink water take a nap take a walk exercise stop looking at the news and the stories have nothing to do with it just stop telling yourself stories so that's the first advice get out of your head and by the way you know the best way is to get out of your head help others go help somebody help your kids play with your kids the with with the Legos on the floor and then you help them put it away at the end so that's the first advice just get out of your head and stop with the narratives okay but then sometimes it's not just a narrative sometimes it's something that's really weighing heavily and that's why we have the second interpretation they're both true they're both true or like said that so when you have two different opinions Within in TOA this is the neurodiversity within toyra when you have two different opinions in TOA it's not which one is correct they're both correct it depends on context so the first opinion is stop talking yourself into being more stressed cut out the storytelling but then in the event that that doesn't work meaning you're averting your mind from it you're keeping busy with good things and you're still feeling stressed then maybe there really is something to it then maybe there's something that you need to get off your chest and that's why it says the second the other opinion speak out have a conversation with somebody else and actually the the anle of the balat says that in this context means people who are physically they're other than you as far as the physical body but not emotionally not spiritually in other words when means is when you're in a situation where you're going to have to do this we're going to have to have this conversation and talk about what's heavy on your heart you have to pick the right person you have to pick somebody who's going to feel your pain because the reality is that's what makes it healing that's why it works there's a story told this story about the um the Reb rashab the Reb rashab was the Reb's father-in-law's father the fifth Reb of kabad so he was actually the younger brother theab of Shalom had an older Brotherman Arin they called him RAR so and the younger brother and ended up being the reab but when they were kids they were playing and you know some kids play cops and robbers together but these were rabinder they were the sons of the reab maharash so when they played they played reab and clet that was the game they played and of course the older brother thear told the younger brother that aab you be the I'll be theab so of course the older brother always tells the younger brother what to do which is ironic because in in the end the younger brother was the one who grew up to be to be a re not the older brother so they're playing and they're having a private audience so the rebab comes in and he's a little kid six years old and he says what did you do older brother that that asks him what do you do what do you need a ticken for he says I ate nuts on shabas it says in that it's a sh of with the shells it's very cute because that was like the biggest evader that he could think of so he says I ate I ate nuts on shabas so the the RAR tells him so your tikon is that anytime you make a you have to read it from inside the S so the you know why not that's the tick one that's what he made up so theab says to his older brother ah Miss King rabit you're not a reab and he says what I'm not a reab why I'm not a re what's what am I doing wrong he says violet because IBA before he answers he has to sigh when theba told that story he said sometimes the Sigh is everything that's all that the person needs it's not the answer it's the sigh what's healing if you follow the second ofi not the but rather the what makes it effective the conversation is who you tell it to if the person has empathy real empathy if they can give a CS then it's healing but if you just say it to somebody just just to have said it out loud doesn't have that effect now I want to insert here something that's a little bit off topic but I cannot resist the opportunity to mention this because to me this is so important if you are a parent by the way has anyone here in this this a big crowd so maybe did anyone In This Crowd take my online parenting course oh like four or five people beautiful okay oh like six seven people okay more hands went up all right excellent so you answer for me when your child needs to do this second mode and they need to speak to an empathetic person ideally Veterans of my course answer who should that person be Lon what lesson four very good wow that's crazy that it it is Lesson Four there six weeks that is Lesson Four yes and and what's the answer for everybody else who should the person be a wise empathetic Len their best friend yeah who is that person the mother you it's you yes you you're the debbit you're the one who has to give a cats this is so important we think that our children need our wisdom they do to some extent but more than they need our wisdom they need our empathy and you see this more and more not just in families but in communities as well who are we looking to now for leadership is it just the person who knows the most the smartest person that's good also obviously the person has to know things but primarily especially in this generation we want empathetic people we want somebody who's going to feel our pain someone who's going to validate our experience and not the opposite who's going to try to talk us out of feeling what we're feeling now it doesn't mean that your feeling like they say feelings aren't facts right doesn't mean that your feeling is true true but at the same time just cuz feelings aren't facts doesn't mean that feelings aren't feelings it's a real feeling you can validate that somebody feels a certain way you don't have to tell them that's not that's not how you should feel but that's how I do feel so yeah if you're a parent I would say your main job is to be that person and that when you can provide that kind of soothing for your child when they have pain and they have stress and worry and they're able to talk it out with you so first of all that bonds them to you so tightly and then you actually can be their mechanic and you can actually teach them your values but also it sets them up for life to be strong secure healthy people because they know how to work through stress so we all need to have a compassionate person in our life we all need to be a compassionate person in someone's life it's extremely important so that's another tool okay so I give you three tools tonight first thing he's binding us even a minute now for all um what do you call call it transparency I I I guess I should say if you're going to think about Hashem you have to have what to think about which means you're going to have to learn so I could recommend you can learn we mentioned you can learn which I mentioned point is to learn P something where the subject is Hashem not just obviously you have to know theas that you need to know in order to to run a home and to live a Jewish life and there are practice things you need to study all the time you need to restudy those things but I'm saying as far as the meditation stuff you have to learn P where the subject is about Hashem about hashem's about the nature of of reality how Hashem creates the world every single second about about how really everything is El you have to learn these subjects and then you have what to think about and if you'll think about those Concepts then that will be what you have an emotional attachment to and you'll have that and that confidence and that security to go through life with peace of mind so that's one Tool The Meditation I give you another tool which is kind of the opposite which is not to think that when you catch yourself stacking all these narratives and trying to give yourself a logical explanation for why you're stressed instead of talking so much to yourself stop quiet your mind and go do something productive go engage in self-care Again drink water take a walk play with your kids so that was the second tool and the third tool is to seek out meaningful relationships with empathetic people that's what we call a faban by the way when you have a group of empathetic people people who are all in the trenches together who are living life and applying what they're learning and trying to grow and they can actually empathize with each other's struggles and there's no judgment it's a judgment free zone and you could speak about your failings in a vulnerable way and receive validation and so that's another tool there a lot more tools we could go on and on and on but I think that's good for our first for our first time and because we advertised that there's going to be Q&A I want to live up to that so uh how are we're going to do the Q&A in a orderly quick fashion now that it's like midnight and people's babysitters have already left their children alone how are we going to do I have a moderator could somebody help me to like or am I on my own over here am I on my own okay I'm going to try to do this quickly yeah oh you help me out know there's babysit so should weip or do you want it's up to the crowd we could do three four quick questions we'll do three or four quick questions let's do three or four quick questions okay I'll just call on people quickly yeah okay I'm going to repeat it out loud question was what if it's not just that you have one Lego on the floor but the entire floor is covered in Legos and everywhere you step you're stepping on Legos so do you extract yourself from that situation meaning at what point do you say that this is not myus now obviously what I'm going to say is general and really if someone's making a decision like this this is a very very important decision but I could tell it to you like this the decision to walk away from your nan even when it's a really really really challenging is not only as serious as divorce it is divorce well in some cases it literally a divorce yeah but in every case it is metaphorically divorce because your Nama came to the world for a mission and you are married to that mission it's a marriage the Nish and the and the Goof are like a husband and a wife we know this from Raman s by the way that aam buried s and then he went and he cried over her grave and that teaches us the Z says about how the the soul goes to where the body is and and Grieves for it for a certain amount of time so soul and body are like husband and wife when your soul comes into your body that's your marriage meaning your your SCH in this world your mission that you were sent here for and we were all sent here only for a mission no is Disturbed and brought out of ganaden and plunged into the the limitations of a body except to accomplish something some type of bir some type of TI so it's all a it's all a mission that mission is a marriage a marriage of soul and body at what point are you allowed to say I can't take this Mission I don't mean God forbid someone says I want to check out of life itself although I am understand when people have so much pain they have such a feeling but I'm talking about where someone says I want to radically change my life and I don't want to subject myself to this difficulty anymore maybe a career change or Geographic change or sometimes yeah literally it could be marriage but how do you know when it's time so it's actually it's a three-way makus and it's interesting because B is usually m and b is usually M but the reason why they're M and M is because of and you following so B Hill generally takes a kind approach bami generally takes a more tough approach so when Bas Hill says that you're allowed that that when Bai says that he's M it's only when there's AA that is grounds for divorce and base hillo is more Mel and he says even even if she burns his food is that c in gor that's not nice that's not nice not nice to to say somebody burnt your food and then you write them off so what is this describing it's actually describing the questioning whether it wants to continue a particular in this go so B will say you can only leave your if it causes you to actually be damaged spiritually meaning P it if it's causing you to do a AA then that's grounds to leave it but not nothing short of that you don't like it tough luck so he'll say even if you're not enjoying it even if it's not kmak he'll he'll write you a pass and uh Rea says even if you find one that you like better which means there doesn't even have to be anything wrong with your current SCH you just found one that you might think is even more enjoyable these are all legitimate approaches that's why I said this is a very general answer but you have to understand that in any case even though they're all legitimate approaches in the case where there is a divorce so the MB cries MB is the place of sacrifice so why is it crying because instead of sacrificing a person chose something else instead of embracing the hardship they chose another option so it's always tragic it's always sad but if you want to hold yourself to the strictest standard to the mid the of B then the rule of thumb is that if not only your is hard for you but it's spiritually damaging you it's actually dragging you down barus then that's considered to be a serious factor to consider that's about as specific as I can be yeah a lot of times when I have anxiety I feel like it's a little bit of a betrayal because of just all the blessings that God giv all of us you know and if you're spending your time being anxious 99% of the time about things that didn't even happen yet I just feel like it's betrayal yeah so you mentioned that when you feel anxiety you feel it's a betrayal to Hashem and I say that's fine if that's the way you want to feel as with one caveat that as long as you don't take that to heart too seriously because sometimes you end up feeling bad like feeling guilty about the fact that you feel bad and then it brings you to an even lower level so yeah it is I mean k to to be ingr is a serious thing but at the same time don't internalize it too much because if you start to condemn yourself that will actually only lead to worse things so you have to be gentle with yourself and it's possible to say to yourself you know I really shouldn't be ungrateful I really should is anxiety and gratitude it it well it is but what I'm saying at the same time is be gentle with yourself and say but you know what I'm a human being and sometimes these are the feelings that we have and I'm not going to condemn myself because I'm having this feeling what I'm going to do instead is use some of the tools that we have to try to bring myself out of it right so instead of it starts a vicious cyle very often or a person feels guilty about their their level and then actually the pain of the guilt causes them to indulge in worse things which causes even worse guilt so you have to be gentle with yourself like take notice maybe when you're with your compassionate group of friends you can mention it but don't condemn yourself because it's uh going to lead to worse things maybe this will be the I'll do three and then four okay and then let's see let's see if these are quick yeah classic question how do you know the the the balance between yeah yeah how do you know how do you know you did enough isas okay so here's the thing you have to have some sense of what's normal hisus means a normal amount of effort sometimes we're very deep in our own situation so we lose our objectivity but you can gain objectivity by thinking about if anyone else were in this situation what would be considered a normal amount of effort and once you've done a normal amount of effort you can stop because remember hisas does not produce anything I just want to clarify that you you think hisas does 1% and the does 99% it's not true hus doeses 0% hus produces nothing oh so then why do we do it very simple because Hashem does not want open Miracles so theist is to provide Hashem and so he can hide the miracle in nature so as long as Theus is enough that we're granting Hashem plausible deniability where he could always say I didn't do it it was just he then that was enough isless you're done okay then yeah you're asking a clinical diagnosis right yeah so yeah well based on how well you know me so far how do you think I feel about it when people say to other people if you hadn't more Monon you wouldn't have anxiety what it's no good I don't like it why don't I like it it's not compassionate first of all don't ever say that to anybody else that's for somebody to say to himself secondly if you had more money you wouldn't have anxiety that's preposterous if you had morea you'd have less anxiety it's a spectrum it's not either anxiety or no anxiety doesn't exist you'll have less anxiety and so even a person with an anxiety disorder somebody who's clinically diagnosed can and should do things to curb the anxiety like even somebody who's taking medication let's say also there are practices that will give a person more of a a feeling of emotional grounding and of course they're going to do those things and when they do them they're going to feel better and when they don't do those things so then you have to go back to doing those things so to pretend like it's all or nothing like either it's completely a psychiatric issue or it's completely a spiritual issue either extreme is is faulty more am more is always going to be helpful it's always going to make things better in every case it'll make things better does it solve everything of course it doesn't solve everything but that's also you know part of perfectionism which I was talking about before when we condemn ourselves with the the black and white thinking and the extreme thinking which sometimes unfortunately is very common in the religious community and it ends up being unproductive you have to be gentle with yourself and you'll end up serving Hashem a lot more a lot better okay last question yeah oh you okay one and two okay well I I'll make my answer quick yeah beginning this is a deep question of if everything's Fromm but you see people take matters into their own hands and then their life gets better well okay so first of all so first of all plenty of people took matters into their own hands and their life got worse let's not forget about that okay okay but secondly like you're saying even when you do take matters in your own hands and your life gets better that was also from Hashem of course so this is the classic philosophical Paradox of of B and Yuda and how can they both coexist but at the end of the day it's also from Hashem everything's Hashem Hashem gives you the to do it Hashem gives you the idea to do it Hashem knows that you're going to do it okay this is the last yeah Oh you mean I could pick from different questions just pick the most exciting one no pick the most controversial one because this is the last one so we want it to be exciting does it to fill my mission know that's yeah so what does it mean to fulfill my mission okay so here's what I'm going to tell you I told you that life quality of life is not about how you're treated it's not about what you get but it's about what you give right all right now I'm going to tell you something I don't just mean it's not about what you get from I even including Alam Haba life is not about what you get even if you're talking about that's not the ultimate purpose and I'll prove to you it's not the ultimate purpose that nishas in ganeden who are receiving their scar eventually when M comes and there's they'll come back to this world they'll leave G the purpose each one of our purposes is what we contribute to this world to make this world a holy place to bring Messiah so the spiritual reward that's a nice benefit but it's not your purpose bringing mashiah is your purpose and each and every one of us is tied to that purpose because in order for the world to be perfect in order for there to be a g clus each one of us has to have a g and that's really what we're doing especially in this generation as we're getting so close to Messiah what's really happening is people are waking up and experiencing Gus so when you do your healing it's not just personal it's not just about you it's not even just about your family when you do your healing you're actually perfecting a little piece of this world so this world can be a place where Hashem is revealed that is our purpose okay it's been such a pleasure and we'll have to do it again sometime thank you