Leadership Series 2022 Session #6

i'd like to begin really with really last week two weeks ago because it's important to set the context so um if there's really anything that is at the core of of a jews progression in life and our path to greatness it's the fact that we have free will and it's it's quite interesting because we're getting into the rosh hashanah season you know it's coming up now and um you know there are many angles you can play with rosh hashanah but one is one very fascinating and interesting angle is that it really is the birthday of mankind it really is like i always say to everybody that i do services with like you know give yourself a happy birthday wish because it really is it's a birthday now it's truthfully mystical term the recreation of the jewish neshama it's almost like i know we don't like the idea of born again because we associate with the christians but the truth the real truth is that we are born again jews on rosh hashanah and we're born with a new set of potential i heard it once uh described as parallel to the big bang just as you have a big bang in the physical world and every thing everything in this universe came out of that singularity which was in that bang everything there's nothing else that could be included in that thing that wasn't in there in the initial physically anyway that initial singularity so too in this jewish soul you're gonna bang this year you're gonna have your own big bang and its potential to spread is dependent upon how much field of influence of free will god gives you and it really is your opportunity to expand your field of free will in the coming year that's what makes you you this year you will bang again and you'll have potential to make decisions god willing greater than you did last year so when you ask god to be part of his plan for civilizing the planet and quote unquote making god king that's what you're doing you're saying give me a greater field of sphere of influence which i can use my free will okay so that is what this class is about this class is the five levels of free will and it's it's the engine for human greatness nothing more important than that okay so but that is a context that is a backdrop we'll mention what we said last week there are five levels of free will the first level we mentioned last time think rather weinberg sal called it periscope up and what he meant was like just like a submarine as a periscope and it sees what's in the landscape we too have need to get our periscope up in life because too often we work on autopilot we go through our lives we make decisions maybe 10 years ago 20 years ago even what we could go what do we have for breakfast and we don't revisit that decision and the first site the first level of free will was get on top of your choices because unless you are proactive and get on top of your choices your life is run by past choices and that's not a that's not a great uh recipe for success because you know they say that you know as you get wiser and as you get uh you live and have experience you should really have a better chance of making choices that are more successful in your life so therefore to deliver past choices doesn't make a lot of sense it doesn't mean you have to question everything but it's just getting on top of your choices some of your choices i'm sure are really good to remind yourself this is why i'm doing it this is who i am it's also an affirmation of self we're going to get into a little bit later on on the call so the first level is periscope up start getting on top of your choices start realizing you have a uh a playing field that 24 7 you're in a situation of making decisions and making important decisions and we don't relate to life that way kind of like just kind of go with the flow that's number one number two is that also part of that just to expand that a little bit is that all of us have um inculcated ideas from society about life and you know when i live when i wasn't religious years ago you know we had ideas about the world the way it was and some of them weren't correct necessarily so this would also include like seeing where your ideas come from now some ideas advise ideas good ideas when we teach our children those ideas and say we're socially conditioning them right it's a positive thing but one man's social conditioning is another man's brainwashing in other words when the communists use soviet union you know it also socially conditioned we would call it brainwashing so it all depends on what side of the aisle you're sitting on as to whether what you're saying is brainwashing or social conditioning so just also unearth the ideas the major ideas that run your life run them through talk them out know why you do what you do because those are the first two levels now the third level is the most important that's what we're going to start with the third level of fruit with the last week was is really the butts of the topic it really comes from the torah and we said that in the torah free will is defined participants of him in about four weeks four weeks from now you're going to get to this parsha question it's of him and the end of the parsha it asks there's life and death good and evil blessing and curse in front of you and it says choose famous expression the heart the time choose life so that you will live and your children after you that's a fascinating turn of phrase first of all that you would think that free rules about life and death is also uh kind of intriguing because most of us really don't look at it that way most of us look at free will is probably a choice between good and not good meaning and meaninglessness most of us don't look at it as a choice between life and death but it's funny how the phraseology works it says choose life so that you will live your your children so really the the verse probably should have said don't choose death so that you will live right because how do you stay lies you don't choose death but the torah doesn't say that doesn't say don't choose death so that you'll live it says choose life so that you live so the implication there the profound implication implication is if you don't choose life you're not really living and i guess we would say you're not fully living you could be waving your own hands and you know moving your feet running all over the place for 80 years of your life for 120 years but not fully living not fully getting what life's about you come upstairs they're going to say you live 20 years of life i didn't live 120. there's only 20. and the goal of the jews to is to connect that which is most precious about life so how is life a choice between life and death so we mentioned we mentioned that most of us are battling between escaping the the the hard work of being great and fighting to be great it was like you know to be or not to be that's the question but hamlet said whether the struggle and strive for the sleep dream to quit that's the struggle with in in in the world it's not between big moments of putting evil that's also true but it starts in the little picture of actually struggling or quitting someone told me once and i thought it was a nice line sports people were like this like football players it's the choice to remind or not the grunts i mean that's it am i gonna burden my loins so to speak and march forward or am i gonna go back if i get a retreat am i gonna advance now reverend wander had a very nice way of saying this and say the drive for most people in life for death it's usually never the final exit of really taking what's life god forbid he would say is the drive for comfort and people we all resonate with this in other words that beautiful picture jenny with the beach over there that's the uh that's the you know that's what we're looking for the hammock you should have a hammock over there with a pina colada you're on the hammock just about asleep the ultimate in comfort no struggle no pain we call that america retirement it's very interesting because most of america they're dear to this fantasy mythical place where you don't have any trouble in life it's a nut it's not a jewish it's an anti-jewish condition rabbi wolbe said you know a healthy heart it goes up and down but when you're comfortable it's flat line you're dead really is true in the spiritual world spirituality is about striving it's about accomplishment it's about it's like lifting weights you know when you lift weights the only way you actually grow muscle is if you feel the burn it's when they actually the muscle fibers ripped and they regrow stronger that's how you build muscle in a gym but it's really the same thing in the soul the soul has to sweat and the only way the soul sweats is if you overcome challenges i put us in a world where we'd have a uh we have two opposing parts of ourselves body and the soul and because those two parts are kind of in conflict you have this challenge we are able to overcome the drive that the body has to want comfort the body wants to sleep the body wants to dream the body wants to procrastinate the body wants the air conditioning really high and really wants to go to sleep and the soul wants to live the soul wants to sweat the soul wants to conquer and that that therein gives us our free will so he said in a very practical way the choice of free will is the choice between what you want to do versus what you feel like doing and it's not semantics it's very important what you want to do are your aspirations when i say to you you know at 11 o'clock at night before you go to bed what do you really want for yourself you'll say i want to be a patient mother i want to be an uh a a um sensitive spouse i want to be courageous and stand up for myself i want to help the jewish people like you give me a list everybody will give a list of what they really want in their lives and what i would say that's what they want capital w that is what they want but you know when you get up in the morning and you decided i really want to run this morning i want to do my aerobics for my zumba at seven o'clock and then the alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button and what you're saying internally is you know what i do want to do my run for the day but i feel like hugging my pillow i feel like sleeping for the next half an hour so you see free will robert wanted to say so beautifully the struggle between what you want to do versus what you feel like doing i want to be in shape i want to be on my diet i feel like eating the dropper cake i want to be patient my kids are driving me crazy and i feel like snapping right i want to help my coworker you know be get confident i don't have time but for all this you know back and forth back and forth so constantly we're in free will struggles doing what we feel like doing versus feeling what we want to do now it's a very practical definition and i think what is most important for all of us is that we each have pivotal free will struggles each one of us in other words i would say there are probably six to eight three world struggles that odd fit custom fit each one of us to have and they're not the same you know i have a free will struggle about you know you know eating versus you know uh pump the comfort of eating versus you know getting out there and having meeting my wife doesn't have that just doesn't have it she has other free will struggles you know so the first thing is to say everyone knows really they think about it what are my pivotal struggles what are the things that i keep you know falling into like that pothole that spiritual puddle i fall into all the time it's probably six of them what are those six because if you don't unearth them if you don't know this is a struggle that that that god is giving you to get to help you become great you're going to be like it's like you're going to be ambushed that's what happens a lot i know i had this situation with my mom that i you know i i work i do her finances for for many years and as she's gotten older she just gets on my case about it like again and again and it's just very you know annoying now now i have i ha i can look at it like mom leave me alone i got work to do it could snap i could be impatient or i could just say you know what i'm just honoring the mother it's not about the finances you know it isn't about just like hold it together just like make her feel good that's what you're there for right now you know what i mean and i have this free will struggle now if i don't remind myself that that's really the bigger picture i fall in nine and ten times like nine out of ten times i'll respond to what she's saying he'll say something that doesn't make sense to me uh respond perhaps sharply right and and it's only because i didn't kind of alert myself with an early warning system but if i had said to myself before i got on the call this is likely to happen mom's gonna say what she's going to say and you're going to react with you you always do react and there's a very easy way to short-circuit this just gird your lines you know hold on to your seat and just say this isn't about the financial question she's going to ask me this is about you honoring your mother period now if i kept that in mind i wouldn't be am so i urge every one of you figure out your six free will struggles so you're not ambushed okay critically it's critically important and and rabbit warmer would say i think he's just so um you know right about this there's a hazal i'll tell you in a minute that confirms it but he said free purse the the person who's great it's not the person that always makes the right decision it's the person that fights that does what they want more often than what we feel like meaning we're gonna fall in we're all gonna make mistakes and take the comfort however that comfort plays out in our lives we'll take the drink we'll take the we'll be angry we'll be impatient we're all gonna do it we're human beings that's the war but if we just do what we want a little bit more often that we feel like becomes become righteous people that's the goal try to do what your aspirations lead you to do more than what the comfort of your body is leading you to that's the measure of a great person now we'll get to today is like anything in life you know you know when you become um used to something you become habituated to something right we talked about the first level of free will is doing the wrong things because you're habituated to doing the way you've done them for the last 10 20 years so what about turning the tables on that philosophy in other words why can't we habituate ourselves to do good things we can you know we just have to realize that's what i'm doing now i'm going to habituate myself for a good habit the same way as i habituated myself for a negative head in other words if i realized that i just had a free will struggle and i did what i wanted to do then i should first of all it's so important for you to notice that notice it don't just let it go especially now as we're like we're almost like a training wheels on this right now so when you do something you want to do right notice it number one that's going to be this fourth level notice that you did something that you want to do and what that means is you followed the aspirations of your soul you just sided with your soul and you made your soul a little bit stronger like in the gym right but every time imagine every time you did something you wanted to do and just didn't let it go but you acknowledge you said you know what i just did something that my soul wants to do i'm a soul i'm a soul i'm a soul what it does is is it allows you to make the easier choice the next time around because what happens when the reason why we tend to make mistakes is that we don't know we're souls we most of the time think we're bodies we most of the time think that what is in the mirror is really who i am and we get signals from the body and the soul give you an example my body says simple you need to eat and you need to eat right now because you're hungry you didn't eat i mean you're starving you could buy if you don't eat right so remember wondering would say kind of tongue-in-cheek but an interesting say an interesting way he would say the soul should first of all say hey that's the body part the stirring for me to eat comes up from that desire is that coming from my soul generally not generally not so he would say oh what was the body body when was i love you body it's my you know it's like my porsche that i drive around it all day my poor shoe i love what was the last time we ate oh an hour ago then you must not really be starving you see that he would have an interplay it would basically create a distance between your body and the soul because when you make mistakes there's no distance you are your body and you if you don't give in to quote unquote that desire you're denying yourself now i want to take you back because it has a real mystical uh root to this you know if you go back to the garden of eden adam and eve when they were in the garden before the 8th tree of knowledge of good and evil they were souls and they knew they were souls they had this appreciation that i'm spiritual and connected to god and you know what the the murmurings of their evil inclination their tempting the temptation was the first temptation in the garden of eden it didn't come from inside of them it came from this thing called the snake it was outside of them right now it's very fascinating inside they knew who they were outside there was a temptation it's sort of like you know when you go through the old days 42nd street you know there was all these peep shows and stuff it was like you were you but there were these temptations outside the billboards on the you know that was a temptation let's say from the tree of knowledge of good evil they broke that temptation internally inside and their body their concept of body and soul got enmeshed and they didn't realize who was speaking so in their voice inside says we need to drop a cake or we want to go out for god they didn't differentiate that voice so if the body the desire was saying we need this this this and that controlled computer screen they would go after the desires of the body so what we have to try to do interestingly enough very interestingly enough with free will is what we're trying to do is we're trying to un-blend the body and the soul as if it was pre the sin of adam and eve that's essay lessons what you're doing you're trying to actually to straighten out the confusion that the human race got into 5578 years ago if you understand what i'm talking about so what little by little the way you take that ground back you try to identify with your soul harley what robin weinbridge said was he said start saying hey you want to do this that voice that i'm hearing about wanting to go to sleep about want to take that drink about wanting to snap at my mom about you know you fill in the blank start to recognize hey that is not the aspiration of my soul that's coming from my body's desire for comfort that's really the next step you want to start differentiating between your soul and your body okay differentiating very similar to the first level periscope up this is a little definer differentiate and start to side start to identify with your soul now partly like i said before whenever you do something good say hey i just listened to my soul i feel really good about that i am a soul okay very very important because then what happens is you'll your body and soul will kind of be like this you'll make a you're like space it'll be much easier for you to make the right decisions much it'll be much easier for you and all of us to become sensitive to spirituality because spirituality is really talking to that soul now i also think it's a good idea if you can there are so many books out there in the jewish market today uh even philosophies of speaker series which talk about the soul you know and most jewish musser books classical ones masol shashari but you can go to any jewish bookstore if you do anything about self-growth or the soul you can be sure that's a book trying to help you train into the aspirations of your soul in other words instead of just um battling in this battle that i'm talking about how about putting on some armor and look at that there's a a verse in the psalms it says surme rav asi tov veer away from evil and do good there's two aspects of judaism stopping the negative and doing the positive so when these bodies trying to ambush you and i give you these tips that's staying away from the negative but how about enriching your environment with spirituality which is speaking to the soul in other words any jewish book you have that speaks about the soul and who you really are is something i think you should be reading on like a daily basis to remind yourself and ingrain i am a soul i am a soul now i want to just tell you a few different different things that i've done or that might be helpful to people or my wife's done there's a jewish um spirituality series called sod soda adam the secrets of a human being it's by a rabbitson in israel famous rebecca she has thousands of women doing this and it's just this work it's work without knowing your soul it's literature and torah about the soul is trying to get you to side with your soul does this fascinating thing can you please put it inside the chat she says that when people are young and their parents their parents give them a sense of god in a very healthy way then they they tend to end up being very healthy people and the parents give them a very secure feeling and um that's connected to to god it's a very beautiful thing it's called sewed hot i'll get you the information maybe we'll maybe we'll put it out um maybe we will um be trying to write it down we will put it on uh send it out an email soda ha dumb secret of man that's what it really means but anyway she has an exercise and it's called targula moon right and just don't want to belabor it but the way she gets at your strengths is she says you have to look at your weaknesses you have to look at a lot of these things like we're talking about the it's a hurrah the body things and flip them because she says every time you have a weakness it's really tipping you off there's a hidden strength below it right so and then she says turn it around to a statement an aspirational statement but give an example of an aspirations my wife did this for like two years i'll give you an aspirational statement and that was in one of the books listen to this but it was gotten that by looking at a person's negative character flipping it around and trying to identify with let me show you let me give you an example because i know who i am i am good selfless person who is loving at ease accepting of others offering encouragement and positivity i engage in i engage in life with resist which means alacrity like i go for it idealism and responsibility with a sense of adventuring curiosity i'm an open person who's secure happy and content with myself sensitive to others deep feeling and full of simcha i have harmony order a healing orientation and passion okay that's a statement it's like an affirmational statement that who this person is right so imagine that every day you the idea was to do this twice a day to meditate on it really say this i am then it says as a summary i believe in myself that i'm good and that my value is not dependent on my accomplishments or success often we fall into i believe in myself i'm good my value not dependent on my accomplishments i connect to the pain of feeling like a failure meaning not measuring up to the statement and i accept myself in the gap okay now it's a fascinating approach this is like i said before is trying to we call this muscle to get yourself to believe in real important true concepts so i just want to suggest this is a good approach to get either a book or course of study which fills your spiritual environment with positive affirmation i want to show you something else this is a psychological modality i don't know if this is backwards on you i don't know is that backwards or is it it's or is it right upside up it says no bad parts i don't know now it looks uh i don't know my my book my book looks backwards but any of it this is a actual uh a a uh psychological framework it's called internally iss ifs is a it's a modality of therapy my wife actually is a therapist and this is the modality she's found most helpful to people it's called ifs internal family systems i'll write it down for anybody ifs and the book i'm holding was no bad parts now it's fascinating because it really traces the idea that we're all very healthy we have this beautiful soul but we have these parts of us which may be from other psychology psychological terminology dependent parts which maybe weren't so healthy which kind of they fight with each other but we don't realize that they're not really who we are and what this ifs therapy does is it is it has the self almost come out like the parents with his parents their own family that's why it's called the internal family system imagine a healthy parent parenting their children the right way with love and security right and then that kid would be healthy so this is a model therapy which actually has a person parent themselves but what happens is which is fascinating is the soul comes out the soul of a person comes out and in this therapeutic model which is fascinating the the self the actual self is loving compassionate sensitive and wise it has all the answers in other words it doesn't need a self-help book it doesn't need anything it's got all the answers inside of themselves now this is a torah concept and it was fascinating to me that this ifs therapy system came onto that and i know one of the my wife introduced me to one of the therapists and he told me he said somehow i used to be an atheist they said i can't be an atheist now because i see there's such a thing as an ashama such a thing as a soul and that's obviously connected to something higher says i don't know what i am now i'm certainly not an atheist that's another approach it's called ifs it's a great book no bad parts and i suggest anybody wants to read about you like psychology do that as well but the point is that whatever we can do to strengthen our attachment to our soul and habituate that that is going to help us win this battle and it's going to get us back to adam and eve post the hate syndicate in the garden to be which is the ultimate goal to rectify mankind that's what we're talking about here rectification of the human being and remember what i said robin warburg is a very practical suggestion talk yourself off the ledge let your soul start talking to your body have a conversation it might be stilted initially but hey we really don't want to be not nice to mom right now you know if you have a problem and you're impatient and i don't want to change my new body i'll deal with you later but right now i'm going to deal with mom even the dialogue what it does it distances you from the the battle of the body and soul my wife told me ifs just noticing your parts that also means your soul is starting to emerge if you didn't notice a part there'd be no separations from you and it's so it's fascinating okay that's that the last level of free will the highest level of free will is oh i want to make one more comment before we get to the highest level the goal is inner peace you know when when you use your free will properly you'll be at peace why do i say that everybody wants to be at peace but what i mean by that remember this is a battle right so there's two ways this battle could go either your body can say hey you know what if you eat that chocolate cake we'll be at peace we'll be comfortable we'll be okay we'll be good and that's what it does it tries to jewel you into siding with that comfort now the problem is doesn't work if it worked it'd be great it doesn't work okay and the soul though says no there's a different way to get inner peace it's not following the comfort of the body it's lifting the body into the aspirations of the soul see and the soul will never quit the body can be co-opted in other words i made i mentioned this two weeks ago when i first went jogging i hated it 16 years old i tried to jog for an edge in my tennis career i hated it you know after a while my body got into jogging it liked to run it woke me up to go running i think you can all identify with that instances where you've stuck to a program or there was exercise or diet or whatever it was and your body actually really got into it and the passion of the body was on your side that's what we're talking about here you want to lift your body into the aspiration of the soul right my wife would say just like the the body doesn't say hey eat that whole piece eat that whole cake there's a cake here you can eat the whole thing most of us don't go for it i would never eat the whole cake but what does the body say just have a sliver just have a little piece we'll start the diet tomorrow whatever it is it it goes bit by bit and then after and then you look up after it is gone now robert would say why don't we do that from the soul side just say hey you know what i'm just gonna not um eat that cake today tomorrow i could do it you know what i'm gonna run a quarter mile usually i go three miles but you know what i don't have time today so instead of just doing nothing i'm gonna go a quarter mile and you know what you go a quarter mile usually says hey you might as well go another quarter mile or you know you're up to three miles you would say use that trick for the soul as i said before then you're gonna build muscles the soul and identify with the soul every time you win you have to say yay soul yay soul i'm a soul very very important to identify start identifying with the soul the last thing is to realize that the ultimate in free will is not just to side with your soul is to identify with god because what is your soul your soul is really a connection to hashem that is the ultimate goal that's the ultimate pleasure you're having samson in your last module he did the five levels of free will so the fifth the first level of freedom was love of god the greatest pleasure you can get in the world is love and the love of the infinite creator if you knew them you didn't have the greatest love affair in the world that's why song of songs is a is a passionate love song between a man and a woman it's really an outfit for by the jewish people that's the possibility we have here so then you're supposed to ratchet up from the second level for the first level not only am i a soul and not only am i identifying myself i'm identifying with god in the most intimate way i'm doing this because god wants me to do it i'm doing it because i'm i'm i'm fulfilling his will i'm doing it i'm connecting to my love for god that is the ultimate access point for free will get up to the point where i'm doing it not just because i'm assault not just because it's a great way to live not because it's just because i'm i'm actualizing my potential but no i'm connected to the creator of the universe that's the highest level of free will so when you pray when you're in synagogue and when god's name is mentioned you can say you know god i'm doing this because i i want to take a step towards you that's why i'm doing this now we it's a very good plan for this lady by the way because this weekend on shabbat we're entering the month of ello is an acronym for anila dodie it's a time when hashem's close and it's a time we could feel this closeness and this love so if we use this month you know properly even if we this month try to employ these five levels of free will you would end up at the end of the month with a greater love for god a greater closeness like that particularly this month because he's close now so he assists us it's like we have you know the jet stream you know the behind the plane when you go um from east to west is it's quicker to get to california to come back because the jet stream is behind you so the jet stream spiritual jet stream of life is god and his his wind which is going to the east to the west is starting to blow this shabbat with a very very very important opportunity and uh for everybody to try to get in touch with that opportunity those are the five loads of freeboats just a quick summary first levels periscope up get on top of your choices second level is also evaluate your social conditioning you know make sure that your idea is make sure you're behind them right if not these two things don't listen you know and be a robot third level is where you make your money understand free will is a battle between you want to do versus what you feel like doing what the soul wants worse versus what the body feels like doing feels like his most uh described by comfort if you feel your life's mostly about comfort realize you're not going to get the greater pleasures of life which are all about struggle and effort to actualize your potential those are going to be the greater higher pleasures to do you want sometimes it takes effort right so you got to take that pain to get the gain you know like the gym no pain no gain that's very true in the spiritual world that's level three the most important level make sure you know your free will struggles what you want first what you feel like the person who they want more often than what you feel like is going to become a great person it's going to come outside that's three levels the fourth level or the second level if you want to go backwards is identify with your soul the whole reason we got in this mess in the first place is we got mixed up between who we were a soul or a body this is unpacking and unblending and soul from the body the more you identify with the soul the more you will win your free will battles and then the more you will connect to hashem and i think in this level when you do something good you do something you want to do make sure you acknowledge that was my soul that was my beautiful pristine precious soul and then the highest level is realize that soul is just a portion of god and the highest level of free will is do it because hashem commanded you to do it it's going to bring you close to him it's going to make you like him it's going to give you the infinite pleasure of love of god okay those are the five levels of free will this next month starting on shabbat gives you a great opportunity to test this out because god's close to us so any gains that you make this next month will be i likely be gains that have that really stick with us so my my brother and everybody you should have lots of fun make sure lots of success everybody should have a good bench you are you should have a very uh good new year with a very very good judgment and you're a big bang like i mentioned in the beginning but free will should be fast you should have a greater much greater big bang of soul potential than you did before at a greater range of opportunity to really become all hashem wanted you all to be