Q&A Being Moshe, Visualizing Hashem, & True Love (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy)

okay q a um so I was wondering um does that mean that it be challenged proportional that uh all people are awarded equally for their challenges is a proportional to the what you could do and also we're able to say that certain challenges are harder and if also that premise is is how can we actually how should we be viewing challenges that people receiving their life not quite sure I got all all the details of the question but first of all yes um the principle is you are able to succeed in meeting every challenge but you have to read that proposition backwards it doesn't mean it doesn't mean every obstacle you can overcome even though it looks impossible to you but it can't be impossible because God doesn't ask things from you that are impossible no it means the other way around it means some obstacles that are in your way are possible if you say overcome some obstacles in your way are impossible for you to overcome and the obstacles that are in your way that are impossible to overcome aren't challenges only the obstacles that are possible to become are challenges no if they're impossible to overcome then they're not challenges otherwise God would be shooting you in the foot and he doesn't do that that means you can make the judgment as to which obstacles are possible for you to overcome which not this isn't infallible you will make mistakes yes and they could be biased yes yes but there is a difference between the obstacles which are possible to overcome which are impossible to overcome if you have difficulty making the decision then ask for help ask for for uh to take counsel with someone often people who are I've seen people like you develop can say this is not for you right now this will be for you two years from now right now you shouldn't be investing in that so this is the difference between possible and impossible if it's impossible not a challenge often when you when you're facing an obstacle which is impossible to overcome the challenge is to live with your inability to overcome it rather than to beat your head against it in an endless uh endless frustration because you think you have to overcome it so someone says I read about the golden he studied 18 hours a day on a bad day a good day was 20 hours a day so I'm a failure I'm an utter terrible disaster because I if I could say three hours without losing concentration that's a good day for me no you're not you're not supposed to do what the building God was doing at least at this moment in time it's impossible for you to do what the building did um there are many sources that that indicate this um and I've I've talked about it before the two places and the Rambo and other places now having said that are all challenges equally difficult to overcome and is the how does that relate to the rewards you get for overcoming it now of course not equally easy to overcome you know that and some people when they get started studying Torah they get so off basis so off balance and they think I don't know maybe maybe marshmallows are butterflies I don't know you know the system is so different it's so difficult It Isn't So Different it isn't so difficult and your normal judgments about life most of them are correct um and you know very well that it is not possible for you to start speaking Chinese tomorrow it's also not possible to just to get onto a unicycle and ride it now and it's not possible for you to play Flight of the Bumblebee on a on a tuba because the two of them won't allow it and you know there are things that are impossible to do or impossible for you to do at the present moment now obviously some things are harder and than other things uh uh you see someone and he says hello and you're distracted and you're thinking about something or you're not in a good mood and your mind says yeah but it's not his fault that I'm not in a good mood so you say okay I'll uh you know and you put on a smile and you say good morning I compare that to someone who insults you brutally in public in a very embarrassing way and because you're from Texas you have your right fist ready you know to rectify the situation and you have to overcome your uh your impulse and maybe your Habit to solve these problems in a certain way and that's much harder than just saying hello to the guy so of course there are some that are harder and some they're easier we have a rule that the more difficult it is to do the right thing the more reward you get for doing the right thing because you invested more more effort so obviously not all challenges are equal the severity of the challenges overall can be more than someone else well I don't know if we can measure amount of severity in any coin that's that's common for for all um but let's put it this way because gerrymanders your circumstances and the events that occurred to you so as they give you the maximum opportunity to develop yourself spiritually now this is like those old stories based on a maze you know if you're choose between a and b and choose a then the next choice is between C and D if you choose B then the next choice between p and Q because the choice you made makes the next step relevant and it defines the next relevant step for your progress so there's no question that different people will have different paths and different pairs will have different qualities but at each stage at each when you make a decision that's the decision at that your stage which will be the one that can contribute most to your continuing development that we can say so people or Egypt two people are able to overcome the challenges in their life can we say that for instance one would be rewarded more for the challenges that they overcome just because that were more difficult they are well you think about the challenge I mean life is filled with unaccountable challenges you mean some total of all challenges uh no the the Rumba says that people a person has free will has the ability to be equally righteous to Moses Moses being the top of righteousness and that would mean that everyone has opportunity through his lifetime to achieve the Pinnacle so not going to be gerrymandered so that because I gave you these challenges you're going to be subpar because that's not that's not correct yeah so so I'll ask just quickly isn't there a sense if we have an idea of reincarnation maybe you can because of past actions in your life you can in previous lives you can limit your access to the Pinnacle in a subsequent life or is it that you you're facing the same test as if someone who was going into it fresh okay reincarnation is a big um a big I don't have to be sorry I'm just apologizing for the fact that I'm not going to speak now for three hours um but I'll tell you this which I think will give you a different perspective on it one of the things that I read out says like this the the Sharma is divided up into different features like everything's divided up let's just pick an arbitrary number let's say it's divided into 10 features it is and also to fit into into 1613 and other divisions I'm not done let's throw out 10 features now in your lifetime you're given opportunities to perfect Yuna Sharma your soul Perfect all ten let's say you have partial success you perfect all but one four and nine then in reincarnation only one four and nine come back the ones that are perfected are sequestered they're taken off and put in storage no chance is taking that something which was perfected becomes damaged one four and I can come back each separately now you say now wait a second a soul it's composed of 10 pieces you have three pieces of One Piece they don't have a soul and you don't have a person ah but you see oh each piece subdivides into 10. piece four is composed of piece 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 it is a microcosm of a whole soul so four can get back by itself and inhabit the body and play the role of a person and go through a lifetime and the same thing repeats it has 10 pieces and each of the ten pieces all ten could become perfected if some are they are taken off and the ones remain are I come back for another Incarnation so we're playing a game of successful successive approx a successful approximation successive uh assistive achievement and you can't get to the point where you finish up the job and then they're all and they're all perfected but now they're all split and they're split into different personalities so um there's no choice there's no chance of losing what you have what you have accomplished the only chance of of improving the purpose of reincarnation is to improve now there are the original has like 300 pages on reincarnation so I'm not pretending I don't have read it well I don't understand it or I'm just giving you a snippet and uh subjective further investigation yeah when we say that everyone has a pleasure to be as as we mean that throughout their lifetime at every given moment that that's true or like at the beginning of their lifetime or how does that work because like someone's about to die right and they're not like Mojo how can we say that that's true now you see I didn't say like I didn't say level I said Sonic okay that's rumbum's worth Ram's word is Sadiq so comments on this rhombum which is the beginning of chapter 5 of Hilton um he comes and says if I would served with all my strength for a thousand years I wouldn't come up to Moses ankles so what did the zarama mean it doesn't mean that your achievement your performance would be equal to Moses performance you'll be the greatest prophet of all time pushed Moses off the pedestal right and violate one of our principles of faith um I think and the greatest leader and so forth and so on no what it means is I could serve because with all my strength just as Moses certainly has broken with all his strength if I did it I would be equally exotic because Tariq means you did everything that you could do means you used your potential you used your abilities your resources in the best possible way possible for you performance depends upon what resources you were given what talents you have what powers you have we aren't given equal talents and resources so it would be utterly unjust to say you get 40 resources and your ceilings c ah you're condemned because well it doesn't play that game he gives you resources he judges you on the way in which you use the resources that you're given problem is saying that each person could use his resources ideally just as Moses used his resources ideally now let's reflect that's coming to the details of your question let's reflect that each person a person's in progress Moses made mistakes made mistakes he was punished for them of course and repaired them in the way that you've repaired them all of us make mistakes no person righteous in the earth who will do good and not fail so we're talking now about the State achieved at the end given the processes that went into achieving it and if there are failures then the failure should be repaired if they're repaired they won't count against the person at the end so I think that we're talking about the end State and some people take longer to get to the end State something longer to repair the things that that have gone wrong and that some total life then could be equally righteous to the to that of Moses that's what that's what Ramadan says and that's what ramaphan said about so it's really that if a person uses his life ideally even if he makes mistakes and he he covers those up like in the best possible way that's what he uses all the resources that's what the Rama means I think so yeah that's it white during the Amita is there like a right like they say like when you when you're dominating the amida and you're taking the steps forward you're answering his Palace right and you see the palace you see everything else like in your imagination but I can't really see him like how do you try to make enough connection there you know um yeah I was wondering how seriously using the word visualize I wouldn't rely on visual visual qualities at all um if you like imagine a person who's blind from birth doesn't have sight but he's read what you've read and he understands but you understand the Bible and he told he tells it when he takes the three steps forward it's coming into hashem's presence he won't have any visual picture of it because there's no visual pictures at all that doesn't mean he's going missing out on awe on Focus on that sense of enormous opportunity a sense of closeness all those things you can experience without visual pictures so I don't think that visual pictures are going to help even for the palace you know you can take the descriptions for the beginning of the Book of Esther right you know the Onyx and the chaplings the tapestry and everything else I think that would just be distracting indeed if you look in the where it describes the experience of prayer it reads like a attracted on meditation he says you lose consciousness of your surroundings you lose your sense of the physical at all altogether you're you're engrossed in an experience which eclipses the physical altogether okay so although at a certain stage in development maybe a visual imagery would help but I don't think that's the ideal the ideal is to sense a presence which and which for example a blind person could could sense also without without any image of hero yeah so if we think about long-term gratification not instant gratification is our long-term gratification but the thing we should have in mind is that the thing we should be working towards in the long run yeah so this is a very important question and uh I'll just say talk about a couple of sources about it should you have in mind that your goal is to achieve and use the word gratification and I I would I think it's not a bad word I would use it with pleasure also the description of all of my ball is which means enjoying the shine of the presence of the screen of God's presence whatever that means ultimately but there's definitely kind of enjoyment now um the Roman rights in chapter 10 of the laws of repentance that the ideal is to served out of love for the master who commanded what you're doing amazing and he specifically says ideally you don't do it for any selfish motivation including the world to come he says that word for word that's the ideal not to do it even for the world to come now if a person what I want to tell you now is summary and this could be tricky and there could be other conditions that they put in but generally not everybody's on that level indeeda Rumba himself says that's a level that takes enormous amount of effort and time to achieve in the meantime you may be serving God out of the desire for a reward reward and Punishment naturally motivate that doing that to trip us up it's just that at a certain point you should graduate beyond that but if you haven't gotten to that point yet to do it for the reward that he's promising you and to avoid the punishment that he's threatening you with certainly makes your your actions correct you do satisfy the Mitzvah and you will get rewarded for that it's just I would call it a kind of immature type of of service of God so um now also says in chapter 9 chapter 8 and 9 of the world's repentance that it is appropriate to desire being in the world to come desire is something that's appropriate for a human being Tava in Hebrew which has a Bad Name titler by Evil Dead you know but of course Brooke was described as having titles so they can't be all bad wealthy because I've desired it because desires the prayers of the sale the human being should have to Avo for the world to come but that shouldn't be what's pushing him to do the Mitzvah ideally now finally um there's something which I'll just get a couple of emails about this last week so since there's a confusion about if you look at the basilia the path of the just in the first chapter he says a person has to know that he was created for his position in the world to come everything you do here is in order to get into the world to come everything should be done and measured by its ability to get you into the world to come so you read that you say Godly but I don't know where you're coming from he just told me that you're supposed to be doing it out of love of the master who commanded it now you're telling me to do it for the to to get the world to come that's not what it says this I heard the name of Jacob Weinberg Baltimore that's not what it says what it says there is this a person has to know what is his obligation in this world application what is he required to do and the answer is you know what your obligation is what you're required to do by asking what God's purpose was in creating you what does he want for you what he wants for me is what I'm obligated to do because he wants it and then it says his purpose in creating you is that you should get into the world to come so that gives me my obligation to get into the world to come that doesn't talk about my motivation people can have many different kinds of motivations for satisfying their obligations she was obligated to pay taxes why is he pay taxes some people pay because they're honest some people say it's because they're afraid of being caught some people pay because they know that they'll gain somebody's respect obligation motivation are two different things obligations of moral thing and motivation psychological the same as the showroom says in chapter 18 that your motivation should be to please August that's the motivation why am I doing it I'm doing it to please him what am I doing you know what I'm doing I'm doing what he wants me to do what does he want me to do he wants me to get into the world to come so of course I'm doing it because I want to please him so the first chapter is not describing my motivation first chapter is dividing sorry my obligation the contradiction between them whatsoever so the bottom line is if you serve them for a reward including the world to come you have you have done to service you'll get credit for it and you will get it but you should try to graduate to the point where you don't use the anything selfish including the world to come as the motivation for for doing what he commands you to do we've spoken a few times thank you about the what what's the word okay wondering what type of sources or what type of relationship a Jewish person should have in order to to understand how that muscle actually works and affects his life okay so there's a big literature on this and and a lot of it is misunderstood the word masal comes to the word nausea which means to flow but that means a flow when you heard something happened something could happen to someone you say Mazel Tov what you're saying is you are experiencing a good flow it's not good luck and it's not you know Sagittarius in the sky is benefiting you out of his beneficence it means you are experiencing a good flow just like if so in in the secular World a says to be uh I got a raise at my job so somebody would say that's great what is he doing he's describing the situation as having a certain value a certain certain virtue and he's that and by describing it that way he's empathizing with the person he's he's showing that he that he shares the person's excitement about it that's great a Jew says to another Jew that is a good flow from heaven and he's doing the same thing he's identifying with the person and saying it's wonderful to hear that you are receiving this good flow from heaven now there are Heavenly forces and they do flow and they do in fact have an effect on on our activities the Stars play a role in mediating that flow it isn't that the stars have power nothing has power the Creator is giving everything its existence and its energy and its as activity from the very beginning but it's something in the in the flow chart of the distribution of the Divine energy the Stars play a role in that way um he uses them as a channel let's put it that way so uh that's all that you should be thinking about is that there is this flow from above and by doing the right thing you access some of that flow and you also stimulate some of that flow good thing you know when I when I use my resources properly in the moment so um is Hashem affected by that I guess it depends is that what you mean by affected um let's see let's imagine you know you're you're playing squash so you're throwing the ball at a wall and you have these bits so now when you throw the ball at the wall doesn't always come back at the same angle does it no it depends upon the angle you throw it at are you affecting the world well you know I mean sort of it's true that the wall the wall throws the ball back at different angles but the wall is a is a is a body with a certain physical structure operating according to a certain physical Rule and the rule is the angle of incidence is actually angular and accident it's just equal angles on a flat surface preset so it's pretty the the reaction to the stimulus is preset okay so in a certain sense because Miracle has principles for dealing with the world and these principles many of them are conditional principles one principle is if a happens then a star will follow and the other principle is B happens B Star will follow and somebody says well this time God provided a star and that time God provided a b star so then he changed it I changed him and so forth and so on no because both conditional principles were always involved and you provided a the first time you provided B the second time you didn't affect him even those results that you got from him were different results this is the answer to the question with prayer people pray people say prayer I'm asking him for something am I trying to change his mind so when you ask yourself the what you presume is that you're asking could play a role in the outcome if you were guaranteed that you're asking like no impact on the outcome you wouldn't ask and that's why I would never tell us to do something that's absurd so we say Well it means I'm imagining that it's at least possible that if I don't ask about get if I do ask I will get so I might it might I might try to change his mind if I don't ask I won't get that means he's made up his mind he doesn't want to give me now I'm asking sorry Yet which means that I have to change his mind isn't that true no it's not true the logic is wrong his because preset condition can be I've decided that if he doesn't ask he doesn't get if he does ask he does get so when you ask and you get Ever changed his mind his mind always was if he doesn't ask he doesn't get it if he does ask he does get mind stays exactly the same and what happens to you depends about which of the two conditional principles you trigger by what you do so I think that's that's yeah I think I think the only sad part I see in that is that there's a you can imagine a world where everybody maximized their Free Will properly as opposed to one where they didn't and they modeled along the way I know people make mistakes and so on and that's built into it but it seems like from hashem's side of things it's the same reaction maybe right there at the outset of creation versus the outcome where all the people in the system make the proper choices or do their absolute best versus the one where they're more mediocre and do badly well I don't know if this is the question you're asking there it's put usually in more metaphysical terms uh maybe maybe the same Dynamic and if so it's a very difficult question I don't know if we have a adequate answer to it there's a concept of divine hiddenness and progress towards revealing God and um there is idea that the more hidden the more effort is required and the bigger accomplishment of Revelation so now you ask well what about in Canada they were given the tree had they succeeded in keeping the Mitzvah of the tree that would have been the end of our history from the end of free will the end of striving would have all been accomplished going from there into the next world they failed which brought great concealment into the world revealing now is a much much more concealed world it sounds like the potential for accomplishment of Revelation has gone up tremendously so it would mean that without their failure this opportunity wouldn't have been available to us that doesn't sound right it doesn't sound right they end up with a second rate um accomplishment if they do it right as opposed to the accomplishment that they could have had and actually did happen by doing it wrong not only says let me think about this for a second my mind is not crunching the numbers Maybe hmm maybe it's not so maybe there's an extra premise here hmm if you imagine them experiencing 20 concealed and had they done what they needed to do that have gone to 100 revealed those from 80 to 100 and then going into the world to come and what happened was they failed the world deteriorated to 70 concealed only 30 revealed and for us to manage to get to qualify go to the world to come we would have to achieve 100 revealed that we would have gone from 30 to 100 whereas had they succeeded they'd have gone from 80 to 100 our college would have been much greater and therefore I mean would mean that their failure made possible for us a greater accomplishment that sounds nuts okay but maybe maybe that's the wrong picture maybe the picture is had they succeeded they'd have gone from 80 to 100 the world deteriorated it's now sitting at 30 and we can't get to a hundred and we're not required to get to a hundred maybe we're only required to get from 30 to 50. in the condition of Greater concealment but we won't be doing more than they did what we're doing is moving 20 notches up the reveal Revelation ladder the rest of it will be done will be done automatically after we get to 50. and I'm beginning to think this is true I hope I'm not just excited about a new idea I believe this is true because the question is in the ramaha's picture of how things work the question is asked this way imagine you they're incarnated right and they have a challenge they have to get to achieve a goal so imagine traveling a path now halfway down the path there's a crash and they end up detouring into the swamp and now they lost to the swamp you might think what they need to do is two things first of all get back on the road and then finish the finish the trip on the road but that's wrong that's wrong for sure all of the secondary challenges in the swamp if you succeed in the challenge in the swamp you're put back on the road and driven to the end there's no Second Challenge on the road that's for sure now if I take that and apply it here it could be that the accomplishment won't be a bigger accomplishment it'll be a context of Greater hiddenness it will be a con an accomplished within a different context with a different type of challenge but not a qualitatively greater accomplishment and therefore the reward won't be any greater the reward this this relates to the idea that you know you play with chess with a chess master uh he could say you're going to lose and when you lose you'll have exactly one bishop and one Knight and and six Pawns and he can work it out he can make that happen but he can't predict the exact path of moves because that depends upon the moves you choose but he'll work it out that a little guy he'll end up that way no matter what you choose he'll find a path to the end to the same end so sometimes they say that about about the way because Rojo runs the world the pathway is it can vary because we make different choices but he manipulates the consequences and the new choices such a way that we get to the same end so maybe maybe that's a way to solve the problem yes there's greater concealment yes worth the case that we in the greater concealment would have the power to overcome the entire concealment we would have accomplished more than they would have accomplished but that's not given to us just like the the trip down the road and gone Aiden isn't under our control anymore we're not chased it with that at all that's taken away from us we work only at the lower level so that it could be that the amount of revelation of cons of concealment that we that we accomplish is not different in amount it's just different in context and different in quality so and that wouldn't that would that might be a solution if that's a solution then I've had a good day a very good day yeah exist now or like the I mean I can see them develop the level of revelation we have now at least the Lesser form of it has to do with the fact that we're not worthy for it I was curious about the content we would hold to um that we're not that we're not at the level of which we're able to still receive that uh Revolution well now you said two things and they're not synonymous when you say we're not that level that could be have nothing to do with worth at all that could be how you're created I don't want you to receive it because I have something else for you to do that would have nothing being Worthy uh it would be the challenge that you are chosen to uh to address um the amount of concealment and the particular places where the concealment applies varies from generation to generation and from person to person and it has a big effect on free will for the generation that left Egypt the choice between belief and Atheism didn't exist atheism wasn't an option they saw too much that would be a choice between believing that there are tables and not believing in their tables you don't have that choice so you say well but in our generation we do have that choice that's true because of course set up different conditions so he wanted a certain generation to face the temptation of atheism and another Temptation another generation not to face that temptation that has nothing to do with being worthy that has to do with what he needs to accomplish in the world you know I say this guy is is an infantry and that guy is in submarine he's the guy in submarine more Worthy now we just need people fighting on Landing people fighting under the water I don't need people fighting everywhere you know and people are assigned to different jobs because different jobs need to be done they were being Worthy uh whether on how stresses in detail he he wasn't really an outlier in in in kabbalistic terms but I I haven't seen it in other places that persons assigned to a certain function in the world to a certain challenges in the world and that can dictate something about his circumstances which is absolutely nothing to do with his Merit nothing at all a person could be put into the world to sanctify God's name for position of poverty or sickness or or war or whatever it is and he could be the greatest Sonic in the world won't happen because that's what he was put here to do so when you look at a person's circumstances you can't read from the circumstances what his Merit is or what his worth is because some of them are dictated by the circumstances there's a taste of some place which talks about it this flow we were talking about before divides it into two types is the flow from above that supports and directs you in your ultimate challenge what you were created for and the masotactone is what supports you in terms of the means that you can make use of to fulfill that ultimate challenge if you are dissatisfied with the conditions that are related to your ultimate Challenge and you pray to God with all your heart nothing will happen because that's what you're putting for too bad that's not changeable but if you pray to God for about things which are only a means that could change that could change so if that's what it gives the example of someone who's put into the world to work on promoting study of Torah and he's in a little town poor town and he's a malamist he teaches kids in the in the Haider you know seven-year-olds that's how he's making his contribution to the study of Terror and he prays to God that he wants to be a sailor or he wants to be work on Wall Street or whatever it is it's not going to happen not going to happen but supposedly pays for money could be that he'll somehow come into a great deal of money and move to the big city and then people will solicit him to support institutions of Torah study and he will make his contribution to the social study that way so the money is a question of a means it's not the end but being about Torah rather than being a sailor or a Wall Street broker that's his ultimate that's his ultimate goal you have this in a famous verse where it's shmuel is talking to King Saul and he says to him God's uh is us and he's uh he's so to speak changed his mind about you as king he's taken away the king to give it to somebody better and he's given to somebody better and that person has it it's going to be permanent because God doesn't change his mind now the attentive reader says hey wait a second you just said he does take his bike and I say he doesn't change his mind God is not like man to change his mind man God's in his mind so the accommodate is explained Souls being King was only a means Saul is not from the tribe of Judah Kings have to go from the tribe of Judah the next one is David David has to be king he had a role to play a preliminary role to play and had he not failed when David became king he could have been the ruler of a province to be a ruler unto David that could have been but he sacrificed his position as a means to getting to David and that's why it was taken away from him but as far as David is concerned he's from the tribe of Judah he's going to be the fourth leg of the chair support that can't be changed because that's the purpose of the creation where his soul was on the amines means can be changed purposes can't be changed that's what purposes can't be changed so this is roughly what's going on yeah um so does that does that like um does that theory or believe does that say that if he were to like move to like an ocean Like a Beach town and buy a boat and start sailing that it would ultimately come crashing down on him and it wouldn't work out or he'd lose his way at Sea and and find himself in Morocco where there's a school that needs a teacher and he'll end up being a teacher because he can't support himself any other way he's going to be involved in dormitory it's not going to work so based on that could you figure out your your purpose in life by by basically like filling things out and trying different things and seeing what works and what doesn't I don't think so I don't think so um there's a wonderful Britannic was a great thinker and Cisco society says imagine two cases a person chooses to go he chooses a means to the goal he dedicates himself to the means faithfully and he and he works as hard as he can and he is phenomenally successful he's ahead of schedule an unexpected allies come to give him support and he accomplishes double what do you deduce from that that he was doing what it was broken wanted no maybe he's giving him enough rope to hide himself on the other hand the person chooses the means and chooses the end and he's working on it and everything goes wrong obstacles arise and his allies desert him and and he that he loses the properties and so on do you conclude from that that what that his choice is wrong absolutely not maybe because Brooklyn wanted to make it harder so that the accomplishment is a greater accomplishment you don't read the signs that's like really tea leaves or you know or reading the entrails of birds we don't do that and these those exact examples that he gives abramovino on his way to the Acadia to the sacrifice of Isaac the southern creates in front of him a giant River he didn't say oh good I can go home he waded out in the river up to his neck and he said he brought us the Lord you told me to go I'm going and the river disappeared so you don't we don't read the signs we could have broken gave us a rule book we didn't have to read the signs and interpret and hypothesize and theorize and guess and then test by you know verify by our own testing he gave us rules the rule book is where you look for directions to what actually needs to be done yeah let's say that I'm a Jew who cares about the truth and is concerned with that but I'm also you know debauched in my natural nature tilts me way afield from Judaism uh and I'm trying to outweigh these possibilities and so I I see that the case for Judaism might be the more likely one you know that Hashem orchestrates history in this particular way with this particular plan um but I when I Square it up against you know the infinite total of alternative possibilities and so I get a number out of it right like even as great as that one rational potential is like five percent that Hashem Guides of the world and it's his hand that leads it but I am 95 even if they're all smaller than that five percent together they kind of gang up and Outsource that one and then I have this inherent um drive that naturally makes me want to just ignore the five percent and pursue my whims how do I navigate that situation what do you think is the way to smash that apart I'm not sure that what you described is what's going on in your mind let's let's just add a little bit more detail so you've got five percent against 95 yeah now let's imagine that works like this there are 96 alternatives 95 of which have each one percent and one has five percent now imagine they are possible cures for a disease that you're suffering you're going to take the five percent because you got to take one of them you can't take all 95 there are alternatives so they're Alternatives the five still wins against the 95. so the thing in the wings is this desire to ignore the whole picture if I can and just pursue when and so that's outside of the the 95 96 and the four well it shouldn't be if if this is the sum total of Alternatives that there are for the picture in the universe then by by following your whims you'll be accessing number 32 and then accessing number 47 and accident number nine right and if you'll be jumping around on the graph but each one of them that you access with each of your actions has a one percent probability of being of being correct and the last one has a five percent probability of being correct you ask me what you should do what would you do if this is which is cures for a disease you'd obviously choose the one with five percent so the truth doesn't divorce from the pleasure in a sense that's part of the answer there jumping around but I didn't say about the pleasure you just women they may have nothing to do with pleasure you know that's what I'm that's what I'm framing it as like my pleasure runs against the life that the five percent would lead okay so then uh who was saying this before about long-term and short-term you know you were saying right so I I think there uh I hope that you don't think it's appropriate to access short-term Pleasures against long-term pleasure don't go to school and get an education you know don't don't take care of your diet don't don't you know in certain respects that's that's idiotic right you immediate you meet a girl and you want to marry her and you say well I'm in a hurry would you marry me you're not going to get married you know end the story and there's a little deferred gratification for all success so you no one it throws away the first gratification altogether you know the middle class has some purchase here yeah I would want to understand the role of emotions and how valid or invalid they are God made us with a complicated mixture of logic emotions external right inclination for evil for good we're all made up of such a mix of of external um I guess voices pulling us in different directions emotions often get a bad rap as as just leading us down a bad path or leading us towards our whims or our feelings whatever and again what's really right or really true but then on the other hand it's hard to understand what are they doing there in the first place then and also like how much does God expect us to do what's right while going against our human emotions like like how much how much validity should we give our emotions how much are they valid this is an excellent question there's an excellent excellent question I myself thought of this question a long time ago and I worked hard on it I don't have a fully fully adequate answer I can give you some some pieces I have a whole Shear on the emotions uh maybe I should give it and not do this just the future but I think everything you said is correct and I think you expressed it very well the the Dynamics are there they are part of our our our apparatus um I'll tell you that I think the the global picture that I have and maybe I'll say a little few details the emotions are associated with the body as opposed to the mind but it's a terrible mistake to rebel against being embodied because Burkle created us as body and soul working together so a person who's regrets having a body Rebels against the bodies rebelling against the creation and the one where you see that in your terms is that there are mitzvos for the emotions so if the emotions are the way that you fulfill mitzvos they've got to have a possible a positive role there are even there's even indication you can describe emotions as appropriate or inappropriate or true or false in a certain way even though David human denied this because certain emotions are designed as reactions to certain circumstances and if you have the emotion when the circumstances don't apply then there's something wrong with that emotion not only practically speaking may not be practical at all but for example fear when you're not in danger is inappropriate right um that's straight then there's a logic of emotions um it would be it's if it's incoherent to say that um I got what I was hoping for and that made me disappointed there's an incoherency there something else about it can make you disappointed but to get what you're hoping for it shouldn't lead to disappointment when you get it it should lead to Joy and thankfulness so um there are certain ways in which emotions can be out of touch with the reality that they're supposed to be relating to now we have blessings that we make on such emotions we make a blessing on an emotion that's out of touch with reality um so for example there's a blessing and something that good that happens and something bad that happens the terminal asks what would be if you have something that's both good and bad now there's a variety of ways to do this but the Thomas is just a particular case and the case is where you have a field there's ripe wheat in the field next week you're going to harvest it and you're at the edge of the field there's a river flowing the river overflows it swams the field and destroys the wheat which is obviously bad but in so doing it deposits silt on the field it makes it more productive so the three years and now there's going to be a profit that's good what bracket do you make you know what it says you make the bracha on something bad because you worked eight months on the week and you protected it from from insects and storms and everything else and now you're going to harvest it it goes down the drain you feel terrible about it I your mind knows that three years from now there's going to be a prophet but you don't feel that because your emotions are tied to your bodily existence if you think about it what you're going to do tomorrow is much more emotionally impacting to you than what you're going to do next summer or 10 years from now or what you did last summer or 10 years ago or if an event takes place two miles from your home and the same event takes place a thousand miles from your home you're affected by the one that's close by so the the emotions show the situatedness of the body as opposed to the mind which would say it makes no difference where it is or when it is the mind is is characteristic of the soul for which time and space aren't barriers And the emotions are characteristic of the Body for which time and space are barriers you know you could only see till the next opaque surface um and you go and touch what's your what's your contact with and you can only smell for a certain distance so now when the Torah tells us there are there are blessings for emotions they're out of touch with the reality that the mind is telling you it means that the body is also real the body also is valid being embodied is part of the the purpose for which we are created and therefore you can't turn your turn your back on it so I think you're right the emotions play a necessary role we could even go have the Thomas damasio who says that without emotions you can't be rational there's a whole theory is as a familiarologist says well theory about that um I think that you're you're right that people tend to discard them and to uh and to uh and to um discredit them unnecessarily unnaturally I think this is part of a much bigger picture um it's the difference between reality and illusion I'm sorry reality and appearance people oppose appearance to reality thereby de great appearance that's also incorrect because an appearance is also reality it's just how the thing relates to me rather than how it is in and of itself but how it relates to me just as much an objective fact is how it is in and of itself and both are necessary so for example when Abraham entertains the three guests um as Michael likes whether he knew they were Angels didn't know they were angels so if he did know they were angels why did he offer them a meal and the answer is well I know they're Angels but they appear as people why did God send me angels looking like people because he wanted me to give them a meal it's the appearance that they had that dictates my interaction with them not the reality because the appearance is also a reality it's it's just a different kind of reality so I think that appearances and emotions both are incorrectly degraded what we have to understand is the positive role that they play we have definitely have evidence that they play a positive role and now to do the philosophical job of defining the role and setting it in comparison to other roles and that's something which I have not been able to do in great great detail but this Foundation is a foundation for what the kind of intuitions you are expressing and I think that that's that's where the story lies yeah when I got off the plane like two weeks ago and I walked down to the wall and I put my hand on it I just like broke down crying and I usually don't cry and I know that's a feeling of kadusha but how do I describe that spiritual feeling um I think you're stuck you know how do you describe the taste of strawberries oh here's how you do it it's it's the taste the strawberries I describe it because it's not physical and we can only describe physical I think that's basically right if you think about it the words that we have for non-physical things are often borrowed from the physical let's see that question was it a hard question how hard ER than granite it's harder than diamonds I don't mean hard like that you know was an idea deep idea six miles deep eight miles deep I don't mean deep like that okay but then we need a vocabulary to talk about about feelings and ideas and things that are abstract and we borrow the physical because because we don't have a direct vocabulary for those things right a hard question is one that because things that are hard require a lot of effort to interact with them break them move them so a hard question requires a lot of effort so you should bother the idea of a heart a lot of effort and you use the word hard so I think we really are limited in our ability to describe things other than the physical which includes the emotional and intellectual and um in certain types of sensory experiences if a person had never felt fear there are no words that you would be able to use to communicate to What Fear was you have the experience you get a label but that's that's not describing it that's just you know it's the label like one of my friends grandchildren says I know what olives are when you go to the store there's a jar it says olives that's what the owls are the thing the olives jar well he can pick that I can buy them for you if you want but you know he doesn't know whether they have marbles or whether they're they're pistachios or they're just olives oil IVs so I think I think we're stuck that way I don't think we can we can describe it that way we tried to communicate to someone we do it by comparing it to other experiences but we the direct vocabulary would be very very difficult for us to do yeah last thing I've got to go possible false love last thing uh you know you have some questions which would take a week but um I heard somebody reps in front of what what the morale says about it but this would require a long time to unpack it in two minutes after the upstairs teaching um true love is is where the relationship is not based on anything that I get for myself number one that's a negative what it's based on is what the two of us can make and build together it's not receiving but it's doing it's accomplishing and there's something very precious that we can make and do together that's the ultimate true love now not every project can be love but that's that's the the ballpark in which it lives that's very important thing okay