Tanya (Part 15)

Morning Booker. Welcome back to 10 minutes of meaning with tremendous gratitude to our very generous sponsors Marilyn and Michael Fedak. We're grateful for all that they do. Please help yourself to coffee, slushies, pastries corner and join us for 10 minutes of meaning. Safer Tanya. And this morning we are beginning the third perk. Third perk separates the men from the boys. Third per is uh hardcore to really understand and to get into. Balatana is going to try to dissect to the best of the agre the ability the uh different layers and levels of the nishama of the soul to really get into and to better understand who we are, what we're comprised of. And he takes us on a little detour in order to get there. But he does it to set and create a foundation to build upon. Only when we best know and understand ourselves, who we are, what we're comprised of, what we're made of, can we live a life of a voda, of service to Hashem. So until now, Perrick Olive spoke about the animal soul. An animal soul, the animal impulse, the animal instinct, the animal in us is not something we seek to slaughter or purge or get rid of. We're trying to train, trying to channel, trying to uplift. That's the animal soul. The fact that God can be found inside each and every one of us. We are all an expression, a manifestation, a piece of Hashem. Not hypothetically, not in theory, not just as a beautiful dush, but quite literally. And therefore, instead of looking and searching all over the world for evidence of Hashem's existence, where should we look most? In the mirror. When we look in the mirror, we'll find Hashem inside each and every one of us. Which brings us to each of these three levels of the divine soul. This mamesh this literal piece of God that's found in each and every one of us has three different expressions. Nephesh which is the intellect of the body. The nephesh is we share in common with the animal. It's the body intellect. The body consciousness. The ru which is our emotional intelligence. And the nishama which is our self-conscious, our conscience. The fact that we are a sentient being. We have memory. We have feeling. We have emotion. These three levels of our soul of the godly soul found in us. These three layers of the godly soul found in each and every one of us contain within each of them expression of the 10 spheros. What are these 10 spheros? So again let me give the disclaimer. I'm grossly unqualified to be on this side of the camera. I'm grossly unqualified to be on this side of the table teaching. I'm just learning out loud and trying to grow myself and I'm sharing it with you. And with that disclaimer, imagine if you can imagine if you will picture for yourself a ray of light, an enormously bright light, a ray of light entering a prism. And on the other side of that prism, all of these colors come out, the full colors of the rainbow. One ray of light is going in and on the other side of that ray of light coming out the other side of that prism are all these different colors. All those colors are different expressions are distilled parts of that one ray of light. But the one ray of light is what enters and it comes out. It expresses manifests in these diverse colors. Is the almighty shalom is this endless light we can't comprehend. can't understand but we know is this one endless bright light and he expresses himself. He essentially was himself. He constricted himself. He is able to be accessible to us. That one a that one ray of light enters the prism and on the other end are the 10 spheros. The 10 different manifestations expressions the 10 powers that come out the other side are the distilled way in which Hashem presents himself and makes himself accessible to us. So those 10 spheros are not the totality of Hashem. And when we explore and access him through those spheros, we shouldn't think we have a complete understanding or capturing of him. He is an orain. That one endless light that goes into that other side of the prism is an orain. But he chooses throughum. He reduces he constricts himself. He is able to make himself accessible, available and make us be able to in a limited way understand through expressing himself by entering that prism that distills him into these 10 spheros the 10 ways. So if that's true for the reborn and we are if every if every inside us is a piece of Hem and Hashem is an orient. So if it also means in his commentary points this out if Hashem is beyond our comprehension. If Hashem is beyond our understanding then the nishama within us also can't be expressed in words. The nishama inside us we can't do it justice by trying to describe it with words. Why? Because then if Hashem can't be captured or expressed or understood by the human mind and the mere words we have of mortals then the of which is an extension of that of also can't. So just like all we can understand and access of Hashem is the way he appears to us and the way he appears to us this distilled through the prism throughash throughum comes out as the 10 spheros. So to the nishama of a yid that can't be put into words and that we can't get to its essence. But what we can try to access and understand and build upon is the same expression manifestation. Same way the nishama distills itself in those 10 spheres. So again, we're all an expression, a manifestation, a unique part of Hashem in this world. And in that way, we have a ru we have a neph and the nephesh is the animal intellect, the body intellect. The ruach is the emotional intelligence. And the nishama is the consciousness, the soul, the spirit. And each of those three have those same 10 spheros that just as Hashem expresses and we can access and is distilled into so is the and now those 10 spheros that are in the in the safer splits those 10 spheros into two categories two groups. Those 10 spheros again the spheros are the colors on the other side of the prism. The 10 ways that Hashem we can describe. It's not the sum total. It's not the totality. We can't. He's Hashem. He's infinite. We're finite. We're mere mortals. But we can access through those spheros. And so too the nishama also expresses itself through that same prism distills into those 10 spheros. And those 10 spheros according to the safety are divided into two. And those two are divided those 10 spheros are divided into two categories. The first three and the next seven. The first three are the emos the mothers the matrices and the next seven are the kulos which are the doubles. What are kulos? The Balta is not going to bring this topic up again and it's not the time to elaborate both because it's not the time and I'm not qualified. But theos according to the is based on the following. The entire world came into be through Hashem's speech. It means it came to be through the Hebrew letters and it classifies the letters into groups. The three mothers, the matrices, the emos are the letters alme and shin which represent the beginning, the middle and the end. Now shin is not the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. What's the last letter? Tough. But tough is one of the kulos. So the last letter before the kulos is the shin. So the alf me and shin are the beginning, middle, and end of the alphabet. And they represent the matrices, the root of everything in hashem. They represent the mother that gives birth to all that we know. The letters alf, me, shin, beginning, middle, and end. Those are the first three of the spheros. The seven doubles that are the last seven of the spheros are the letters bimlab kpe r and tough. And these letters all have a double identity depending if they all have a desh. Relax. Nobody break into boils or hives because we're bringing up grammar. I know a lot of people are allergic from their youth. But these seven letters can be read with a dish or without a dh. Some we're very familiar with. Baz v for example p these seven are clueless with the or without and the saf says with the dagesh it's pronounced as a hard base as opposed to the soft vase and the double identity in these letters represent two ways that hashem interacts with us hard or soft din or those are the last seven of the spheros that are the kulos these letters that can have a dish or no dages in them kulos. We're not and the balan is not going to talk about them again. The only point in bringing it up is to divide the 10os into two categories. The first three the emos the mothers and then the seven the second seven. But we can better understand this says the first three of the spherosma and das which are points out is counted sometimes differently. These 10 spherosma and das also can be counted as aser asma and bina as the first three which are interchangeable and how you count them again not for now but for our purposes the alterb quotes the 10 spheros the first three are bina and das and then so the first three areas they speak to the intellect those of the emos, the mother that gave birth to who we are. The mother that the gestation and the birth and responsible for our existence are the first three that are known as the spheros of the intellect and das. Then the next seven of the spheros are the seven of theos which are the seven of the midos seven of the midos. So and so on and so forth. The next seven We can see these 10 is divided into two. Three and seven. The first three are the and the next seven are the midos which loosely translates as the first three speak to the intellect and the next seven speak to the midos. How do you define the word midos? So Miller defines the word midos as emotions. Emotions. These are emotions. Aira, love, fear, awe. They're emotions. A little sharper says not emotions. He calls these not emotions. Rabbi sche calls these drives. He writes, "Midos are usually translated as emotions. This two is somewhat imprecise. Midos are seven drives. Seven forces that motivate human behavior and elicit an emotional response in the person. Emotions such as love and fear are a mida's imprint on a person's thought and awareness. The midos are fundamental elements that operate in certain ways, but only when combined with the power of thinking do they form actual emotions. An emotion is in fact a composite entity, a koma schma that includes perceptive elements, sensual elements, tactile responses. The emotion of fear, for example, includes in addition to the actual feeling of fear, a perception, a recognition of a cause for the fear, the reactions and response spawned by the fear. In our experience, we never encounter a pure mida or even a pure emotion, but a compound of emotions. Just as chemical elements do not exist in nature in a pure form, but in various compounds. The mida then is only the drive, the vector of a certain emotive direction in the heart of man. As such, midos are not to be found in reality. They do however operate in it within a certain emotional structures. So our midos emotions or our midoses that manifest in emotions. But either way the alterba is dividing the spheros. So again hashem is beyond comprehension. You can't capture him in words. He is mit through. He constricts. He refineses and he appears to us through these 10 spheros. Similarly the nish the essence of the nishama we can't capture in words we can't know. Indeed the nishama wears a lavush. The garment of the nisha, the lavush of the nish is thought, speech and action and those are the lavush the garment. Now we're all here dressed and we don't confuse what we're wearing with who we are. Who we are is underneath the clothing and we wear the clothing as a way of it's a uniform. It protects us from the elements. It's the way that we appear and engage the world. But we never confuse it with who we are. We take off that clothing. The clothing is the that is over the essence of who we are. The essence of the like is so just like Hashem is beyond comprehension and can't be captured or articulated in words, the nishama too is beyond comprehension. We can't describe it or capture in words, but we do through the lavush that it wears. And what's a lavush? There's the internal lavush of thought and the external lavush of speech and action. The way we interact with the world within manifest in the 10 spheros. We our nish manifests in this world through those 10 spheros and those ten spheros are divided in two. The first three are the emos, the mothers, the matrices and then the next seven are the kulos hard and soft and the way interacts with us. Alternatively, those 10 are divided into two. The first three are the intellect and the next seven are the emotion or the drive. They're the midos. And that's for the bala. Now, all of that was a setup and a buildup. All of that we're not going to get into any further. All of that was to get us to the point to say that the emos, the mother that gives us life and essence that lets us understand the peace of God in us are the first three of intellect and das whose acronym is lab. No, just joking. Whose acronym is and so now the alterb is going to better define what'sma what's d. If out of 10 spheros three are intellect, those three are not simply redundant. The three are not synonyms. Those three have to be distinct. Those three have to be different. So what are the differences of the three? What's if we want to know ourselves on the levels of each have the 10 spheros is how we manifest how we access the inside us. That's a piece of God. If we want to access have self-awareness, know how we appear, know the foundation of who we are, it begins with the first three. Knowing the intellect, knowing the andas inside us. And that's what we'll pick up with next week. How to better understand and dissect what a opening of perkimal is to set us up to appreciate and to understand the foundation of who we are. May be a day of bisuros to Yeshua.