Tanya (Part 8): Chapter 1 - Temperaments Based on the Elements

Good morning, Booker. Welcome back to 10 minutes of meaning. Please help yourself to coffee pastry slushy. Want to thank our 10 minutes of meaning sponsor, our dear friends Marilyn and Michael Fedak. Thank you so much for all that you do. This morning's shar sponsored by Amanda Lions for the Rafu of Leia Bas. Mary, we should hear good news and a complete and speedy Rafu. We are towards the end of the first paric of Tanya the alterba's great contribution the Torah ofus really establishing not only for not only for those who identify as labavich but for all of us a prescription to better understand our soul on shama to get into our kishkas and our internal sense of self and to better be able to therefore regulate our sense of self. The uh Balatani is the book of Benonim, the book of inbetweeners, intermediaries, the book of those who are neither entirely wholly righteous, who instinctively and intuitively do the right thing with no struggle nor those who are rash, those who make poor choices, but those who find themselves in a place in a position of challenge of struggle who are living in the real world and even those who make the right decision and come to the right conclusion are benonim if it involves and engages a struggle. So in this opening paric the bat has been defining for us by process of elimination who and what is a benon. If this is the halen it's we aspire to merit to be worthy to be called a benon what does that mean? So towards the end of the paric he's answering all the questions we've seen until now by telling there are two complete independent souls that every Jew has that on the one hand we have this animal soul. We have a very physical. So we're physical beings. We operate and we live in the physical material world. And we face and we confront and we navigate physical temptation, desire, physical needs, and all of that. What we have in common with an animal. Identifying and understanding our animal soul. Learning to train it and to harness it and to utilize it and to elevate it, not to slaughter it, not to eliminate it is what's going to help us in our goal. So we'll get to the nephesh alus. We get to the godly soul in the second per. But the bat ends this first parak by talking about the origin of this of this animal soul. One soul stems from the kipa. Kipa as we began to define last week is the egocentric souls. The ego the kipa the kipa means the peel the husk. It means the barrier on the outside. A fruit has the delicious luscious sweet meat of the fruit on the inside. But there's a kipa, there's a peel, there's a husk, there's something on the outside. And if you want to get to the what's inside, you have to peel away. You have to remove, you have to take apart what's blocking it. So the kipa, the kipa in this sense represents the filter that distorts our perception of reality. It is the kipa is the world based only on the external, the superficial. The way we understand, we interpret, we experience it based on our senses, based on the physical senses is the way we interact and understand the world. And then the balata employs a synonym or a second way of understanding this kipa. This concept of the perception through our senses and our base self and our not our best self but the other self. And the synonym is sitra also known in the zor as the sitra. Citra is the dark side. the other side, the alternative side. If there's a light and there's the dark, there's the positive and there's the negative. There's the godly and there's the animal. The sitra is in the universe this other alternative side. And there's a struggle. There's a battle they're pulling at us. There's a tension between it. Which defines us? Who's the decision maker? Who's the judge and arbiter? What is empowering? What's the engine that's driving our lives? Are we indulging the sitra and the kipa? Do we experience the world only through our senses and through our animal soul, through our physical material experience? Or are we going to live a life of kaduca? Are we going to live a life of kaduca? And as we spoke last week, the batan here introduces the idea which was novel that there aren't three categories mitzvah and rash. It's not that I could do something righteous and noble or alternatively in a I can make a mistake and do something which is going to drive me away. And then there's a whole middle category how I sleep and how I walk and how I eat and the music I listen. Oh, that's neither a mitzvah nor an a. It's just this neutral power of category. There is no power of in life says the altern everything we're doing and every way in which we live our life is either contributing to kaduca. We are serving Hashem. We're finding the elocus in it. In the music we put on, in the food that we eat, the way that we sleep, we're either using it all to elevate. We're using it all to fulfill a mission. We're using it all to elevate and advance his name. or we are indulging, we're giving in, we're conceding to the sitra, to the dark side. If you eat because you're satisfying an animal urge, you're giving into the dark side. I the food's kosher. I made a before and after. If the food's kosher and I'm justing, where's the aos, but where's the a says the because you've just indulged the kipa. If instead of in eating realize that you're embibing the life force of Hashem that through the act of eating you are connecting to Hashem who designed a world in which we eat in order to be able to live. So every act of eating I'm making contact with life and the life force namely Hashem. So the whole act of eating is transformed as kaduca. I'm either act eating with kadusha or I'm eating with sra. I'm either eating to live or I'm living to eat. There isn't a middle category. There is no neutral. There is no Switzerland. There is no par. In life you got to take a side. You're either living your life towards kadusha you're transforming everything you do or you're indulging the and now the rebl explains the explains that animal soul the soul the life in which we are only experienced in the world through the physical the material experienced and integrated and analyzed and absorbed through our senses experienced on a very superficial plane. That animal's soul is embodied in the blood. Last week's para, the soul of the flesh is in the blood. And there's a lot to say on this, but what the is telling us is that this animal soul is embodied within us. Don't think it's external to us. That's why you can't slaughter it or negate it or deny it. It is badam badi. That animal soul is part of the very way we are designed. The blood that flows through our veins, the physical being that we are and live in this world. That animal soul is mislabbes. It is wearing a garment. It is encapsulated within within the body. Why why is saying that? Why is that an important comment to make? Because lest you think that the animal impulse, the animal desire, the urge to live life through the sensory experience, through the material superficial, you know, that's like being taken over by some by some satanic urge. That's a mental illness. That's some external force. I'm not equating those and I'm not judging mental illness. But lest one think that that urge to live the sensory material life to struggle with that animal soul that's not inherent to who we are that's something outside that's a virus we got a virus person has a virus you have to try to get rid of the virus heal from the virus so the animal soul the animal instinct animal urge animal impulse living life material sensory that's like a virus that we got so give me a medicine I'll heal from the virus and then I can be the godly soul no the says That animal impulse and drive, that urge to live this superficial life, that's part of who you are. It's not a virus that you heal. It's not something you take a medicine and you purge. It is internal. It is part of who we are. It's how we were designed. And now we have to learn to train the animal. We have to learn to direct and channel the animal. We have to learn to transform and elevate the animal. You'll only do that once you first concede that it's it's in it's part of who we are and therefore it's not something you're going to get rid of simply by taking a medicine. You have to interact and engage it in an altogether different way which is the way in which we're going to elevate it. So now he defines the ebmanos this kipa this husk this peel this shell this kipa the filter and the prism when we only encounter the world or experience it through our senses in a superficial animal material physical way this kipa which is the ego the eye the pursuit of my pleasure my happiness my joy from this animal soul all the temperaments arise mime menu is employing the four categories of the temperaments which were not unique to Judaism and to Torah shared by other philosophies of the world. But the four temperaments are fire, water, air, and earth. The four elemental forms, fire, water, air, and earth, which have corollaries within the human temperament. We're all designed and we're different. Some people are calm, cool, and collect. That's the way they're born. It's in their DNA. It's how they came out of the womb. Other people come with a fire in their belly. A fire they go from zero to 100 in two seconds. There are temperaments that we have. Some people are are loud and boisterous and outgoing. Others are shy and quiet, reserved and reticent. There are temperaments we have and the temperaments that we have naturally all come from these four elements. They find a corlary in the four elements of the physical. So the spiritual temperament what we think of as the emotional or spiritual temperament finds a source in these elements. And now he defines so Tanya says the four temperaments of the body flow from the four spiritual elements in the animal soul. The negative temperaments come from the negative side of the spiritual. So the temperaments can be good or bad, positive or negative. They can be harnessed and channeled and manifest in a good way or they can be destructive and sabotaging and negative. They're not inherently one or the other. They're what we do with them. So when they're when they are inspired by the ego, by the kipa, it brings out the negative in them. They manifest in the negative destructive way. But when we elevate them, which we'll get to in the next peric, then we can channel them in the positive way. So first he begins with the negative drawing from So the temperament of anger and arrogance are the negative side of the element of fire. So the animal soul can draw from the element of fire and fire leads to vagiva shenigba. Why? No matter which way you hold the flame tomorrow night's which is otherwise known as the Jewish pyromaniac convention. So whichever way you hold the fire, how does the flame flicker? If you hold the candle up, the fire goes up. If you turn a fire over and hold it down, the fire the flame goes up. The fire always rises of is always rising, climbing, aspiring. That's why and is likened to a flame. We have a candleite candle. We look at a candle and we see, we feel our nish. The flame is always flickering up. The nish of a yid, it's always going up. It's climbing up. But the idea of the fire always going up also can be the negative. Something that goes up is like an inflated ego. The eye, it's rising. Me, more followers, more fans, more likes, bigger influence, more influencer, more power, more money, more fame. The ego, the eye is result of the fire that is flaming, that is tendency to rise upward, that's going up. So that same fire inside a person, the inflated ego that's rising, it leads to anger and arrogance. and he had the alterba very subtly and it's reminiscent of what we learned together recently in sashar and both series are complete and you can listen to online in both we saw this this tremendous association between anger and arrogance why is there an association between anger and arrogance because where does anger come from most if not all anger is the result of ego is the enemy arrogance why does someone get angry Because why are you doing it that way? That's not the way I want you to do it. That wasn't my plan. That's not the way I drew it up. That's not happening on my schedule. That's not what I wanted. People get angry. They get angry because their ego gets in the way. The core and the source of anger is ego. That's why both the Ramban and the Rambam when they talk about all midos belong in some measure, all are not inherently good or bad, but how we use them. There are two exceptions to that rule. Both the Rambaman and his letter to his son in the Rambam and Hilos writes they both write that there's no room in the repertoire at all for ego or anger. We have to be extreme in never getting angry and extreme in humility and never having an ego because they are self-destructive. They destroy us and the relationship in our lives says they come from fire. You could have a fire in your belly. Now a fire in your belly is a good thing. The people with fire in their belly are getting things done. They're changing the world. Someone with a fire in their belly are defending the vulnerable, the weak, the fragile. Someone with fire in their belly are fighting the good cause, the good fight of the Jewish people. Someone with a fire in their belly is passionate, enthusiastic, energized. It's a good thing. But if fire is coming out, that element of fire is coming out negatively. It's coming out in ga and like fire that go up. And then the temperament, this negative temperament has three derivatives. Number two is the temperament of seeking physical gratification and pleasure. Water is necessary for life. A person has to be hydrated. We are composed, we are made up mostly of water. Water represents life. So it also can lead to what people think their life is defined by the pleasures of life. to be a pleasure seeker of life which is negative. Then says and then we have another temperament which comes from the negative side of the element of air. So the animal soul operates and lives in a world. The animal soul sensory soul material physical soul experiences fire and the negative side that could come out of that is anger and arrogance. The animal soul experiences pleasure, water, life force that comes out as the inappropriate pursuit of pleasure or satisfaction. The animal sensory physical material soul experiences air. And what's air? The element of air, it's like hot air. We talk about hot air. You're full of hot air. Blowing air. Hot air. So what comes out of that? Silliness. and and being sarcastic, mocking, boasting and otherwise conversation. So the element of air our sensory, physical, material soul experiences and draws negatively applied the element of air this attitude towards the hot air, the lightliness, the nothingness of air. The fourth one is the physical sensory material soul. The animal soul draws the negative side of the element of earth. Earthliness, the loneliness expresses itself in atlos. The atmos laziness and depression. Not clinical depression that of course we have no judgment of but we mean negativity, laziness, general melancholy, sadness come from this element. So these are the natural propensities that a person is born with. The animal soul, the material, sensory, physical soul can have a natural inclination or tensity or tendency, predisposition or propensity towards these expressions of the animal soul. But they also have a positive but a positive temperament also can come from them. What is the positive temperaments of a person? Jew in our DNA planted in our very DNA in a Jew are the Gar tells us on divine test that in fact the signs of a Jew the symbols of a Jew. How do you know if somebody's Jewish? You don't have to go to uh what are these websites? Something in me. What are these genetic testing websites? 23 and me. 23 and me. How do you know if someone's a Jew? You don't need 23 in me. Are they sham? Does a Jew do they have compassion? Do they still recoil and feel a sense a healthy sense of shame? And are they flowing with generosity? Are they flowing with generosity? These are the good sides of the animal soul's four elements. So the four elements, the sensory physical material of the animal soul, the negative application are the attributes, the predispositions. We spoke of the positive predisposition a Jewish a Jew has in not in their godly soul but in their animal soul. The is telling us in the godly soul we'll talk about inb but in the animal soul that a yid that a Jew has their very animal soul which is connected to the four elements that creates the temperaments gives us the positive temperament of an inclination towards kindness. That's aid. That's a Jew. And here the contrasts it to and then he's going to which we'll pick up with next week. The end of perk olive distinguishes between the Jewish animal soul and the non-Jewish animal soul. The Jewish animal soul can have a good positive natural temperament. As a great person I admire who's teaching me Tanya wrote to me we can explain this concept and this matter. It's hard to find people like that. But look at Allen Burger. There are people a Y a Jew who is drawn towards helping and caring and giving and doing having nothing to do with their ego, their sense of eye, nothing to do with honor it will bring them and not even anything to do with if no one knows the good it makes them feel. A Jew is capable of being benevolent and altruistic. Dr. says the non-Jewish animal soul doesn't have that experience. What did he mean? Is his bias and discriminatory and superiority? Maybe yes, maybe no. But we'll pick up with it and end perk alf next week. Should be a day of bisarvos.