Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 171): Honest With Ourselves - Mesillas Yesharim

good morning book or two welcome back to ten minutes of meaning merciless to sharon please help yourself to coffee and donuts a very special thank you today to jeffrey gelb who has sponsored our series for the year today is the last day of that sponsorship in memory of michigan david chandler deeply grateful to the gelp family for their generosity and there is the opportunity if you'd like to sponsor the series for the coming year and help enable people all over the world to learn music to improve themselves to become better versions of themselves all in honor or memory of someone you choose please reach out to leah beerus online l-e-e-p-r-s online dot o-r-g we are on the 20th chapter we've just begun the mishka we spent a long time defining what it means piety to be a hustler that is not an external manifestation it is an internal attitude personality filter vision through which we understand and absorb and interact with the world and so that has told us the 20th chapter that you have to know the truth authentically genuinely that this is the malacha the hardest part of to follow the strict letter of the law of the very difficult but you open the book you study the code of jewish law you know what to do and how to regulate your life and your behavior we simply have to have the discipline to follow through but when it comes to hasidis it's above and beyond to be a hustler is not the letter of the law to be a hustler is not to follow the strict law as it is easily explicated and explained for each and every situation to be a hus it is in between those situations the circumstances where it's unclear and we're unsure exactly what to do to ask ourselves what would the ribonus shalom want from me what is right and what is righteous what will give him all give him pride in me what does he want in this moment in the dilemma that i'm facing at work at home with my family in the community where i open up my shukhan i open up shasta and post him and there is no clear answer and i have a dilemma i have a choice i have to make about my life about my lifestyle what does hashem want from me what does it mean to be a hustler in order to be honest with ourselves in order to truly arrive at what is the correct answer a person needs to ask themselves three questions to be a hustle to be righteous is to live with the following three questions criteria shia libo yashar shabal number one you have to have an honest and a truthful heart you know there are people who lie to themselves all day long they're people who rationalize who lie who twist to manipulate who are selling you know they don't sell us but they seem to sell themselves and you cannot be a husted you cannot really be righteous you cannot arrive at what is the righteous thing if you're not honest if you don't have a pure and a clean and honest heart you're not able to be truthful with yourself and with the world person who is the pathological bender of truth person who's constantly rationalizing and twisting cannot be a hassan so prerequisite number one question number one criteria number one is to have a libo yashar shabba babbo so have to have a straight heart take the honest route don't always think in the crooked manipulative twisted how can i get away with it way but to be a yasha what's right what's righteous what does hashem want to yep and to always ask oneself now what do i want not what feels good for me not what's comfortable or convenient but what does hashem want where does he want me to davin how does he want me to respond what does he want me to say what does he want me to do where does he want me to be not what's comfortable or convenient for me not what i'm predisposed to want not what gives me pleasure but what gives nacha now it happens to be that we are designed and we are built in a way that we get great pleasure from giving him so when we make the choice of that which will give him incredible pleasure that gives us the greatest pleasure but to think in that way and for a long time i struggled with this because you know we think that we are sophisticated advanced we are intellectual we use fancy big words like ontological and axiological and we read our abundant margin we speak the queen's english and so you know it's to picture hashem is getting what is hashem like our great grandmother pinching our cheek the old person at shul get nakas from you so i struggled for a long time i thought hashem is you know we intellectualized we rationalize hashem to picture him getting he doesn't have emotions he doesn't have feelings so to describe hashem as having us we get nakas please god from our children we hope we give nachas to our parents to our grandparents but this amorphous says yeah you want to live a righteous life recognize we anthropomorphized hashem in so many other ways the notion of is growing impatient or getting angry with us so why can't we describe hashem also as getting tremendous from us he takes pride he looks down and he sees us do the right thing those who are in the room you came to shul this morning you didn't have to you got up you arranged your schedule you made it to minion hopefully on time hopefully didn't talk hopefully even concentrated a few of the words and be proud that should feel great because know that it's not just a check on a checklist you're not just doing something and dismissing an obligation but hashem is looking down with tremendous tremendous nachas you have some juicy lushnar to share you bite your tongue you're tempted to look at the wrong thing or you start looking and then you act out giving hashem tremendous ruach so the second criteria to be hasid is to ask ourselves in every circumstance not again what feels good what's comfortable what i want but ask in each circumstance i live to give nachas to hashem that is how i define my life what will give him what will give him to take advantage of that airline's terrible glitch and mistake and send it to everyone i know to buy the cheap ticket which will cost them is that giving him to get away with the bare minimum to twist and do something that technically is permissible i found a legal loophole it's not going to give him nachas the criteria through which we should live our lives the criteria through which the hosta lives his and the third criteria is to always be in a state of analyzing our actions intensely and to rectify them to always be aware and mindful of what we're doing we spoke about this very beginning zeros tells us you want to live a meaningful life a purposeful life a righteous life a life of fulfillment and satisfaction and pleasure then you need a life in which you are mindful a constant evaluation not paralysis and not shame or guilt or regret but a constant awareness what are those i'm making what are their consequences what will be their consequences who am i and where do i fit in gudel ian godlin and ian goddel to always have an awareness you know great people kept journals great people still keep journals and diaries they want to track and have an awareness and sort of step outside themselves to be able to look at themselves and say what am i doing well where do i need improvement what does my life look like am i doing everything i claim to care about and claim to want to do so three areas again in order to succeed to be honest in evaluating how we're doing in the area of living with hasidis with piety number one yahshua bill vavos true heart an honest heart we have to be honest and straight and number two we have to live to give hashem not to live for our pleasure but live to give him pride and number three to constantly be evaluating great business people have weekly monthly quarterly bi-annual annuals constantly looking what are our targets what are our revenues what are our numbers what are our demographics you're not going to succeed if you grip it and rip it in life if all you do is live life and you never pause you never stop you never evaluate you never internalize you're never looking at your life with an even guddle you're never carefully looking what's right what's wrong and then after one does all these things then a person has to cast his burden on hashem cast his burden on hashem it's an incredible apostate in tehillim incredible take yavo take whatever burden there is difficult meetings difficult conversations difficult circumstances and to take whatever challenge we have throw it on hashem throw it on hashem hashem i rely on you i lean on you i'm sticking to you i know you've got my back i know you've got my back so this is the pathway these are the steps that have to be taken towards hasidis is not external the real hustle nobody can measure by looking at them the hustle is the way we live our life and the choices and the mindfulness and the thoughtfulness that we have the self-awareness that we have in our lives to be driven by those three things to be straight have a straight heart to want to give hashem and to self-awareness to constantly be working on ourselves to know ourselves continue 845 with living with a munna tonight we're going behind the bema with dan grenfell the son of ernie grunfeld fascinating fascinating story at 9pm until next time stay happy stay healthy