The Point Where People Give Up | Ten Minutes of Meaning | Tanya #35

Good morning and books and welcome back to 10 minutes of mining Tanya together. I want to thank our generous sponsors Mike Marilyn and Michael Fedak. Please help yourself to coffee pastry slushies in our corner on this important and significant day. Not only because we're learning Tanya together, but today is the 10th of a significant day because it is the yearite of the Reba passed away on and a year later on that was a shabas that he was nifa that he passed away a year later on the previous the last reba accepted the nas. He agreed after a year a year of trying to persuade him a year. I spoke recently in Shaw about the new profession the new career of being an influencer the greatest influences of Cla's history ran away and shied away from being influencers. They never signed up for it. They didn't ask for it. from Salvich who was a pramed to the labb who spent a year resisting agreeing to be the rebba to Rafam who refused to be on the data until he was convinced to do so. So the rebba took a complete year a full year. And so today yvat is a significant day both the histoal theatite of the freedba and all that he did when he escaped the horrors of the nazis and replanted kabad labavich on these shores and a year later his successor the rebat and of course the army that he dispersed around the world that all of us benefit from on a regular basis doing so much for Israel. So today learning Tanya anvat is very meaningful. We are on peric z. We're going to finish up the seventh perk of Tanya. And what we've been learning until now is the idea of the three kipos versus the fourth kipa is the husk the peel. It eclipses the or the light of the ribon shalom. And negative or categorically bad evil behavior. Even thoughts and speech create an eclipse that block this light of the rebon shalom. And so that which is the word assurb the uh the alterba introduced us to that the reason for that which is forbidden it's called assurer is and asser and mut is that language comes from the notion of being tied being bound. Matim release those who are bound who are imprisoned. Mat is to untie is to release. There's a on shabas not allowed to tie a knot and so on. So, so mat is to untie and isim is to be tied that which is bound. So that which is is that which is forbidden is bound up with the kipo without husk with the with the dark side. So those are the three kipos that the alterb explained to us. If you eat non- kosher food, if you violate chabas, if you gossip and speak loara, if you do that which is bad, that which is wrong, you have indulged the kipa, the kipa of tuma, the sitra, that which eclipses the light altogether. There's the fourth category of kipas noa which is a partial eclipse where some light of the still can shine through the kipos noda which is the area of rashus which is the area of that depends on our intent that we bring. Eating kosher doesn't necessarily equate with eating healthy, eating positively, eating what's good for you at the time it's good for you and the amount that's good for you or why you're eating altogether. Do you live to eat or do you eat to live? So the attitude and intention we bring to eating will determine in that fourth area whether that's kipos noa or whether the light of go of of elocus is shining through. Are we indulging in ego or elocus? All of that was up until now. The three kipos versus the four. We spoke about it. If you didn't hear it, you can go back and listen and review what we've said until now. Which brings us up to the end of the third section of parag. And maybe you didn't see this coming that there is one energy and there's one act which is easier to repair because we left off that when a person does that which is user that which was tied and bound with the kipa with sa with negativity. So the level of chuva that you have to do in order to even find the nuda tova to find that light that's been totally eclipsed but even when there's a total eclipse the sun is still there. When it's total eclipse, it means that we're in the complete dark, but the sun is still there. So even when you have the three kipos, the three total eclipses, the sun is still there, the orient of the but to get to it is harder. So that requires not the ordinary chuva we spoke about, not the ordinary sense of I want to repair and I want to repent. It requires when a person does a when a person does the love of the is so deep, so profound, so authentic, so real, so raw, and they want not just to get out of a punishment, not just to get out of a consequence, but they want to actually repair and redeem because they want to transform, they want to come close again. So when it's a chuva from anam then they can even find the light behind the total eclipse of kipa they can reveal even the elocus even when they violated ego they can do a chuva may aa and they can repair and redeem that way and that requires enormous effort and it requires an enormous act of achuva however there's one act of kipa which is from the dark side where it's a total eclipse, not a partial eclipse. And the or is totally blocked and it's easier to do chuva than that and other things and it's entirely counterintuitive. It would not have come up if I pulled everyone in this room and everybody listening combined times a million. You wouldn't have come up with this as the top thing. And what is that? Says the how's that for a buildup? says the energy in the drops of semen that a person emits wastefully represents an exception to the above. Didn't see that coming. Tanya taught that permitted acts without the correct intention or forbidden acts both strengthen the negative forces of kipa. So if you do permissible acts what we call them permissible acts sleeping and eating and so on but you do it without the right intention you do it for ego not elocus or you do that which is us or forbidden acts in both cases you're strengthening you're indulging in the forces of kipa of sitra a difference between is how it's corrected right that if it's kipas noa it's more easily corrected than absolute kipa but if the act is forbidden a A profound repentance the cha is required. But an exception to that rule the only act that belongs to the world of total kipa in which you don't need the highest level most profound most intense chuva the chuva is being is a person a person who shalom wastes seed. Now at first that should fall into the category of not only should fall into the category of absolute kipa. You might have thought it'd be the top of the list. Many learned in yeshiva many that gave was about what an act of murder the act of murder of millions. How irredeemable and irreparable how unrepentable if that's a word. how the punishment is to boil in a pot of the most horrific graphic descriptions of the consequence and the punishment and the suffering. All meant to scare and instill fear and disincentivize or motivate a person to be vigilant in this area. And all of which is almost entirely ineffective in helping particularly young men overcome this very real and human and universal struggle. This is a topic for manup for another time, not for the Tanya. But most of which those and those put people in therapy and SA rooms and created all kinds of dysfunction and likely did not inspire and elevate and motivate and empower young people and all people to overcome that. And not only that, but it turns out at least according to the alterba and the Tanya, it's wrong. It's inaccurate. Does that mean to say it's not a severe sin? Does that mean to say that a person does not need to be vigilant and careful? We find ourselves from the learn from the shim an acronym for these parios that just like we went from galas to goula. These are days to take ourselves out from our own personal gullus to gula watching the wrong things thinking the wrong things seeing the wrong things acting in the wrong ways. These are time to be vigilant and grow and regulate ourselves and strive for kadusha in the area of holiness and self-regulation and sovereignty. We can be godlike. We could nourish our godly soul. We can grow. We don't have to indulge our our ego. We can strive for elocus. So this week's par. The sea split in the merit of our own aronos yose. What does Yoseph have to do with the sea splitting? So the is the same way that water naturally sticks together and is one. How do you perform a miracle? How did God How did we convince the rional violate nature and split a sea in the merit of Yoseph? Because he superseded his nature. The nature of man is to give in the relentless proposition of Asia's potif a lesser person would have given in. And Yseph didn't. He resisted. Yseph essentially overcame his nature. if he could overcome his nature shalom overcome the nature that you created and split the sea but also the that's why it's called Yseph the when we talk about inyan kadusha in yode we're talking about yoseph is the one who instills in us the capacity to overcome nature ah it's natural to want to look it's natural to want to gaze it's natural to want to watch it's natural to want to think it's natural to want to act who says you have to do everything that's natural just because it's natural doesn't mean you have to do it. Where do we get the kawak to not do that which is natural from hat? So the bat is now saying that we don't have to be vigilant that this isn't severe that it's something that we can take lightly that it's something that a person can indulge in. So what is he saying? What is he saying then? How could this be the only exception that even though it should belong to the world of total kipa not kipas noa it's not a partial eclipse it's a total eclipse and it should require the highest level of chuva chuva may and yet says no it's the exception and you can repair it now at the highest level chuva you can repair it how even though the energy of this wastefully emitted seed is downgraded absorbed into the three impure kipos not kipos noa the three total eclipses. Here's the chua you can do. You don't have to do a personal found intentionally or unintentionally that they violated this prohibition even though it's the world of Kipa not just what do they do to their parent but malamita when going to sleep at night say with theites what's the t ofum what's translate the wordsuma Huh? >> Kavana means intense intent, intense concentration. Atsuma. But my friend Raavski shared with me this morning that the Tavana says brought down that just understand what the words mean. We think means you have to think about the spheros and the kabala and higher levels of meaning. No, it just means pay attention when you say think about what the words mean. Be present, be mindful. That's doesn't mean some higher levels or deeper levels, more intense levels, multiple levels. It just means means have pay attention be mindful of the words that you're saying as it was known from that with is the antidote is the repair for the damage done from being to redeem the energy I'm reading now from Miller to redeem the energy trapped in the negative forces by wasted seed is not necessary to carry the extraordinary offense it's sufficient to feel remorse resolve not to carry the forbidden activity again and the trapped energy can be redeemed with say and be mindful be present and this is into anyone who says it is like they held a double-edged sword a sword which destroys the destructive agents of the negative forces absorbing the energy from the drops enabling energy to rise out of them is known to the masters of now the notion that being wasting seed is more easily corrected more easy more easily what do you mean that goes against everything we're taught we're taught this is the most severe this has the greatest punishment what do you mean it's corrected more easily so this also appears in the itself notes the notes that in the list the Torah tells us what are the forbidden illicit relations. Where do we have the arayas appear? Whereas we read it on the holiest day of the year. This is what we read that a person has to be aware of and vigilant and never violate the most intense the most severe illicit relations. And yet on that list, in fact in the Torah explicitly, nowhere does it say one is forbidden to meet. Nowhere does it say that a man is prohibited to intentionally waste or spill his seed. Where do we learn it from? Aaron Onan. Aaron Onan who did so intentionally. So the Gmorrah concludes from there that there is a biblical prohibition that there's a to waste seed directly or even indirectly because the Torah also says in that the person has to be careful person has to protect themselves from any evil thing for which the Gmorrah concludes don't be mahar because a person's mahar will be balah so a person should not indulge fantasy thought because doing so even the Wrong thoughts can unintentionally lead to the wrong outcome. And so the Garra has to find a nowhere in the Torah itself does it say explicitly is nor it's an it's a but it doesn't appear explicitly in the Torah. So the alterb says that's instructive that's not coincident that means something inos where it lists all the sins of aras there's no mention of wasting seed suggests that that omission hints to the theme of our discussion that the spiritual damage caused by this is different than others even though wasting seed is considered worse it's worse sin but it takes less chuva how does that make sense by the way when it talks about this in the writes that it's an more serious than any prohibition in the Torah. That's why those from all those spoke out that way because the itself records that it's an it is a more severe sin than any other in the Torah. And yet the says note that nowhere does it appear explicitly. And note that the chuva for it is less than the cha necessary for other things that require why his sin is great to the enormity and extremely abundant quantity and impurity and kipos which result from it. On the one hand it's worse because it's a total waste. It is the ultimate ultimate act of wastefulness. We live in a world where we're supposed to imitate Hashem. Hashem is best known and his greatest accomplishment is being a creator. And we are meant to emulate and imitate him by creating. We create. We create with Torah. We create with recipes in the kitchen. We create by mixing ingredients to produce and conceive a child. We create. We use creative energy. We use creativity. And we imitate Hashem by creating. When we do the opposite of creating, which is destroying, which is wasting, which is eliminating, which is having nothing productive or creative coming, that is the ultimate of the opposite of imitating or emulating Hashem. And therefore, it's severe. So this then is something of a paradox. On the one hand, more spiritually damaging than all sins because it's completely wasteful. Nothing positive or creative or productive about it. But on the other hand, it's more damage is more easily repaired and rectified. It doesn't require which means just pay attention to the words. Focus and pay attention on the on the translation of the words when saying it. So, so how is it? How do you understand this paradox? In the case of other forbidden relations, those sins give power and energy to a kipa that is so extremely impure that in ordinary repentance does not have the power to extract energy. So wasting seed is more serious in terms of enormity and extremely abundant quantity of the negative energy. However, the extreme impurity renders the kipa less willing to release the energy it absorbed. Far greater repentance is required. So emitting seed in vain causes more spiritual damage. It's the other prohibitions are harder to rectify. Why? Because the other elicit relations seed is spilled with a recipient of that seed, a clay, another person, another party. So extracting anything positive from it is harder. Whereas the act of wasting is more severe as an act. but extracting the light from it because it wasn't received by another. Now we understand the pusalas what are considered twisted things that you can't straighten broken things that can't be fixed somebody who has relations with another individual is forbidden to them and they result in azer results in a mamzer all the cha in the world cannot remove the label and the consequence of azer one can do all the cha in the But you can't elevate the energy to holiness because when the mamza was produced when the outcome was a mamzer all the chuva in the world can't undo the mamzeras that's the result of arayos of arayos whereas spilling seed because there's no outcome not of a mamza nor a clay kibble recipient for it one can extract and one can do the chuba from it even more easily. Rabstein will end with this when he describes this explains as he writes the following. The possibility of rectifying the sins of wasteful emission is not because it's less serious. On the contrary, the negativity of this sin is more profound and it touches on the very essence of evil. However, precisely because this sin entails such utter destruction. Precisely because there's no vessel that receives it, it can be even more readily rectified because it is not absorbed by another being. It also does not become part of any other reality. does not become part of the complex systems that make up reality. Its severity lies in that it is wholly one directional being an emission of life that is not received by any vessel. It is for that very reason it does not become rooted in reality. The person can when the proper repentance entirely obliterate its negative embodiment which is spiritual rather than physical. He cannot transform it and redirect it but he can destroy it and render it utterly non-existent as if it never was. On the other hand, other forbidden unions because they do not entail an utter destruction. The life force is received by and absorbed within a female element and the sin is etched in reality. There remains a black hole a blot of evil and this blot cannot be eradicated with ordinary chuva. So counterintuitively somewhat paradoxically in some ways it's more severe and of course we have to work on ourselves and inspire others not through fear tactics but through inspiration [clears throat] to be vigilant because on the one hand is more severe but on the other paradoxically the chuva from it it's more easily rectified than other acts because it's utterly wasteful because it's not rooted in reality because there's no recipient and clay kibble because there is no vessel because there's nothing product produced and there is no outcome it is more easily rectified And it's rectified how through malamita with a kavana and the here gives us I think a very important message and how to communicate this ideas and others. We continue next week with of which will continue us in the world of kipos should be a meaningful day in the memory of the in celebration of the appointment of his successor the great rebat. We got that.