Break Free from False Limits | A Passover Message for the Soul

People limit us all the time and we don't always notice it, but we often take it more seriously than we think we do. And sometimes, by the way, these people that are limiting us care. How many of you have gotten bad advice from people because those people were afraid for you, right? They've given you advice not because they succeeded and they know what success is, but because they've had their failures, they have their fears and they don't want you to go through with that. So now they start giving you advice and it's just limiting advice. Okay friends, the story begins and PES is coming up and we're going to be talking a lot over the next uh holiday a lot about freedom, right? We're going to be eating that freedom and you're going to be eating so much freedom. It's like enough freedom for me. I'm done. Um, one of the sentences we recite in the Hagada toward the end of the MG portion, toward the end of the portion where we're discussing the Passover story, we say in every single generation person's obligated to see themselves as if they had left Egypt. In every single generation, we have to look at ourselves as if we had left Egypt. In other words, when we're discussing the Passover story while reading the that night, we're not just commemorating a historical event, but we're supposed to see this as an ongoing event that every single year, and the truth is the alter emphasizes that it's every single day were leaving Egypt. The Maharal of Prague, Rabi Lao of Prague from the 15th or 16th century asks an interesting question. He says, "If I see myself, if we see ourselves as if we had left Egypt today, aren't we lying? Don't we still have some sort of oppression? I mean, thank God we're not literal slaves in Egypt. We're not forced to build pyramids, but from generation to generation, since the Exodus of Egypt, there's been so much oppression and Jewish oppression, and we still are to a degree subject to oppression around us. I mean, it's not like Mashiah's not here yet. How could I genuinely say see myself as if I had left Egypt? as if I've gained some sort of freedom. Knowing that freedom is lacking, knowing that historically since the Exodus, full freedom has been lacking because there's been many other exiles. There's been the destruction of the two temples. There's been the Spanish Inquisition. You could go from generation to generation. There's been, you know, there there's no shortage of negative occurrences and atrocities that we can count. So the Maharal of Prague says that what we gained through the Exodus, there's an element of freedom that we had gained that we still carry with us even through other um periods of oppression. What he says is that the Exodus of Egypt wasn't just a geographical freedom. If we're commemorating a geographical freedom, we were oppressed in Egypt and now we're not. So then the whole Passover would be a historical commemoration. But because we're not just commemorating a geographical freedom, we're commemorating an inherent sense of freedom, psychological freedom. We can carry psychological freedom with us wherever we go. to the extent and this is difficult to say but it's the truth and yeah it's it's it's very difficult to say but it's just brutally true. You can be oppressed and in prison and free and you can be you can live a life of of liberation and have everything you want and need and still be oppressed because psychological freedom is so important. Psychological freedom is so necessary. I think of that story of that hostage and I I'm butchering the story here. one of the released hostages, forget this her name, sharing how she started keeping Shabas in captivity in a tunnel in Gaza. I mean, that's geographically that is certainly not free. Psychologically, they had no power over her because she lived with her deepest values and had a connection with Hashem. Even in the darkest and most difficult places when Rabbi Schneeren previous the Reb's father-in-law was being carried away by the communist Russian regime. They had arrested him because he was teaching Jewish values when it was illegal. And they cuffed him. They put him away. They sentenced him to death. They ended up changing it to exile in Siberia and then ultimately they said he could just go free which was a whole miracle in its own right a whole story for another time. But while they were carrying him away his parting words to the thank God only temporary parting words to the were that a Jew is always free and although the body gets imprisoned the soul is always liberated. And one of the things we gain on the night of PES and that we relive and we're supposed to see ourselves this way in the night of PES is this part of freedom, a part of ourselves, a version of ourselves that nobody can abduct that isn't subject to other people's limitations. Not geographical limitations, not psychological limitations, not spiritual limitations. Totally free. It so happens to be that eating matzah on the night of Pesak and the right kind of matzah at the right time at the right place. Everything has to be done in the right time, the right place, the right people, right? But when we do it right, it's called the bread of faith. We're internalizing faith. We're internalizing a deeper connection and consciousness of the soul that allows us to be more free, allows us to be more independent. What is the impact of this freedom? Like why is it so important? Why is it such a big deal that we live freely? That we live in a way that is not uh just in reaction to what other people think of ourselves of us. That we're psychologically free even if and spiritually free even if we're not geographically or physically free. Why is that such a big deal? Besides that, it's personally beneficial. But why is the Torah pushing for this? We do agree, right, that Passover is not just another holiday on the list, but it's fundamental. The Exodus from Egypt is fundamental to Judaism. The Exodus from Egypt is something we mention all the time. Every single Friday night when we make kdish, this is to remember the exodus from Egypt when God revealed himself for the very first time to three million people, which is the the the historical validity of Judaism. God revealing himself mass revelation. What does God say? I'm the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt. This freedom isn't just a luxury, but the freedom and especially the type of freedom we're talking about, the psychological spiritual freedom, and we'll talk more about it soon. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity. Why is it a necessity? Okay. So in the book of Cohellet, Cohelis by King Solomon in English they call it that name I can never pronounce correctly. Eastes ecclesiastics. There we go. I always see it. I think Elastices. I don't know what that is. Okay. Ecclesiastics. The book of Ecclesiastics. Does anybody know what ecclesiastics means? Because I don't. Somebody. Anybody? Okay. If you're watching this on YouTube, you could write it in the comment section. You like that trick? Um, now I have to edit that out. No, I'm kidding. Okay. King Solomon writes in the book of Khalelis, Ecclesiastics, he talks about how there's a time and place for everything, right? A time to be happy, a time to be sad, a time to dance, a time to be somber, a time to laugh, a time to cry. And he concludes this whole famous poem quoted by every single rabbi at every single funeral. He concludes sorry um he concludes God placed the world in their hearts. That's what King Solomon says. God placed the world in their hearts. And Rashi interprets that to mean there's so much diversity in how we could experience God. Whether it be through laughter or through crying or through happiness or through dancing. And there's so many diverse times. Imagine one person experiencing all that. That's can be very overwhelming. So God empowered us to diversify. We all have our own unique way of processing and we can all connect to God in our own unique way. That's Rash's interpretation. And that's a liberal interpretation. Butus has a deeper explanation of what this sentence means. That God placed the world in the heart of man. What happens in the heart of man impacts the world. That's howus interprets the sentence. When God placed the world in the heart of man, that means what happens in your heart actually matters to the world outside of you. Which is a crazy statement. When we're not feeling our best, we can hide it. We can mask it. We can pretend. We can put on the the the flight attendant smile, right? Smile and wave. But it's still going to have an impact. And when we are feeling internally free, when there's no uh cognitive dissonance between our heart, our mind, our behavior, our identity, and we're feeling like we've left Egypt, we see ourselves as if we have left Egypt. There's a global impact. And we're going to talk about this impact in a moment. Before we talk about this impact, I think we need to unpack what this freedom means. Here's the thing with freedom. Here's the reason why a Jew can be inherently free despite oppression. And and very often, by the way, Jews are funny people. We tend to feel free like we're our true selves when there's oppression. When the anti-semites get up and start bashing and start saying what they say and start picketing, all of a sudden we feel I'm a Jew. Don't talk to me that way. We start feeling like this is who I am. And the reason is because freedom is never situational but inherent. As Jews like the Maharal explains, what God had given us, the gift he had given us was the freedom to be free because of who we are, not because of where we are. In a mimeric teaching essay that I had was learning from the he said something which I thought was so beautiful. He said freedom means serving God, which is a free thing to do, but in a way that is beyond calculation and measure. We are usually rational people or emotional people, but we we measure things. And when we can serve God without measure, I'll explain what that means. We're going to feel freedom on the inside. and we'll soon discuss the impact that that has on the world on the outside. And he goes through three levels of freedom. Freedom number one is not to take into consideration limitation that the world puts on you. People limit us all the time and we don't always notice it, but we often take it more seriously than we think we do. And sometimes, by the way, these people that are limiting us care. How many of you have gotten, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but think about this. How many of you have gotten bad advice from people because those people were afraid for you? Right? They've given you advice not because they succeeded and they know what success is, but because they've had their failures, they have their fears and they don't want you to go through with that. So now they start giving you advice and it's just limiting advice that may not be appropriate for you. So common. I can't tell you how many people I had spoken to in the last what is it four or five months since we had made our our career shift. And in my mind I'm like I'm very excited. Obviously, it was a difficult decision to make, but I'm excited to have a global impact and to improve lives and to and to I'm very excited about this and I'm very excited about this. But the amount of people that have come to me with empathy and sympathy, it must be so difficult because before you were on salary and now you're going through all these changes and now you're moving and they mean well. They really mean well. They're trying to empathize and they're trying to to be sensitive and they're saying it must be really difficult and I'm sure you're afraid about this challenge. These are limitations that I didn't have in my own mind. Why would somebody plant that in my own mind? Again, they mean well. I'm not judging anybody who's watching this. My point is that how often do we put limitations on people that don't need to be there? I have a a mentor in the world of counseling and he said something fascinating you know in in the world of therapy therapists often like to give homework you know practice this and then when we talk next we'll see how you did and he says he doesn't do homework I don't give people homework because I don't know what people are truly capable of maybe people are much more capable than I think they are. He said he had a client who was like on heavy drugs and wanted to get off and he was going to advise for the next week, pick one day to stay off of drugs. He and he's like I didn't say anything. The guy stayed off of drugs for an entire week because he didn't put a limitation on it. I think of um think of Rabbi Gordon of blessed memory. Rabbi Josh Gordon, many of you know from his online presence. Rabbi Josh Gordon ran a very tight ship. He had a huge operation running many Kabad centers, many rabbis under him. Um he also had his own business. People didn't know that he had a lot going on. Uh a catering business which was part of the Kabad operation to help support the Kabad sender. And my father once asked him, "How do you do all this?" Like, "You're managing a lot. It's a how do you?" And without like skipping a beat, he says, "I guess nobody told me I couldn't." Imagine somebody talked him out of it though. I'm sure he wouldn't listen, but they would have planted limitation, artificial limitation in his head. The reason why I'm mentioning this is because how much of the limitation we experience is artificial. I'm not saying limitation don't doesn't exist. I'm not saying challenges and roadblocks don't exist. But how many of them are psychological and literally planted by other people's insecurities? An exodus from Egypt means let's not take those into consideration. We don't have to take we could be respectful to people but we don't have to take that too seriously. That's number one. Number two, another type of limitation comes from the animal soul. The animal drive that's within us. We have the godly soul, the godly drive. We have the animal soul, the animal drive. And what is the difference between the animal soul and the godly soul? The main difference, the animal soul seeks comfort and pleasure, the godly soul seeks truth. And because the godly soul is seeking pleasure, like like that's every interaction, right? If if I were to meet you for the first time and the first thing I think to myself is, do I like you or do or do I not like you? That's going to be my animal soul talking. If the first thing I think is, "Who are you? I'd like to get to know you." That might be the godly soul talking because the animal soul is thinking, "How is this good or bad for me? Is it pleasurable or is it not pleasurable? Is it comfortable or is it uncomfortable?" The godly soul is thinking more, well, what is this? Is it true or is it false? Is it holy or is it unholy? The pleasure seeking paradigm, I mean it's is necessary to a degree like God made us with it, but could be very limiting. Approaching life from the perspective of how am I going to experience this could really set us up for number one [Music] um false or failed expectations when life isn't always comfortable or pleasurable and sometimes you have a mission to do even when it's uncomfortable. That's number one. Number two, it's just a very limiting and narrow path to go down. To only do what feels good, to only do what feels right. What is true and what is our mission and purpose in life should feel right should feel good. It might not always initially. And if that's the first thing we're looking at, we're definitely putting a constraint on ourselves. And part of leaving Egypt is not taking into the cons not taking into consideration the uh concern the the the perspective of the animal soul. I'm not talking about when there's like some sort of safety concern of of of abuse or whatever it is like that's the animal soul. I got to do what I got to do. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just regular everyday life. Sometimes our animal souls are so hyped up about how is this going to benefit me and not is this inherently good or bad and that could limit us. I I'll give you an example. This is a really good example. Um Passover, the night of Passover, it's very difficult. It's my my father always says this religion ain't for sissies, right? It's late and you got to eat a lot of food in not a lot of time. There's a lot of discussion you're supposed to there's a lot to do and it could be very tempting to not do it right or to let things fall between the cracks because it's more comfortable. But if we're not initially even looking at life from the paradigm of what's comfortable, what's uncomfortable, we can be a lot more free. We can be a lot more fluid in how we approach life and how we approach people and how we approach God. Limitation number three, and this is a little bit more difficult to understand, the godly soul has limitations. Did you know that the godly soul has limitations? Because one of the things the godly soul does is assesses and judges. Is this right or wrong? Is this true or false? Is this holy or unholy? And with that comes the tendency of overthinking, of overassessing. The most freest version of ourselves is that little spark within us that doesn't have too many questions, that just has clarity, that just knows the truth is true because it's true. the the the the think about by the way think about these three paradigms in a marriage because number one I think it applies to marriage very seamlessly but number two I think that will help us really clarify this. Imagine a newlywed couple and the newlywed couple are trying to work on their relationship and the first limitation are the voices of the in-laws, right? External voices giving opinions that are not helpful because they have had their own traumas and fears, right? That that it's not going to work. Limitation number two, their own personal limitations. Their own personal is this, you know, assessments. Is this comfortable or uncomfortable? That's not a good way to approach. That's a good way to approach dating should be, you know, you should be asking those questions. But if you're married already, that's you don't need to be asking those questions. It should be comfortable, but you don't need to be assessing all the time. And then limitation number three, overthinking everything and trying to be just so perfect and been beating yourself up for it. Not big. That could be a problem as well. The deepest part of the relationship, the closest part of their relationship is the fact that they are united as one and now they have something from which to build. The fact that they had a Jewish marriage, a wedding, a connection, an inherent deep connection and you expand from there. There is a part of the relationship that they will never question hopefully which is the fact that they got married unless things are again unless there's some sort of abusive situation but there is a part of the relationship where there is no question we were meant to be. We may not always feel it or experience it or know it, but there is a version of ourselves that's very comfortable with that. And discovering that breaks us free of all limitation. You know what we call this? This is not what the secular world calls it. This is what Judaism calls this love. Because in secular society, love is more about attraction. More about how do I experience this? This is a deeper type of love. The Bashmov gave an analogy. It's my one of my favorite analogies. Um and he was talking about in the context of with God. Imagine you walk into the king's palace and it's a beautiful palace. And in that palace there is just beautiful architecture and you're trying to go through the palace to get to the king's chamber so you can have a meaningful conversation with the king. But you're just so stunned by the architecture. You love architecture. And then you realize there's not just architecture here. There's beautiful art. And I just love art. And there's beautiful plants here. And I really enjoy plants and there's just so much extravagance and so much beauty. Imagine how beautiful the king is himself, right? if this is what represents him, but you totally forget about your meeting with the king and you totally missed your appointment because you got distracted by the king's palace. You forgot about the king. So the bashto says, "How often do we forget about God because we're so distracted about trying to find inspiration from God, trying to find love from God, trying to find blessings from God. And same in marriage. I'm trying to get this and I'm trying to get that out of it. And these are all beautiful things, but sometimes they're limiting. But had I had a conversation that was meaningful with the king in the right time, in the right place, maybe I'd be invited back more and maybe I'd be able to experience the architecture more often and the plants and the art more often. This is real love where it's not just about what I'm going to get, but what I'm going to get as a byproduct of who I'm connected with. This is incredible, incredible freedom. And if we can see ourselves in this light because in every generation we have to see ourselves as if we had left Egypt. We have to look at ourselves differently. And if we could look at ourselves differently, and by the way, the way we do this, not easy, but simple. Recite the shama like you mean it. You say the shama like you mean it. Because when you say the shama like you mean it, you the soul, the Jew inside internalizes, listens, God is my God and he is totally one. He's truly one. And when we think about the oneness and truth of God, we're inspired to love him because he's the ultimate backbone and and reality behind all of existence. And with that comes clarity. And when we go through these meditations, two things happen when we develop this type of love. Two things happen. Number one, we become generous. We become generous with our money. Our charity is on a different level. We become generous with our time. Our Torah study is on a different level. We become generous with our heart. What is our doing going to look like? We're not going to notice the phone ringing and the calls coming in and I got to get to the email. What's we're going to be present? We're going to be present in our relationships. But why is that important? Why is that internal psychological freedom important? Because like King Salman said that God put the world in our heart. And when we have freedom in our own heart, that influences the world. How does that influence the world? It makes God more comfortable with the world because that's what freedom is. I'm comfortable with God. So God says, "Well, if there's people in this world that are comfortable with me, I'd like to hang out here more often." And now the world is a place that's comfortable for God. And now we've brought the world closer to Messiah, to the Messianic era. Literally, by being more free internally, we have an influence in the world outside of us that we won't always notice or we won't always see unless we really, really look for it. And you see this, by the way, in in the the Jews during the plagues, 10 plagues. It says there was darkness, total darkness for the Egyptians. But it said the Jews had light. Within the darkness, we carried around light. We were still in Egypt. The the geographical exodus technically didn't happen yet. And somehow in the darkest of times, we carried around light with us. And in our exile, we have the ability to carry on th those torches with us through the right connection, through the right domining, through the right intention of developing real love, real freedom. Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.