The Sacred Destiny of Our Generation to Embody Divine Bliss: A Conversation with 18Forty

I am so privileged and this is really a privilege and pleasure to sit with someone who we've sat with once before, Rav Y Jacobson. Thank you so much for joining us today on 1840. >> My privilege, my honor. Thank you for the opportunity, the gift. >> You know, we live in a very interesting generation really for the first time in all of Jewish history. we're raised. We have Jewish institutions that are there to raise us really from from the cradle from when we're born, nurseries, programs. Then we have camps, we have elementary schools, we have high schools that take you through really up until your mid20s. You go into yeshiva seminary, wherever it is, and then you step out and you step out into the world and you no longer have that institutional cover. We've built incredible institutions that literally saved the Yiddish in America. Why am I opening with this? It's because I want to explore and talk to you about how the focus of tshoua changes over the course of your life. And specifically how the tshoua that we have when we're when we're in yeshiva, when we're in we're in high school, we're in base medish, whatever it is, there's this sense of what tshoua is supposed to be. We have our list of things that we're supposed to get towards. We have all the alates. We have the special sitter. You know that if you can't think of an aa that fits into this one, I'll give you suggestions and usually you could find one. And then you step out into adulthood and we don't really have an institution. The institution really that we some people merit to have a little bit earlier later is family. You've spoken quite a bit about this. And what I want to hear from you is how does tshoua change if it does at all from the years when you are within the institutions you have a certain focus you want to do the rules and then the tshouva of doing chuva in the context of family in the context of spouse children >> great question so I could not speak for how it changes institutionally so to speak for the collective because I think everybody's journey especially in this area of chuva is very unique but what I do think is I know from my own experience I think there are two experiences of chuva and often I could leave the yeshivas and leave the institutions I never reached the second level because I may have left the structure the infrastructure of the schools the seminaries the bmedrish the yeshivas but I may still take that with me at least in my memory and not really have another model. What really uh touches me in a very deep place is a discourse of the alterb the balany rab of lead who was also the founder of kabadidis and the author of the tanya the author of one of the greatest students of the mag of misri you like history he was born 1745 passed away in 1812 and he writes in one of his discourses something incredibly incredibly moving he says the gammorra says the says in track chabas taught his students that of your whole life you should be doing chuva and he asks the obvious question wouldn't he wish his students to s not to sin rather than to constantly sin and always do chuva he say you should always be doing chuva so literal interpretation is you never know when you're going to leave the world so you should always be prepared just always repent he said but I would think the ideal state is stop sinning and you won't have to do chuva every day you'll end the day and say you know what it was a great day and he says something very powerful. He says we make a mistake of thinking that chuva is connected to sins. Chuva is connected to transgressions. He says it doesn't have to do with that. No, what are you talking about? All of Chuva is repentance. Chuva is I'm asking forgiveness. It's remorse. Karabola, it's all remorse, resolutions for sins and transgressions. He says that's the outer layer of chuva. That's the tip of the iceberg. Chuva is the posture of the soul. A soul that's in touch with its deepest heart space is always in a state of chuva because the word chuva means return and the soul in its deepest space is aware of the most powerful experience in its life and it's he calls it the trauma of existence. The fact that the soul essentially is subsumed in pure infinity, piece of hashem which is beyond what our human consciousness can even grasp. There's a part of our consciousness that transcends our human experience of it. It's divine consciousness. But the soul is very well aware of the breaking point of the fact that it emerges into a world where ego and self becomes the litmus test. If I'm safe, if I exist, if I have value, you like me, am I doing well? Am I successful? Even in a religious context, am I learning well? Am I doing mitzvah? Am I observant Jew? Am I am I a am I a good guy? Am I is my wife like the best guy almost the best guy at least second? You know, am I going to get the trophy? And he said all that is the trauma of existence where my ego hijacks my soul and suddenly I become an existence and I may live my entire life in that bubble like a chicken and egg and not even know anything else. Truva is the posture of a soul that experiences that pain and it's homesick. It's homesick to experience ego death and to be subsumed in infinity. Of course, if I have sins and transgressions, I want to get rid of them because that's like the stain that simply blocks the ability to experience my intimacy with Hashem. That's the outer layer of chuva. But the inner layer of chuva is the awareness of the pain of separateness. And that pain of separateness is at the core of all of our anxiety. Deeper than all the anxiety is the anxiety of me thinking that I need an ego to exist. The burden of me having to exist outside of infinity is the most painful thing for the soul because it's really completely one with Hashem and yet he sent me here. So it's not a mistake. This is my mission. So chuva is the dual recognition of number one there's a deep pain and the pain is not because I'm a bad guy or because I have psychological problems. On the contrary, the more sensitive and spiritual you are, the more anxiety you're going to have of this level because you're more aware of how homesick you are. You're aware that there's something unnatural in the very definition of existence. Ble being in flow alignment is surrendering that, letting go, seeing it, and then saying, "And now I could choose." Once again, connection, surrender, love, trust, transcendence. And that's that's truva. >> I want to build on that and and push a little bit further and talk specifically about chuva in adulthood of what that process feels like. One thing that I find really interesting cuz I listen to quite a bit of your classes and conversations is recently and I don't know if this was a deliberate choice or this was a strategy or something that you saw was very desperately needed in this moment in this generation is that you started talking more about your own transformation later in life. talking about waking up and like re reanctifying the holiest, most intimate parts of your life, family, children, and and and that's really what spurred my opening question, which is trying to understand how is it that somebody like yourself, who I assume was the best guy in Yeshiva or of second to best, third to best, but you you you were of you had all of the pedigree and everything and you you you were seen on a point and we're rewarded for your excellence. And then you step out and you start building an individual life. We're in your home. You have a wife. You have children. And you started talking about how a transformation later in life of what waking up. And my first question I wanted to really understand about this is why did you choose to start talking about this publicly? Why did you choose to share this in this moment right now? I'm sure these are things that you've been grappling with for some time. Why did you choose to start talking about it now? >> Wow, very deep question. There's probably many layers here and I'm not even sure I'm conscious of all the layers. I hope with time I'll become conscious of more layers, but I think at least one uh very important truth about this is as follows. I grew up in a home and in a community which was extremely intellectually stimulating. Um, I was very into learning. I think I was a pretty decent student in yeshiva. Uh, with God's grace, I did well. Um, I even had the privilege in my young years as a yeshiva boy. It was the last years of the labba's life to join the team of oral scribes of theb which was an extraordinary privilege and also profound responsibility and also extremely challenging and difficult simply from an intellectual perspective to memorize hours of the rebs and then transcribe them and be on that team. So it was really a blessed blessed opportunity and quite stressful for a young yeshiva boy. My midsai shabas could not be as fun and as exciting as a lot of my classmates and friends and I was a little jealous of them but I but I understood the privilege and the and also the is the responsibility and generally you know I learned a lot. I excelled and I did well. Thank God I did well. I also, you know, built it into a career that was successful, impacting people, inspiring people, lecturing all over the world, visiting hundreds of communities, uh, Kabat centers, shors, universities, bi yes schools at seminaries, etc., non-Jewish centers, which was all a great privilege and I'm very grateful for it. As I was growing later in my life, I still felt there was something that was intangible, but I was feeling my anxiety more and more, acute anxiety. And I always had anxiety. At a young age, I started to pull out my ear at a very young age. In those days, nobody sent you to therapy. Therapy was not part of the cosmic Jewish uh today. If you don't have a therapist with sugar, what's wrong with you? You know what I mean? But then if you had a therapy, you therapist, you were really, you know, so it wasn't part of the equation. But I was pulling out my hair and I had different internal challenges but I overcame them because I did well and I was successful and I proved myself to myself and I proved myself to the world. But as you get older I guess uh layers start being removed. Especially I was struggling in my marriage. I was struggling with my children. My children were struggling and Hashem has blessed me with a partner with a spouse who was not very impressed with my external accomplishments. was hard for me because I could go out to the world, get a standing ovation after a speech to 5,000 people. And yet in my home base, my wife was not impressed by that. I remember I was once featured on the front page of a distinguished magazine. And from my perspective, it was a it was an accomplishment. It was a great accomplishment. And I saw that my wife was unhappy. In retrospect, it was God's greatest gift. Because what she was really telling me, not through these words, what she was really telling me is, "I see in you something that you don't see yet. There's a greatness inside of you that you don't know yet." And I was feeling pain. I was feeling anxiety. And something was not adding up. Something was not adding up. And I began a journey of deep, deep emotional and spiritual work. A very, very deep journey which came with a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and pain. And I ultimately discovered that my heart space was blocked. I was a uh I was really really shut down. I was shut down. But it was so sly and clever because I could talk about emotions better than most people. My lectures can describe trauma, can describe people shutting down. And the reason is because I got it somehow. I understood it. I understood it intellectually. I had the empathy to articulate it. But internally I did not have the courage to experience it. It turns out that because of my sensitive heart at some point a lot of it shut down and I was operating from a brain space which was very successful because I was like AI. AI is very very good you know gets all the information processes it knows how to say it better than most people articulates it. The only thing that AI lacks is a soul. There's no nishama. You can't get married to AI. you can't have an intimate relationship. [laughter] And that's what that was my story. And when I started to explore it, it was very very painful. I had to go back to the rupture. I had to go back to the breaking points. There was a reason I disassociated. There was a reason my heart shut down. There was a reason my brain said, "I'll take over. I'll take over your life. It'll be much more successful. It'll be less messy. Uh you won't have to deal with the the intensity of real emotional experience." And it's still something I struggle with. It's something I struggle with. I was reading I used to I would learn a lot and I I saw the beauty of Yiddish the depth of Kabala of course but there was an emotional component that simply was was missing. It was missing and I didn't even know it. That's how funny it was. I didn't know it because my brain really compensated for it. And I thought that to be inspired means you intellectually understand something. You get it? That's what inspiration is. As I disintegrated with the help of my wife and my children and a good support system and a lot of inner work and a lot of healing work, I started to feel more of my heart space. And then I realized something. I realized that I wasn't the only one. I realized that this is probably one of the greatest challenges of our generation. We have been incredible at survival. We have been incredible at intellectual achievement and accomplishment. We've been incredible at creating, as you said, institutions and infrastructures that facilitate tradition and commitment and learning and scholarship and also stories and inspiration and and kindness and so forth. But I suddenly realized that the embodied experience of the divine in my nervous system and my body was virtually non-existent. And it was completely relegated to the sub subconscious. As I started to experience all these things more, my heart started to open up more. I went back to some of the greatest works of the alterb of his Tanya, his discourses. And I remember one morning I was reading it and I started to cry because I realized he was articulating in words the vision of the other side of the space in which the heart actually channels the frequency of the divine. And I realized this was the whole secret of Yiddish that I never knew about. I knew about it intellectually but what is it to actually embody the reality of Hashem? Not in my brain, not in mathematics, not in a gimra, not in the cabal, not in not in philosophy, not in mush, not inva, but actually in my nervous system. In my in my physical visceral experience, he says for my flesh, I shall experience hashem. And I realized that that that that's it. The trauma of gulos is the trauma not just of geographical exile. I think much more of emotional exile. car. The bos says redemption is in the soul. And when I started to experience it, I realized this is what I this is what I want to teach. This is what I want to channel. This is what I was looking for my whole life. This is the only thing that's going to heal my anxiety, my disassociation. My soul is searching for truth, for authenticity, for a living experience of the divine, in which there's no ego, in which I don't have to be defensive anymore. In which criticism is not suicide, in which an intimate, vulnerable, authentic relationship is actually the deepest and most blissful experience. in which I don't have to live anymore for validation of others even for self validation in which I could let go of all forms of self-consciousness and the deeper I can go into a real authentic ego death and just be a channel for the anai for the infinite I can actually start breathing and living and be present in life but all of my protectors were going crazy and with a vengeance they would they they still do they constantly come back to monitor to criticize to make me better to make sure that I'm impressive, to make sure that I'm safe, I'm successful. And it's it's it's literally a daily choice of leaning into the frequency of trust and surrender and love and faith and transcendence. These are higher frequencies. They're not easy. They're not lowhanging fruits. Guilt, shame, anxiety, need for validation, success, these are lowhanging fruits. They're very easy to get. Jealousy, resentment, comparing myself to others, do you like me? Do you not like me? The higher frequencies that are available are surrender uh uh love, faith, bliss, transcendence, they require uh um the ego to dissolve, at least dissolve somewhat. And once I started to teach like this, I realized I'm not going to be teaching this. I'm not going to be authentic. Maybe I can give a beautiful speech. Somebody close to me called me one day and said, "Your old speeches were much better. Your old speeches were much better." Those were their words. I'm like, "Why?" >> I would have called on the spot. >> I'm like, I'm like, "Why?" And the person said, "You used to speak about ideas and nobody was as good as you. When you spoke about the Rambam, you allowed people to understand who the Rambam was. When you spoke about the people and now you're talking about yourself, what happened to you? You became from a large person, you became a small person. And I was like, "Wow, wow." And I I I I had to feel into that. And then I had to ask myself, is that true? And then I realized, no, what happened was I'm trying to teach much more from a heart space. I'm trying to teach viscerally. It doesn't always work. My my mind sometimes takes over and I go back into that space. But to really experience the fusion, that's my own chuva. And it's a daily chuva. It's a daily avoida. It's uh it's it's something that my coping mechanisms, my survival instincts have a very hard time with it because I have developed pretty effective coping mechanisms and they were not sinister. They were not evil. They were not abusing people. I was not a perpetrator of any form. They were doing good things. I was teaching. I was speaking. I was inspiring people. I even said a lot of good things. I think I hope. [laughter] But I realized that I was cut off from myself. There were certain wires that have been severed very early on in my system. And I did not know that. I simply did not know that. And when they started to rewire and I'm still working on rewiring, that's my own chuva. That's my own process of daily chuva and throughout the whole year even on I got to do chuva in the middle of pes in the middle of um there's simply nothing close to it. I remember one of my mentors told me and it was it was such a powerful moment. And he said to me, he said, you know, Yk is my full name. He said, you know, even if you put up your videos on YouTube and you don't have a 100,000 views or 50,000 views or a million views, you'll have 7 billion views. All of humanity from President Trump to the president of uh North Korea will be watching your videos. In other words, you'll reach success that your ego will have to say, "Amazing. Amazing. I affected the whole world. 7 billion people are watching and being inspired and sharing it like what else and your ego is actually wow then I want to tell you even if that happens you haven't even scratched the surface of your true greatness because your true greatness is your infinity you're channeling Hashem's infinity and I got it trauma is really reducing ourselves to such smallness the litmus test of My success is if a million people or 10 million people or 100 million people or 10 people or my wife and kids and my bmedish my sh my colleagues my comrades whatever it is like me and that means that I'm actually a pathetic insignificant reality and that's the core of the anxiety that is the core of the anxiety and paradoxically it's in the death of all of that it's in the death of all of that that I we can actually begin to breathe and I still have a hard time articulating it because it's still a shock for my ego brain, for my egoic mind. This is still a shock. Like, what are you doing now? What are you doing? Why are you being so vulner Why you being vulnerable? What are you doing? Like, you had a good life. You weren't ashed and destroyed. Like, what are you trying to do? But yet, I know that it's in the heartbeat of my authenticity where I can find some truth, some peace. And that's what that's what I want to channel. >> So I I want to ask you because when I was listening to you, you know, I I want to be very careful. I don't compare at all. Um I'm I'm on every metric I am a much smaller, less influential person than you. And yet I feel like I experienced something around three years ago. It was very interesting because you mentioned you were talk I've always been talking about mental health. I did a series on mental health on 1840. It's right before Pesak three years ago. Um, and what was so strange is that for the for not for the first time, but of the most significant episodes I've ever had, I I suffered afterwards like what I would call an actual nervous breakdown. Like I I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't move. Like I felt like the the way I described it was like I I felt like the the floors kept on caving in like I was on like a 50s store building and I and it was genuinely frightening. I had to relearn how to exist in the world. I had to relearn literally like my wife, my children, like I had to restart from scratch. But something I'm still genuinely struggling with is we're both in this place of like of of being out there of of trying to influence and and and loving that and and enjoying that responsibility and the commitment. And I still struggle to this day with what you said looking at the at the numbers at the views. 1840 is not the the yeshiva.net that even though you know like it's not it's not we don't have the reach that you do and I sometimes I look at the other podcast the other people and and it I know it's not healthy and I know it's not it's not going to get you anywhere but you could feel the cling >> of of compar and I I wonder for you did you did you let go do do you look at the stats on your YouTube videos does it does it do you still notice what hits and what doesn't hit. Is it that you stop noticing and looking or that the noticing and the looking is done in a healthy more trustful context? >> Beautiful question. And it was a moment when I said, "Hashem, you know, if you really want me to delete every single video of mine on YouTube, on the yeshiva.net, every Instagram of every message every clip not a clip not an audio garnish garnish not in writing and it's saying that's who you want he me was such a comforting feeling it was such a liberating feeling so what I'm going to tell you honestly is I try to lean into that posture I can't always I have the other parts I want to know what's going on I get stressed, I get overwhelmed. But because I have a reference point of the other side of the vocabulary of an authentic soul, I think it just dictates my life much less. I don't worship it in the same way. It used to be when I finished a speech or she my trauma I should say craved feedback. I needed the people to tell me how amazing it was for me to feel like I'm a good guy. And the more I yearned for it, the more the yearning increased. As the garra says, the more you satiated, the more hungry it was. And it could never be enough. And if I got one criticism, it canceled out all the praise. And the reason, of course, was because the void was internal. The void was I didn't like myself. So the more people can tell me that they like me and I changed their life, the more I could start believing that I'm liking myself, but it's all fake, fraud, phony, because inner self-love could never come from the outside. And if there's a million people telling me they like me, just makes me hate myself more because I realize how desperate I am. And even with a million people, it's now a million people telling me how lonely I am, which is why celebrities are more depressed than everybody else. So I'm a push guy, there's two people who tell me that I'm a nobody. But if I'm A HASH OF A GUY, THERE'S TWO MILLION PEOPLE TELLING ME EVERY DAY THAT I DON'T EXIST. WOW, that's hard [laughter] to deal with. 10 billion people telling you every day you don't exist. That's tough. That's tough. And [clears throat] then I realized it's simply because I am not in touch with my heart space. I am not in touch with my soul. The moment I had even 30 seconds of an embodied experience of what does it mean to feel Hashem's infinity in my nervous system and at that moment I don't need an ego ever again. I don't need anybody giving me attention. I'm literally channeling infinity. I remember somebody once told me, a therapist once told me, a very profound person. Person said, "Feeling your own spiritual energy is infinitely more valuable than getting feedback from 1 million people." And I know how true it is. If I'm giving a share a class or lecture and I'm in touch with my own spiritual energy, which means with the divine flow coming through me, I'm just a channel for the divine flow. That will be infinitely more satisfactory emotionally, psychologically, spiritually than being disassociated. And having a million people giving me a standing ovation for 20 minutes and telling me I changed their life for eternity and I'm the greatest gift to humanity since I don't know who. That's great. It's great for three and a half minutes. I saw when I came home from a lecture, I got a standing ovation. Then I was eating uninhibitedly. Why am I eating? I was numbing the pain of loneliness. And in the good Jewish way, the great numbers is, you know, I wasn't addicted to terrible things. I was addicted to food. You know, a chocolate Danish doesn't seem to be harming the world, >> but it was simply numbing my soul. How do I know? Because I finished the Danish and then I went for a second Danish and then I needed some sushi and then I What? What was happening? I was hungry like you're a frock. >> Yeah. >> I wasn't hungry. I was hungry for for love. I was hungry for connection. I was hungry for authentic attachment. And I still feel it. I come home after an intense lecture and my coping mechanisms say, "It's time to eat. Time to eat." Because they're experiencing again this anxiety that I need to numb. Numb. And some of our numbers are intellectually rewarding. Some of us numb ourselves through religion. Some are some of us numb ourselves through Yiddish. Some of us numb ourselves through worshiping God. But I'm worshiping a god that's simply numbing me from my own trauma. So as the told the atheist, you know, the god you don't exist. No, you don't believe. I also don't believe in you know the god that's here to simply allow myself to numb myself because to say I have this also it's it's it's it has nothing to do I realize it has nothing to do with the real experience of Hashem. And then I started to be so grateful to people like the balant and the alterba the balatanya and I realized what they were doing. What really happened was that the trauma and the suffering of exile caused so many of us to disassociate from an embodied experience. It's very hard to remain present with your nervous system with so much persecution and pain. It's very difficult. You can't you can't blame anybody. We can't judge anybody. You know, we have thousands of years of faith and of suffering in our genes. And the Balsham who was an orphan who was thrown out of the system who didn't make it in any school of yeshiva who hung out in the forests in that vacuum he could hear the voice that of Ramavu heard that Mishabenu heard the original voice of experiencing the divine hashu. He is my consciousness. is in my nervous system and it was breathtaking because I realized that's where all bliss exists. That's the only place it exist. It doesn't exist anywhere else. There's no attachment outside of that attachment. Once I'm present in that attachment, I could be attached to myself. I could be attached to others. So, I want to ask you about the context in which a lot of your vulnerability, but that's not even the right word, a lot of your insight emerges. And it's a place that actually I feel extraordinarily close to even though I've only gone once and it is in the organization that is called Kesher Navi. I want to talk about that for a moment. Kesher Navi, which you know it it it's mostly for more clientele, more Hamisha clientele, but it is an organization that's dedicated to coaching and mentoring parents who have children who are struggling in in a whole variety of ways and how to keep that family unit intact. And I noticed that you go you speak there a lot. You're very drawn. In almost the founding of 1840, we put that at the center. Every year before Pesak, we do conversations, parents and children. We call it intergenerational divergence. And there was something about the family unit and the struggles within the family unit that I found were like literally like a like almost standing at harina. You're getting a new revelation that you didn't get when you were in yeshiva. when you really start to grapple with the immediate family unit, all the broken and every family has their own, >> you know, I think is the line from Dusty, all happy families are alike and all unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way. What do you think is unique about the religious revelation that comes in the context of families struggling with their own children? You go into that room and I've been there. You see have strals beckishas people learning they're doing dearu they're doing dafio they're they're really like at the highest level and yet they all have this very similar struggle where their ch their children are not in the image that they wanted >> and I I look at that as I I've I've said it many times it's the holy of holies it's the koteshakadashim but what I'm trying to understand >> is what is unique about the revelation that comes in the context why why is the revelation so different when it comes in the context of spouse and children than it does in the context, this is really my my opening question, than it does in in Yeshiva. You you had an audience with the Rebi. You you you had there's not there's nothing more superernal of a revelation in the last hundred years than to stand eye to eye with the Labavich Rebi. And yet there was a revelation that you were only able to receive in the context of familial struggle. Yeah. >> The most b like getting seeing spouses seeing each other children adjusting expect. Why is it >> I learned that I could not live vicariously off the lab. It's a very deep and profound and acute truth and that is sometimes you can encounter very very great souls and that too can be a crutch that allows you to avoid confronting your own pain your own soul. You see such holiness you see such greatness and you almost live off it. But sh our word for the abyss is the same letters like the word sha borrowing spirituality from somebody else. That's what it means to live in the abyss. >> I've never heard that term before. That's the the abyss. The language we use which appears throughout the liturgy is sha. The the lowest level. And that's the language of borrowing. >> Borrowing. >> Yeah. >> It's not really yours. >> It's not yours. I'm borrowing energy. I'm borrowing your wisdom, your energy, your heart. And it's nice. It's beautiful cuz I could transmit it, but it's borrowed energy. It's not authentic. It's because I don't believe that God wants me. I don't believe that I am the greatest thing that ever happened to Hashem or as our sages put it in. I don't believe it. I may believe it intellectually. I may give a thousand lectures about it. I'm good with this topic. Believe in yourself. [laughter] I'm smart. I'm good at it. I did it. And it's helpful. It's a good It's a good message. It's a good message. But viscerally, my nervous system got another message. There's a lot of guilt. There's a lot of shame. I realized that at a core, it's this is hard to say, but it's true. I realized that I have a an existential shame at my core. There was an unconscious fear that if people would really know me, not my oratory skills, not my charisma, not even that I'm a nice guy because I'm a I think I'm a pretty nice guy, but they would know my core, my real real core. You would not look at me again. It certainly wouldn't be my friend. I would not look at me again. So, I couldn't even know about that part. I'm going to show it to you. And imagine that much of my life is dedicated to avoid confronting that part. So I'm like standing at the edge of a cliff and my entire life is invested making sure that nobody sees the cliff and I don't even see the cliff which means I can only be facing in one direction my whole life I don't have the freedom to see reality cuz I'm going to see reality until I was not ready to face that and it's daily work. I couldn't even begin to integrate all of my parts. So I think, you know, as as I developed and as I grew up, I had to go back into me. Where does where did this all land inside of me? And I realized I couldn't even see the reb until I did not see myself because I don't think we can really see the core of another human being if we haven't seen ourselves. All I will see in you is how you make me feel better. All I would see in you is the part of you that works for my survival system. And I could do that with a big sadic tool. I think it's true that all great people in history, real great people in history, had at least one person who saw them. They really, really saw them. Seeing them not their talents or their gifts or their resources, seeing them at their core in the most regulated way. almost like a regulated mother who's looking at her infant and sees the infant at its core. Not what you need to do for me, not what you're going to be, not what I hope for you, but actually the you that heaven conceived of when heaven conceived you into existence, what that you looks like. Um, I was always moved the previous describes the meeting between the alternative of Misridge. And when he came to him, he told him a few words. He said, "The told me that a soul, it's very emotional, a soul that was never here yet, cuz most souls are reincarnated, is going to come down into the world, is going to pave a new path revealing the infinite depth of Yiddish. And he's going to have incredible, incredible adversaries, very significant ones, who are going to try to cut him down. but he will prevail. And he turns to Alreb and he says, "That's you." Imagine that gift because when he was being persecuted by some of the great contemporaries of his day and he was a humble man, you start doubting yourself. You're like, "Maybe I am a weirdo. Maybe I am distorting Yiddish, right? You're talking about one of the biggest geniuses, the is a masterwork of goas like but he had one person who saw the mag says, I see you. I know you. You don't have to doubt yourself. If I never had one person to see me, I'll never see myself. I'll doubt myself. Once I have one person to see me, I could see me and then I could see others. So till I cannot see me, I couldn't even see the I couldn't see the alter. I couldn't see the Reb because it's only in meeting your somebody once asked me was the five towns and Jacob Langanger did this public with me with the audience and I remember at the end you know he throws these surprise questions like you do. What time do you go to sleep? What time do you wake up? What's your favorite book? Whether you go to the bathroom, how much cholin do you eat? You know, all these questions to confuse the brilliant experts who don't remember how much Cholen to eat on Shi. So he throws out a question. If you could meet one person in history, who would it be? And I remember I told him myself, I would love to meet myself because if I don't meet myself, I won't meet anybody in history. I'll just meet my version of them. And once you do meet yourself, you could meet every person in history because in the core of energy, everything is there. You know what did the poet say? You're not a drop in the ocean. You're the entire ocean and a drop. >> Mhm. >> You're the entire ocean and a drop. And if you're the entire ocean in a drop, so then you meet the entire ocean. That that that's what divine embodiment means. You meet the entire ocean. So coming back to your original question, I think it's our most intimate relationships, our wives and children who don't allow us to settle for our mediocrity. What I find with the youth today is and I describe it with the verse in the Song of Songs. These are our spouses and children banging on the closed doors and the walls that have surrounded our hearts called Arlas Hale, the foreskin of the heart. Mommy, I want to feel your heart space. Can you open up your heart? Can you open up your heart? In yeshiva, nobody challenges me that way. In my community, often people don't challenge you that way. Certainly around the world and among fans or likes, they don't say David. They're like, "You're amazing, Rabbi W. That was life-changing. I'm never going to have to say Kip my life. Incredible. Amazing. You're a gift. Shine." But my children were struggling. My marriage was struggling. And they weren't impressed with Friday night speeches with Rabbi Waway. They didn't care for it. It didn't mean anything to them. They were looking for something else. What they were looking was I want your heart space. I want your your your embodied embodied heart space. Not philosophy, not ideas. I want to feel you. I want to feel your etm, your your core. That's what real real attachment is. I didn't know about that. I didn't know it existed. I didn't know it existed. And I think a lot of us in Kesha Navi began to learn that. And there were two stages. Stage number one was realizing not to take it personally. Your child is struggling because your child is struggling, not because you're a failure and a horrible parent. And if you don't give me nas, I am a miserable failure because then we can't be here for our children cuz we're busy getting angry at them for not living up to our expectations and not getting the we want the yeshiva, the seminary of this. So that's number one. That's step one and it's an important step. Can you recognize your child's pain? Can you see your child? Can you separate? Cut the umbilical cord and just be there for them with attachment, with love, allow their healing process. That's step one. Step two is harder and deeper. Step two is what if actually much of the pain of my child is a response to my own unresolved wounds? What if my children are mirroring for me the fragmented parts of my personality that I never made peace with? What if the pain of my children is really a gift to reflect back to me where I have disassociated and they're just as good children? They're bringing it out to the for you know like somebody once said what's this weird custom that we hide and then our children are the ones who find it the ones who expose the ones who return and then they want a prize. And then somebody once said a gald he said there's a profound message here exactly on the night of liberation and that is we hide a lot of parts of our life especially our broken matzas. Our broken matzas we put into pillowcases and under couches and in drawers and we cover it up and we hide it very very well sometimes for generations. And whatever we hide our children are going to reveal. They're going to find it and they're going to show it back to us. And then you could do one of two things. You could scream at them. You could disassociate from them. You could explain to them how much they have and how you would have never done this to your parents and how ungrateful they are and they are an entitled, despicable, bratty, self-centered, narcissistic generation addicted to internet and technology. How dare they reveal this? And they're rebelling against the Messiah and they're destroying 3,000 years of Yiddish. Take a deep breath. Look your child in the eyes. Thank him or her because only when you take it and you internalize it can you together finish the sed and say can you actually set yourself free and that is I think what we are really really seeing our youth today are very very sensitive. They are picking up you know in the 1960s they finally could pick up the sound of the big bang. >> Yeah. >> And authenticate it. And I say our youth today is detecting the sound of thesum. The original big bang is the lurionic cababalisticum upon which much of kabala are based on >> the sound of >> the sound of theum. The contraction, the contraction, the absence, >> the absence of infinity which allows existence to emerge. Feeling that it's separate from the divine embrace and love and therefore creating anxiety at the core of our DNA because existence knows deep down that it's based on a lie. It's based on concealment and it's sum as the greatidic masters would say meaning it's not a real absence. It's the divine allowing you to emerge as an independent person who will choose trust. You have to choose it because it's it's coming from your play your space. And I think they're all picking up on it. Can you hear that this is what they're hearing? And if this is what they're hearing, don't throw them back into the tensum. Don't just beat them into compliance and pressure them just to follow you. because then you're crippling yourself and they don't buy it. There's a much deeper response and the deeper response is can I find my heart space? Can I hear the pain of the temple in my life and let go? Not intellectually. I did this intellectually for many years. I got it figured out viscerally. It's very vulnerable. It's extremely visceral. It's your children feeling the authenticity of your own relationship with God. It's them feeling that you actually don't need them to have a very deep relationship with yourself and God because they will not compensate for the attachment that you're searching for. And once you can meet it, it's fascinating how it shifts. It's fascinating. I saw it in my own family. One thing that I want to ask and this is in many ways the inverse of the question of like looking at the views on on YouTube but something that I have have struggled with and you alluded to and and it may be a very almost an identical it's an inverted question but I I want to talk a little bit about how this awakening allowed you to deal with uh criticism and specifically I'm coming from a a very real place for whatever reason. Um, at different points in 1840 as we've come up, we've hit some real bumps in the road where people who listen to us either get very worked up and upset and they'll, you know, we have a community where people can be very zealous and they're going to try to shut you down and say that that's and they'll really like there was a point this year where like I felt there was somebody who was really right of me like genuinely like sending out emails to other people maybe you got email and and and genuinely trying to schmutz me up and getting dragged down and initially >> they were galdic successful and not in the outside in me. They shut me down >> because I have a lot of doubt. I I I don't always know that I'm right. I try to share what I think is authentic and true. I try to have Rabim who I ask and we every episode that we release is is always listened by another set of ears and even with all that one person gets upset and they try to make a rash and they go around and you feel so um isolated betrayed you're waiting for everybody. You're waiting for Raunham to get up and clap and say leave Bashkin alone. He's Gavalduk. He's a gem that we want. And I see I want people to say something that like it's a ridiculous expectation what no one's laying down on the tracks for me. I I wanted to know you've also maybe in a different and and most of these things people who follow me they probably have no clue that there's one guy but when you're in it it's your whole life you all think there's one self-righteous person and they usually have their own they always have their own issues their own brokenness but it's still it still can shut you down and I'm curious for you how not the positivity but how did you learn to really tame or grapple with vocal negativity directed at you. And I don't even need to I'm not even going to ask whether whether you have any because my assumption is you are out there enough in the world that there's somebody who really does not like you and makes it an effort makes an effort to let everybody know and try to and how do you deal with that negativity? >> Yeah, such an important question. So here too I have been working on evolving evolution. [laughter] I used to crave compliments and loathe criticism. In retrospect I understand why the compliments made me believe I exist. They made me believe I'm a good guy. I'm valuable. They avoided the need for me to see the cliff and face the shame. And they created an external facade that made me feel good for 6 minutes, hoping for the next compliment 6 minutes later. And it was very, very difficult. It was difficult because the compliments and the criticism were literally operating on the same frequency. They were doing the same thing. They were talking to a shell of me. They weren't talking to me. The compliments weren't talking to me. The criticism wasn't talking to me. They were both dealing with a shell. And the shell didn't really exist. So it was being created by a compliment and being destroyed by a insult or by a criticism. It's a very torturous way to live. What I realized was that the compliments were as torturous as the criticism because the compliments verify to me as much how much you know how inauthentic I am that I'm really a shell of myself. It's a it's a flimsy shell. It's a house built a palace built of cards you know as we say literally a dream and it comes and it goes one of the most beautiful was a real apicaris grew up in a religious home went to Germany became friends with Mendelson wrote a biography been to the he met the mag of misri and he hated he hated he hated so that's why you could trust the good things he says and he says that there were three tyrus that he heard in the name of the maggot and they blew him away. In other words, even Schlomma had to concede, had to acquies to the to the richness of it. And one of the terrorists, two of the terrorists that they're life-changing terrorists when you converely internalize them. And it's fascinating that years later, they found these teras in manuscripts of the students of the market. So, it's really incredible because the original source comes from not from texts. One of the Tyruses, one of my all-time favorites, Alicia has anxiety. He can't prophesize. He says as the musician begins to play the hand of hem rests on and the says and he says there's a big difference between a musician a musician a vocalist a rabbi a caner a speaker and the instrument itself the vocalist or the musician has self-consciousness I come home when I say they liked me. Why is somebody texting in the middle of my speech? Why did you just leave in the middle of this messing? I'm self-conscious. You think they're going to hire me next year? You think I can ask for more money? You think I'm really good? The violin doesn't have self-conscious. The violin doesn't come home and say, "You think I did a good job? I'm a threat of arrogance. You think they like me." The violin has no ego. Says the mag. When the becomes the niggan, becomes the like the instrument of the song. In other words, no self-consciousness. I'm just a violin, right? I am a harp to your melodies. Ego death. I'm not there. You're in flow. That's the he says something else from the says, "The honor of your friend should be as precious as your own honor." In other words, the way I respect myself, I should respect my friend. But the mag says we would think in you shouldn't be so into giving honor to yourself. And he says the honor that you get from people should be as valuable as the honor and the accolades you give to yourself. Imagine I finish a speech and nobody applauds me. So I go home and I give myself a standing ovation for 15 minutes and I don't have to stop. It's a joke. It's a bluff. I know it's worthless. She says that's exactly the value of quite of the accolades that other people give you. The moment I could start internalizing this, I could let go of more and more and more. I would finish a speech in a shir and I was waiting for the feedback and then I realized I am actually stealing from God. I'm afra once said once said something beautiful. The Maharal points to it already. When you say something in the name of the one who said it, you bring redemption to the world. You when you're paraphrasing, give credit. Attribute it to the one who said it. Why do you bring redemption to the world? It's a NICE THING. IT'S A NICE THING. IT'S COPYRIGHT. DON'T STEAL THE SAY IT IN say it in the right in the person's name. The Reb said Hashem is speaking the world into existence. Everything in the world is really God speaking it. When you identify in every the one who says it, you're channeling, you redeem the world from olm from helm from the concealment from the blockages. So when I realized when I finish a speech, if I'm looking for your validation or somebody else's validation, what I'm really doing is I'm seeking to hijack something from Hashem. Somebody once wrote, "Creativity is easedropping on God." If this was a creative class, it's simply because I was easedropping on the creator. Creativity is from creator. It's creativity of the creator. So now you say, "Rabbi, why was the best class ever? Was life changing. I NEVER HEARD SUCH A CLASS. IT CHANGED MY MARRIAGE." My coping mechanism wants to take that, own it, hijack it, and ask for a little more. Could you explain to me how it changed your life? And all I'm looking for is build up my ego more. What did I just do? I stole the energy that Hashem just channeled through me. I took it home. I own it as myself. And you know what the sad thing is? It's never going to be enough. In 10 minutes, I'm miserable cuz I'm building up a self that doesn't exist. I am part of a self mad. There's nothing outside of him. I watch my coping mechanism and I say, I know you want to be I know you so hard want to be validated. I'm here for you and I'll give that up and just be a channel. It's literally the avoida of surrendering the ego and the insecurity again and again and again. We call it bal. Now when there's criticism I can go into the same posture. It's not always easy. I'm not going to say that it doesn't occupy any space in me. I have to ask one question and that is when I look in the mirror and I can see the innermost space of my heart. Was this the right thing that I said or the wrong thing that I said? And that's counts billions of times more than any compliment or any criticism. What does God think of Rabbi Y Jacobson this morning or lecture or speech? And if I find out that I made a mistake and maybe I said something wrong, maybe I was insensitive, maybe I was disrespectful, maybe I exaggerated, maybe I dramatized, maybe I lied, maybe I said something wrong, maybe I was a little clueless, I could also turn to him and say, "I'm human. I have my traumas." What a good lesson. What a lesson. Help me fix this for the future and surrender it. Now, it's hard because my coping mechanism will come in and say, "No, you're a loser. You're a failure. You always do this. IT'S ALWAYS YOU ALWAYS do this. It wants to now completely detach me from source and put me into guilt. So now I'm the most miserable person who ever lived cuz I made a mistake and somebody got insulted and I need to hold that and again bring that into the relationship and say, "Yeah, it feels horrible, but deep down I know I'm an innocent person. I'm a good person. I'm going to learn from my mistakes." And somebody recently came to me and said, "You know why you're being vulnerable recently in your classes? Cuz you're looking for attention. You're looking for attention. You used to get attention by being a skillful, CHARISMATIC PRESENTER. AND NOW TODAY'S GENERATION. Everybody wants vulnerabilities. All right. My wife has new attention. I could listen to him. But God inside of me knows the truth and I know the truth. Somebody else told me something a little deeper and said, "You're like a little boy who discovered a sandbox. At 54, you discovered vulnerability. So you're talking about it all the time. YOU KNOW, YOU FOUND A NEW YOU FOUND A NEW LOVE OF YOUR LIFE. Don't worry, you'll grow out of it. That's a very deep observation. And you know what? Maybe I'm sure I'll evolve and emerge. And I want to be honest about it. And I hope I can be a channel to truth. So, I think at every point of our life, we really have to, you know, ask ourselves right now. One of the most life-changing for me insights of the is he says we say every morning I shall not be embarrassed and humiliated for eternity. Why would I be embarrassed for eternity? And he says what it means is like this. The second the soul departs from the body the consciousness of the material world is gone. The soul is not anymore in the body and suddenly in a split second the soul experiences itself as subsumed in infinity. There's complete complete ego death and suddenly a part of the eternal bliss of hashem and he says the shame of looking back and saying wow I invested my entire life in building up a reality that doesn't even exist. How much pain and shame he says it was all a mech to I was building and building a self that doesn't exist that shame is the shame of seeing eternity of facing your own eternity and asking where was I living which part of me was alive and I think this is the question I have to ask myself the person may be very very critical the person may be saying I'm embarrassing Judaism I'm embarrassing God I'm going against the Torah whatsoever then I want to ask myself if I had a complete ego death. I had no blockages. I had literally survival coping mechanisms opened up and unraveled and I came out of my egg and I faced infinity in life and I face the place of me that doesn't need any validation because it has the divine confidence of being part of Hashem. Will I have make peace with what happened today because I was a channel or not? That's that's the that's the only criticism that matters. >> I want to pose a question again. Thinking about where we are in history and what needs to change. I feel like every generation had a much clearer understanding of what we were waiting for and what needs to change in order to have what we've been anticipating. you know, some messianic redemptive experience of the of the Jewish people. And, you know, a few generations ago, like my grandparents' generation, it was having yeshivas and basic Jewish education for people. You know, all four of my grandparents grew up in the United States of America. It's a miracle that that my family even has a connection to Jewish life. Most Bashfkans in the world, very, very distant, don't really have a Jewish education. So we spent a generation building building yeshivas and communities and we developed a model of Judaism which is the of American Judaism. It's the innovation doesn't require state power. It doesn't require coercion. You know there there we don't get taxed. Nobody's getting if you get excommunicated from one sh you go to the one down the block. There's a lot of sh a lot of great options. And there is this sense right now of like where should we be focusing? Where's the work focusing on? And especially when we come to the high holidays and the yumm, you know, there's a sense, yeah, I I I could try to say a little bit less lush and hurra next year. I is that what's going to like move the needle at this point? Is that what's going to to set to send those over? It feels like it's very unclear. I feel a deep ambiguity in where Clius should be investing their focus and their resources >> to get to the collective bliss that we've all been waiting for. >> I was wondering if you could talk almost generationally in this moment. What do you feel like the collective body of the Jewish people, what do we need to learn and what do we need to unlearn in order to really realize what we have been waiting for? Wow. What I could say is what I am experiencing in my own heart and my own soul. And that's who I could speak for and what I could speak for. Carva, I feel that one of the most incredible avoid deep work of our generation is cracking open. This is the first generation in Jewish history when at least for most of us, our nervous system is relaxed from outer threats. If I ask my eyes, are you seeing a lion or a Kazak or a Nazi coming? No. My ears, my nose, my mouth, my hands. Most Jews, thank God, most at least in most situations, I know of course there are some very difficult situations, have safety most of the time. That means this is the first generation in history where we could turn inward because if it's a Nazi is banging at my door. Both my parents grew up in Stalinist Russia. You couldn't go inward. Survival. Survival. Survival. Mr. Snafish. And this is true for thousands of years. In one form or another, very small breaks. But this is actually a generation where most of my life, all of my life, 54 years relatively external safety. And yet we see anxiety everywhere for what? Why are my kids anxious? Why am I anxious? We have prosperity and money and parnosa that our great-grandparents couldn't even dream of. The biggest today is a bigger than the Yeah. You go to our you can eat six meals a day from soup to watermelon to bis soup to cholin to some sponge cake to honey cookies of course and some more food and then somebody brings from the pyaban some good sushi and you're good to go. You don't even have to you don't have to go home for supper. The anxiety is coming from a deeper place. It's coming from the sound of the tim. This is a generation that can actually heal our history. crack open and start experiencing the divine in our bones and in our nervous system. It's very foreign to us because we have showed up with tremendous commitment but with a lot of latter layers, a lot of facads at least I can speak about myself and I think the unique aid today and it's very very creative. It's very beautiful. I'm grateful for it is what does it actually look like if each of us can find the Msiah inside of us can experience redemptive consciousness says redemption begins in the mind what does it look like if each of us is living in their full infinite greatness and power there's no defensiveness there's no ego there's no need for anybody to rub shoulders there's no living from anxiety, fear, self-consciousness is what if I am embodying the full divine bliss in my bone. I can feel Hashem's infinite love to me and operate from that heart space. Everybody shines in their deepest deepest greatness that is incomprehensible and inconceivable. Here's the tragedy for me. I didn't even know what these words mean. If you would tell this to me a couple of years ago, I would look at you. This is a goal. This is a task. What in the world are you talking about? Opening up what? What do you want me to do? I was so closed up. I didn't even understand the vocabulary of redemption. You know, if I'm a chicken and egg my entire life and there's nothing outside of that egg, that egg becomes reality. I may laminate the egg. I may expand the egg. I may bring in some furniture into the egg, but that's the egg. Gula is the egg cracking open. And it's breathtaking. It's literally breathtaking when you could start feeling and having a reference point of what it is to experience the bliss of Hashem in you inside of me because we are all channels for infinity. And I think this is the unique or certainly one of the unique and missions of our generation where Judaism will not be taught. Yiddishkite will not be preached. It won't be communicated only through words and through rituals, but it will actually be embodied. Embodied. What does that feel like in my nervous system? To feel love to Hashem with all my heart, with all my soul, with every fiber of my being. What does that feel like in the nervous system to experience? What does that feel like in a marriage? What does that feel like between parents and children? What does such a dvening learning look like? What does learning is experienced as a divine embrace as my opportunity to hug Hashem and Hashem hugging me like the Tanya puts the learning of Torah. I know the intellectual richness is very satisfying for many many people, but sometimes that's eclipsing the experience of it, the embodiment of it. And what would that look like for Jewish leaders to be able to radiate that to the world? We're worried about Israel. We're worried about our future. We're worried about Jewish continuity. Worried about assimilation. Critical. But sometimes we're worried about it from a very, very limited vantage point. Live the greatness that you really are and you set the world on fire. Moenu is really saying this to the Jewish people in Sephor. The greatest exile of the Jewish people is the internal exile, the galosimi. Can you imagine if every Israeli leader, if every Jewish leader, if every rabbi, Russa, Reb, teacher, parent doesn't practice Judaism, doesn't even teach Juda, doesn't even believe in Judaism, but actually embodies it. How do you think the world will respond to a Jew who is at channeling the divine energy through them where there's no insecurity, there's no ego, there's no fear. >> What do we need to unlearn in order to learn that? What do we need to let go of? Meaning everything comes at a cost. And I feel like we have like we're at a moment where we're holding so much as you said, not just trauma, we're holding a lot of good stuff. >> Of course. >> Do you think that there's something that we're holding on to that we need to let go of in order to create the space for this kind of learning? >> So much pain. So much pain. So much fear. So much pain. And so much fear. And we can't judge it. We have survived four 3,600 years after Ramina. We have survived and heaven knows it wasn't easy. Heaven knows the price we paid to survive. And we have survived. And for the first 60, 70 years after the Holocaust, this was the theme of every good keynote speech at every Jewish conference, organization, and convention. And I'm guilty for that. I'm not guilty. It's beautiful and for good reason. A person who saw his parents being to Rabbi Laos, all of his parents, both of his parents and siblings being taken to trebling link in the gas chambers and a whole generation like that. Is there another message? Give your children the gift of Yiddish. Rebuild our schools. Rebuild our yeshivas. Rebuild our shows. And we did it. We did it. Israel was rebuilt. The Jewish world was rebuilt. That was the message. The kids don't tune into this message so much. I speak to teenagers. They're like, not that they don't care about Awitz. They care about Awitz. Of course, they care about Awitz. They're not they're not their hearts are not deaf and closed down. But the soul is looking for aliveness. Where is Hashem today? A relationship with Hashem. The word Hashem sometimes is our greatest problem. Our God is a God of old. Our God is a God of a fixed image. It's not a living vibrant reality of infinity vibrating through my bones because that's alive. It's alive. So the shift is a very very profound one. It's a shift from gullless consciousness to gula consciousness. It's like all of history was given to us and now you have the ball. Go to THE END ZONE. DON'T DROP THE BALL AND DON'T JUST SAY I'M GOING BACK. Sometimes we talk about let's just GO BACK AND BACK. THE GOOD OLD DAYS. LEARN FROM THE GOOD OLD DAYS. THEY WEREN'T SO GOOD. WHATEVER. BUT LEARN, LEARN EVERYTHING. LEARN, OF COURSE, LEARN. Don't back off. Don't lament about the old. You're missing the point. You were given the quarterback called Hashem. Threw the ball into your hands. You caught it. Don't drop it. Now run and run for your life. But that's a revolution. That's openness. A lot of people are afraid of that. Oh, SO NOW WE HAVE A NEW religion because when we don't really get, we don't really understand what it means to godliness. were afraid that everything is going to destroy rather than actually bringing the back to earth. Bringing the divine presence back to earth viscerally the way heaven intended the world that begins in my heart. Unmbodied experience of Hashem in my bones. I don't have to say another word to my children. I don't have to say another word. I'm fully here because my eye is just an extension extension of the source. So it's a very very deep moment of awakening and an opportunity but it's letting go of a lot. There's so much pain and there's so much fear and I get it. I get it. It's true in the secular Jewish world. It's true in the Jewish world. But the funny thing is there's a common denominator. We're both being dictated by pain and fear. and everybody's just doing what they know to do best. Now, of course, the religious Jewish world is flourishing in terms of yiddish and yes, and it's amazing and mitzvah. So, we have the groundwork cuz we have we have the groundwork bringing in that ghoul of consciousness opening up the heart, opening our eyes. It's literally opening opening our eyes. It's I had an experience one day. It was very very intense. The experience was what if acidic masters say it says in the medr that the difference between ga and guula the word for exile and redemption is the same word in Hebrew just one olive gya is exile and gula redemption is an olive it's putting in the olive and I realized what if the real secret of msiach it is not anything outside there'll be a lot of things coming from outside I'm not Hill who says a Mashiah may not turn nothing is going to happen. But what if the real revolution of Mashiach is that I actually be able to look into my own life, my own home, my own family, my own presence and experience Hashem's infinite love and presence in this moment and know that it's as perfect as it can be. Give myself permission to be really okay. know as Alreb always says that nothing changed from before creation to after creation in the sense of the oneness and the unity and if I can really experience it I look at exactly the same life in the same world but I see the alf and that's the most perfect moment that ever was and ever will be and I'm like what are you crazy do you know how many problems people have there's illness there's death there's tragedy there's mental health crisis this this problems, this kids, this marriage is falling away. I get that. I get that. I also have some pain in my life. And yet there's a deeper layer of consciousness where the soul can really trust, where the soul knows that it's perfect. It's exactly the way it's supposed to be. That's redemptive consciousness. The says the says the brings the difference between this world and the messianic world is be subjugated to the kingdoms. So says what's he says is thoughts of stress and anxiety. So the difference between and is often in the mind. If I could let go and actually experience in my nervous system the presence of anoid mulvadi, what does that feel like? Who even knows what does that feel like? But David, there's no bliss in history that ever existed and ever will exist outside of the ecstasy and the bliss of allowing our egos and insecurities to die and surrender into this most openhearted space where Hashem fills every cell of our 70 trillion cells, every neuron of our 86 billion neurons. every organ, every tissue, every molecule, every atom, every subatomic particle, and we're channeling it. This is, I think, the most important conversation. These are the conversations around our Shabas tables, dinner tables. This is the 24-hour conversation. What I learned from my own work is that any conversation, I don't want to sound too weird, but any conversation in life that is not about Hashem, it's not a real conversation. It's not an authentic conversation cuz either about Hashem or it's about my insecurity. It's one of the two. Either I'm trying to find favor in your eyes or manipulating you, exploiting you or impressing you or just talking about nothing or we're both cracked open and we're connecting. What does it mean we're connecting? We're channeling the divine energy. So any conversation that's not about Hashem, it's not a conversation worth having. After that episode I had where I really felt collapsed, I did something a little unusual which is in, you know, I've been in therapy since fifth grade. you know, my parents. So, I my whole life I actually started group work. And it was group work >> when you're sitting around with others. >> Yeah. >> That actually showed me it's the only conversation I ever have even if I'm even if I'm not even if I'm just sneering at somebody because I don't like the way they talk. That's also a part that it's always not. Yeah. the the Yakav Ysef writes of Yseph of Pab was one of the great students of the BM and in Benf told us and Shab which is 1765 he says that the BM used to say something before the blowing of the chauffeur it's really a parable for the whole year but he would say it before chauffeur and it's incredible to know that the BMT spoke before the blowing of the chauffeur and to know what he said that's unique And we know it from his student who says he heard it. He heard it from the BMP. What what should you tell your students before blowing the shelf? Especially if you're the you would think it's time to do chuva. It's time to apologize for your sins. It's time to coronate. It's time to make it's time to let go of your transgressions. Whatever good beautiful messages to arouse the people to chuva to repentance to to closeness to Hashem. The bos actually would tell a story that which is not surprising. And the story he tells the says is as follows. He says there was a beloved king who invited all of his people his subjects to come visit him and spend time with him. Wow, what an invitation. Everybody came. But here's the catch. As they're approaching the palace, they see a huge fortress. So some people just went home. Some people climbed it. They came to the other side. And on the other side there were huge, huge treasures of gold, silver, jewelry, money. Ah, what a beautiful king we have. They took the prize and they went home. Those who continued, there was another wall and on the side on the next wall the other side there were more treasures. And so there was wall after wall. Most people either went home, took the treasures and ran. He says, "But then there were the few anchas who realized it's not what he said. He said, "Come visit me." And they continued the effort and they climbed the walls and they saw the trophies where they went on and on until they reached his presence. And as they walked into his presence, they turned around and they saw there were no walls. It was all optical illusion. There was a and this is the story that would say before the blowing of the Ysef explains it's literally the story of life. All of life is Hashem's desire to be with you, to be with me. I want you. Why do I want you? It's beyond why. Logic was created because of this relationship. So, logic will never understand the depth of the relationship. My mathematical mind will not understand my love to my child. The mathematics was created after the bliss, not before the bliss. Come. But I want the relationship should be your relationship with me. Which means you have choices. We come from radical infinity. We come from radical love. We go back to radical love. But during our years here, we get to choose radical love. So there are walls and I climb the wall. Those of us who have courage, we penetrate the wall. We go beyond the wall. The walls of Bash says is anxiety. That's what he says. The walls are anxiety, self-consciousness, guilt, shame, resentment, jealousy, hatred, a lot of the pain that we have. Those are the walls. And he says people climb the walls. And you know what? There's a good rewards, psychological rewards of facing your walls. And this is the big mistake. Some of us doing the work, take the rewards and we go home and we never get to the destination. We look for enlightenment, spiritual consciousness, expansive consciousness, healing. So don't stop. And then when you get to the other side, you turn around and you see there was never a wall. inside every struggle, inside all of the anxiety, it was always there literally holding you. That's the breathtaking experience of our generation. This is our work. It's literally that moment. There was a moment in my life. I remember I was doing a lot a lot of inner work and crazy pain, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And then there was a release. And I looked around. I looked at and I looking at it and suddenly I saw all the anxiety. It was like a drop inside the ocean, but I only felt the drop. That's what our anxiety is like. We're inside an invisible ocean of God's love and bliss. But we only feel the drop, which is by the way how quantum mechanics is described. You see the ripple and you don't see the invisible field. That's asy because the symptoms doesn't allow us to see the quantum fields of godliness. So we just see the the drop of water and I live in that drop and I need to live in that drop because those are the walls he created. But on the other side you see you were completely in the ocean. That duality and the fusion of that which calls the lower level of unity the higher level of unity there is nothing that can even come close to it. This is the tick of the world. This is the healing of every marriage. This is the healing of every soul. This is the bliss that Hashem had before all of creation where we're all striving for. This is it. That's what the bos would say. I cannot thank you enough. You know, there's a beautiful book. I think it was written by Mark Epstein. It's called the trauma of everyday life. And he has a story right in the beginning that everything that your words and your voice really says a patient came into him and said, "I feel like I'm in a little canoe with a tattered uh sail and I'm the ocean is mammish storming and it's beating down in my boat and I feel like I'm hanging on for dear life and I don't know how to escape this." And he said something that always stuck with me and I at moments I'm able to to embody it in the right moments. But the this Mark Epste looks at this patient and said, "You're in this boat, but you have to realize you're also the ocean. You're also the ocean." That all of that feeling, >> right? >> And and really your voice and what you've done, I I'm just so incredibly grateful for what you bring. >> I think I just want to add something because I think it'll be beneficial for people cuz they might be thinking like, "This guy dreaming, you know, what did he put into his coffee this morning?" Right now, as I'm saying all of this to you, there's a voice in my head. And you know what it's saying? Saying, "You don't believe any of this. You don't feel this. You're just preaching because it sounds good." I can hear this voice literally shleing me down and trying to tell me that I'm disassociated, that I don't believe any of this. And it's a painful voice. I wish it wouldn't be there. I wish I could just be holistic. I wish I can just be openhearted and just allow the tears of joy to come down. But this protector is trying to protect me and I could see it. And I'm saying this because I can literally see the gullus and the gula inside my own brain. Literally, I know without a doubt that I had those reference points. I had those moments where I experienced this. And that's why I'm not going to go back because I know the the distinction between torturous self-conscious existence and emancipated surrender blissful existence. I know it. I feel it. I'm never going to go back. With God's grace, I'm never going to go back. I don't want to go back into the abyss of but I just think it's important for all of us to understand because we're in the transition moments between redemption and exile. We are privy to literally hold on to both which is unique because the next generation won't have that. The previous generation didn't have that. This is our generation to be able to literally look at both sides, see both mechanisms and then choose in a very humble and humanistic way where I want to live, where I want to dwell, where I want to spend my time, what I want to trust. Do I want to trust my anxiety and my ego or my divinity? I just wanted to share that. >> I am beyond grateful if you'll allow. I always end my interviews with more rapid fire questions. My first question is really, we always love book recommendations and I'm specifically looking for books that helped you really um discover this new path. Looking for a book that was introduced to you, a way of thinking that introduced you that helped open your eyes to this new approach to tshoua and embodiment in life itself. So to be very honest with you, something very interesting happened to me and that is I would read books especially on psychology and healing and self-help and some of them were very helpful but after my deeper journey I realized that uh they're all touching the tip of the iceberg they're saying good things they mean well but I realized that my soul starts dancing when I learn from the alterba when I learn the discourses of the balatana when I start learning uh real realus from the alter Reb or his successors all the way to the Reb, the Bosch and his students, I started to feel that's where my soul is coming home. It's starting to come home. So although I appreciate the wisdom, but it really doesn't do it for me anymore. Um and uh when I start like I I I learn every day and it's just like it's like a homecoming. It's like wow, this is the vocabulary I was craving for. So uh I that's that's just the truth. I did appreciate very much. There's a woman named Vori Nusbama and she just published a book on Kanye through the lens of a psychologist. She's a therapist in London. It's called How to Live with an Open Heart. And I really appreciated the book because she took the Tanya and she showed it as a blueprint for people to be able to implement it viscerally. One of the greatest challenges of a lot of our works or spiritual works is they remain aloof. The language is abstract, cabalistic, mystical and people didn't know how to translate it into a very visceral way. So I found that to be a very very beautiful contribution living with an open heart. It's a book on the Tanya. >> Beautiful. If somebody gave you a great deal of money and you took a sbatical and you go back to university, you could study any subject of your choice, get a PhD in any new subject. What do you think the title of those studies would be? >> I don't want to go into a whole lecture, but I'm just going to tell you an experience I had. I grew up in an environment where the mind was considered to be very very significant to put it mildly it was considered to be you know [laughter] the greatest thing the mind learning especially Torah and uh I grew up among a lot of intelligent people who took learning very seriously they challenged me intellectually I challenged myself intellectually and I excelled I always knew that darizel writes and the alterba the balatani quotes this often pmus aba pmus which means in simple English at the core of [clears throat] wisdom is bliss. I always read it. Some time ago I I experienced it viscerally. I realized as my emotional wires were reconnecting that all of logic is really an experience of bliss. And what that means is all of reality begins in God's bliss and love. And as a result of that bliss and love, he allows his own infinity to be contained in different experiences. One of the richest experiences is logic. So really logic is just an experience of the divine bliss through the container of logic. There's no such a thing as a logical idea. It's really Hashem's bliss and infinite presence being manifested in a particular container. back to quantum fields. They're expressed through a particular ripple, through a particular formation, but it's really an invisible field of bliss because I started to realize that logic is really just channeling an experience of reality through a particular prism. And it was such a loving loving experience. And I think that that's the future of all wisdom when we're going to be able to reveal that all wisdom in the world is simply manifesting God's infinite bliss and love in each and every one of us. Whether it's geology or mathematics, engineering or psychology, biology or physics, cosmology or astronomy, certainly philosophy and everything. And of course, all of Yiddish, that's that's the blueprint for it. That's what it is. This fusion. The heart and the mind are really one. They're just different manifestations of capturing the truth that Hashem says, "I want a relationship with you." Sometimes the relationship will be through an understanding. I'm sharing with you something. Sometimes it's pure emotion, but that's what I want. And the Rambam says at the end of Mishna Torah, his last words is that in the future when Mashiah comes, there's going to be no hunger, no war, no jealousy, no negative competition, which really the Ramb is describing AI in 15 years. It's going to take over everything. So the question is what is everybody going to do? Says the occupation of the whole world, not only Jews, the whole world, all of humanity is going to be do the one thing that AI can't do. Das is not intellectual knowledge. It's not knowledge. It's not a resume. It's intimacy. The whole world is going to be experiencing Das. Intimacy with Hashem. My final question. I'm always curious about people's sleep schedules. For you, I'm actually curious about how your transformation affected your daily schedule. >> I used to think that I don't need sleep. Part of my coping mechanism was telling myself like all the greats, I don't need sleep and I would go on very very little sleep and I worked very very hard because I was overriding my system. I was not present. I was not embodied. That's why I ate things that were not healthy for me. That's why I did not focus on my body because I was disassociated. I was doing much more because I was dis when you're disassociated when your nama is not in a gulf. You could do much more. What happened as a result of my work is I started to feel my body. I started to respect my body in a completely different way. I realized the only way I can experience Hashem is when my spirit is in my body. And therefore everything changed at that level. My eating habits, my sleeping habits, my relationship with my body. I'm still working on it because this is one of my big traumas. I disassociated from my body very early on not to feel pain and therefore I used to live outside of my body and it looked very spiritual but it's really just pure disassociation. Wow Jacobson I am so grateful for you joining today. Hi friends. You know, recently I was in a uh some kind of gathering like a small little mini conference and a friend of mine who lives in Lakewood named Moshi came over to me and he was talking about you know 1840 and he said you know in in Lakewood where where my friend Moshi lives says in Lakewood everything comes back to Torah. you know, if we're having doesn't matter what the holiday is, what the gathering is, the central theme is always going to be Torah, that is kind of the value that is championed, prioritized, and centered in Lakewood. And he said with a very sweet and mischievous smile that on 1840, uh, everything comes back to Tshoua. Everything comes back. Doesn't matter what the topic or who you're talking to, it comes back, uh, to toua. He was saying that in a way to uh to kibbit uh a little bit you know to you know to tease a little bit in a very sweet way. Uh but it genuinely warmed my heart because I think there is a tremendous amount of truth to what he is saying. If there is one central value it is why every year before the high holidays we have several episodes and we really try to center this theme of tshoua about religious change and religious transformation. If there is anything that we are trying to accomplish on 1840, it is giving language and space for this idea of sincere religious growth, development and transformation even in this very cold, harsh, cynical modern world. That is what we are trying to accomplish. And the truth is we try to accomplish it whether it's in podcast, whether we this year we started Talmud Daily, a 40week tour of the entire Talmud. We're doing a trackate a week. It's so exciting. It's not too late to join. We have thousands uh participating already. Whether it's I read this over Shabas and building substance and highlighting the opportunities that come across every single Shabas. This is what we are trying to do. This is what we're trying to do with our reader uh the dance of Tshoua. Again, uh thank you to the students of Rabbi uh Ebner for uh partnering with us and publishing this incredible reader, the dance of Chuva that is available uh online for download. Anything that we are trying to do is essentially trying to preserve sincere religious examination and growth in this what sometimes feels like somewhat of a harsh uh modern world. And in our efforts to do so, undoubtedly every year, uh, we fall short, we mess up. I'll be honest, this past year, um, this past year was very difficult. This is a very difficult year that, um, that we're that we're now reflecting on. Um, [clears throat] in the past year, uh, we had, uh, the loss of Rabbi Hower. Um, Rabbi Hower worked extraordinarily closely with myself and with 1840. And it was so important to him that 1840 has a place of privilege within the Orthodox community and with the establishment. and he made a tremendous effort to make sure that we have the guard rails and the sensitivities in place uh to make sure that we could broadcast an authentic kind of uh Jewish confrontation with modernity uh which is not always easy. Aside from that, um, this year, one of the more difficult things was, uh, I heard from several people, uh, some of whom I respect tremendously. Um, honestly, some of whom I respect a great deal less, but there were people who took issue, uh, with some of the things that we said on 1840 this year. And one person uh in particular honestly you know made uh made it this was his his life's mission uh and really tried to um to make things very difficult for me both personally and professionally and [snorts] I don't want to talk about this uh in depth but I do want to highlight uh in in my own relationship with our audience and what we're trying to uh that this was this was an extremely difficult this was an extremely difficult year and you know because we try to share and highlight what it means to have you know a sincere relationship with Jewish life, a sincere relationship with our own growth and our own religious identity. I I do think it is important to surface um the difficulties that we have, the very real difficulties that we have uh each year. Uh that of course is not going to stop us. But you know I really grappled. You know people took issue with certain episodes especially episodes where I was trying to present a Jewish perspective an orthodox Jewish perspective to those who do not have the same background. And very often I know for myself you know I love language and I love describing and talking about Torah and the Jewish people. This is my entire life. But I'm not perfect and I can say things that can be overly ambiguous, that can be easily misunderstood, that people can take in the wrong way. I think and I really know in my heart that people who have been listening for a long enough time or really anybody who has taken the time to know and to talk to me or even share their own concerns or questions that may have come up on 1840. I I know that is not the audience that I need to to apologize to because I really do put in a tremendous amount of effort to respond especially and you you miss emails or or calls here and there. Uh, but I think people who have been listening for long enough know that what I'm trying to do is really help the Jewish people is really art be a voice to articulate and and surface other voices who are able to highlight what it means to connect to the Jewish people, what it means to connect to God, what it means to connect to Torah in this modern era. But that does not excuse maybe new listeners, maybe people who you know just listen to one or two episodes and they come they can it is possible to come away with a very skewed view of what we're trying to accomplish here. And this is really a way of me and I try to do this every single year because I take uh 1840 and what our work that we are doing here with a tremendous amount of seriousness and responsibility. I I think it's important every year that I apologize and that I say I am sorry and I want to be very specific. Uh most importantly because I think the issue that that I heard from from many not all of whom I think had good intentions of their own but that doesn't excuse me and that doesn't excuse ambiguities or questions or disappointment that people may walk away from any episode or any idea that I share here. And that is why I try to, you know, go into Yum Kipper with um a genuine accountability and responsibility for our work here. And there is no way to take accountability and responsibility, especially in a public audience, without publicly saying, "I am sorry." And I am sorry for any listener who came to an episode looking for inspiration and walked away with more questions. I am sorry for any listener who is looking for a lifeline to make sense of their Jewish life and walked away with more ambiguity and more uncertainty. Um this is a very uncertain world and there is a lot of ambiguity in this world. Uh I don't try to dismiss or ignore that. We try to articulate it. We try to talk about it. You know, the language that we've used in the past is, you know, when a car is careening out of control, our instinct is always to grab the steering wheel and go in the other direction. Uh, that is is not what we do on 1840. If you do that, uh, the car starts really spinning out of control. we actually steer into the controversy to give language to give conversation to give space for some of the questions dilemma struggles that I think occupy all of our minds whether that's how we relate to Jews who have different backgrounds than us different practices than us whether that's how we think and conceive of Yiddish kite and the Jewish people in Israel how we think and conceive of the Jewish people in diaspora how we think about our own religious journey me. I was talking to a to a mentor of mine and you know during this period where where I was really receiving a tremendous amount of criticism criticism that I listen and pay attention to and maybe in a future episode we can go through that that's not for for for today. But for right now um I want to just say I'm sorry. I want to say I'm sorry if we have ever fall short in your eyes to the to the work of 1840 to the standards of 1840. And even if in our efforts to uh reach that standard, if you walked away with a negative experience, if I interacted with you in a curt way on social media, there are so many ways in this very public world, uh unfortunately, there are so many ways to disappoint, to betray, and to let people down. But thank God uh there are also so many ways to uplift and to heal and to move forward. And I think that is the spirit that I want uh our listeners to go into the high holidays with. Uh every year we have a list of mess ups, of disappointments, of people we let down, of conversations we wish went a different way. And this year is no different. And I want to say from the bottom of my heart, uh thank you. And I'm sorry. Thank you to all of our listeners and supporters uh who allow us to continue and grow this work which I think is very important collectively and anybody who supports us in whatever which way whether it's financial whether it's clicking subscribe whether it's uh whether it's sharing uh an episode with somebody who you think uh would gain or benefit from it. Whether it's sending out, you know, the Talma daily uh to uh a friend, you know, who has a background who this would really be helpful to them. There are so many ways that we can support one another and there are also so many ways that we can disappoint one another. So, I wanted to say both I'm sorry and thank you. There are so many ways that we can support one another and there's also so many ways that we can disappoint one another. And my hope for our community is that the ways in which we support each other, the ways that we uplift each other, the ways that we just pick up a phone call, send a text, find some way to make somebody else's life a little bit easier. Like Raf Soduk writes in Sikka Satsic, everybody has the capacity to be somebody else's Messiah, to be somebody else's redemption on an individual level. That's not just me. that's everybody in our community has the keys that somebody else is looking for. And as we close this year, I want to say thank you to all of our listeners for the growth that we've had over the years, for the focus of focusing on sincerity, on sweetness, on building a future for the Jewish people and being able to talk about and have space to talk about some of the difficulties uh that we face. And that includes of course myself and of course the difficulties within 1840 itself. Mahila is the Hebrew word uh that we ask when we grant for forgiveness. And I've written about the word mila may come from the word kalal which means a space which means to ask for forgiveness is asking somebody else to create space for you to create space in their lives for you. And may all of us as we go into the high holidays, as we go into Yom Kipper and then finally sukus, may we have capacity in our hearts for love, for support, for feedback, for criticism, for even the difficult conversations and the joyful conversations. May we make space for one another. May we make space for Torah. May we make space for the Jewish people. May we make space for divinity and God in our lives. Wishing everybody a vasimatova, a good gabben, a year of all things happy, healthy, and of course sweet. So, thank you so much for listening. This episode, like so many of our episodes, was edited by our incredible team of Dina Emerson and Svi Simhon. I am so grateful to both Dena and Svi for their incredible work over all these years. If you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, please subscribe, rate, [music] review, tell your friends about it. And of course, thank you to our dearest friends and sponsors over all these years for our Tshiva series, Danil and Mera Stokar. We're so grateful for your Frenchman support. And of course, we're grateful for all of our donors and all of our supporters uh over these years. And no matter which way, there are so many ways to support our work. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends about it, and of course, you can also donate at 1840.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue to put out great content. You can also leave us a voicemail with feedback or questions that we may play on a future episode. That number is 2125821840. Once again, that number [music] is 2125821840. If you'd like to learn more about this topic or some of the other great ones we've covered in the past, be sure to check out our website at 1840.org. That's 18fty.org where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings. Thank you so much for listening and stay curious, my friends. >> [music]