Shedding Who We Were to Meet Who We Are

Hello there. I'm Tanya Kazanov [music] and you are listening to Human and Holy. Today we're going to be talking about how [music] we have to loosen our attachment to past versions of ourselves [music] in order to grow. This is one of those truths that often feel like loss in [music] the moment. The way we have to loosen our grip on past versions of ourselves [music] in order to meet new ones. and how in order to unlock new levels of growth in our life, connection to God, connection to others, [music] we have to willingly outgrow past versions of ourselves that we may [music] have loved. There have been many junctures throughout my life where I looked up one [music] morning and thought, I'm not the girl I once was, or I'm not the woman I once was, or I [music] am genuinely a different person than I was in a different season of my life. This is the experience of life of constantly becoming a new being of looking back at old versions of ourselves and truly feeling like new beings. When we are in that moment of transition though, when we are in a certain state of being and we recognize the parts of ourselves we need to let go of in order to access new levels of growth, it can be painful and there can be loss. Getting closer and closer to our soul's voice requires this constant shedding. And I want to look at this topic from a Torah or from the alterba which so beautifully depicts how in order to experience God, in order to experience our godly souls, in order to experience a life of growth, in order to experience and unlock the next level of our potential, we have to let go of the past version of ourselves, even the good parts. The Zohar says people of truth on JMS meaning sadikim are privileged because every day they look at themselves as if it's their last day. Most people interpret that to mean that Sadikim people who are tapped in to the source. Righteous people are constantly staying mindful of the fact that today could be their last day on earth. And because it could be their last day on earth, they live with more presence. They live with more mindfulness. They live with more awareness of how precious it is, how much opportunity there is in every single day. They live as if it's their last day. Another interpretation of this is is that Sadikim living every single day as if it's their last are Sadikim being cognizant of the fact that if they would die today, they're going to meet their maker. They're going to meet God and they're going to be accountable for every single action. And so in recognition of this meeting of their maker, they live with that awareness of death and the possibility of meeting their maker every single day. So the alterb asks the question really is at sadic is motivated by fear of punishment of meeting their maker worried that they're going to be accountable to their last day on this earth. So the awareness that today may be their last is an awareness of the accounting and reckoning that they're going to have about their actions on this earth. You would think that it would be more than this foricadic can't just be motivated by fear of punishment. Bela says no. When we say that a sodic lives with an awareness of death, we're not saying that they are aware and afraid of being accountable and so therefore they act in the correct manner because they're about they may be about to meet their maker. Instead, what it sadic is searching for is lack of attachment to this world. Because before that Zodic enters Ganaden, they need to rid themselves of the memory of this world. They need to rid themselves of the experiences of this world because past experiences become a blockage to experiencing the present revelation of God in the Garden of Eden. But it's not just a delineation between this world and the next. Even within Ganaden, even within the next worlds, there are higher and higher levels of revelation that a soul experiences. The soul is constantly ascending. Even the soul's ascension to higher and higher levels in the garden of Eden requires a purifying process from one level to the next. It's are they experiencing anything negative in one world world of divine revelation they need to let go of? Why do they need to let go of the memory of the previous level of divine revelation in order to experience the next one? They're not getting rid of sin. They're not getting rid of being impure. They're not tainted from the world of divine revelation. What is it about this purification process between worlds that will teach us about this level of existence where they live every single day as if it is their last? The altar answers that even just the memory of divine revelation in a different world and place becomes a blockage to the divine revelation in the next place that they come to. So if they experience God's presence in one level of Ganedan in one level of the world to come and [snorts] then their soul ascends to the next level they will be held back by memories even of divine revelation and they will not be able to experience the world that they are in so completely because the memories will hold them back even the good ones. Even if a soul on this earth was in complete alignment with their divine soul, even if they lived in a state of revelation in this world, they have to rid themselves of the memory of this world in order to fully experience the world to come. We normally think about forgetting as a bad thing. We forget our connection to our divine soul. We forget our previous levels of truth. But real growth in our lives requires complete obliteration. True experience of the divine requires ultimate presence. Being able to activate new parts of who we are, new levels of growth, requires leaving an entire old self behind, even the good parts, the memory of who we are. The attachment to who we were will prevent us from becoming the person that God needs us to be. When we're holding on to old parts of ourselves, we can't become someone new. When we're holding on and so attached to who we were, we're not able to evolve completely. We're not able to grow. We're not able to decompose. were not able to begin a new. The sadic living every day as if it is her last is not fear of punishment but it is a recognition that my growth in my connection to God requires a lack of attachment to yesterday. Every day as if it is its own thing. Every day I am a new being. Every day I shed who I was yesterday. Every day I have a an opening to become someone new. This might seem like an extreme way to live. Every day is a blank slate. Every day decomposing. Every day a new. But really what the invitation is is to loosen our attachment, loosen our grip on our own sense of self to recognize the parts of ourselves that we may need to let go of in order to accomplish all that we wish for. And I think what's key here is that I'm not just letting go of an old identity so that I can take on a new identity, but I'm letting go of an old identity or I'm letting go of all of these attachments so that I can be present with where I am. I'm not shedding a costume to take on a new costume. I am shedding my attachment to my identity so that I can be present where I am. God creates new realities and experiences and circumstances for us every single day. Are we able to meet them? Are we able to rise to each moment? Are we able to remain present in the experiences of our lives? Only when we're able to let go of the stories of who we are, where we're supposed to be, where we're coming from, and recognize that if I am here right now, this is the only day that exists. This is the only day that matters. This is the only life that I have and it's more than this. We live in a world that is full of pressures and responsibility. When a person dies in that moment, all of it evacuates. The only thing that's left is the essence of a person. The bills that they had to pay, the job that they had to keep, the alarm clock that they had to wake up for, all of those things cease to be. Presence with another person, presence with ourselves requires letting go of those pressures and responsibilities that all of us live with in order to meet another person fully. As a mother, I experience this challenge constantly. How life is this running stream of responsibilities and people that we are answerable to and things we want to do. And in that moment of connection with a small child, there is an invitation from this child to let all of the parts of life that feel so important behind and to just meet this moment, meet this human being with full presence, to leave all of our attachments to those responsibilities that are genuine and true and of this earth and to say this is the only moment. I am here completely. I leave all parts of myself behind. This presence is only possible for us when we can loosen our attachments to all of our identities and all of our responsibilities where we can access an opportunity for real connection. This is an experience also within creativity and something that I find more and more challenging as life goes on to create these playful open spaces where I can be completely present without the feeling of adult responsibility that I live with on a daily basis. but to create these pockets of time where nothing else exists besides for right now in these materials in front of me. Creating those sacred spaces where I can be completely present where this is the only place that matters and letting go of everything else. The memories of every other part of my life just to be here completely. This is the tadics experience. This is a near-death experience. This is the experience of complete presence. This recognition that the memory of previous sense of self, the memory of responsibilities that are not relevant in this moment are preventing me from experiencing this moment completely are preventing me from experiencing this person before me completely are preventing me from connecting to God completely in whatever life circumstance I'm being called to. And the Alra talks about how this is one of the core blockages that we each experience to prayer. Being able to create this oasis in time, this place where we hold no memories of anything else but just this dialogue, this meeting, this encounter between me and Hashem, an experience of true connection. We have to be able to loosen our attachment, our responsibilities, to be able to be right here, right now as if this is our last moment. In order to access new levels of growth, we have to consciously let go of past versions of ourselves that may have been beautiful and good, but is not what this moment is asking of us. I think that point specifically is what really stands out to me about that Torah. How even when the Sautic soul ascends from two different levels of Ghetan, they were both experiences of divine revelation, but it has to shed the memories of the past in order to experience the revelation of the present. We have to shed our divine experiences of the past. We have to shed our attachment, our old divine memories in order to experience the revelation of the divine in our present moment. On a very practical level, I think people experience this in looking back or idealizing certain spiritual periods of their life. If you went to yeshiva or seminary or you had periods of like real spiritual connection, if you are a balish chuva and you returned to your Torah observance in a real deep way and that came with a fire and a passion and we could look back at that time in our lives as being the pinnacle of our spiritual experience, even if God in this moment is clearly revealing himself to us in a different way, asking different things of us. For example, me as a mother am clearly not being asked to sit in that experience of divine revelation that I was asked to do when I was sitting in school and able to sit with acidic texts for 10 hours a day. God is asking something different for me. The revelation looks different now. But if I am attached to those old memories, then I will not be able to experience God's presence here. And I will not be able to connect to the people in my life now. Very often our attachment to old divine memories can prevent us from being present for the ones that exist before us and can prevent us from becoming the person who we need to be to meet the life that God has given us. This is the invitation to live every single day as if it is our last. To be able to shed past versions of ourselves, to meet the current moment of our lives, to respond to the divine revelation that we are experiencing right now. to recognize what it looks like for me to be present with God, present with others, and to move away from an attachment to either what is going on throughout my day [music] so that I can be present in this moment or what I experienced in other chapters of my life so that I could show up fully in this chapter. May we all be able to purify [music] ourselves from one chapter to the other so we could fully experience divine [music] presence, divine revelation, connection with others, and allow ourselves to truly respond to the call of the moment to truly experience the divine in the current version that we are [music] without becoming too attached to the divine experience of the past. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. Wishing you a wonderful day. Bye.