R' Shmuel Reichman Journey to Your Ultimate Self Part 2

everyone thank you for coming up to the chair it's a great ride to care for our wish for right we now have this new amazing safer church building itself purchased right after this year i'm glad we uh signed it give me a message um [Music] live in chicago and it's like yeah thank you robbie so close is all nine just to give you a little bit of an insight as to how it started um i was a host of giving to hazak uh and about a year ago robbie said would you like to do a book tour i told him i'm publishing a safer and i smiled and i said yeah sure we'll do a book tour will be great um i didn't think it would actually happen but there's a beautiful thing we say every single friday night that if you want to create anything in reality it has to originate within a thought you have to have vision and we're here a year later in barcelona you know we're going to share some incredibly deep ideas of torah and i want to start off tonight's show by sharing a story stories of a carpenter and this carpenter was the best carpenter he loved to build and he built houses that was his passion that was his life and he spent his entire life 30 years building houses and he was ready to to call quits to retire he was ready to move on to the next stage of his life so he went over to his boss and he said i loved working for you i've built hundreds of homes and it's been great i'm ready to retire and the boss obviously wasn't too happy they said okay you know you are our best worker our favorite worker we loved having you can you just do one more job for us one more house so he says i i really don't have any i i don't have it in me i just don't want to do it anymore i'm done i'd saved up enough i have enough for retirement i'm ready to move on to the next stage of my life and the boston steps and he says can you just do one more so he says okay i'll do one more fine but he's not into it he's not passionate about it that doesn't really focus and he's shoddy craftsmanship and he doesn't build a great house he builds a pretty you know piece of garbage and a couple months go by and still a house still built the house and he's done he goes over to his boss and something really strange is happening because he went over to tell his boss he's done but everyone who he's ever worked with is there in the room and they're all smiling they're all happy and he doesn't understand what's happening so he goes over to his boss and he says i finished the home i'm ready to move on what's what's going on the boss smiles goes into his pocket takes out the keys and gives it them and says here are the keys to the house start going away present you just built your own home and he's crushed he thinks himself if i only would have known that i was building my house i wouldn't built the best house i've ever built i would have been passionate and driven and focused i would have created something extraordinary i would have built the best house imaginable but i built the worst house because i knew i was building my house and then they open up a fascinating topic in life many people think that ulam haba the world to come is for your soul for your neshama your spiritual self whatever that means and you do mitzvos you serve hashem you live a good life and your spiritual whatever will experience all inhabit but they say the most profound principle you can ever learn which is that ulam the world to come is nothing other than experiencing you experiencing the person you became the consciousness the values the thoughts the philosophy the ideals the inner world that you crafted and built you will experience that eternally that's why shabbos the government brought us after zion says it's a taste of the world to come why because shop us we stop now we think is physical activity but melaka also comes through of malach which is a creative emanation an angel is a creative emanation from hashem malacha's creative activity and shabbas we stop creating we have a taste of experiencing who we've become and for a lot of people it can be very scary and a little bit daunting and perhaps a little sad when we're by ourselves because if we don't have external stimulus we have to come face to face with who we actually are and if you're not feeding your mind if you're not feeding yourself if you're not growing and thriving and striving and pushing yourself when you're by yourself you feel empty and that's you but when you are pushing when you are striving when you're learning and growing and struggling and pushing yourself to the max you're living at a different frequency at a different level and something changes and that's why i wrote the safer the purpose of the safe area is to give you the deepest ideas in life not we'll go we'll talk about why i wrote it but the what in terms of what the safer is it's an inspiring gateway into the deepest concepts the deepest principles thoughts ideas it's not designed to help you be making your mitts of talmud torah so you read another devotee it's meant to open you up to help you strive for true greatness and it's broken up according to the parsha even though it's not really a partial book everything's connected to the parsha so you have a weekly set limit as opposed to most philosophy books which you open up and you close quite quickly because it's hard to orient yourself and how am i going to actually learn this it's fundamentally written according to the yearly cycle and most abstract philosophy books you read them and you say where did i actually learn so every chapter ends off with summaries of the actual principles ideas contained within each chapter and there's discussion questions at the end of each chapter so that you can bring it into social environment bring it to the shabbos table with javarusa with your spouse with your friend and then there are action points because as we all know the greatest distance in life is between the head and the heart because we can learn the most profound principles in life and then say what does that mean how do i live that idea how do i bring it into my life so every single chapter has practical tools for living the ideas i want to delve into some of the most fundamental concepts and let's start with this what is greatness it's probably the most misunderstood concept in the world because in secular culture in the western world in the capitalistic system greatness is objective the very best who gets the best results is considered great you want to be the best basketball player you gotta be the best basketball player you want to be the best accountant the best lawyer the best architect the best doctor the best rabbi the best speaker the best educator you have to be the best you want to get paid the most you want to actually become noted and known for becoming great you have to become better than everyone else but that's not greatness and the starting point of learning is recognizing that the most fundamental component of the human experience is miscommunication words are just words but we often misunderstand words for example you can say i love you to your wife as your husband you can say i love pizza that's the same word and hopefully it means very different things but we all miscommunicate because we all have our own understanding of words of ideas and of concepts and when you understand that you don't yet fully understand and when you understand that not everyone has the same perspective as you you start to say what do some ideas actually mean i'll give you a great example a couple couple weeks ago i was trying to get whole wheat colas for chavez and the reason why is because i looked at the freezer on friday afternoon and we had no whole wheat hollows so i ran to the grocery store supermarket and i looked for whole wheat hollows and i couldn't find any so i went over to one of the workers and i said excuse me do you have any whole wheat hollows and you looked at me and you said whole wheat of course of course i said but there's no there's none left on the on the shelves do you have any in the back storage and he said hell wheat of course come with me i was thinking like come with you like okay like i'll come with your show so i'm thinking like i guess some vip service go to the back of the store see what they have back there i'll be cool so i go with them to the back of the store and we go right past the kitchen we go right past the pantry we go right past the storage area and he starts taking me to the very back of the warehouse i'm thinking these are some very well hidden colors and he takes me to the offices in the back of the back of the warehouse and he takes me past all the offices up the stairs and he literally takes me to the top floor to the manager's office i don't think he's from very well hidden house he knocks on the door and right as the door is opening i see the name of the manager and his name is howie and opens the door and the worker looks at me and smiles and says ali and i had to explain to the manager of the store that i was not looking for howie but whole wheat challenge and this is just the miscommunication and i apologize it was the funniest thing the worker happened to actually leave right as he introduced us so i was literally there just like frozen in my frozen place it was it was a great example and i obviously didn't find it so funny at the time it was a little awkward but the point is like this the point is that miscommunication is a fundamental component of life but it's also the most fundamental component of learning because what is greatness the gemara needed that phlebs fundamentally opens up the topic of greatness and it says and this will change your life is the most incredible gemara it says that when we were all in the womb when we were a fetus in the womb we learned kola torakula we learned all of torah the malach taught each of us and right before we were born the mouth hits us on the mouth and we forget everything so everyone asks the same question the villain the morale everyone asks why teach it to us in the first place if you're going to make us forget it why teach in the first place and why make us forget it so the vilnigan says something incredible he says the reason why is because you didn't forget it you didn't you didn't lose it you lost access to it what you were given in the womb was something profound you weren't just learning torah you weren't opening hamas you weren't learning a gemara you were being shown the cosmic nature of reality the meta purpose of everything you're being shown the purpose of all of creation but you're also being shown your unique purpose who you are supposed to be literally what you're designed to become your underlying purpose who you are what you're supposed to come into this world to become but you lose that because your job is not to get that as a gift but to come into this world and create it to earn it to build it and that's why when you hear deep ideas sometimes you have this feeling of recognition not learning but recognition it's almost like it clicks why there's no the lock was famous john locke was famous for saying that we're all blank slates there's no such thing as as as you know true ideas you just are basically molding your minds but this is fundamentally saying that you are already perfect at root and you're just not yet in touch with it and when you learn you're becoming more and more in touch with yourself so what is true greatness true greatness is not becoming great it's becoming you and no two people are the same which means that true greatness is self-awareness it's understanding who you are it's going on this incredible journey of self-exploration of striving to become you and if you want to get the chills i'll i'll tell you this this this this gemara is the central underlying theme of the safer as in the entire safer is designed to help you become the ultimate version of yourself it's not a self-help book it's not a self-development book it's a synthesis a harmony a synergizing of the deepest elements of mahashava and depth and philosophy with inspiration with gemara with it is the ultimate harmony but the underlying principle of this book is that is designed to help you take that journey to become your ultimate self and my father who himself is is incredible he told me just a couple months ago as i was i was obviously i've been giving shiraman this for a long time as he saw the safer and he said i don't know if i've ever told you this but you're not going to believe me i set over that gemara at your breasts and that blew my mind that blew my mind because i've been sharing the akamar for years at that point and he just never thought to tell me that as in it just clicked that oh my gosh i literally told that gemara over at your breasts and my father's expertise is not makshava and it's not something he often says so that wasn't like that wasn't something which i just said oh of course you did like that was something you would do that's not something which i thought made any sense i thought that was the most incredible thing ever and the story doesn't end there because about three months ago i was okay to have the birth of my brother of my firstborn son and as you can tell where the story is going i obviously shared the same gamer at his verse as well so this simple idea that you're in this world to become great but greatness is subjective which means that you never compare yourself to anyone else it's like you know we're in a we're in a basement show i'll share one you know one one div one my sister is not fundamentally torah michael jordan was asked how he became michael jordan how did you become the greatest of all time and he said everyone else wanted to be like me everyone else compared themselves to me and i compared myself to no one all i wanted to do was to be better than i was the day before and if you live like that you start getting outside of the realm of jealousy and comparison and trying to say i want that person's relationship that person's health that person's finances that person's wisdom that person and you start saying how can i become the greatest version of myself and i want to just take a step back because i want to share some of the most essential principles within the safer within this book but i want to just take a step back and share a little bit of my life story because i grew up very normal and i i grew up very normal not striving for anything not trying to change the world and at a certain point my life fell apart i you know i was facing death on a daily basis i was having medical difficulties my life fell apart in many different ways and barack hashem that was the greatest gift because i got to put myself together from scratch and one of those things where i got to ask myself at a very young age about 20 the questions you only really ask much later in life meaning if i'm facing death on a daily basis i start asking myself why am i in this world what what am i living for if i'm only living for a couple more days what am i doing with the time i have left how can i make the most of my skill sets how can i start thriving and trying to contribute something to the world and my passion life became striving for greatness and helping others do the same but when i was younger what i thought the world needed what i thought clay israel needed was inspiration right everyone wants inspiration everyone wants to feel inspired to feel just on fire but i realize that what we don't need we don't need inspiration inspiration is important but everyone thinks the inspiration inspiration is a quick fix what we actually need is depth we need wisdom we need true true underlying fundamental principles ideas how often do we listen to divreitora listen to ashir and we're not changing the way we see the world now i want to share a simple idea with you a lot of people spend their entire lives being the kind of mitzvah of tamatora which means what that you want to feel like a good evid hashem you want to feel like you are being making a mitzvah so you listen to a shirt while you're driving you listen to a shirt while you're cooking you you go to morning stadium you go to the night city you have a chavru so and that's a distinct you know isolated part of your day that's not talmud torah that's academic torah now i i have studied at great academic institutions and i have studied at harvard i studied at university of chicago i studied at yu i have you know barack hashem lots of academic experience the problem with academia is that's fundamentally analytical as in the purpose is not to live the ideas it's not for it to permeate you and transform the way you experience life you analyze it's a purely intellectual endeavor and talmud is not an academic endeavor tamil torah is transformative you should never leave an experience of learning torah the same way you came in you fundamentally shift your paradigms perspectives your philosophy your views your ideology your inner world should be there should be a chemical explosion and yet that's not the way most people view torah most people view torah as alimut as a seder as a shir and their makai in the mitzvos that they feel that they were so to speak dida mitzvah and where you know that's what hashem wants but if you want to understand what talmud towards tamitori is transformed it means that you start realizing that true torah learning is going on an endless journey of discovery it's an endless journey of deeper and deeper wisdom and the reason it's one of these things where i love bali i love ballet to shiva i love belichi people who are becoming from now i'm not about trouble i was born from from birth but why do i love balishuva they are always deepening always expanding always exploring always questioning because they know that they don't know and when you're born from from birth and you're taught certain things again and again and again you come under the illusion that you already know and you want to know what true learning is it's recognizing that you never know there's an endless spectrum of knowledge and you are never at the end which means you can always deepen and true learning is engaging in opening up every halacha every suga every concept every question everything you think you know you realize that you have only touched you've only scraped the surface and there is an endless amount left and it's one of these things where the greatness of torah is that it's the greatest wisdom but when you think of torah as something which is literally just an in like a surface level kium fulfilling of a mitzvah and that you don't explore and search for the deepest aspects of life in torah because you don't think it's there it's the ultimate corruption of what is and part of it is is just switching that simple paradigm of understanding how to learn because it's one of these things where part of the reason i wrote this affair one of the underlying concepts of the say fair is the concept of oneness the concept of interconnectivity synergy synthesis because a lot of people they think of torah as a bunch of disconnected parts you have tanakh right torah and vienna you have ghazal you have mishna gemara madrashim you've shown him you have you have pesky then you have master self-development you have mahashava philosophy and they're just a bunch of different pieces and parts when you start to realize the interconnectivity of all aspects of torah and you start to realize that in order to really understand anything you need to interconnect with everything meaning that how does anything work you open up you right it's all rooted into our ships have you always look for a makura source in the torah and it's expressed in the mission a very potent way it's further developed in gemara and the rishonim opened up the gemara into a sugya and then moser is so to speak the self-development aspect of torah is living is the why of torah as in the underlying fundamental philosophical components concepts ideas of torah and they're all interconnected and then you start to realize that in order to understand any aspect of torah you have to understand the interconnectivity of all of torah for example if anyone has ever learned a sugi and cha so suggest you open up in order to understand you start to realize that this is related to a different topic and you understand that topic you understand that that three other topics are mentioned in this topic and if you open up around them you have to understand this rambam you've brought up you know something here you understand this over there you start to realize that to truly understand torah means to engage in an organic entity of interconnected oneness and it's kind of like a neural system where like your brain everything's connected everything the way you think is through connections neural connections torah is the greatest greatest wisdom and it's one of those things where torah is a science that's beyond science the reason why you admire the philosophical components of scientific wisdom is because everything is interconnected you plug in anything into the system it has to fit in with everything else that's the underlying component of a science is that if there's contradictions if it's just a bunch of facts if nothing is actually meaningful interconnected and part of a grander philosophical conceptual system it's not a science it's just an irish kite it's just a bunch of things and no one i shouldn't say no one i would say that the greatest challenge is getting access to the point where you experience and respect and admire that torah is not only the greatest science but the science beyond science and that you can use irrational faculties in the greatest way and yet move beyond it and that's why we'll get to in a couple of minutes that the greatest the greatest principle of torah is the interconnectivity brilliance and oneness of torah and that when you're not experiencing that when you're not in love with torah torah but when you're not when you're learning it's not bringing you alive i'm not just talking about you know learning fluffy inspirational ideas i'm talking about you know learning hardcore yamara be ian and lundus and halacha and moser and ashkafa and and no matter what you're engaged in it's one of those things where when you learn that you want to bring everything you are to what you're learning there meaning everything that you're look you've learned until now should come expressed into what you're learning now and everything you learn now should transform everything you know until now there should be this this explosion of true experiential learning and why don't we do that you know why it is very scary it is very scary to be vulnerable enough to truly learn because in order to truly learn you have to give up the way you see the world the way you see yourself the way you see hashem the way you see people the way you see an idea you have to give that up for something new and that's not comfortable that's scary and to truly truly learn you have to go into the unknown you have to journey towards the truth you have to take that vulnerable vulnerable leap into the committed journey to truth and that's the name of the safer the journey to your ultimate self why the joint trial ultimate self because avraham was told why why wasn't he told where to go right also means go to yourself avram was told to embark on a journey to his south but he wasn't told where to go so everyone asked why wasn't having told his destination hashem didn't want to tell him where he was going but when you're journeying to your true self when you're journeying to truth to hashem you have no idea where the destination is going to leave you but you commit to the journey because it's the truth and when life doesn't become paying the bills and just enjoying life and just you know being with kyrie's tomorrow but because this extraordinary adventure in quest of true true learning true true becoming your true self life takes on a whole you can't go back it's like and one that's one of the things where we think it's not for us right it's design this is for like the great among us this is not for me like everyone who hears this is like i'm just a normal person this sounds great for like great people not for me no you also learned koalas are cool in the womb but you're torah your purpose and it's not about becoming objectively great so becoming the greatest version of yourself and if i were to share with you one more fundamental principle from the safeway it's the answer to the following question in almost every lecture you've ever heard i'm sure the rev the teacher the motor will end off by saying and we should all be all merit to connect to the spiritual and connect hashem and it sounds really wonderful what does that mean to connect the spiritual to connect to the infinite to connect to the transcendent the ethereal the what does that even mean if you ask a lot of teachers what does that mean what do you mean when you say that they'll probably shrug it off and say you know you know what i mean like you know and they might shrug their shoulder they might not be able to some might be able to explain to you what they mean but many won't so what do we mean by that so one option is that it's literally that just a fluffy idea it doesn't mean anything there's no way to explain it another option is that it's only for the elites it's only for the philosophers the intellectuals the great among us but not for us we can't access that concept but the last option and this is perhaps the most fundamental principle in this affair it's based on the maharaja it's not the transcendent the ethereal the infinite the spiritual it fundamentally permeates every aspect of reality because the physical world is an expression of the infinite now what does that mean so philosophers will say that the physical world is the place in order to connect to the transcendent to the infinite to the divine you have to transcend the physical world which means what buddhists will meditate and just escape christians will be celibates not engaged in the physical muslims don't drink wine it's one of these things where in order to be spiritual you remove yourself from the physical but as there are everyone who i trust mentioned but i'll have to go through the whole list every single time they open up with the most beautiful beautiful way but it's based on a maimer hazal which says a staccal verizon the hashem looked into the torah used the torah to create the world which means what the physical world is an expression an emanation a projection of the infinite of the spiritual now what does that mean well think of a seed a seed expresses itself into a tree think of a human being a zygote expresses itself into a fully grown human being right you look at a screen where coming from a projector what you see on the screen came from the projector which means that when the physical world stems from the spiritual the way to access the infinite the transcendent the ethereal the spiritual whichever word we're going to use because it's a whole topic every single chapter is fundamentally connected to this concept the way you connect to the spiritual is through the physical which means that every component of the physical universe is fundamentally permeated with spiritual significance that's why open up every aspect of human experience human emotions psychology philosophy mathematics and how real with mathematics is brilliant it's one of these things where you start to realize everything has spiritual significance you start to realize that you you can literally start experiencing every aspect of your physical experience with transcendent lens start seeing past the surface and it's one of these things where you say that sounds really difficult how do i how do i access the spiritual through the physical that means i have to be a philosopher every single second of my life i have to like always translate past service i can't do that you do it all the time without even realizing it because think about what you're doing right now right now can't see my thoughts you can't see my emotions you can't see what's going on inside me but i'm taking a deep breath nashima i'm blowing out some vibrations into the world my mushroom is now being expressed into the world the vibrations are hitting your eardrums those vibrations are turning into sounds those sounds are turning into words those words into sentences and you are reconstructing what was inside of my head and all of a sudden what was inside of me infinite abstract the thoughts that you have no access to are now inside of you and you're experiencing me now you're not experiencing me myself because the words are never the thing itself it's always a limited expression but you are gaining access to what you had no access to and that's what the physical world is it's a limited surface where if you learn how to peer past the surface and gain access to that which is so to speak the source of it you start viewing the world in a different way that's what purim is we just passed purim qatan pramil khan was a transition the world transition why because the beginning of world history there were miracles prophecy hashem openly revealed himself to the world it was a different type of reality the physical the world was clearly reflecting a higher source and now we transition to a point where it doesn't you used to go to a navi and say what's my target what's my purpose and the prophet would tell you now you have to figure it out yourself and it's one of those things where you start to realize that all of life is about learning how to peer past the service and see things in a deeper way once you start to realize that you start to go on that journey and it's an incredible journey and it's one of those things where you ask yourself like if we're spiritual people if clients jewish people are spiritual people why are all of our mitzvos physical you ever think about that how many spiritual mentals do we have like how many philosophical mentals do we have like believe in hashem don't serve idolatry don't be jealous you can literally count on one hand how many intellectual philosophical mitzvos we have right what happened to our spirituality all of our mentors are physical eat matzah right shake lu love where to fill in well where what what in the world is going on why are we a physical people but the concept of mitzvos which the morale says means it comes from the root of connect it's all about connecting the physical to the spiritual it's about creating the underlying concept i mentioned before of oneness that you don't disconnect and disengage from the physical and become a philosopher who has nothing to do with the world but you engage in every aspect of physicality in the most brilliant deep emotionally intelligent and conscious meaningful way and you start living a higher life in this world as opposed to transcending the world and when you understand it changes everything it changes how you view the world because as einstein said you can view the world as if nothing's a miracle or you can view the world as if everything's a miracle and the choice is up to you in a similar way you can view the world as if everything is meaningful or you can view the world as if nothing is meaningful and if you view the world as everything is meaningful that can be scary why because that means everything you do everything you think about everything you say everything you eat everything is meaningful it's a lot of responsibility it's a lot of responsibility but your life will never be the same and if nothing is meaningful which is pretty much the notion of a lot of atheists nowadays it's great because there's no responsibility but your life is meaningless and the choice is up to you you get to choose how you see the world when you start to realize that learning is expansion it's changing the way you see things it's questioning every mitzvah every concept every everything you think you know you can deepen you can explore you can expand you can start living a higher version of yourself when you start viewing yourself as capable deserving and destined to achieve all the things you've always dreamed of achieving it's about engaging in a continuous process building momentum creating an environment getting around like-minded people it's making the choices that actually help you and it are worthwhile long term and the fundamental uh it's one of those things where the way i wrote this affair the way i wrote the safe hair is i started to realize that i had a lot of things in my head and there were a lot of contradictions a lot of contradictions in terms of studios i was learning questions i had sources ahead so i started writing everything down i started writing everything down everything every question every source every gemara every sugya every share i heard every book i read every safer i learned every idea i had whether it was in the shower when i was lying down in bed walking exercising i was always writing things down and then i started writing down in files used one note i start having files for every mitzvah every halacha every question every concept every sugar every source every single aspect in mustard national final philosophy and psychology and mathematics and maksha mastering and medical ethics and psycho everything and interconnecting everything to everything meaning everything was connected to everything and you start to realize the contradictions and you fix the contradictions because once it's outside of yourself you get to see what you actually think and you can say let's fix this this doesn't make any sense oh wait this is connected to this you start to realize the brilliance of interconnectivity and how true harmony and oneness of ideas is the brilliance of torah and as opposed to having a cute vert on the parsha or a great devotor that doesn't say much you start to realize the depth and wisdom of tor once you go deeper and deeper and by the way a shear that is open to that is brilliant because some sharing if you break them down and spend 10 hours on one cheer really breaking down what was said there are 25 contradictions nothing makes sense but a great cheer is when you break it down go deeper and deeper deeper and the deeper you go the deeper it gets and the deeper you go the more it comes together and the deeper you go the more the underlying oneness of everything that's being said and not everything is susceptible to that type of analysis that's true brilliance and the purpose of the safer was basically a reflection of the oneness of torah which is basically the concept of the more and more you learn the more and more you start to realize that not only is everything interconnected but there's a hierarchy of ideas meaning some ideas come up more than often some ideas are more fundamental some ideas are more potent more deep and it's almost like you have this tree of wisdom where there are fundamental underlying principles which you can call the trunk and then there are exp expressions of those principles right those are the branches and then expressions of those principles branches and smaller branches small branches and then leaves are like the you can call them mitzvos which are basically like the outer expressions and obviously they're all connected but true wisdom is understanding the hierarchy of concepts sourcing things back understanding how ideas work and it's not just being the kind of mitzvah tamatory but it's becoming truly someone in love with wisdom in love with learning in love with actually becoming torah not just learning torah becoming wisdom not just learning wisdom and it's supposed to transform you and once that happens you just never go back and it's about realizing that all of life all of life is about connection we want to connect to our best selves we want to connect to other people in marriage and our family and our communities and cholesterol in the world we want to connect to ideas we want to connect to hashem we want to connect connect connect in the best of ways and by the way that is the underlying concept of the journey to your ultimate self which i haven't yet showed in any other shame we've given but the junior trial until itself is a journey to your ultimate self that's a capitalist because then you go to your expanded self which is marriage then your expanded self your family then your expanded self your community your expanded self claudius jewish people you expand yourself and shaman every human being comes from other people the ultimate self of the universe the source of all self but that's the journey that you take it's a journey towards the extraordinary and it's a journey into the unknown and that's the the fundamental reason why i wrote this if i just i'll end up with a story it's a story of a couple months back i was speaking at a conference and the way these conferences usually work is that there are two microphones and the person who introduces has one microphone introduces and then he takes the microphone there's one microphone up on the podium and the speaker comes up and he uses that microphone and i'll never forget this this time it was the strangest thing there's only one microphone on the podium and the guy introduced the ceo of the company and he finishes introducing and i come up and instead of giving me the microphone he keeps the microphone and i'm thinking like when the world's going out like you know i've never seen this happen before and he walks to the front of the podium and he turns to the audience and he says something i'll never forget before we get to that the purpose of the safer is to give you access to the deepest ideas in life to not tell you things you already know to not help you be making the mists of talmud torah to not have a good read or a good inspiring experience supposed to be all that too every single chapter starts off with inspiring stories there are summaries at the end of every chapter so you really get a sense of what you're learning there are discussion questions so it becomes much more than just an intellectual endeavor it becomes something you bring into your life with your friends with your relationships with shabbos table and there are action points so you can start acting on it's so difficult to say what does this mean to me how do i live these ideas has this torah become part of my life and there are footnotes in every single chapter connecting everything in that chapter to everything else in the book so you start to realize how what you're learning now affects all the other things you're learning starts to see the interconnectivity you want to delve deeper into something you're learning a certain source a certain idea their footnotes throughout the book connecting to all other parts of the book because these aren't just separate ideas these aren't just beautiful div ray torah these aren't nice concepts it's designed to be a reflection of the harmony and oneness of torah wisdom and the scariest scariest thing in life is journeying to your ultimate self because it means that you have to go on a journey and it means that you have to grow and it means that you have to engage in change and when those things are scary we don't do it but when you start to realize that that is life that is life itself if you are not in pain because how do you build muscle you rip your muscles apart you look at someone in the gym and if you're an alien looking through the window you think someone's pointing a gun and making him do that he's paying to do that why because he knows that the way you grow is you rip your muscles apart you want to get in good shape you push yourself to the max how you doing in your emotional safe your spiritual shape your intellectual shape you gotta be pushing but when you're pushing oh my gosh do you enjoy it those endorphins well spiritual endorphins come you know what is happiness happiness is when you are striving and becoming your best self you don't have to have a smile on your face it doesn't have to be enjoyable it's enjoyable in the sense that you are living with meaning and purpose and passion and that is life and if you're not it's time to start and if no one no one in the history of mankind has ever been perfect or become perfect we always can take our life to the next level and if it's not one aspect of your life it's another aspect of life it's so easy it's one of these things where we'll come to close with this but it's one of those things where if you're 10 years old and you're a kid it's okay to ask every question and start learning because it's okay to be a child but when you're an adult it's so embarrassing to start engaging in something you're not good at because you're already good at other things and if you're good at things why would you want to look like a fool it's the the youngin concept of the fool where you don't want to start and become a beginner once you're already good at certain things because you can just rest on your laurels and rest on the fact that certain things already easy but once you realize that life itself is struggle and growth it's it's just expansion it's this just engaging and learning how to enjoy the struggle enjoy the process enjoy every aspect of your life you start to just look for things in your life that aren't yet the way you want to be you start to look for openings and gaps you fall in love with questions as opposed to the embarrassment embarrassment i don't know the answer to this you start to say oh my gosh there's ideas out there i can connect to there are concepts i can learn i can give up the way i see the world for the way i know i could see the world in order to grow you have to give up who you are for who you could become and that's the greatest thing you can ever accomplish now you all notice that there's a problem here right what's the problem why can't i end this year yet microphone microphone what was the problem with the microphone story there was no ending to it right now no one starts a story without ending it it's just not acceptable you get fired that way you don't get hired again to speak you're definitely not going to hard to speak again but isn't that our life right we all have a starting point to our story a joke has to have an ending has a punch line a story has to have a conclusion has to go somewhere otherwise it's not a story you have a setup for the single purpose of having something that concludes that it goes somewhere that's our lives we all have a setup we're all so to speak right now at our current point in our journey but what kind of conclusion are we gonna write and the first first first principle to realize that you are writing the story sparkle gave you you are writing your story and once you realize that why not make it the greatest story imaginable no no no it's not for the great it's not for those people who you see are famous you're not just the nobody who's going to live your life doing nothing no it's going to be you too you also learn to collateral clue in the womb you're also going to take your jobs off it doesn't have to be objectively great you have to change the world and be famous you can live the most extraordinary life becoming the greatest version of you on your terms by becoming self-aware and writing your ultimate story don't let fear get in the way don't let those voices inside of you that says oh it's not for me don't let that get in the way it is for you because we are each building our home back to the introductory story we're building our home and what kind of home do you want to build i mean it's one of those things where you experience that home not just an olam haba every day right who do you spend 24 7 with you why not why not fall in love with yourself the right way by becoming the greatest version of yourself so my breakfast is that we truly engage in this journey we all strive to become our ultimate selves and i'm gonna invite everyone i'm gonna you know at the back table i'm now going to um you can all purchase a copy of the safe right i ask you i invite you i implore you to all get a copy of the safer i'd be happy to write a personal inscription for you and i hope we can all continue taking the ultimate journey to our ultimate selves thank you all right for the users [Applause] y