Spiritual Spring Cleaning (Pre-Pesach Lecture)

So, the Israeli Air Force built a new fighter jet that uh flew uh faster than the speed of sound. The problem was that every time they brought it up to top speed, the wings would fall off. So, they called in all types of engineers and experts in aerodynamics and uh nobody could figure out a fix that would work. So, finally they said, "You know, we're Jews. Let's ask a rabbi." So, a rabbi came in and he said, "What's the problem?" They said, "Every time we take this new fighter jet to top speeds, the wings fall off." So he said, "Drill holes, perforations around the fuselage where the wings enter the fuselage. Just perforated. Put holes there." They're like, "That's going to damage." He says, "Trust me, just just do it." So they did it and they took up the jet up to top speed and the wings stayed on perfectly perfectly well. And they landed it and they asked the rabbi, "How did you know that would work?" It's very counterintuitive. He says, "I knew from Pesak the matzah breaks everywhere but along the holes." So that's how I knew. That's how Yeah. Anyway, so Pesak, yeah, Passover, festival of our liberation. Um, contrary to popular misconception, Passover is not the commemoration of our people leaving Egypt. And that is because for the simple reason that our people never left Egypt. There were many attempts to leave Egypt and they never succeeded. The only way that we got out in the end was we were removed. Okay? We did not leave. We tried to leave. We couldn't leave. And in the end, Hashem did for us what we could not have done for ourselves. We say in the Hagada that if Hashem had not taken us out, we would still be slaves. We and our children would still be slaves to Pharaoh and Egypt. That means that on our own accord, limited by our own human power, the servitude and the slavery of Egypt would have never ended. Never. We'd still be there. But Hashem rescued us and he pulled us out. And that's why we're here and that's what we're remembering. So really, Pes is the commemoration of the miracle of Hashem doing something for us that our own powers were futile to accomplish. Even if he would give us a hundred years, a thousand years, thousands of years, we could never have accomplished it. But Hashem did. And we were so uninvolved, so to speak. It was something that happened to us and for us as opposed to because of us that even in the last minute after 210 years of wanting to get out, but when it finally happened, we were so unprepared, it took us by such surprise that we didn't even have time for our bread to rise. So that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about when Hashem takes us out of a situation that uh we are powerless to ex extricate ourselves from. So, every one of us can relate to the idea of powerlessness in some context because uh we're not all powerful. powerful. And what what does it mean to experience powerlessness? It means not only to be in a situation that my best efforts are incapable of removing myself from. But even more so, real powerlessness means that my best efforts are counterproductive. You know, if you ever go uh in the uh the jungle where they have quicksand. Yeah. So, the the tour guide will tell you, I don't know if you ever went where they have quicksand, but Yeah. So, they tell you if you fall in the quicksand, don't struggle because actually what happen, you'll you'll wrigle around and then you'll you'll fall in faster. You have to just relax and wait for somebody else to pull you up. Yeah. Same thing if you fall in a grain silo. By the way, if you ever a grain silo, I know a lot of times the kids like to actually in rural areas it's like a thing that teenagers do. You climb up on the grain silo and get drunk and then but it's actually not funny because they they fall in and then you fall on top of the grain. If you wrigle wrigle around, you just sink and drown in the grain. It's deadly. It's absolutely deadly. What do what do the guides tell you to do when no one's around? So don't go into the jungle when no one's around. Don't go don't go by yourself. No. Yeah. Yeah. Or I'll get I'll give you a more maybe a a more uh benign example, but you know those that we we used to call them uh Chinese finger traps. Oh yeah. Yeah. You put your fingers in there and you pull on it actually gets tighter. So that's real powerlessness. It's where my best efforts not only don't improve my situation but make it worse. Yeah. Yeah. So when I'm in a kind of situation like that and somebody tells me, "Hey, cut it out. Like stop doing that." Well, yeah. You don't understand. Like if it were that kind of thing where I could stop if I wanted to or I could make it better if I cared enough to, then I would. But here's a situation which sometimes happens where it's not that I don't care enough. It's not that I'm not smart enough. It's not that I haven't worked hard enough. It's not that uh that that I don't have enough remorse or self-awareness. I I do I have all of that. And the harder I try to get this thing under control, the more it controls me. and the more collateral damage and the more disaster. And there's really nothing that I can do on my own on my own power to remove myself from it. I need to be removed. I need to be taken out. I need a power greater than myself to pull me out of there. And and and that's Peso. That's what Peso is. That's what we're remembering and reliving every year. So, let's try to relate to this what this means on a on an individual level. Not just on a historical, collective, national level, but for each of us as individuals living this story in our own way in the present. Think about uh try to imagine yourself when you're like seven years old. And I say seven years old just sort of almost arbitrarily randomly, but it's an age where you're young enough where you don't really have much agency, but you're old enough to kind of understand what's going on and to have a personality and to start developing your own reactions to things. And try to remember when you were seven and let's say you're in a stressful situation like let's say your family's fighting and different families fight different ways. Some of them are door slammers, others just don't talk to each other for three months, you know. So, depends depends. But let's say you're in a stressful situation. You're seven years old and and and try to picture yourself like how did you react to that? How did you deal with that? Um, and you may not have a clear memory of it, but uh sometimes your imagination is going to be more accurate than than your memory. Uh, like see yourself as seven years old. How do you deal with the stress? Are you the peacemaker? Maybe you're the one who tries to, you know, uh, be the diplomat. Or maybe you're the comedian. You try to diffuse everything with a joke. Or maybe you're the fighter. You know, when people start getting mad, you get madder than mad. Try to intimidate them. Or maybe uh you know how to make yourself invisible. You know, you disappear, so fly under the radar. Or maybe you leave. Maybe you learn how to just get out of there. And if you think about that, what you're really looking at, if you're doing it right now, there's no reason not to do it right now because it's free. I'm not charging you for this, you know. Just just do it. not going to. If you're if you're imagining yourself what your uh go-to response is in that stressful situation as a seven-year-old, you're you're really you're seeing a snapshot of an early adaptation that you developed that becomes one of your most defining characteristics of your personality and probably your strong suit, probably one of your uh strengths, something that is your go-to move when you're in other stressful situations. And it becomes very uh defining. It becomes, you know, a big part of who you are. Um, you know, think about yourself. You're you're seven years old and let's say you're the new kid on the playground or in in a in a classroom or wherever it is. You know, what's your go-to method? What do you do? You're the new kid. So, do you find the biggest, toughest kid and go pick a fight with him? Some people do that. That's that's one personality. Do you figure out where the adults are and you just hang out with the teachers or the lunchroom monitor? Some kids do that. Do you uh start giving away your comic books and bribing people, try to buy allies? Some people do that. Uh or do you just uh go off into a corner somewhere and play with imaginary friends and hope that nobody talks to you. Think about how you dealt with those kinds of situations as a child. And you're really looking at the beginning, the the seed of who you become as an adult. And you're going to realize that those are the those are the go-to coping mechanisms and personality traits that you've come to master and really are just have become synonymous with who you are. And you'll also realize if you think about it that not only are those your strengths, but they're they're also your your weaknesses. You know, the the Greeks, they like drama. They used to call it the tragic flaw, right? You have a character, he has a he's a noble character. We like him. We're supposed to like him. He's the protagonist. And he has a tragic flaw. There's something about him, some unique quality or idiosyncrasy that becomes his undoing. And if you think about it, that thing that you developed, your go-to coping mechanism or or adaptation, it served you. I mean, it helped you to survive as a as a seven-year-old who was under stress, and you became a genius at it. I mean, you spent a lifetime honing it, but it also became your undoing. If you think about it, that became the thing that's an impediment to genuine relationships and to being authentic and to facing your life and showing up for it in a in a vulnerable and raw type of way because these things also become deflections. They become buffers. They become protection. I mean, that's what they are. That's why we come up with them. We come up with them as armor and they do their job and they do serve a purpose. But that armor also puts a buffer between us and the rest of the world. So like let's say I said before that somebody developed the adaptation of being the the little comedian. Okay. So uh then that becomes like a an impediment to genuine intimate relationships. Oh, you're always making jokes, right? Or the or the one the little kid became the precocious little uh junior therapist and he realized he he had a little knack for understanding people and reading them, you know, sensitive soul and he became everybody's therapist. Well, you know, he gets a lot of attention for it, gets a lot of positive strokes for it. It it buys friends and influence and it's it serves him well, but it also becomes his undoing because now it's like, hey, you know, like are you analyzing me? What are you doing? I mean, is this a real relationship or uh are you sitting and taking notes? Like, do I really know you or uh are you just uh looking at me like a case, right? or or or or I mean this is an obvious one. The person who learns how to use aggression as as his armor and his protection. And then obviously that's that's an obvious one. You're scaring people off and every time you experience frustration, which is bound to happen, you know, you get meaner than mean because you have to. You get tougher than tough and then no one wants to be around you. They're afraid of you. So the point is you think about these personality traits and their origin and how much they become who you are. And now you become aware of the fact that it's not serving you well. It served you, but now you're in a place where I don't want to be like this anymore. It's causing me trouble. It's causing me trouble. So I don't want this anymore. and you want to stop, but you can't stop because this is who you are for as long as you've known yourself or had any semblance of a concept of an identity. So now you're telling me that I can't be me. I got to stop being me. How do I stop being me? But I don't like this me that I am. I'm stuck. But the only way to get unstuck is to stop being me. Which is rather ironic because if the only way to get unstuck is to stop being me, then when I'm free, I won't even be me anymore. So it won't be me who's free. So who will it be who's over there on the on the side of freedom to enjoy being unstuck, which come on in presents uh somewhat of a conundrum. But you aren't your habits. H We're not talking about habits. Or you aren't. We're not talking about habits. We're not talking about habits. We're talking about personality traits. But it's not a personality. It's a defense mechanism that you developed over time. So it's not really you. Yeah. But uh you could unbe so great. So therefore, my response to that is stop doing it. Okay. Great. And if you can stop doing it, congratulations. there's more power to you, right? The problem is you can't stop. You can't stop. And people have told you before, you know that thing that you do, yeah, it kind of bothers us. Stop it. And you're like, nah, it's not true. Doesn't bother. It's just you. But then another person tells you, you know, that thing that you always do, we don't like it. I heard it from two people, right? If two people tell you you're drunk, right? And then a third person. And then you know what? Somebody once told me very, it was very, very hurtful. He said, "Think of Yeah. He said, "Think of every dysfunctional relationship you've ever been in and think about the one common denominator every time." You. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You. So then people start pointing out. like, "Why do you always do that thing?" So then it's like, "Oh, okay. I admit it. It it it's it's not nice. People don't like it." But I could stop. Okay. So stop. I will. And then the next day or week or month, whatever. Give it time. You do it again. It's almost like, "Why are you doing that thing again?" I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What do you want from me? You want me not to be me? This is who I am. This is who I am. As long as I remember this is how Oh, so you don't like my personality. So that's like telling me you don't like my nose. What do I do? I should cut off my nose. I should stop having this character trait. This is who I am. I agree with you. It's not really who I am. But for all intents and purposes, I don't know how to extricate that from my my existence. So for all practical purposes, this character trait which served me well to an extent that's why I picked it up in the first place has become part and parcel of my identity to the extent that even when it's not serving me well and people don't like it and people have pointed it out to me and I have pointed it out to me and I can't stop it. Now there are plenty of things that you can stop. That's not Egypt. That's not mit. That's not being stuck. If it's something you could stop, so stop the bad habit and you want to stop it. So stop it. This is much deeper. This is I want to stop, but I don't know how to stop and still be me. Who will I be without this? And if you think about it, I mean, you really want to talk about the being stuck, the quicksand, the irony of it. The catch 22. When I realize how bad it is and how much people don't like it and how much it's undermining my own hopes and goals, that stresses me out. And you know what I do when I'm stressed? I do my go-to thing. I do my go-to thing because, right, so if I'm the guy who always has a smart answer for everything, always wants to philosophize, right? gets cerebral because whatever you learned that at a young age that if you want to get people off your back, you just outmaneuver them intellectually. Okay? And uh then people start pointing out well you know that know there's an expression to a person who only has a hammer everything looks like a nail, right? So if that's the tool you have so you try to use that tool on everything even when when it's wildly inappropriate, right? So somebody says to you your spouse says to you I want to talk about our relationship and you look at it like a debate that you have to win. And if I have a have a smarter answer, so I won. So you have to agree that everything's fine. You can't have problems. I just proved to you that you don't you can't have any complaints. I just won the debate, right? So let's say that's your go-to thing and somebody points out to you how destructive it is. So now I'm feeling threatened. I'm feeling insecure. Well, darn it. What am I going to do? I know what I do really well. I go into my cerebral debate team mode and then I do more of that. And that's just an example. It could be anything. It could be the person who disappears when there's stress and then people start calling them out on it. Like every time things get intense, you disappear. Well, calling me out is stressful. So now what do I do? I disappear, right? Or or or or the person who's, you know, the people pleaser. That's their adaptation. They're always just trying to curry favor with everybody. God forbid nobody should be upset. And then you tell them, "Hey, you know what? You're sucking up to everyone and it's upsetting us." Oh, you're upset. WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE YOU NOT UPSET? NO, DON'T DO THAT. OH, NO. That makes YOU UPSET. WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE YOU NOT UPSET? It's It's a vicious cycle. That's called being stuck. That's mit. So, what do we do? We say, "Okay, I'm going to work on this. I'm going to I'm going to work on this. I'm going to stop this. And we we first we we attempt to approach it with with human power, regular self-improvement. Why not? You know, Benjamin Franklin, he wrote a list of character traits and character flaws and he picked one each day and he worked on it. That's what I'm going to do. I'm work on my character traits. I'll do it. I'm a mature adult. I have good values. I'm not afraid of hard work. I'll fix it. Here's the problem. When you're stuck, you do not have sufficient power to take yourself out. So, what that means is with your limited power, you're trying to address something that you cannot address. All you're doing is the equivalent of a six-ft tall man trying to cover himself with a five-ft blanket. So, you're moving it around, right? You take it away from one area and it crops up in another area. It's the technical term they call it cross addiction. So I heard one time one person tell me he said I've been an addict looking for a drug my whole life. Right? It wasn't I was addicted to a drug. I'm an addict looking for a drug. If I found this I did this. Then there were too many side effects. Okay. Can't do that anymore. So then you find something else. cross addiction. So also with emotional addiction with emotional adaptations defense mechanisms when I am limited as I am as we all are and I'm just trying to uh fix it myself invariably what happens is that as soon as I get one area of life under control. It exposes a whole new area, a new front, a new battlefront, and it becomes exhausting. Constantly running, putting out fires, trying to stay one step ahead of my own powerlessness. And eventually hopefully what happens is I give up and I realize the futility of what I'm doing. Now some people can keep up this racket for a lifetime and never give up. That's that's heartbreaking. That's heartbreaking. There are some very tough people who will martyr themselves to remaining loyal to dysfunction for a lifetime or multiple lifetimes intergenerationally sometimes. And never give up. But hopefully what happens? Huh? Well, I don't know if it's comfortable. It's terribly uncomfortable. It's it's that to stop means to give up the thing that I think is protecting me and has been a protection to me. So to stop means to let down my armor, let down my defense mechanism and be vulnerable to death. From my ego's perspective, letting go of this means just free fall. You're falling into the void without a parachute and you don't know where you're going to land and I won't let you do it. The ego, the selfpreservation instinct says, "I don't care how dysfunctional our life is. I don't care how miserable we are and I don't care how much we're hurting people. I do care, but I can't care. I'm not going to let your ego die because then you'll be nothing. And you get to a point where you say, you know what, this can't this can't continue. and you surrender and you say, "I'm ready to let go of everything I think I've known about myself and find out who I really am without any protection or adaptations or defense mechanisms. I'm ready to meet my true self, whoever that is." And it feels to the ego, it feels like death. And it's the scariest thing in the world to release my character defects, which are my defense mechanisms. I heard somebody once, it was actually it was a recovery speaker, a woman who talked about her experience hitting bottom and getting a new lease on life. And she said that when I look back at my life at all the dysfunction and all the wreckage I caused to myself, to others, and uh I can look back now and I see all the times where I was terrified because my life was falling apart. I now see in retrospect, I now see I'm in sobriety. I'm able to look back and see all those times when I was terrified because my life was falling apart. It was actually that my life was falling into place. But I had to become comfortable with the falling. So we want to hold on tight. We want control which we delude ourselves is safety as painful as it is. We hold on tight and eventually we have to do the most counterintuitive thing in the world which is let go and let God or some people say let go or get dragged and uh admit that our power is not enough here. And it's not because we're not good enough or smart enough or hard enough workers or have a good enough moral compass because we are all that and we've done all that. We've tried all that and uh there's just certain things that are impervious to limited human power and the only way out is to be removed. Hold on tight. Hold on tight to the ride. You ever wonder why some people, and I stress the word some people, go to therapy and come out as bigger jerks than when they went in? Imagine that you become something and like we said, you became that for a reason and it served a certain purpose and now it's causing problems and people are telling you it's causing problems. Now you want to fix it with your own power. But you're not ready. I mean, that's synonymous with fixing it with your own power. You're not ready to surrender. You're not ready to let go. So, basically, what that means is you're going to take what you already are and just become a more polished version of that or sometimes just an enlarged version of that. So, I've taken my warped self and I've just made it bigger or I've become more comfortable with it or more articulate in expressing it. But I I am what I was when I came at my father's gazun is a psychologist for many many decades. He told me this joke. So, I feel I have permission to say this. There was a guy went into a bar and he ordered a shot of whiskey and the bartender put the shot on the bar and the guy took the shot of whiskey and he looked at it. He squirts it in he splashes it in the bartender's face. The bartender says get out of here and don't come back. Next day the guy comes in and the bartender says, "Get out of here." He says, "No, no, no. I'm sorry. That was totally crazy. That was I'm gonna behave today." Says, "Okay, fine. But I'm watching you. What do you want?" He says, "Shout of whiskey." Bartender pours a shot of whiskey on the bar. Guy picks up the shot of whiskey, looks at it, splashes the bartender in the face. Bartender says, "You get out and never come back. Lifetime ban, no matter what." A year later, this guy comes rolling into the same bar. The bartender instantly RECOGNIZES HIM, SAYS, "GET OUT OF HERE. YOU'RE BANNED." He says, "Hey, it's been a year, right?" He's like, "Yeah." He says, "Where have I been for a year?" "I don't know where you've been for." He says, "I've been in therapy. Can I come back?" He's like, "Okay, come back. What do you want?" Says, "A shot of whiskey." The bartender pours a shot of whiskey. Guy takes the shot of whiskey, looks at it, splashes it in the bartender's face. Bartender says, "Thought you said you've been in therapy." You said, "I have been." Now, when I do that, I don't feel guilty anymore. I told him my father told me that joke. Okay. Talks about a seed, the the metaphor or the allegory of a seed that in order for a seed to become a tree, it has to stop being a seed. So the seed has a destiny. And that destiny is latent within it. That's the potential of the seed to become a tree which is incomparably greater than the seed itself. Because how many seeds does the tree produce? Infinite potentially infinite. They they say anyone can count the seeds in an apple. Only God can count the apples in a seed because it's infinite potential. There's generations and generations. But in order for that infinite potential to come out of the seed, the seed has to die to being a seed. Has to no longer be a seed. Has to decompose. It has to rot. So you think about it like this. I am who I am and I just want to become a better version of who I am or a more polished version of who I am or a more presentable version of who I am. In other words, I'm a seed and I'm never going to stop being se a seed. I'm going to continue to be a seed. I'm going to cling to that. But within being a seed, I'm going to try to be a better version of that. That's what the ego tells us is our only option. You're going to continue to be you. You're not going to let go. You're not gonna experience ego death, but you're gonna improve yourself and become a better version of you. But what doesn't happen from that and what cannot happen from that is for you to become who you were always meant to be to actually grow into your destiny in the case of the seed of becoming a tree which isn't 10 times better than a seed or 100 times better than a seed or even a million times better than a seed. It's infinitely greater than a seed because the tree produces an infinite and potential infinite amount of seeds. So, it's like I don't want to let go of my adaptations and my defense mechanisms. I'm just going to rearrange them and move them around so they become more presentable or more socially acceptable. Okay, fine. So, that's basically I'm going to remain who I am. I'm just going to play around with it. Again, it's like the six-foot man with the five-ft blanket. So, I'm just gonna cover this thing because this is causing me too much trouble. I'm gonna cover that thing because it's causing me man is okay because he's not covering his head. Then what do you do about the monsters? If you're not completely covered, the monsters can get you. You have to show them respect. You don't know about that? No, thankfully not. Okay, now I gave you a new thing to worry about. Does this spiritual self what does the spiritual self cleaning apply to the bay? We're Oh, don't really Okay, hold on a second. Everyone should hear Ask me the Tanya. We have a beautiful qu question that is based on see unfortunately not everyone here is a full-time learning full time every time you tap into your potential you can right so the problem is that not everybody was there at 11:00 a.m. But the Tanya so okay but I uh without giving the whole Tanya not only the whole Tanya 23 weeks of Tanya because we're around the 23rd week already. Okay. At any rate let let me just uh Okay. So what is Pesak? Pes is where we completely surrendered. We completely let go. We completely admitted our own inability to improve our lot and to change our situation and we allowed a power greater than ourselves to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Now, interestingly, after we're rescued from Egypt, we begin this self-refinement process called 49 days of counting days. But also each day represents another subset or quality of our uh of our psyche. But we do not begin to work on ourselves. We do not begin the work of character refinement until we've been pulled out of mitzim. Mitraim is the biblical name for Egypt and it also means mates sodom. It means tight places or strictctures. In other words, it means being stuck. So when we're stuck, self-improvement will not work. It's only counterproductive. It's like taking your warped personality and just making it bigger or shining more light on it or polishing it or doing whatever it is to try to make it look more presentable. So when you're stuck still, character refinement and self-improvement is actually counterproductive. What then is the solution when you're stuck is to admit that you're stuck. Stuck means my work is counterproductive. His work is the only thing that is going to help and therefore my role has to be that of unconditional surrender. And that is precisely what happened in Egypt. There's a verse in Shir Hashidum in the Song of Songs where King Solomon explains this process. Song of Songs is written as a love poem between a man and a woman. Hashem is represented by the man and the Jewish people are represented by the woman. There's one line where the the woman says to the man, King Solomon says this beautiful uh love poetry. So what does it mean? Means draw me, pull me, shle me out of here. We will run after you of the king has brought me into his innermost chamber. So this explains that this is three phases. three months actually Niss or three uh times in the Jewish calendar uh three observances Passover counting of the Omr and the anniversary of the revelation at Sinai anus and what are these three phases the first one is I'm stuck I'm in mitim strictures tight places my work is counterproductive I cannot get myself out of here. So I surrender and I say draw me, pull me and Hashem pulls me out. The next phase, we will run after you. Something changes. We will run after you means now I'm active. Whereas I was passive, I had to be passive. In the first phase, my actions were counterproductive. My only way of participating in it was through surrender. So I surrender and I am passive. The second phase after I'm removed from my stuckness now I can start to work. So we will run after you. That means self-refinement. We start doing the work of self-refinement. And that's why it's also plural. Now it's we because the two souls now. Oh, now you got your Tanya reference because Yeah, I give you a little Tanya reference because what at first when I say pull me out of here, pull me singular, that means just my godly soul, my animal soul, meaning all the survival instinct adaptations that haven't been serving me well. I ditched those in Egypt. I cannot take them with me. Yeah, that's the ego death. I abandon that stuff. I cannot bring it with me. And I'm naked now because that's what I used to learn how to survive in this cold, cruel world. But I'm not trying to survive anymore. I'm just surrendering. I'm letting God take care of me. So that's the first phase. Just pull me out of here. Then when I'm pull and just with the godly soul, the animal soul, meaning my personality, everything I thought I knew about myself was left behind. Now I'm in phase two. Phase two, I start to slowly regain a personality. I get back my animal soul. And on the first day is the second day is the third day is and so on and so forth. every day picking up another character trait, rebuilding a personality where I had none. Because to leave Mitim, you cannot hold on to your personality. If you cling to any part or any semblance of your old self, you will remain in Egypt like four-fifths of the Jewish people did. What are you refining? H what are you refining during the month of your self-refinement does not mean what we normally think it means. Self-refinement really is working from a blank slate. So what is spiritual spring cleaning? That was the title of the whole thing is letting go of those attachments to the false self to the survival mechanisms and allowing yourself to face your greatest fear of not even knowing who you are, not knowing how to defend yourself and realize that your only protection is Hashem. That's phase three. No, that was phase one. Phase two is now you start to build a personality, a real personality, not based on the lie that you believed in when you were a child, when you didn't know any better, which is I have to take care of me, but now a new mature adult self-concept based on the idea that Hashem is taking care of me. So being stuck is a prerequisite. So being stuck is a prerequisite to becoming your true self. So really the whole hitting rock bottom was to precipitate the ego death so that you could have new life. That's the paradox by the way of this week's para mitz. Usually mitz is is a double para tazria. The Reba pointed out that it's an oxymoron because tazria means conception like birth. Mitsra is a disease which our sages tell us is k. It's like death. So birth death. How do you put the two together? It's like complete inongruity. So what's the answer? that in order to become born and be your true self, you have to allow the false self to die, which to your ego, ego, edging God out, feels like the scariest thing in the world. So, you just got to pray that the dysfunction becomes painful enough that you're left with no choice because the worst thing that could happen to you is the dysfunction is just painful enough to be able to bear it for the rest of your life. That's the worst curse. The best gift is when everything comes crashing down and it rises to the surface. And then, like I said before, when it all falls apart, it's falling into place. Or another thing they say, when you're down to nothing, God's up to something, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you have to allow yourself to experience that. Um, yeah. We didn't mention phase three is the king has brought me into his innermost chamber. I mean, that is union. That's intimate union with God which happens in the final phase where you get a real personality. And now it serves you well because it's predicated on the fundamental belief that Hashem is taking care of me. And now my personality is no longer in conflict with God. It's aligned with God. And that's the intimate union the king has brought me into his innermost chamber. And that was exemplified by the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the revelation of God at Sinai. And it's it's if you really want to know it's like Dolly Parton said, you know who Dolly Parton, she said you can't quote Dolly Parton in a prees lecture. So Dolly Parton said, "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." Find out who you are and do it on purpose. What does that mean? What's the difference between the dysfunctional me that needs to die and the real me that I'm going to discover after my unconditional surrender to Hashem? All of those skills that I picked up in the past, all those strengths that I learned that weren't serving me well because they were a double-edged sword. I had to be ready to completely let go of them and to say, I'm not going to protect myself anymore because God is going to take care of me and I'm surrendered to his will. But what happens afterwards is that now I find that those skills that I developed, I'm no longer compelled to use them. I don't have to be the funny guy or the smart guy or the tough guy or the whatever it is that I thought I had to be in order to survive in this cold cruel world. I don't need I don't need to be any of that stuff because I've surrendered and Hashem is taking care of me. But now what I realize is as a servant of Hashem, hey, I've got this skill set now. It's not for me anymore. I don't need it for me. Hashem's taking care of me. But I've got this skill set that I learned now. I can use it to serve Hashem. So that's what it means. Find out who you are and do that on purpose. The things that you learned how to be because you thought you needed to learn how to do that to survive. You realize you don't need that in order to survive. Hashem is taking care of you. But now that you know how to do all that stuff, now do it to serve Hashem's agenda. So if or don't do or don't do it. And what it means if you're really doing it for Hashem, that means that if Hashem doesn't need that from you right now, then you're not going to be of like we say, well, when do I get to be the smart guy again? Oh, it's okay. Nobody needs that right now. Oh, okay. No problem. But when it is called for, when it does advance Hashem's agenda, when it adds to the glorification of Hashem, then I'm the guy who knows how to do that. Not but I'm not doing it anymore because I'm compelled to do it because that's the only way I know how to feel safe. And I'm not doing it anymore because that's the only way I know how to have an identity. No, I let go of all that. Hashem's taking care of me. And I don't need those those adaptations to have an identity. My identity is that I'm a child of God. But I know how to do those things for my old life before my ego died. So now let me use them to serve a higher purpose. What's the timing of this spiritual self? When should you be doing? It's a good question. When should you not be doing? So yeah. So are you saying you're mistake or people. So in order to not get rid of that, okay, so you're using the word people pleaser, which has an inherently negative connotation. Let's strip the inherently negative connotation and say like this. Let's say Very good. So we Exactly. So let's say you learned how to make people happy, right? But in your old model, you were making people happy because you felt ultimately for you. Now you you feel like a martyr, but really it's it's selfish because it's all about your own survival, your own protection. And this is my skill. This is what I've got. I know how to make people happy. And if I don't make them happy, I'm going to die. Okay. So now I have to do it. It's like an addiction. I have to. It's a compulsion. I have to do it. Okay. Then I realize, you know what? I don't have to do it. I'm okay. I won't make everyone happy and I won't die and I will be me. In fact, I'll be the real me. I'll be the genuine me and everything will be fine. Okay, now that everything's fine. Hey, you know how to make people happy. Could you do that? But now do it because it's the right thing to do, not because you're terrified of what will happen if you don't. Now you're actually free because you have the skill, but you're using it because you're choosing to use it for a higher purpose, not because it's your instinctive survival mechanism that you think you have to use in order to protect yourself. How do you know the difference? Can I just say, yeah, if if you're doing it and you're expecting something in return that will benefit you, then you know that expect anything in return. I'm saying no, you're a people person. If you're pleasing people, you expect something in return. Either people call you nice or you're, you know, you have a certain reputation or you're let me make it very very clear. It's you. So, if you're a people pleaser and you're nice to somebody and they still hate you, that'll keep you up at night. If you're a god pleaser and you're nice to people and they still hate you, you can sleep well at night. Sleep very well at night because I did the right thing. You don't sleep very h but you don't care anymore because it's not you. Cuz it's I don't I don't need let's say I was a person who my entire life was based on approval and if I didn't have that I would do anything. I would compromise my morals and principles in order to get that. And then I let my ego die and I said, "I don't need that anymore." Okay? So, I stopped doing it. But here's the beauty. It's a skill that you were given for a reason. You know how to do it well. Go back and do it again. Just do it for the right reason. Now, do it for a higher purpose, not as a an adaptation. What they say, do everything. do everything for Hashem and not just any old thing. The very same things that you learned how to do and became your character defects and you did it for sick reasons. Now knowing that you have a brand new life, go back and use those skills for beautiful reasons, for selfless reasons. without the fear and without the compulsion and without the feeling that if I don't do this, I don't even know who I am. I don't need this anymore for an identity. I have an identity. I'm Hashem's child. That's my identity. That thing I do, it's a thing that I know how to do. And if it adds to the glory of God to do it, I'm willing to do it. But I don't need to do it. And if I don't ever do it again, I'll be at peace. If I don't ever get to use that tool again, I'm okay because that's not who I am. It's just a thing I learned how to do. I'm really rushing to get put to my next live stream. We go to the seder as slaves. This whole mentality is is totally antitheical to a slave mentality. Well, the end of the the end of the process is complete freedom, right? So, where are we doing this? At the seder, we're doing all this spiritual cleaning at the saber time. Start now. Okay. Start start now. Starting right now. Finish the And beat the Passover rush. Yeah. And by the time you come to the seder, right, you'll uh you'll you'll just you'll just be an observer. You're all Yeah. You'll show up to the seder and you'll say came early. I did it already. Yeah. Okay. I got to wrap up over here because I got to get to my next live stream. I'll tell you a quick story. This is a story that I've told before in the five towns, but I'm going to tell it again. Anyways, there's a guy driving down the highway and he's depressed and he says, "God, I hate my life." And all of a sudden, he hears God say, "What? What do you say?" He says, "What?" Oh, God's listening. He says, "Yeah, I hate my life. I want a new life." And God says, "Well, you're in luck. I got on sale today for a very reasonable reasonable price a brand new life." So, the guy's like, "Wow, okay. What's it cost for a new life?" God says, "How much you got on you?" The guy's like, "Uh, 20 bucks." He's like, "That's the price of a new life, 20 bucks." So I told you, the guy's driving. He's like, "God, if I can give you the 20 bucks, it's going to clean me out." You see the gas is going low on the car, then I'm not going to be able to buy gas. The guy says, "Oh, you have a car?" "Yeah, I forgot the price of of your new life is $20 in your car." The guy's like, "Well, God, if I give you my car, then how am I going to get to work in the morning?" God is like, "Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. Yeah, the price of your new life is $20 your car and your job." He's like, "Well, if I lose my job, how am I going to pay the mortgage?" God's like, "Oh, mortgage. That means you you're a homeowner. You have a house." Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The price of your new life is $20. Your car, your job, your house. Guy's like, "God, if I give you my house, where are my wife and children going to live?" God's like, "Oh, wife and children." Yeah. Okay. You want a new life? You're serious? And this is the price is what you're going to have to give up. Your $20, your car, your job, your house, your wife, your kids. At this point, the guy realizes every time he opens his mouth, it gets worse. So, he's going to shut up. So, God says, "Okay, give it over here." Now, God says, "There's one more thing I want from you. One more thing. You got a problem with that?" The guy's like, because he doesn't want to talk. He's afraid. He knows. He just just digging things deeper. So, the guy's likem. So, God's like, "Okay, here's what I want from you. You see this $20? It's not your $20. Used to be your $20. It's my $20." God says, "I want you to spend it, but it's not yours. It's mine. So, you have to only buy things that I want bought." God says, he says, "You see this car? You used to have a car just like this, but you don't anymore. It's my car." God says, "But I want you to drive it. But since it's my car, when you drive it, you can only go places I want to go. You see this job? It's not your job. It's my job, God says. But you you you should show up there for me. And that means you have to conduct business the way that I want business conducted. You see this house, it's not your house. It's my house, God says. But I want you to live in it. But it's my house, so you can only use the house the way that I want God's house to be used. You see this wife and children, God says, they're not your wife and children they used to be. They're my wife and children, God says. And I want you to treat them accordingly. Can you do all of that for me? So the guy says, Mhm. God says, "Very good. So here's your $20. Here's your car. Here's your job. Here's your house. Here's your wife and your kids. And here's your new life. What's the difference between your old life and your new life? God. Who's is it? Who does it belong to? So even my character defects when they're mine, when they are me, when they are the ego trying to survive, that's called Egypt mitim strictctures being stuck and I'll never get out. Not by human power. But God takes me out because God is graceful and good and kind. And then when I'm out, I have all these things I learned how to do, but I don't have to do them anymore. I'm not compelled to do them. I won't die if I don't do them. I'm not afraid of not doing them. I won't lose my personality if I don't do them. But God put these things in my life and he he must he want he must want me to use them. After all, they belong to him. They're his. And that's a completely new life. That's a completely new life. Anyway, when we're uh Pesak cleaning and we're going through all the old stuff and you find uh I sometimes think of pesak cleaning, you know, you do that once a year deep cleaning and you look at all the interesting stuff that you amassed over a year. I sometimes think of that as going to the Museum of Dysfunctional Attachments. Just, oh, really? That was important to me back in January. Okay. All right. Let that go. Let that go. Let that go. And as you're letting go, just let go of the whole thing. And uh whatever spiritual, huh? Spiritual. Well, it's that is the KTZ. That's right. The KTZ is the ego. And uh whatever you encounter on the other side on the other side of surrender that's the real you. But you have to be fearless. You have to be fearless in order to get over there to that side. You have to be ready to give up being everything that you've ever known that you were in order to become who you truly are. Okay, I got to run. Thank you, Rabbi Tab, and looking forward to