Tame Your Inner Beast (Parshas Bechukosai)

so back in the shtetl there was a guy uh an eccentric who was going around and telling everyone he was mashiach and it was getting on people's nerves so they went over to the love and they said this guy's going around he's bothering everyone trying to tell them that he's mashiach so that i've said uh send them to me so the guy comes into the dove and it off says to the guy i hear you going around making some announcements he says yeah i'm i'm shirk the dove says to him i know guy's a little bit surprised he says huh you know he says yeah i know i know your mashiach you know your mashiach the problem is the people in this town they don't know your meshia so we got to prove it to them it says that when mashiach comes the wolf will lie down with the lamb the wolf becomes tame so uh you're you're in luck the circus is coming to town today and they have with them wild animals including a wolf so we're gonna take you and put you in the cage with the wolf and everyone's going to see that the wolf's not going to bother you so now the guy sort of hesitates he says uh rob i don't know if that's a good idea he says of course it's a good idea why is it not a good idea the guy says rabbi you know i'm mashiach i know i'm mashiach but the wolf does the wolf know that i'm mashiach okay in parties i it talks about some of the positive i know we talk about a lot of the negative things but there's also positive promises if we fulfill hashem's will and one of those is vinasati shalimba audits i will make peace in the land and i will remove the kaya the the wild animal or the predatory animal vicious animal from the land i will remove the the wild animal from the from the land now this is actually the subject of a macholicus go figure in jewish tradition that we have a torah verse which is the subject of a dispute of the sages yes this is this this is the subject of a macholicus of a dispute in the madrush terror [Applause] let me see here i just i will remove the vicious animal from the earth i will remove them from the world they won't exist they'll go extinct don't we don't want to scare anyone but that's what says don't worry there's another opinion is from last week i will remove from them i'm going to translate liter liberally not literally but i will remove from them their predatory instinct yehudah says i will remove them from the land literally i'll get rid of them they won't exist derbyshiman says that i will remove from them their damaging nature so they will exist but they won't be vicious ameribe shimon says continues and he elaborates on his point of view when is there a praise of the omnipresent in other words what is a greater praise of hashem bisman when there are no damaging agents when there are the nothing that does damage i or alternatively bismancy yesh mizekin there are damaging agents they ain't musicum but they don't do damage so what's a bigger kuns right what's a bigger thing to pull off that there's no more things that cause harm or the things that cause harm still exist but they don't cause harm anymore because their nature has changed so he answers bisman shayne mizekin i'm sorry so it says manchester united the time when they have damaging things but they don't do damage anymore and that's what it says means michelin shabbos from tillman a psalm of the sabbath day what does that mean to and here's this word see in in in the in the original vishvati i will remove i will get rid of okay it's related to the word shabbos has the same show to shin bay suff and actually we're going to be speaking a lot about that grammatical root or that word root that etymology shin bay stuff we usually say shabbos to rest but shabbos also means to get rid of in the case of shops to get rid of work to get rid of you know strenuous labor but mismas he reads it hamletically a praise a song to hashem that he has removed the damaging nature of these beasts la mash beast music in minnesota not to actually remove them but to remove their nature and this is why i told you the joke at the beginning the message continues and says and that's precisely what it says regarding the messianic era the gorzavim kavas that a wolf will lie down peacefully with the lamb indeed what is this proof of what that prophecy that when meshiach comes the wolf will lie down with the lamb what's the proof of there will be wolves but they won't bother the lambs which seemingly supports the opinion of which tana reby shimon very good who says they will exist but they will no longer be damaging as opposed to debbie you heard the very good who says no they won't exist okay excellent so that's the message now you guys are great there is an examination of this machlakis in the writings of the raga trover goin yasif rosen who was one of the we don't make rankings here of like talmudic but let's just say in everybody's list of great sages from the modern era meaning people you know we have pictures of people from the past two hundred years everyone will say you know he's somewhere on the top the raga chaver examines this machelecus and he relates it and this is very much his style by the way raghav would often look at one subject in terror and mitsad the fact that all of toyota is organically intrinsically underlyingly linked and one you can find connections in any area of toyota to any other area of terror so that was very much his style is he would take one entry point and then connect it to something else and show in a certain way it's like a certain reduction um in a certain minimalism that he would take something that seemed to be complex and he would show how it really turns on one single point so he takes this machlakis of do you remember which tanayum and he and it's about how to interpret a passage i will remove the vicious beast so the raga traveler points out there's another makalaikus the same two tonight which is related to the same word tashbisu there's a commandment when comes pesach tashbisu you should destroy comets okay great what does it mean tashbisu you should destroy comets the word the tata uses to to to describe the commandment to get rid of the comments prior to pesticide so you should destroy it so does it mean touch me so you should destroy it says the only way is to burn it you have to burn it maybe shimon says you could tear it up into tiny unrecognizable pieces like dust and throw it into the wind and it is effectively destroyed so that says it's the same mach like us do you have to actually remove the physical matter from the world like to take the hummus and burn it so it actually it doesn't exist anymore maybe you know there's a conservation of matter and energy so now it turned into fire it turned into energy but that matter those atoms right they're broken apart debbie shimon would say you don't have to go that far the comets can still exist just not in the form of comets so if it's reduced to powder that's not comets if you tear it up so the same atoms are still around but that's fine because it's effectively no longer comments nobody calls it comments you don't recognize it as comments it doesn't function any longer as comets so the raga traveler says that's the same machelechus the same to knowing with the same word that yehudah says you have to actually get rid of the wolves and the lions and the leopards and you can't have them your bishop and says you could have them just in a different form in this case with a new nature with a tame nature say mach like this with tashbias with comets says you have to destroy it it cannot it cannot even exist bishop says it could exist just not in the form of comets okay now and by the way i'm getting this don't think i'm such a tom okam i'm getting i'm getting this from a secret from the sikhs so in in the secret the rabbit adds it seems to be the rabbishiddish the yeshleimer the rebels adding another machelecus which is also like basically building on the raga tower also the same to name it shiminub yohoda also this shin-based soft etymology we have a commandment to cease from melaka the term the words that tata uses to tell you to cease from from creative labor and shabbat says tishbis tischvice t spice can mean rest t space can also mean the negation of labor so the question is what is the definition of tishbois of getting rid of labor so it's interesting yehuda would say if you have not only would say he says if you have a heavy bench outside and you drag it it's not a question of carrying because it's in a courtyard but you're dragging it and when the bench is being dragged drug through the dirt floor it's creating a furrow in the ground so it's plowing which is one of the 39 forms of prohibited labor it's plowing rebbe shimon says it's not because that was not your intention your intention was not to plow okay so it it it performs a function that simulates or resembles the act of plowing but nobody was plowing that's not what anyone was trying to do you're trying to move a bench so that ever points out the same macholicus looks at it very concretely was the act done or it wasn't done it doesn't matter why you did it t spice get rid of that act that act can't exist eb shemin says the act can exist just not in the way that it would during the weekdays meaning it can be done it just can't be done with creative intent and if it's not done with creative intent then even though functionally the act was done on a very mechanical level the act was done but the act doesn't have that significance so therefore you got you effectively got rid of the act well it was done yeah but it wasn't done for that reason so effectively it's as if it's not there it's the same macholicus well they're still wolves yeah but the wolves aren't acting like wolves oh but you dragged the the bench and it made yeah but that's not why i was doing it it's the same concept oh the comet still exists what do you mean on a molecular level yeah but it doesn't look like a piece of bread anymore so it's the same machelecus yahudah says for something not to exist means it doesn't exist and for uh rabbi shimon it could exist it just changes the form in which it exists and that's enough and not only is it enough it's even better right because that's what abhishem was saying what is a greater praise to hashem when something damaging no longer exists or when it exists but it's no longer damaging okay what are we talking about here what's this whole discussion the question is like this we all have character defects we all have traits that are damaging what is a greater praise to hashem to eliminate those traits so that they don't exist or to retain them to keep them and to repurpose them so they function entirely differently so the wild animal within is still there but no longer a reckless vicious damaging animal now it's domesticated it's working for you so obviously the greater praise is to train what we call the nefeshabamus the animal soul the base instincts not to eliminate them but to transform them so it's interesting that this macholicus that we're studying now includes the discussion of comets remember we've talked about before tashbiso get rid of the comets what does it mean to to destroy it on an atomic level or just to change the way it functions the halachic status of comets me rephrase that the evolution of the status of comets over the 49 days between pesach and schwarz or 50 days is in microcosm a metaphor for the transformation of the ego from a damaging force to a holy force let's go through it when we start off when we start off this process we're in the middle of a process right now right we're in the middle of sphero the process began with pesa in fact it began before pesach when we got rid of the comets in anticipation of of peso what was the status of comets completely forbidden a mashahu of comets is forbidden now hummuts we know khazal compare it to the itsahara the evil inclination why because it's puffy it's big it's self-important so it is the pride and the arrogance of the ego the ego the edging god out and we have to get rid of it because it is a destructive force there's a story sid and tell parable that uh you know the the gamora says that the malacha moves the it's a heart of the satan they're all one malek they're all one entity right the angel of death and the the satan and the evil inclination so there's a story of sydney tell the one time the malacha moves the angel of death comes to hashem and complains my name is bad for business because i'm supposed to make people make bad choices and destroy their lives but when i'm about to close the deal with them they say what's your name i say angel of death and they're like whoa get away and they're they wrong so i need a name that's less scary so he says okay call yourself yay sahara evil inclination so he does that for a while it comes back says god it's still not good because it has ra has evil in the name they're still running for me says call yourself satan so he calls himself sutton and then he comes back says god it's not good they asked me what does sutton me i say it's a hebrew name they say yeah but it's a translation that means adversary adversary get out of here i don't want anyone to be adversarial get out of here so god says okay i have a name for you it's cute almost the sydney made up a name for you it's less threatening it's called nepheshabamas animal soul try that out so he tries that he comes back you say god it's better but it's still not working because when i'm about to close the deal make somebody make stupid choices to ruin their life they're like what's your name again like never bomb animal soul they're like you know what i'm not comfortable taking life advice from an animal so i need a better name so god says to the malchem of slash slash sutton slash right angel of death slash evil inclination slash adversary slash animal soul okay i got a name for you ah i didn't want it to come to this because this is very dangerous and if you if you have this name you're gonna really oh this is gonna make you very powerful everyone will always listen to you in fact they will they will listen to you even when their loved ones tell them the exact opposite and they will always believe that you have their best interests at heart even when you're undermining them he says what what's the name i'm going to go by he told he tells him you're going to go by the name yes yes yes just means i am i exist you ever heard of habraengen and they say to each other they rebuke each other lovingly and they say yes you know what that means you would think it's such a swear word what's a yesh yash means you exist you exist no hashem exists so at the first level and by the way i'm going to do a spoiler right now because unfortunately there are people watching this right now who will be triggered by this and i'll tell you why because a lot of times they've been exposed to this and they weren't told the punch line so all they were told is you're nothing you don't exist which is the setup but it's not the punchline the punch line is once you realize that you don't exist as a separate entity apart from god the punchline is so therefore what are you you're a part of god you're one with god so it's not a put down it's not a put down to say you're nothing once you're nothing then you're one with the everything so that's really a spoiler because we didn't get up to that point yet but i'm saying it now because from experience i realize there are people who hear this and they get triggered by it rightfully so because the the beautiful beautiful concept of bittel which means self-nullification has been weaponized unfortunately and used abusively so that's why i have to make i have to make clarifications that this is not to hurt anyone to the country it's to liberate us from the bondage of self so that we can become one with the all and meet our true greatness okay that was a spoiler so let's back up and pretend we don't know that yet we're in phase one phase one is comets is toxic even a mashup of comets is toxic you have to get rid of it even in the tiniest amount why because we're in egypt and in order to be liberated from egypt you have to be completely deflated here's the problem you cannot leave egypt by human power no slave ever escaped egypt it never happened and it never would happened and that's what we say in the hague that if god had not taken us out from egypt we and our children would still be slaves to pharaoh and egypt because we could not leave by human power god took us out he did for us what we could not do for ourselves and if we would have gotten in the way we would have actually kept ourselves there so phase one is admission of powerlessness my life has completely fallen apart and the best smartest thing i can do at this point my best efforts my best thinking got me to this dysfunction so at this point my move is surrender surrender and i just let him do the work god pulls me out of here and at that phase my ego is my enemy my self-concept my personality it's my enemy it's bringing me down so i just who am i i'm nobody i don't know i have no personality i have no i have no agenda no nothing i can't afford to i just i i drop it all okay now you're pulled out of egypt now you're safe now you're safe now you're out of egypt now what now what now we're going to slowly start to rebuild a personality trait by trait and that's what spherus is one trait at a time we'll polish it clean it reinstall it we completely wipe the hard drive and we're reinstalling a new operating system you're getting to know yourself again for the first time you as you the former you took you down to the lowest level of impurity god yanked you out of there he saved you but now you're going to meet the new you and that's the process called spherus hoymen at that point muhammad is no longer forbidden comets is the personality the ego it was forbidden when i was in egypt because it was the most dangerous thing for me but now i'm safe and in fact i need to actually get back my personality not my old one a new one but a personality i have to discover a self-concept i need a self-concept who am i that i'm serving god so i need a self-conscious i need to know who i am so this is the process of discovering myself my true self and now muhammad is no longer prohibited you can eat comments during swedish in fact on pesachini which is a month after pesach right in the middle of we do a pesach it's like pesach and you have comets in the house with you at the same time so the comments is no longer toxic your ego is being slowly safely reintroduced and then you know what happens at the very end of the whole process the third phase is schwarz is matan on the 50th day since redemption we stand at sinai and god reveals himself to us and gives us the torah and what happens at that point oneness oneness there's only one time in the best in the holy temple when there was a communal offering that had to have comets anshus there was a corbin called the shiddaya lachem which was two comets decoloaves imagine the rapidity of that is that the word rapidity or rapidness of that transformation then in 50 days we went from comets being like cyanide you can't even touch it it's even a drop is is is toxic that was that was pesach and then it became normal and then it became a mitzvah it became a corbin it became an offering in the holy temple you can't get holier than that that's the transformation of the ego that in 49 days my ego my self-hood went from being my worst enemy and it was my worst enemy and i acknowledge it was my worst enemy to becoming neutral like oh okay fine now it's safe again to becoming my greatest asset my greatest asset because now i'm aligned with god now my ego is not edging god out i'm not resisting i'm not blocking my ego is a surrendered ego my selfhood is a godly selfhood i have pride and a healthy sense of pride pride in my neshama pride in my godly mission my self-concept is now working with me working for me in fact i'll put it i'll put it like this somebody who has the surrender adequate to allow themselves to be pulled out of egypt but then refuses to go to the next phases and remains completely utterly selfless is actually you're cheating god because what does god want from you he wants you to be a someone he wants you to have a self-concept just in a healthy way in a healthy way and that's what that process is so tashbisou what does tashbisu mean what does it mean get rid of the comments i know the comments okay we know what but i'm saying the comments the comments in the heart like we say when we burn the comments and we say that beautiful trilla that just like we got rid of the comments from our house hashem should remove the comments from our heart what does tashbees who get rid of the comets mean there's two ways of looking at it you have you hold into shimon one perspective is the greatest thing that i could ever hope for as far as personal development is to take my lower base animal instincts and eradicate them just get rid of them completely burn them that's one that's one approach that's another approach is greatest thing that could ever happen to me in terms of personal development the greatest praise there could ever be of god almighty is that the same ego that was drawing me down and separating me from god is now the greatest asset the greatest tool for connectedness for oneness with god that's rabbi shimon that the wild animals are still there they're just not wild so there's a wolf but he no longer behaves like a wolf not that we hunted them to extinction we got rid of the wolves no the wolves are our pets now now it's like a little little dog a little cat maybe even better than that it's a beast of burden it's like like a cow pulls a wagon or something it's working for us it's working for us i'll tell you one more parallel to this whole thing how are we doing on time doing okay yeah okay so we'll take two more minutes here it's the same concept but it's just another way of framing i find it helpful to to repeat the same concept but in different ways so it just it drives it home more there's a possibility a verse in the song of songs uh king salman writes a love poem which is a metaphor for the relationship between hashem and the jewish people and one of the things there in the in the first panic in the first chapter it says has drawn me into his innermost chamber there are three clauses here in this verse which describe the three phases same three phases we're talking about pesach phase one draw me why do i say to we're speaking to hashem the woman is speaking to the man which is speaking to hashem draw me why do i say draw me because in phase one i cannot have any active participation i'm a danger to myself so i say hashem you do it draw me pull me out of here yank me i'm in the pit throw a rope and pull me out phase two we will run after you now we're active so phase one ego was my worst enemy i had to surrender just let god do all the heavy lifting take me out of egypt phase two is sphere sphere is i'm working now i'm refining my own character traits so that's we're the active ones now we are running after you and another thing you notice which changed was from singular to plural because yeah in the first phrase i am the object and and in the second phrase i'm the subject in the first phase i i'm the one things are being done too draw me second phase i'm the one who's doing things we will run after you that's one change but also from singular to plural why because you have two souls shtaina fascists now kiss godly soul animal soul in the first phase god rescue me it's only the godly soul when he saves you it's only the godly soul you know why because the animal soul didn't change by being rescued the animal soul can only change through hard work so really what happened that's why by the way the altar explains in tanya kibara that they ran the nation ran from egypt why did they run at that point egypt wasn't chasing them egypt was licking their wounds so why were they running the altar explains in tanya because they were running from themselves because their nephew bombs hadn't changed yet their egos were still drawn to the dysfunction they knew if they didn't run they would get comfortable and they would be stuck so in the first phase machene draw me only my nephew shall accuse only my godly soul is rescued in the second phase we will run after you we plural both souls the nephili kiss and the bombs godly soul and animal soul because now through sveta through personal introspection and inventory i'm starting to slowly change who i am so now the animal soul is getting refined now it's both now it's plural we and then and that's sphero and then the third phase have yanimal of the king has drawn me into brought me into his innermost chambers that schwarz that's intimacy the king brought me into his innermost chamber his innermost chamber that doesn't mean the lobby that's not the office that's that that's the king's bedroom the king marries me schwarz is the marriage and and maesha and aaron were the interference and have seen i was the hopper and then the lokis were the subah marriage is oneness the reunification of two halves of one entity shavuous is the unity between hashem and the jewish people he gives us his title and he draws us to his perspective we see things now from his perspective through the holy torah and now we are we're privy to his wisdom and his will and at that point we who's we we we we are him he is us so at that point how is my sense of self a danger anymore it's not my sense of self is a sense of godliness i realize like it says in tanya mamash literally that means in a body i am one with god and at this point when my self-concept is is a godly self-concept so there's nothing wrong with ego to the contrary it's completely completely holy like on shivers when you have this as a corbin in in the basement so that's it that's the that's the evolution of the ego from damage to productivity to being the greatest asset to being the greatest greatest tool in our service of hashem