Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 113): Don't Take Large Steps - Mesillas Yesharim

good morning and welcome back to our weekly ten minutes of meaning so glad to be together again as we study the ramkhara of moshe lutzatta who gives us a formula for how to lead our best and most successful life yet uh very grateful to our dear friends khani and leni grunstein who sponsored the series for the year in memory of khani's father mr aaron tambour arun ben yitzhak aliyah if you'd like to sponsor a particular episode please be in touch with lee at brsonline.org brsonline.orgliapirasonline.org we are on the 13th chapter of mesela susham the amhara of moshe is giving us a formula for how to live our best lives yet we begin with the meet of the heroes mindfulness the more present we are the more mindful we are the more that we can achieve we then moved over to zrisas alacrity and zeal not to keep it all inside but to come up with a plan a goal and make a resolution how we're going to achieve it how we'll measure ourselves and our success along the way we moved over to nikeis identifying all the character traits and attributes all the behaviors that we want to expunge that we want to purge from within our repertoire and how we can ease our life by moving it from the battleground to the conquered territory and it brings us up to the media of precious which we've begun which is the character trait of you can only live with when you've proven you can live without that there's nothing wrong with enjoying and indulging in the beauty and the pleasures of this world but it cannot and must not define us and who we are and therefore we can only enjoy those pleasures when we don't need them when we can transcend above them the vahi so the answer says the ram khal the answer to this what's this the answer is why is it we left off last week with a question we have enough prohibitions we have enough things that the torah says you can't do we have enough limitations on our life why do we have to introduce others so this is technically permissible if it's in the rules of engagement why do we have to voluntarily voluntarily take it off the table what quality is this exactly to lead a life of asceticism to try to transcend the rise above it what do we gain by doing so the truth of the answer is precious is a value it's a virtue humor and this is what the torah tells us in pasha's kidoshima kidoshim to you we should be holy now what does holy mean what is holiness kedoshan kedusa we translate the word kadosh as holy holy is a christian term it's not a jewish term i don't know what the word holy means too often we're satisfied with translations that we don't even understand because it just gives us an english version of a word to use but what does it mean to be holy and what does it mean to strive for holiness so rashi there tells us the sifra based on the madrish what is kedosh what does it mean to be holy prusion to you it means be distinguished be separate be a part in judaism holiness is not living without holiness is elevating ourselves enriching ourselves empowering ourselves it is engaging the physical world not avoiding it but engaging it in such a way that we lift it when it comes to food we eat really it's not a virtue to starve ourselves to death although fasting of course can promote the spiritual side the soul within us but we eat but we make a blessing before and after we make sure it's kosher we are disciplined and dignified in our eating in our eating in the intimate component of our life in every area of the physical world odamro our rabbi say in the tractate this yoshi batanas nicker kardashians that a person is able to live with a sense of fasting it's interesting how society and the world of health and wellness at least right now because it moves in phases has caught up intermittent fasting is considered to be a very healthy lifestyle at least again this week who knows next week these things change on a regular basis but the idea that a person doesn't eat after a certain time of night and doesn't eat in the day until a certain time of the day not only affects the metabolism and not only helps one burn calories or burn fat or whatever the mechanism is that supposedly it is helping one lose weight and live a healthier life but it's also emotionally and spiritually a much more disciplined way of life intermittent fasting intermittent fasting essentially says on a daily basis i'm going to strive not just to eat every time i have an impulse notice i didn't say eat every time i have an appetite because most of us don't eat when we have an appetite we eat much more often than that we eat when we have an impulse we when we walk by the cabinet we when we were in the supermarket we eat when we are trying to distract ourselves we eat because emotionally we're able to um escape whatever it is uh by entering instead into a bag of corn chips or kettle potato chips we eat not because we're hungry we eat to indulge all kinds of other things so the notion of intermittent fasting aside from the health benefits have tremendous spiritual benefits because it means no matter how how ravenously hungry you are at night or however much you've developed to have it the impulse to eat even when you're not hungry if you're committed to fast intermittently then you're going to be exercising that disciplined muscle and that's what precious is about precious is growing the disciplined muscle exercising it and growing it and making it stronger and creating a new muscle memory around best practices and behaviors odometer they said further sadiq we know the king of yehuda they would put on his table two liters of yarach of soup um so the ram khal employs two examples of two great righteous people one a king of israel and one rabbenu akadosh rabu dahanasi the great editor and redacter of our whole mishnah someone who in perpetuity is known as rabbenu we don't even need his name he is simply our holy rabbi and what made him holy what made him holy is that he said in his death bed said you see these ten fingers i never use them to gain personal pleasure now rebecca review dynasty was extraordinarily wealthy it's not that i didn't use it to gain personal pleasure because i was poor i was impoverished i was indigent i didn't have access to luxuries and indulgences was wealthy a wealthy man who had access to it all who was a a peer and a friend of roman leadership and yet he says even though i have a palace and even though i have delicacies of food and even though i have great material wealth i always used it and channeled it only to grow spiritually only to improve and repair the world only to share with others and it was never about my personal pleasure this is not a standard that's expected of us it's not a standard that's easy to achieve but we need to know as we look at the physical things in our lives the source of physical pleasure often fleeting pleasure that we are capable of rising above it we are capable of being disciplined in it and it says the time of elio the message says before you pray that the words of torah be absorbed inside you pray that food and drink are absorbed in you what does it mean it means that a person should be disciplined in our eating you know we're consumed with eating we're obsessed with our eating our eating habits or eating patterns our holidays revolve around eating shabbos every week is eating it's a lot of food in the jewish ritual jewish tradition jewish ceremony jewish calendar but it doesn't mean that we have to let ourselves go and i don't mean physically let ourselves go and become physically obese but i mean spiritually obese you can be spiritually obese when you're undisciplined spiritually obese when you find yourself in the bottom of the ice cream container or on the bottom of the potato chip bag or in the bottom of the seventh helping only to feel miserable guilty ashamed only to feel empty inside all the pleasure you had while you were eating is gone so quickly because it's replaced by a feeling of often hating yourself but we can we need to know and we need to believe that we have the capacity and the competency we have the muscle the spiritual fortitude and resiliency to not give in to the impulse to not give into that instinct but to be able to rise above and to be disciplined we find ourselves in the days of shove of him the arizal the great capitalist associated these weeks the parties of shemoswaii bashar yisrael mishpatim an acronym that spells shove of him with a passage in the navy shivobanim shove of him where god says return my children those who are returning and this is a period that is predisposed to suspicious to grow that disciplined muscle to strive for a sense of precious not to live without permanently necessarily but to prove that we can live without because then we can afford to live with to be able to fast intermittently not only from food i read an article uh i put out this morning which includes and promotes the congressman from texas who in the wall street journal yesterday proclaimed he's going on a social media sabbatical it's a fast he's practicing precious when it comes to social media there are platforms there are pleasures there's progress which is incredible to our lives we're not rejecting it we embrace it it's wonderful but you can overindulge you can come addicted it in itself can be a source of corruption contamination and precious is the capacity to take a break to do intermittent fasting to say that i own it it doesn't own me i could live without i'm disciplined i'm dignified i transcend i rise above and whether it's in my eating habits i don't have to go back for seconds i don't have to finish every morsel on my plate if you go to a restaurant what they determined to be a serving portion doesn't have to be the portion that you eat it doesn't have to be a person is able to be disciplined whether it's our use of technology our use of social media whether any other indulgence in our lives the the explanation is their fundamental distinctions there's a form of an abstinence that we have been commanded about you're not allowed to eat non-kosher food you know how to speak gossip you're not allowed to look at things the images that one should not take in and then there's another form of abstinence or that exercise discipline muscle which we volunteer we're not obligated in but we volunteer but a person has to be not overly righteous if you try to take on too much and do too much you will implode you will collapse and you will fail you know if you run up the ramp the torah tells us a person would run up a priest who would run up the ramp whose steps were too big revealed their nakedness it means they wore a tunic they were a cloak they didn't wear pants and therefore if your step is too big then you create this gap that someone could look up that tunic and your nakedness is revealed but spiritually the ballet muscle tell us what it means is if you're taking steps that are too big in life don't take on too much too quick because you will reveal your nakedness you will stumble you'll trip you will fall and you will end up worse off than you begin we have a concept also called merce kiyora sometimes there's a behavior that looks outrageous that looks arrogant you're not there it's not where you belong it's not what you're up to and if you take on too much then you're going to implode you're going to collapse and you'll be left with nothing else to eat the carbe so as much as we're endorsing a greater sense of awareness self-awareness a greater sense of discipline in all these areas we're also recognizing although the carbay slowly incrementally in different phases and different stages of life conquer these different areas and recognize that we're capable of working out that muscle and creating a new muscle memory when it comes to those things that are so important in our lives pick it up next week um everyone stay happy stay healthy and stay holy have a wonderful day stay tuned to 8 45 living with emunah go to our youtube channel and subscribe but please please join us for all our shoe room on the youtube channel you'll find out every time we go live if you subscribe also join us tonight very very excited for our guest on behind the beam at 9pm rip joey rosenfeld who is a addiction therapist specialist addiction counselor spiritual counselor talking more about the kinds of topics we're talking about this morning see everyone back in a few minutes have a wonderful day