Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 114): Rise Up - Mesillas Yesharim

good morning booker toe welcome back to our weekly 10 minutes of meaning 10 minutes of the ram khal 10 minutes of moshe khan lotsato's famous messily susham the path of the just 10 minutes towards a better you 10 minutes towards our best selves 10 minutes towards living the lives that we are meant to and trying to be able to live i want to thank our generous sponsors of the series for the year dear friends lenny and hani grunstein who sponsored in memory of hani's beloved father mr aaron tambor aran benitzak thank you so much for your generosity if you'd like to sponsor a future particular class please email lee brsonline.org lee at brsonline.org we continue we are in the thirteenth chapter and the ramhara of tata has been going through the formula to living our best selves the formula towards self-awareness self-perfection it began with zero's mindfulness caution being present in every thought speech and action and move to zurich's how can we identify goals and make resolutions in order to pursue them and in order to achieve them and then we moved over to the area of nichias how to identify what's our kryptonite what are the patterns the triggers who are the people what are the things that will bring us down if we don't anticipate them and navigate around them if we don't seek to purge them and eliminate them from our own impulse and instinct and that brings us up to the media of precious the concept of not abstinence transcendence trying to prove we can only live with once we've proven we can live without how to live a life of such discipline and dignity that we are the master over all of our impulse and instinct to never give in to an appetite a desire a temptation to be able to enjoy and appreciate everything in life because we know that we can live without it so let's explain he says let's define the type of abstinence that's good the truth is we live in a world in which everything is a test for us the whole world is a test i would say from the moment we wake up in the morning but the truth is it begins even before we wake up with the question of when and will and if we wake up at the time that we said we would when we went to sleep we set an alarm but then alarm goes off do we press snooze how many times do we press news do we wake up even before the alarm goes off but reset it for later we have all kinds of justifications the later minions really little slower it's better i don't really need minion i dive in better when i'm at home alone i need to sleep i deserve it i was up late doing something so virtuous and noble god wants me to sleep maybe one day he does does he want that excuse each and every day see even before we wake up in the morning we confront a world of tests breakfast what's it going to be are you doing intermittent fasting are you eating breakfast what are you eating for breakfast are you loading up and packing up on carbs are you eating something which is healthy are you proud and disciplined in your eating are you eating the quantity you need are you eating to live or living to eat the conversations that we're going to have the business we're going to do the interactions what we look at and what we listen to and what we see and where we go and what we do the entire world is it is a world that is filled with tests there is no smooth sailing it doesn't come easy for anybody and for the person who food is not their kryptonite maybe the internet is and for the person who's not tempted to look at or think about the things they shouldn't maybe gossip or speech is their challenge and as we spoke about earlier says that halloween brought evidence so number one thing to understand if we're going to succeed in navigating the world is that it's a complicated world it's a world of challenges it's a world where we're going to be confronting our alter ego and our best selves it's not simple it's not simple so if you go in thinking you have all the answers if you go in thinking you're going to conquer the world if you go and thinking you're going to move into conquered territory and not to battleground you are sadly mistaken and you'll learn the hard way number one number two we are really weak you say how could you say that you're insulting all of mankind all of us you don't even know me some of you are thinking i don't and i can tell you you're weak and how do i know you're weak because we're always cool we're all weak he said earlier that maybe you weren't learning with us back then but the pointed out earlier think of how pathetic and lowly we are in so many ways of course we're still godly and we're god capable and we have tremendous potential but we're also in many other ways very pathetic and very lowly and here's the example he gives an animal encounter something harmful or dangerous a threat and the animal recoils the animal learns and the animal doesn't go back for more but the human being experiences something which is a danger or a threat something which compromises or corrupts and the individual says may i have another and so we know the consequences of what we eat what we look at how we speak how we react in anger or rage whether we act with jealousy or envy we know the consequences we can see the damage that we leave in our wake the relationships that we have to repair our emotional spiritual physical health that we need to improve and yet we go back again may i have another a reflection of just how weak we are and as superior as we feel we are the animals in some ways we are utterly inferior the animal knows and yet we don't is the more things i get hooked on the more things that i get fixated on the more things i come to enjoy and add to my repertoire of what i need be it a incredibly inflated price of coffee at a coffee house i have to stop at on my way to and from work and go into debt because i can't afford it because i'm paying a thousand percent markup on a cup of coffee i can make at home or in my office now if you can afford that and that's how you want to spend your money more power to you but if you're on tuition assistance or do's adjustment at shul if you're barely eking by at home if you're depriving someone in your life something that they want because you're feeding your fix for something which is an indulgence then you have to ask yourself who's really in charge who really controls who who really owns what so we have to look at every aspect of our life and realize that only when we can practice abstinence you want to indulge in that in that luxury and luxury can be an over inflated price of coffee a luxury could be one of the finer things in life a food or beverage a lover a luxury could be clothing a luxury could be whatever we offer or provide ourselves but if we can't live without it if it's gotten to the point that we need it we go into debt for it we go into debt in our relationships with people in order to have it then we have to ask ourselves who owns what abstinence is the way that we express our ownership abstinence the capacity to live with discipline means i can have it maybe i can afford it but i'm not going there i'm not doing it why because i need to prove that i don't need it that i don't need it there is no worldly pleasure that in its wake does not attract also some other form of harmful behavior there is no worldly pleasure that if you over indulge that if you immerse yourself in it indiscriminately not judiciously there is no worldly pleasure that if you just pursue it and live it and enjoy it and you say carpe diem that it's not going to haunt you that it's not going to follow up after you with some poor decision good friend of mine who i admire greatly in these weeks have showed them we're still in this period that we're trying to be working on our sense of discipline on exactly what we're learning about shove them is an acronym yes from this bottom the weeks that we read those torah portions in shul the ariza said based on the passage shivoban show him it's a time auspicious predisposed for us to return to elevate ourselves with a sense of holiness to be much more much more than even we think we can be so a dear friend of mine i admire told me that in the weeks of shoveling he took upon himself and so far he is fulfilling it that he's never watching anything tv movie or video on his phone without his wife and why did he do that what he meant to say is not necessarily true for everybody but in his case he's confident that anything he watches with his wife will not be inappropriate he won't have regret guilt or shame he won't feel bad about himself but he's equally confident that if he doesn't make that promise and pledge to only watch when his wife is with him that he may easily come to find himself watching something whether intentionally or unintentionally because the brilliance of these social media and these video streams and these apps and sources that that one just goes into the next into the next into the next and it doesn't play the the video that's not likely to get your attention or get you to stay with it it kicks in the next video that's going to enormously want you make you want to stay so he has enough self-awareness to know that if i watch without my wife that's when i get into trouble that's precious so precious means who says he can't watch something legitimate you can't watch something pure you can't watch something even appropriate by yourself who says you can't watch sports or a documentary or watch news or watch something even when you're by yourself who says there's no law there's no moral code that says you can't and you're not doing anything wrong if you do and yet precious means i've identified where i can go wrong and just because something is permissible doesn't mean it's smart doesn't mean i should doesn't mean it won't lead me down a path that ultimately i'll live with regret guilt and shame tariff muscle and here's an example we'll just start with this and pick it up when it comes to food and drink if you make sure your food and drink are kosher you make a bracha a blessing before and after i already made my rakha my coffee is kosher it cost about three cents by the way my my coffee here and uh it's kosher i made my bracha before to debate whether you make a after a cup of coffee it's a hot beverage do you drink enough in enough of a time spam for another time so it's perfectly permissible their mutter omnum however milo hakaris where does it say you can't have wine glass of wine every night it's good for the heart words that you can't finish a bottle every night you cannot point to a paragraph in the code of jewish law that says you're not allowed to have a bottle of wine doesn't say you can't have a cup of coffee but i tell you you know how many people try to wean themselves off coffee they can't exist without it what their fast days look like have you ever spoken to somebody who normally drinks coffee but didn't get their coffee that morning what do you think that sheldon bias looks like how do you think that parenting and that carpool and getting the kids off to school looks like so coffee is perfectly permissible but you should practice precious once in a while skip the cup once in a while go a week or go a couple days without the coffee why punishing yourself punitive no in order to prove we don't need it because anything that we need anything that we become addicted to and absorbed in when it owns us we are not our best selves to be our best selves we have to be able to live transcendent we have to be able to leave live without and that's what this media of precious is all about we'll pick up with it please god next week until then stay happy stay healthy stay holy please subscribe to our channel on youtube to find out all when our classes go live tonight behind the beam at 9 00 pm sivan rahav meir we have a fantastic show with hersh we'll be waking up very early in israel and a very special appearance by an enormous jewish music star as well very exciting show nine o'clock first 845 is living with the moon i hope to see everybody there have a phenomenal phenomenal day