Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 124): Are You Smarter Than an Animal? - Mesillas Yesharim

good morning and boker tov welcome back to ten minutes of meaning mrs asharam each week so happy and excited to be back together learning the words of the ramcha ramos his timeless messages and values for every generation every place every time about how to be the best version of ourselves [Music] and as messiest arm taps into the words those learning that daffy me recently covered of pinchas the winning formula of how to grow step by step you don't have to complete one step before working on the next we can be working on all of them simultaneously uh and to be trying to improve first the heroes mindfulness how to be present and conscious and conscientious in everything we were doing and every thought and every action in all of our speech and then we moved to zurich how to act with alacrity and zeal and enthusiasm and then we moved to nikeis how to identify the things that undermine or sabotage our best selves and illuminate and purge them from ourselves and then we moved over to precious how to live a life of discipline not abstinence that abstinence is a value but abstinence in the sense that discipline we can learn to live without we can be in trouble of our faculties and so on i want to thank our generous sponsors for the year dear friends khan and eleni grundstein in memory of mr aaron tembor ben yitzhakhani's father if you'd like to sponsor a future class or episode please email lee lee o brsonline.org g okay we're on peric test we're on chapter 15 of the ram khao and he's telling us what is the methodology what is the way to acquire this attribute this quality this capacity to be disciplined and sovereign over ourselves in other words we know what's right we know the best version of ourselves we know at the beginning of the day here's what my best day looks like i am punctual i'm only saying things that i'm mindful are appropriate and will be positive to say i'm eating the right things in the right place at the right time in the right measure i am and yet by the end of the day we're filled with regret and remorse and guilt at the end of the day we're filled with wishes that the next day we can do better so what went wrong why do we struggle so much how can we acquire precious how can we acquire that attribute that quality of being able to be disciplined so number one he said is to recognize the threat the danger the damage of the things that we're trying to be disciplined over and he began in the world of food because it's a universal universal challenge hashem put us into this world god created a world deposited in it with something called taste buds and appetite just coming off of pesach where most of us gorged most of us ate like gluttons and after one meal we swore we'd never ever ever ever eat again the next meal i'll just wash i'll just have a bite i'll just eat the bare minimum until we found ourselves gluttonously gorging yet again so how we feel sick each time we do it our own body rebels against us our own body is telling us you're abusing me call a hotline the nishama the soul is abusing me the body in the way that it's eating and yet despite that we struggle to be disciplined we keep going right back to the food or to the quantity or to the time we're eating it which which rebels against our very body the pleasure of eating is the most sensory and stimulating hayes davar aved vanessa yost is there anything more perishable more quickly lost than food we see that food the aroma the flavor the memory the emotional connection the eating to relieve stress or to be an escape or to numb ourselves ain't shi or ella kishore the incredible thing about food is you only enjoy food for such a small time when do we enjoy the food while it's in our mouth while it's engaging our taste buds once it descends the gullet once it goes down the throat to the stomach you're full but you're not even enjoying it's not even a source of pleasure you feel bloated and full and disgusting start hating yourself by the way all of this i'm just describing myself i don't know if i'm describing anybody else once you swallow it you forget the whole memory of the food it's as if it didn't exist and once it leaves the area it enters the intestines as forgotten eating eating coarse bread would also make you fall come on the same way it would uh eaten fat and gistas in other words if you need to fill your stomach with nutrients if you need to nourish yourself to be able to draw energy to be able to live you could do so on very basic foods and yet we engage the most intricate delicacies the most expensive often delicacies and quantities which are harmful not helpful if we consider for a moment what we're putting into our system and the consequences the results of high blood pressure of sugar challenges of diabetes of cardiac illness of there are no limits the self-imposed sabotage danger damage we're doing to ourselves or minimally the heaviness the bloatedness you feel when you're done eating and therefore the cloud to your brain your inability to focus to concentrate and therefore judgment is impaired saying things we regret damaging relationships unable to learn unable to be productive so what is pointing out is pointing out is this enormous anomaly about the human being we are intelligent we are supposed to be advanced and above animals we're supposed to be sophisticated and thoughtful people we're supposed to be able to identify that which threatens and harms us and to protect ourselves to eliminate and to be able to safeguard ourselves and yet on the other hand we are so lowly so pathetic utterly pathetic that the very thing that harms us that hurts us the very thing that threatens to shorten our life to riddle us with disease and illness to sabotage our own well-being and success we keep going back again we go back for more we repeat the cycle over and over so after our pesach we'll begin a diet after a pesach we'll pledge we're going to eat differently intermittent fasting working out daily my daily plank how long does it last the cycle continues and we go back the animal knows something's harmful and recoils and stays away forever but the human being supposedly more sophisticated elevated and advanced keeps cycling back to the very thing which is damaging easy and obvious and simple and straightforward method to live this life of discipline is the mindfulness when you look at that food 12 o'clock at night the leftover chinese 12 o'clock at night the bag of potato chips the tea room the third go-around that evening and you look at that and you say that equates to a lab report of high blood pressure high sugar pre-diabetic and you know what how long will the flavor last how much will i enjoy it and therefore a person has to know that in between the urge and the action is a moment in between the appetite and the eating there is a pause there's a space there's margin that's where precious comes in the ability to be disciplined and dignified the capacity to be sovereign and in control the willingness to say no that's not good for me and i don't do things that aren't good for me i only do things not that are pleasurable for me i only do things that are both pleasurable and good for me but if it's pleasurable and bad for me then i'm not interested so how can we train ourselves no matter how delicious cyanide was we'd never consume it because it would kill us we wouldn't drink or eat poison and yet we struggle when it comes to food in ways that act poisonously towards us so if only we can see that food as a form of poison then we'd recoil then we'd develop an allergy to it then no matter how delicious our memory tells us tells our taste buds it was we would stay away the zepashit says that it's simple it's really simple don't over complicate it don't pay enormous money to go to enormous weight loss programs it's really very simple we have to train ourselves to live mindfully to eat mindfully and train ourselves to understand that there is a moment there is a pause there is a space between the urge the appetite and the action between my salivary glands want that food and when i stuff it down my face in between there is a moment and in that moment i can say to myself no that's not good for me how long will the pleasure even last a moment is that worth it is it worth shortening my life is it worth not being able to get on the floor and play with my grandchildren is it worth saying goodbye to my family years earlier than i have to all because of the flavor in my mouth that lasts for a brief moment no in between the urge and the action is that place to say no it's simple it's simple so we have to train ourselves to live with precious precious is not an abstinence that thinks that there's a religious value to living without hashem put us in this world and he said enjoy it's wonderful it doesn't mean i can't occasionally have potato chips it doesn't mean i can't occasionally bend a rule because i'm doing it calculated i'm doing it thoughtfully i'm allowing myself to do it i'm doing it strategically and i understand that in small doses or moderation or measure it won't be harmful so when we accustom ourselves to that truth when we mindfully live that way and we condition ourselves to see unhealthy food or eating it in unhealthy time or unhealthy quantity and we've trained and conditioned ourselves to see that as a danger and as a threat we can set ourselves free coming off of the holiday of freedom slavery we can set ourselves free we no longer loathe them we'll become aware we should take them from this world only what is essential so if we look at food and we look at our eating this is just one example i know we're harping on it but this is only one example what could be of so many but if we look at it we say i'm going to distinguish between good for me and bad for me so there's a matrix there's what's pleasurable and not pleasurable there's also what's good and what's bad and only the quadrant that overlaps that's both pleasurable and good for me that's what i will indulge that's what i will enjoy and i will condition and train myself that the other three quadrants whether it is pleasurable but not good for me or i mean if it's good for me but not pleasurable i guess we can have it but i will train and condition myself to see it as a threat as poison to see it as a danger and therefore to learn to not even be tempted by it that's what precious is all about conditioning and training ourselves to learn to live without to not even be tempted to remove it from the repertoire of our appetite to live in the space between the urge and the action and to remember and to embrace that we ultimately are in control we have free will we are autonomous people and even though the marketing industry and even though these foods themselves have addictive components to them we are in charge and we are in control and it is up to us we'll continue with this please god next week stay tuned 8 45 this morning for living with amuna don't forget to subscribe on our youtube channel if you want to be notified every time we go live join our community of learners tonight we go 9 p.m mrs ruth livestream the founder of project witness the editor-in-chief of hamodiya great granddaughter of the guerreba tonight on behind the bhima which is yamaha look forward to seeing you then until then stay