Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #31

all right we're in the middle of prague judges which as we've already explained is one long thread one long multi-stepped argument and it's very very easy to lose track of what's going on so i'm going to continue reminding you of the main point we started off at the beginning of judges chapter 18 with the premise that we do want to achieve emotional alignment we do want to create some love and awe of hashem but the method that we were given in previous chapters of meditation may not be attainable at least not quickly attainable so we have another method for getting getting ourselves emotionally congruent with the behaviors to which we're committed and that method we introduced that method by saying it has something to do with something called ava misute it's hidden love a latent love that's already there so you don't have to create it you don't have to generate it from from scratch it's already there but you have to access it now how do you access it we didn't really say yet but we did point out to a phenomenon that in a time of god forbid um martyrdom even an irreligious jew historically speaking we have countless cases uh is is able to somehow achieve that intense motivation to remain committed to judaism even though they weren't able to do that during their entire lifetime and then last week in chapter 19 we we discussed a little bit more what that capacity is we said it's kokuma that it's pre-cognitive it's not rational it's not something based on intelligence it's something that's deeper than than intellect um and it compels the jew in a case of when push comes to shove it compels the jew to to cling to hashem no matter what okay so that's that's what we've learned so far yeah okay so let's continue now and and we're gonna to foreshadow where we're heading we're obviously trying to figure out how to make use of this phenomenon for ourselves in regular day-to-day life okay fine pettit huff chapter 20. it's not a long chapter vegemite it is known to everyone now don't feel bad if you're like well i didn't know that it's supposed to be known to everyone this is basic judaism basic judaism no pressure but this is if you don't know this you're a real idiot okay no no no everyone you learn something new every day okay here but basic judaism listen to this ki mitzvahs the mitzvah and the prohibition the positive and the negative formulation of monotheism serving god and not serving idols which are encapsulated in the first two of the ten commandments the first one being i am the lord your god which means to only worship god and there shall be no other gods which means not to worship that's the positive formulation and the negative formulation of the same basic idea those two commandments the first two commandments of the ten commandments are called claulos kolaterkula they are sort of like in microcosm the aggregate the sum total of all of the torah kidibaran because in what way because the first commandment i am the lord your god includes within it all 248 positive commands remember how many total mitzvahs are there okay so that breaks down to 248 positive commands and the prohibition you shall have no other gods before you color kosher includes within it all 365 prohibitions so basically you can break down the entire toyota into two commandments if you want to get really general every positive commandment do thou shalt is an affirmation of god being god and every prohibition every thou shalt not is a uh an expression of you shall have no other gods you shouldn't worship idols and they're basically all just different iterations of either the positive or the negative formulation of belief in god so basically there's really one mitzvah serve god don't serve other gods serve god don't worship idols that's it and it doesn't matter what uh particular mitzvah you're talking about whether it's putting on fill in or it's not wearing sharpness those are just re those are just different uh iterations of the basic command worship god don't worship anything else okay and you're going to understand why we're going for this simplicity okay you know maybe i'll maybe i'll just give it away a spoiler here we know that there's an incredibly powerful phenomenon which occurs when a jew is pushed god forbid into a situation where they are being forced to worship idols the problem is we don't have that same intense reaction when we're dealing with cases where where the stakes are much lower in other words we know that if we were put in this type of do or die situation worship idols or or else that somehow that avamisitis would be triggered and we would have this super jew capacity all of a sudden out of nowhere as if out of nowhere but where does that intensity go why isn't it present when we're faced with a dilemma like uh i ate a turkey sandwich five hours and 58 minutes ago and now i want to have a milk chocolate bar and it doesn't feel like waiting those two minutes is something worthy of such intensity what's the big deal what's the big deal which we called by the way the ruachtos the rationalization now when it's worship idols renounce the god of israel or die no then now then there's no rationalization it's it's which transcends intellect and all of a sudden they have this clarity no i will not do it no i'm not going to rationalize and i told you last week rational lies means rational lies not going to fool myself and say it's okay i'll just do a little bit of disconnection from god and then i'll fix it up later no i won't do it what we're trying to do is we're trying to and and this is not if i have to say this more than once i'm going to really be annoyed okay i want everyone to really pay attention to this really like really because if anyone throws this back in my face today later or even at a future class i'm gonna be super super annoyed okay please listen to this one statement we're going to say something that's really really really black and white all or nothing thinking for the purposes of this very specific context this is not generally the way that we view judaism generally speaking we view spiritual growth as incremental you do a little here you do a little there you try to do a little bit better today than you did yesterday and that's the proper way to grow in this very specific context we're going to be extremists and we're going to think very black and white it's not the way we normally think we don't normally apply this type of intensity but for the purposes of this tool we are going to think black and white we're going to think in binary terms of is it worship of god or is it idol worship you have only two choices your next decision are you worshiping god or are you bowing down to idols one of the other it's there's no in between now is that the way that we normally look at things no is that the way we normally should look at things no but this is a very specific tool you want to trigger that intense reaction that we have so this is the way to trigger it the way to trigger it is to reframe in your mind that the next moral dilemma is black and white all or nothing you're either choosing worshiping god or god forbid idolatry those are the only two options okay so what did i say i'm going to be very annoyed with if anyone says anything to me like well i thought we were supposed to just i thought it's not all or nothing i thought you're supposed to just do your best yes yes yes you're right it's not all or nothing yes yes yes you are supposed to just do your best yes yes yes you are supposed to just grow a little bit every day but in this particular context if you want to use this tool the way you use this tool is by assuming a very extreme all or nothing attitude now you don't have to use this tool i'm just telling you how to use it it's up you're an adult you can choose whether or not no one's forcing you to do anything here if you decide this tool is too intense for you great so don't use it i'm just telling you how to use it okay is it totally 100 clear because now would be a good time to clarify it because i really i'm going to get so annoyed if it comes up later on yes yes no it's not just either you worship him or you don't no no it's much worse than that either you worship him or you're worshiping idols god forbid right you got to serve somebody like bob dylan said yeah and that russia john lennon he he he he berated bob dylan for that he hated that yeah anyways yeah john lennon was a russia boy what everyone loves that song imagine go listen to what the words say it's terrible anyways bob dylan said he got to serve somebody maybe the devil may be the lord but you got to serve somebody that's what he said are always okay someone that's right you are always serving something that's right and if you serve yourself you're not serving god that's idol worship serving self self worship is is one of the worst forms of idol worship okay so everyone understands that there are contexts for every conversation and this particular conversation and it's going to last for weeks it's going to last for weeks so don't say to me three weeks from now oh this is too intense i'm telling you it's intense okay all right so let's continue that is why the two first commandments are the ones that we heard ourselves from god collectively as a nation why because i've heard that before that tita the word torah tells vavrey you know the gematria the numerical value tests 400 ratios 200. valve is six hey is five so what is that six eleven why is toyota we come out because the toyota is the 600 611 mixers that we had to learn from moshe but the first two commandments i am god there shall be no other gods that we heard directly from god why are those the only two mitzvahs we heard directly from god because once you heard those two he got the gist everything else like we said is an iteration of one of those two commandments a positive commandment is a specific iteration of i'm the lord your god and a negative prohibition is an iteration of you shall have no other gods once you heard those two then you got the whole point okay in order to understand this properly we're going to have to discuss the concept of the oneness of hashem the fact that hashem is called one and singular what's about to happen here we're about to enter into a very deep discussion of the nature of divine unity now there's a whole section of tanya called chariza which is the second volume of tanya that is entirely about the subject of divine unity how there's really only oneness how existence created existence is not a contradiction to hashem being the only existence there's a whole volume in fact i tried learning it here and it was very unpopular people didn't like it you know why because you guys are selfish you know you just want to hear about insights about yourself sorry to say that let's talk about you about your yetzer harder you yet it's fascinating i talk about god who wants to hear about god okay i get it i understand yeah so there's a whole volume of tanya called charizard which is about the nature of divine unity but this ain't it so then why are we discussing here this volume of time these 53 chapters is about personal development so why in a treatise about personal development are we having this aside about divine unity so i told you one of the tools that we're trying to employ right now is to trigger our avamicitis our super adrenaline rush response the way to trigger that is to be threatened with an all-or-nothing proposition of connection or disconnection god forbid well if you will take a certain approach to judaism you will realize that every moral decision is a decision between worshiping god or worshiping idols but the way to have that approach is to understand the nature of divine unity and when you just when you understand the nature of divine unity when you understand hashem's everythingness then you will be able to understand how each moral choice is an all or nothing proposition because either you're affirming the every everythingness or you're denying to everythingness because if the everything is is everything minus this little corner of my life that i want to carve out for personal autonomy and doing what i want to do instead of what hashem wants me to do now hashem is less than everything and that is idolatrous you're going to say oh this is very intense i can't take this and i warned you i gave you the trigger warning this is intense it is intense and the way that it's going to make its argument is by explaining to you the nature of divine unity hashem's everythingness so that by the time we're done with this chapter 25 i told you 18-25 by the time we're done with chapter 25 you will be able to have you don't have to do this all the time but you will be able to if you so choose to view every moral dilemma as a choice between affirming hashem's everythingness or denying god forbid hashem's everythingness which is akin to idol worship okay we think sometimes yeah we're doing or we at least tell ourselves that oh this is what god wants us to do to god but hard to know sometimes if we're just kind of rationalizing okay yeah well that that's that's an interesting point but let's start with really simple so you're saying sometimes we don't know what god wants from us let's start with really simple stuff where we do know okay because that's a very worthy discussion but let's start with where we actually do know when something's clear in shock well i know i'm not allowed to eat this i know you know that like it's obvious i know i'm not allowed to go and steal that money right there's certain things i know i'm not allowed to do it so the question becomes can i get myself emotionally pumped to be totally congruent with that behavior and the answer is well here's one way you could you could view this next choice this whether i'm going to eat the milk a chocolate bar five hours 58 minutes after the turkey sandwich if i'm going to view that with the intensity of are you going to worship god or are you going to bow down to idols then i would be able to get pumped for that for that decision yeah without learning anything else it seems like you either have to live in slow motion or think really fast or you have to have learned this beforehand so that you can already have it prepared when when it comes up yeah this is not something that you go and you think about in the moment this is something that i mean we're gonna spend eight chapters learning this approach and then when you need to apply it you'll have it ready okay so let's talk about hashem's unity hashem's everythingness like we say uh in the piotr or shawneem kippur kamehameha we all believe it is a tenet of our faith that hashem alone exists that just like before the world was created so to now meaning to say created reality does not present any plurality does not constitute an an alternative reality to hashem just like he was all that exists before creation so too even now after creation he is the only true existence yes deep stuff yes boring if you don't want to really think about cosmology and the nature of reality and all this deep theology but if it'll keep you motivated please remember all of this trippy stuff is in order to be able to use it for a practical emotional tool okay all right so hashem exists now just in the same way as he existed before he created the world pirish what does it mean he exists he he himself exactly the same without any change he could exceed any hashem i am hashem i have not changed meaning even having created the world i have not changed hashem's infinity was not detracted from one iota by having created a world it's not like hashem was everything oh but now he created a world and in the place where that world is so now hashem is everything minus that little tiny area where he carved out a world no god forbid just like he was everything before he created a world he continues to be everything even now okay explain that let's understand that a little bit better ki elem has because this physical world as well as all the spiritual worlds you know there are other worlds as well they do not cause any change in hashem by their having come into being something out of nothing the fact that existence created existence comes into being does not affect hashem does not does not present any change to him just like he alone with singular singular and unique before creation cain hulav so too he is singular and unique after he created how so mushum because everything before him is insignificant and it's actually like nothingness so what changed nothing changed what did he make created existence created existence before hashem is nothing not puny not insignificant not microscopic nothing because even if you say well hashem is a billion times bigger than his creation oh so then he's not everything he's just a billion times bigger than the creation but there is that tiny little speck called creation that something different than him so he's everything minus that little speck no god forbid he continues being everything even after he creates the world because the world is nothing he's still everything because what we call something is really nothing and he continues to be everything how's that possible let's explain mohammed because the creation of the worlds the spiritual worlds as well as the physical world and all of the vitality that keeps them going so that they don't revert into nothingness as they were before all of that is just divine speech it's just the word of god that is invested within them here's the main concept from this chapter hashem creates through speech he said let there be light and there was light but um blessed is the one who spoke in the world came into being hashem spoke and speaks hashem brings everything into being through speech so what is existence as we know it not true existence hashem's existence but what we call existence meaning existence as we know it created existence it's nothing but divine speech all of reality as we know it is nothing but divine speech ullah marshall metaphorically speaking kame beneficial now we have a long a long uh allegory here a person a person's soul shimadabra he that word that he spoke which was produced by his soul compared to his soul is nothing it doesn't take a chunk out of his soul for him to speak his speech comes from his soul his soul generates his speech and yet having generated that speech doesn't deplete from his soul and if you would compare the reality of the speech that came from the soul to the soul from which the speech came there's no comparison at all you wouldn't say well the soul is a hundred times more substantial than the speech that it produced you wouldn't even say the soul is a billion times more substantial than the speech that it produced you would say no no the soul exists it produced speech but the speech on its own cannot even rightly be described as an existence in comparison to the soul from whence it was generated so we're talking about here a metaphor that helps us wrap our minds around the idea that existence as we know it created existence is not just smaller than hashem it is relatively speaking a non-existence and the metaphor which is helpful in this case is just like the speech the word that was generated by the nephesh by the soul compared to the soul is relatively a non-existence jehovah this speech that's coming from the soul is the intermediate garment remember the garments back from chapter four how many garments three so speech is the intermediate garment the inner garment is thought the most external garment is action the intermediate garment of speech shi yoko i love this proof you can see how insignificant speech is compared to the soul in that the soul can generate an infinite amount of speech the soul will not run out of the capacity to generate speech why because speech doesn't deplete anything from the soul not taking anything away from the soul by speaking maybe you'd get physically tired you say i gotta rest i gotta drink some water but the soul which creates speech doesn't get depleted by creating speech because it doesn't take anything out of the soul just like hashem isn't getting used up or depleted by speaking the world into being negative what does it have to do with it you're mixing metaphors here okay yeah asking about negative speech okay does it okay we're talking right now yeah we're talking about here purely the mechanics of producing verbal communication now a separate issue is what you're referring to is that if your speech is negative speech or sinful speech prohibited speech that there would be negative repercussions for the person for engaging in such speech but that's quite separate from the actual mechanics of having produced speech that's because of the moral character of that particular speech this is a separate issue there so it would damage your soul to speak lush and harder but not because it's speech it's just baseline maybe maybe that's maybe that's the weakness of an attitude because we can't we can't ever do a complete likeness correct yes obviously this is a metaphor and metaphors are imperfect how much more so when it's a metaphor for god it's always going to fall short okay but uh yeah but set that aside because even when a person speaks russian harder and it has negative repercussions on him for speaking less and harder it's not because the speech used something up by having been produced it's because that that particular nature of that talk creates damage in the world which also damages the person who's speaking but it's not because it's speech not because he used part of himself up by speaking okay a positive speech would do the same thing and positive speech would do or not do the exact same thing correct okay a little bit deep okay i i admit that it's a little bit deep the cold shaking is this phenomenon we're describing is even more obvious if you're speaking about thought because thought it's even more apparent how it doesn't use up any of the soul the soul can just think and think and think it can generate thoughts it's not depleting the soul it's not using up the soul there's no transfer cost by creating thought the ain't sorry and it goes without saying that when we talk about the essence of the soul which are its faculties remember in chapter three we spoke about the asakura senate that those are not being depleted or used up when the soul is generating speech in other words we learn in chapter 3 that your soul is made up of 10 faculties yes it's raining hard outside yes it is correct yes yes it is yes and there are cars that drive by and there are birds that tweet and there are a lot of things that we block out a lot of noises we ignore yes it's true there's the wind is blowing and sometimes the air conditioner comes on and sometimes the door opens sometimes phones will ring the lights will flicker sometimes we had that once there's all types of distractions yes if we really want sometimes there are flies yeah okay you know i i reveal my my my bias when i'm very judgmental about being people being distracted by rain because i guess for you when it's raining really loud outside that's like a kiddish that's like oh now there's some new stimulus which is distracting for me that's what every single second of my life is like so the fact that it's raining is like just added to the list of things that i am tuning choosing to tune out okay all right you have ten faculties of your soul right chapter three and uh the intellectual faculties and the emotional faculties the three intellectuals seven emotional and those are capacities without going into a whole class of rehashing what those different capacities are i'll just ask you a simple question which should be pretty easy when you use those capacities or you express those capacities by um using what we call the lavusha hanafish the soul garments thought speech in action does it deplete the soul powers the soul capacities in any way shape or form no no is it like well i have less khakhma now because i was thinking some ideas the uh yeah i was thinking some new ideas yesterday and now my like in a video game where like that you have like that bar that shows like how much power you have like right like i i used up some of my my hakma i used up some of my acid you know i don't know i i gave somebody tadaka yesterday now i have less acid in my soul sometimes you feel stupider from having listened to somebody say stupid thing my brain hurts yes [Laughter] yeah yeah that's true that's a true phenomenon but that's not because your your capacity for intellect got used up actually that's the contrary that's to the country that's because your capacity for intellect was was not used was not engaged it's like the opposite you're sitting there and you're like you're you're listening to something so inane and so insipid and it's like where is the intellectual value in this and it's just so not it's a numbing experience yeah yeah but you'll never get used up your your characters and efforts are not going to get used up for having been uh expressed yeah can they be enhanced their attitude okay the valid question right okay okay okay very very very valid question i don't want to go too deeply we could go very deeply into that but i don't want to get ready we have no yeah we that's it that's it we're stuck that's it nowhere until eight o'clock that's it until benny friedman gets here okay i think it's 8 30 by the way all right don't make me nervous because yeah you got to prepare for tonight okay you can't detract from and really by the same token you can't add to your koiche senafish it is what it is but there are states and degrees of revelation so without getting into a whole side discussion which is a fascinating discussion and i would love to have this discussion but not now it is interesting that through speech you can reveal more of your intellect and emotions and one of the examples of that is that you can understand something better by speaking it out which really shouldn't be possible whatever you understand should be the the maximum capacity of what you're able to articulate verbally and yet we see once you start rolling and you start speaking you can have additional clarity that you didn't have before you started speaking the same thing emotionally you can have something that maybe is not so poignant but you start speaking i gotta stop talking i'm gonna get emotional like why is the talking gonna either the emotion is there or it's not there yet there's a power of speech that can cause both seiko and midday intellect and emotion to become more revealed but the operative word here is revealed so therefore is it more qualitative rather than quantity yes yeah very good well stated yeah is that why you're supposed to die out loud dominating out loud is to engage the physicality that's to engage the physicality um okay it's fascinating no really like one of my well it's one of my favorite subjects and i would love to if i needed to buy time like if i hadn't prepared this class and i wanted to just improvise stalling tactic i would say oh let me tell you about how speech amplifies the revealed intellect and emotion yeah yeah but i i don't want to i want to get back on top okay okay so maybe that should be the new series for the letters remember you were looking for a new series yeah okay but anyway guys don't don't don't don't uh okay i gotta practice some self-control here okay the point we're making the only point we're making don't get don't get distracted there's one point we're making there's nothing but god and the world no no there's nothing but he made a world so there's god in the world no there's nothing with god but there's a world yes but the world is nothing how can you call it nothing because the world is god's speech and just like the speech that your nephesh produces is nothing relative to the nephesh that produced it so too created existence is nothing relative to the existence of the creator who produces it i mean we're not saying that explicitly here but yeah you could say it it has no existence other than his yeah okay all right but let's continue here because there's a point um are being drawn into letters of thought which are then invested into speech thought and speech are both composed of letters what we call letters symbols it's just that letters of thought are more rarified than letters of speech there's a whole other discussion about what these letters are i mean they correspond to the huff-based oasis of of oliphase the the the 22 letters of the that the holy tongue which are 22 distinct energies which are universal energies and even if you don't speak the holy tongue and you never heard of it those are still the elements of all human thought and speech and and everything and existence itself because the world is divine speech correct correct yeah so but we have to have to control ourselves um the point he's making here is that when your nephesh or its capacities its is being revealed or channeled through oysters or ocean ladders of thought or letters of speech that creativity doesn't deplete the nefish that creativity doesn't detract from the nephesh because that the the that creation quote-unquote creation the result of the creativity really is insignificant in comparison to the its its source and so too we have to understand that is the nature of created existence that it's not just much smaller than hashem or an inferior type of existence it is really truly non-existence non-existence so to say that hashem is the only existence and he is all existence even now just as before should make sense to us in some some basic way yeah does anything deplete in that fish does anything deplete in that fish it's a good question so how could it possibly change that's what i'm thinking yeah we can do things that cause a lesser degree of revelation or even concealment of the nephesh but the nephesh is the nephesh but the point here is that in its being creative it doesn't use itself up it's not like a chemical reaction but what does that have to do with our main point missing somebody once told me if you're not part of the solution you're part of the precipitate it's an intellectual joke if you're not part of the solution you're part of the precipitate it's a chemistry joke anyone here did chemistry got it now you got it so the point is it's not like there's some like chemical reaction where these two sides of the equation you have something being used up in order to create something else when the nephesh speaks it doesn't use up any of itself it can just keep on creating speech not using itself up at all in creating speech and by way of analogy when hashem creates worlds he's not using up any of himself by doing so he's not detracting from himself in any way by doing so which are the intellectual faculties are the source of the letters of thought and in turn the letters of speech but in the level of there are not letters yet letters don't exist yet that that that degree of articulation has not yet taken place because it's still on a on a level of potential la marshall for instance kishanay fellow says and listen don't get distracted remember the point remember the point remember the point la marshall krishna fellas here's an example a person has a certain love or desire in his heart and it didn't yet rise up from his heart to his brain to be able to think about it in other words it's just sort of a raw emotional reaction he didn't yet articulate it in any cerebral fashion is a dying it doesn't yet have letters he can't articulate it is considered a simple desire in his heart for that thing that he finds desirous the kosher king kingdom shinobu nafla hattai verhamda beli bayla how much more so before that even happens before he even feels the attraction in his heart but rather it's an abstract knowledge that the thing exists oh no no no we can't get derailed it's known to him theoretically that that thing exists and that it is desirable and it is pleasant okay going for instance you guys are getting all excited because you're imagining something pleasurable and desirous that you're attracted to and you're going to be really really disappointed by the al tadab as example leel my desa like learning a certain wisdom that's what he's getting excited about okay all right you don't get excited about that a lachla is a michael ardev or to eat a sweet food you like that one that's more pure okay at any rate listen listen to what he's saying there are stages in your relationship with that thing one stage is where the desire in your heart rises up to your mind and you're able to start giving it isis articulation you give it you give it distinct um words i you express the you express it as ideas oh what a wonderful piece of cake it's so spongy i don't know whatever you start giving it words but before that it was just this simple it calls it a heifetz a simple emotion it didn't have articulation yet but before that it was an abstract concept in your mind that you were aware on some perhaps even unconscious level that that thing exists in the world i'm not thinking about it now i'm not drawn to it right now it's just somewhere in the memory banks that that thing exists so what he's doing here is he's he's he's tracing going up the line and and giving you examples of increasingly rarefied abstract relationships to something yeah the final level is where you have words to articulate your feelings about that thing but before you have words you have an unarticulated emotion and even before you have the unarticulated emotion you have the abstract knowledge that the thing exists only after that thing he calls it falls into your desires of your heart then you have the ability to articulate to give words to express your feelings about it it goes from the heart to the brain it started from the brain and went to the heart starving the brain with an abstract knowledge that the thing exists but then it went to the heart because something triggered it usually you see it and you're thinking about it now and then you get an emotional reaction but that emotion is unarticulated and the emotion goes up from the heart back to the brain where you give it words language and you start thinking in your word brain about for instance strategizing planning how you're going to get that thing that you like how are you going to get that food or how you're going to learn that piece of wisdom [Applause] at that point you have words for it which are whatever words you use for whatever in whatever language that you speak but the point is that's the final stage where you have words to describe your feeling for the object of your desire deeper than that or prior to that you you have an unarticulated emotional reaction a desire for that thing and behind that or prior to that you have an abstract knowledge of that thing so what happens is from the abstract knowledge comes the emotional connection which in turn leads to a word brain narrative about your desire for that thing but really at the end of it all even when you have all this you write your wonderful uh uh what do you call it the the you know the the they're not i'm not calling a menu it's called a recipe when you go online you look up a recipe and they tell you the whole story about the cafe that they went to in greece and they you know the thing where they they write like three pages of prose and what yeah but you're trying to get the recipe just how many cups of sugar already and they have the whole thing and there was a little black cat that used to come visit us every morning when we would have our coffee right you know what i'm talking about okay all right so the point is that all those words those words those words really what are they they're just a a a another form a lower level form of something entirely abstract that is really one with you it's really it's it's not software it's hardware it's not self-expression itself it comes out as creativity but really it's all creator when by the time you have these words so it takes on a life of its own and it feels very real it feels like it's substantial it feels like it has an existence but really what is it all it's just you it's just you and your connection to that thing and even deeper than that it's just you even before you have any connection to anything it's just it's just your brain it's and i don't mean brain like gray matter i mean i mean the the the the intellectual capacities which are entirely spiritual so the point here is even on a human level even on a human level you look at this product that looks so substantial all this expression all this communication but really if you trace it back it's just my nephesh where is all this expression where is all this communication don't get derailed the point there's only one point here there's only one point here i need to get myself fired up the next time i have a moral choice to make i know if i am threatened bow down to the idol or will kill you that super jew adrenaline rush will get triggered and i'll be able to make any sacrifice my question was how am i going to get that pumped up when i'm faced with a seemingly minor moral dilemma and the answer was in this very specific context i'm going to view all moral decisions as black and white all or nothing it's either worshiping god or god forbid it is idol worship well how in the world am i going to frame things in such an extreme way how in the world are you going to frame things in such an extreme way we didn't get there yet but we're heading there what we're about to say is listen you want to boil it all down really all of tata is two mitzvahs either you're affirming god or you're denying god and what is god god isn't just the only god he's the only existence so if you assert any type of autonomy that is separate from god if you try to carve out even a tiny amount of will where you say i get to do my own thing you are denying the everythingness and that is an idolatrous statement so how do we get ourselves to understand such a concept so this is what he did in this chapter he explained to us through the metaphor of speech how god is the only existence and the fact that creation exists is not a contradiction to that fact because created existence is totally insignificant and non-existent relative to the creator's existence just as all of our elaborate communication and speech is nothing compared to the mental capacities of the soul which generated that speech do we have this yeah you're chomping at the bit i said i've just been trying to reconcile this with chapter 12 our first tool about the the brain rolls over the heart okay is this the reason now is it fleshing that out no no no this is totally unrelated to the tool from chapter 12. a totally unrelated tool you're hearing words about the heart and the brain and but this is not the point here is not about heart and brain that's not the point here the point here is god is everything how can i how can i approach an idea that's so radical and so deep so he says do it metaphorically by understanding just like your speech is nothing compared to you the person who created that speech so too is god's creation nothing compared to god who creates that speech his speech therefore this is multi-steps this is not one step not two steps like five six steps therefore i told you before i'll tell you again when you recognize the totality that god is everything not the biggest thing the only thing now the proposition of departing from his will is not just oh let me break off a little area of autonomy for myself no what you're actually proposing is to deny his everythingness which is idolatry which you would never do if it were clear to you that idolatry was what's uh what's at stake is it safe to say that if we were to examine our state of being now the majority if not all of it would be at dollar tree i don't know i don't i don't know i don't know i just want to make sure everyone's very clear that this approach has a very specific application with a specific goal the goal being like we discussed in chapter 18 to trigger a very intense all or nothing feeling okay so in order to trigger that intense all or nothing feeling we have to get ourselves in the mind frame of focusing on this very binary concept of either god is everything or nothing it's not or should i not or god does god say he says this and since he's everything go with that right and don't say well let me just take a little break for a minute and do a little thing i'm not going to eat onion kipper i'm just going to do a little thing it doesn't matter how little it is he's he's either everything or he's not that when you realize that basically what you're about to do is worship idols oh no no i can't do that so that triggers that intense adrenaline rush it's not robotic at all it's emotional it's intensely emotional robotic would be that you don't have you won't you don't have any intensity you don't have any emotion okay let's plug in this formula okay he said and he's everything so i'm gonna do it but i don't really is to trigger emotional intensity it's a hack it's not real emotions it's like going on a roller coaster for a first date it's not real emotions no only meditation brings to real emotions meditation will bring to real emotions it's a tool it's a tool and it has its purpose it has its usage okay okay all right guys i want to tell you something this is not easy not easy you're doing amazingly so okay thank you okay thank you