Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #47

okay weekly Tanya what chapter are we on 29 we're in the middle of 29. what problem what issue challenge yes apathy we're talking about what to do when you can't get excited spiritually excited maybe you can get excited about other things but we're talking about being excited about the right things and it's just not working and we're not uh we're not able to feel it uh and we said it's very very dangerous in fact uh could be more dangerous than sadness um yeah yeah because it's this uh it's it's a it's like it's emotional death when you slow down and you feel nothing numbness numbness yeah numbness is more dangerous than than pain I mean pain pain could ultimately ultimately motivate you but this is just numbness um so we introduced a an analogy or a metaphor from the holy Zohar that says if you have a log of wood that won't catch fire so it's usually because it's too dense it's too coarse so you smash it up with a hatchet and turn it into splinters and then it'll it'll catch fire so too um if a person's body is not getting ignited so to speak with the passion of the Soul you got to break up the body and what does it mean to break up the body it doesn't mean to physically break up the pieces of the body it means the identity of the body my self-concept as an embodied physical being with all of the trappings of being here in this world meaning my my personality and my possessions and my story and my uh even you know the description that goes on my driver's license those those are all the identity of of the body and somehow all of those have sort of come together to arrive at a state of complacency where my soul is screaming let's get motivated and my body identity is saying no I'm good I'm okay I'm okay so I have to smash down that body identity how do I smash it down we haven't really yet said we said you have to smash it we didn't describe the method whereby we accomplish that um but I want to just back up when we start from the text right now where we got to last week is we read about Hillel the famous Rabbi hello of the sandwich Fame same Rabbi hello and when he would go eat he used to say I'm gonna do a favor for the poor wretched creature meaning to say his identity was with his soul and he viewed his body almost as an other entity I'm gonna go do them a favor but because Hillel was to use the Tanya term at sadik but a regular person the regular person the Tanya term is a banani he still identifies with his body and therefore um an attack on myself means an attack on my body and vice versa I think I have to explain this a little bit more okay at the risk of repeating what I've just said the problem is apathy the source of the apathy is in the body and by body I don't mean that it's like a a physiological issue what I mean is the body identity we know that we are not just bodies in fact primarily and in fact for an infinite amount of non-time before the creation of the world we existed completely without bodies so my real Essence my eternal true self is my is my soul but for reasons that are very important I'm I'm having the embodiment experience right now okay and when these two entities converge soul and body um what happens is my identity shifts from my true self which is my eternal Transcendent spiritual Godly soul and and I start to identify with myself as a as a physical being so in other words let me just amplify what kinds of things make me feel secure and safe spiritual stuff or material stuff what types of goals make me feel the accomplishments of goals make me feel proud and accomplished spiritual goals or material goals what types of when I think about of myself and I identify Myself by certain qualities are the spiritual qualities or material qualities and and the answer may not be so cut and dried because we are complex and there are nuances and gray areas but what I'm saying is before your embodiment you didn't identify at all with anything that had to do with the body because you didn't have a body now we're down here and we do tend to think of ourselves in terms of oh where I live who I'm married to what my job is how much money is in my bank account how many pounds I still need to lose that's what I mean by Body identity okay as opposed to Soul identity which is I'm this emanation of of godliness that's my soul identity so what we're saying is we need to break down the bodily identity [Music] so he's making a point that when we used to see this is this is something that people who learn Tanya actually people who don't learn time you don't have this problem but people who learn Tanya always ask this question have this problem um who's the real me who's the real me and if you guys have been learning with me for any amount of time you know that the answer to any question is well it depends who's the real me okay you want to talk about from the most pristine ideal level like the truth the truth the the the real objective truth the real me is my eternal Godly soul but that's not what we're talking about right now I'm talking about an emotional situation here my apathy okay so I'm more concerned with the subjective truth not the objective truth I'm more concerned with how it feels to me not what it really is so forget about the the objective reality that I am truly my Essence truly is my Eternal Soul and by the way Tanya in other places in Tanya will say that I'll say the real you the real you is your Eternal Godly Soul okay but right now in this context he's speaking practically let's get real let's get real when I say my favorite flavor ice cream is chocolate okay who's who who's speaking what identity am I projecting and okay maybe that's saying my favorite flavor ice cream is trivializing it okay but but even things you you're sitting on the therapist couch and you're talking about all your problems are those the problems of your soul or the problems of your body well the tiny terms we use are enough shivamas and their facilities yes yeah those are the terms so the point is when we say who's the real you the real you don't get confused the real you is your Eternal Godly soul but for the purposes of this discussion in context of this discussion the real you means the one that you identify with the one that you identify with the one that you instinctively protect the one that the one that's dominating your consciousness and your awareness So to that extent we say the real you in this context is your bodily identity and therefore if your body is causing the obstruction right now then we got to attack the body which means we got to attack you because you quote unquote you and your body are for practical purposes synonymous did you follow that whole logic so basically we're gonna roast you you know like a real roast but it's not funny we're gonna just but actually I should I should make it more accurate this is an this is an entirely internal process so no one's doing this to anyone else you are going to roast yourself or maybe maybe roast is too a glib of a term an intervention what's an intervention you get a guy first of all you research for months before the intervention you talk to all of us by the way I want to just tell you something there's not a person in the world that you if you get three months worth of dirt from all of their friends and family and put them in a room and tell them about everything that they're doing wrong it's not a person in the world you cannot reduce to tears I'm just letting you know that anybody three months yeah I probably don't even a lot less yeah Eric Byrne said no man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist yeah so all you have to do is get the dirt on somebody put them in a room and be like yeah your life's okay no it's not okay here's how you're destroying yourself and everyone around you and your life is totally out of control and you reduce them to tears that's the point of an intervention and then you get them to agree to go to treatment and then they leave after a week but which is the SAT I mean it's not even funny but that's the yeah that's that's the reality but at an at any rate this is a self-administered intervention where it's brutal I mean really really really if this is your first time in your class I just want to tell you the rest of Tanya is not like this this chapter is brutal it's brutal I'm not joking I know I use words sometimes in fun ways I'm not trying to be fun right now it is literally brutal like it is it's a beating it's like an actual assault the only thing I can tell you to comfort yourself is it's entirely self-administered nobody's doing it to you so I guess you could stop whenever you want but it's it's brutal okay so can we can we go into the text yeah okay so I'm backing up a line that we already did at the end of last week but with obeying the irregular person is animal Soul has not been converted into goodness like with the sadiki so that's the line I'm stressing he he or Adam this the negativity the coarseness the ego of the animal soul is synonymous with the person himself now again I explain this and I'll say it even one more time objectively speaking your real Essence didn't change you are your Eternal Soul but we're not speaking about that right now we're not speaking subjectively for all practical purposes your experience of things is you identify with your animal soul and that's the problem they have problems the animal soul and you identify with the animal Soul so who's it's like you come in and you're like oh you're with him then you're getting beat up too okay so basically we're gonna beat up the animal soul and since you identify with the animal cell we're going to beat you up okay so here's the beating all right now actually he continues to explain he sets it up more VM Kane it's already getting brutal if this is the case then you are I'll say it in the second person just because it makes it more forceful and it fits the tone um he's really writing in third person but I'll say it in second person yeah and if so then you are ultimately distanced from Hashem foreign you know why you are ultimately removed and I'm not talking about the real you have nothing but your wonderful pristine soul that remains pure I'm talking about the Practical you meaning your ego it is ultimately removed from Hashem you know why he says because it is capable just the fact it is capable of Desiring prohibited things which go against God's will even if you do not desire to actually do these things now guys use your head two chapters ago chapter 27 we just told you we comforted you and told you don't beat yourself up over the fact that you desire prohibited things right remember that remember that okay right that's the life of a painting is you're going to desire prohibitive things and you're going to celebrate the fact that you didn't give in that was chapter 27 this is chapter 29. okay so don't get confused this is if you're a rigid thinker this may be actual mental torture for you because if you're trying to memorize meanings and definitions it's useless that's not what we're doing here Tanya I told you from day one is a manual it's a guide okay so it's a practical guide therefore certain truths can be used in different ways depending on what you're trying to accomplish So today we're trying to smash the apathy so to smash the apathy we're doing this brutal internal intervention and well the first thing he says to you he says you think you you think you're all right you're not all right think about your desires you're capable of Desiring things that go against God's will you think that's cool it's not cool brutal two chapters ago we told you don't worry about it you're wonderful you're so okay that was then this is now different context different objective so keep that in mind okay everyone's following this you're not getting overly confused okay well I'm not surprised there's resistance because like I said it's a very brutal method yeah I give him permission to skip the application of this chapter this time around oh you can just yeah you know 27 28 30. all the 30 kind of continues a little bit 29 but anyways let's okay um yeah trying to make sure that the food that I ordered for my brother's hotel room actually gets to him yeah yeah I don't I thought I saw I saw a call right now I thought it was maybe the food delivery guy I don't know okay I'm just watching this but I'll tell you something since I interrupt myself talking about the food um my food is my materiality your food is my spirituality so when I if I were sitting here in the middle of Tanya class looking at when's my food coming that's very crass but if I'm concerned in the middle of a tiny class when's my brother's food arriving for him and his family so it's not crafts why am I bringing that up just because these these definitions are so fluid and and contextual and uh this body Soul stuff it really really really depends what we're talking about yeah so just always don't the minute these the minute these terms start to ossify shake your head and loosen it up because these terms have to be very we're learning spiritual terms by by definition these are very abstract and and to that extent you're not gonna be able to nail these things down so just you gotta be a little bit like a surfer you got to ride the wave a little bit here okay is everyone okay is anyone experiencing like real cognitive dissonance right now no okay tell us one to us if I no no never never ossified no no always keep this stuff when it comes to halacha okay then you do what you're supposed to do you can keep it rigid but when it comes to see this These Are Spiritual Concepts let it flow let it be very flexible okay all right so let's continue here um so he would never do these things you would never do these things but you would desire them commission is yeah yeah but you know what you you're not disgusted by it like it'sotic like we learned in chapter 12 that aside that is disgusted by anything that is against hashem's will now again in chapter 27 we celebrated that difference between assadic and abenini and said well who who's serving Hashem more the person who's not tempted and doesn't give in or the person who was tempted and doesn't give in that was like chapter 27. but over here that's not the point anymore here over here I have a crisis a crisis of apathy I think my life is fine you know Rabbi Dr toersky all of a Shalom remember him telling me about a guy who was an alcoholic doctor and he finally realized he might have a problem because every morning he would get up and he would vomit blood because the alcohol was burning a hole in his stomach so he's like I got to take care of this is dysfunctional like this is not okay but then he remembered that in med school they learned how to pump a stomach so every night right before he would pass out he would pump his own stomach and then he but then he wouldn't vomit blood anymore so he said oh thank God I thought my problem was getting unmanageable but now everything's okay at first he thought it was the water in the scotch right but listen what I'm saying you think it's okay it's not okay and you need a wake-up call and that's what this chapter is doing so two chapters ago we told you not only to not beat yourself up about your Temptations but celebrate the fact you have temptations and yet you don't give in and by the way that's 99 of the time that's the attitude that we take but here because there's a crisis of real dysfunctional situation the guy has what we call Tim tum halif his heart's blocked up he's meditating and he's not getting excited there's something wrong and we have to remove that obstruction sometimes you just you need shock therapy and that's what this is so here's the shock I'm going to continue with the shock therapy and I said it is brutal I'm continuing with the brutality wow in this respect you're worse than a creepy crawly slimy impure animal s like King David says in the Psalms I'm a worm and not a man you know what that means free choice even the little maggots they just do what God programmed them to do but you you're capable of rebelling against your designer this is brutal stuff by the way it's funny because I'm thinking to myself how shocking and brutal this is and like how bad I feel even reading these words but then in the back of my mind I'm reminding myself some people talk like this at every class so so we could do it once okay but you understand the purpose why we're speaking this way it's for it's not to make you miserable it's not to to make you give up God forbid the person already gave up he's already facing apathy so you understand tactically why we're speaking this way if you just think we're just speaking cruel to be you know I don't know exciting or interesting you understand why this is necessary and and I don't and furthermore let me elaborate this chapter applies to a very specific situation I guarantee you that it does not currently apply to everyone in this room it's not like everyone's sitting here has this problem just because a medicine exists just because a therapy exists doesn't mean that everyone needs it at every time so yeah this is a shock therapy that's available but please don't sit here and go like why am I why is it Tanya brutalizing me I don't need this right now you probably don't okay but you should when are we supposed to learn about it like I for just for efficiency purposes I got to teach everybody about it at one time and you'll apply it if and when it comes up okay but it probably doesn't apply to you right now and he very clearly frames it very clear he doesn't say hey I got a new thing for you to do every day he says he very at the very beginning any other chapter that's right he says why this would be necessary under what conditions would be necessary okay okay in Brackets it continues see this is flipping everything that we just learned in the past couple chapters and even when you go diving and you try to get your Godly Soul excited it's not real it's not it's not authentic you know how how we know that it's not real because even when you get excited during the evening if as soon as you're finished it disappears poof it's gone like it says in the end of chapter 13. so again this is an intervention this is brutal basically telling a guy yeah you remember you were dominating the other day and you felt excited about Hashem that was worthless you know how I know the second you finish the Avenue all of a sudden you got interested in other things if it were real it would have stuck with you [Laughter] this is very different than the way that we normally talk okay now he's going to dig in even deeper because she is now okay here comes the real shaming here comes the real shaming he says especially if you'll remember the defilement of your soul related to what we call nurim Sins Of Youth which is a rabbinic euphemism for indiscretions of a of an intimate nature okay yeah so now we're getting the stuff that people really feel deep Shame about that think about the damage that you caused in the spiritual realms man and in the spiritual Realms it's not under the domain of time so even if you did it a year ago 10 years ago 20 years ago 50 years ago the damage is there right now as if you're doing it now it's like the defilement is happening right now God forbid mamish literally okay so basically we're asking a person it's interesting because in chapter 27 he did speak about sexual shame and he told you that you should act he he actually mentioned that he said a person has hearing if inappropriate erotic thoughts he said he even said of a permissible nature or even God forbid of a of an illicit nature and he said yeah but the fact that you that those thoughts pop in your brain and you reject them and you you identify them as inappropriate and you reject them you should celebrate that over here he's shaming you about it but again for a purpose I keep repeating myself but I feel like half the people I have a big insecurity and it comes from teaching and speaking publicly it is that in any given room half of the people will will misunderstand what I'm saying even if I repeat myself 10 times so I'm kind of nervous that people are going to walk out of here and be like that Tanya is a cruel book and I really don't want that to happen what do you want what do you want to say it's not reverse psychology it's not joking no no no no no no no he's he's trying like we explained he's trying to administer a destruction of the ego it's it's brutal it is a it's like an intervention you're taking a person please sit down oh yeah here's everyone you know yeah and now we're going to talk to you and you can't leave and we're going to talk to you about how you're ruining your life and all of our lives and you're not leaving until you promise you're going to rehab why because you just emotionally gut the person that's what he's doing that's what he's doing okay the Africa oh wow now listen to this and even if you already did proper truva you say hold on a second you can't use that you cannot use that stuff against me I already did proper sugar for it no Hari Ikea believe two of us primarily an emotional phenomenon and there are endless levels in the emotions it's not binary it's not you did it or you didn't do it it's not like a physical action where either you did it or you didn't do it it's an emotional state so how could you ever say you're finished with your chova there are endless degrees that you could reach emotionally that are that are deeper levels of chuva have you done that yet no you haven't furthermore it all depends on the greatness of the person and his circumstances in other words yeah maybe you did chuva but from you a greater chuva is demanded technically speaking yeah you did your technically speaking yeah you were forgiven and maybe even on the Yama din they will not be able to bring this before you you understand those are two totally different things it could be totally possible in this case where the person to shove it to the extent that that Aveda will not be brought in his court case on the day of his passing because he already chival forts it was expunged and yet here for purposes of this method you're supposed to remember that too and say to yourself well I did Jova but am I ever finished with Jova you're never finished with Jova job is endless okay therefore at this moment you see that your soul is not igniting your body remember we're talking about that that was our original metaphor that's actually a sign that your chuva wasn't accepted today and your sins your old sins are still impeding he says look the fact that you are experiencing the spiritual numbness that itself is a sign that old business that you think you've taken care of isn't taken care of and the proof is it's causing you problems today I or alternatively he says another explanation they want to lift him to a higher level of trova meaning it was decided in heaven you know what this guy he did Chiva but we could milk this still some more and get a bigger chova out of him and either way whatever the point whatever whatever the cause for it is the point is that yeah he did chova technically it's sufficient but for the purposes of this method we have to say to ourselves there's still some work to be done and the proof that there's still work to be done is I'm experiencing this numbness right now that's why King David said my sin will is forever before me what does it mean my sin is forever before me it means that even after you do chova trova is endless it's an endless process you're never finished yeah and that's most of the time when we're talking about the subject of chuva that's the answer but this is chapter 29 and in chapter 29 intense yeah I thought but I warned you I gave a trigger warning like 10 times of course it's true okay now you're forcing me to repeat what I've said a hundred times there's a lot of things that are true truth is complex there are different aspects of the truth it all circumstances will dictate which aspects of the truth are important for establishing my view of any given situation so is this true he's not making it up it is true trova is endless you never truly finished with it now in one context how would we take that piece of the truth we would say okay so celebrate the fact that you can get endless chova out of one Aveda and as far as the problems you you you you you you took care of that already it was expunged from your record so it's all good but in this context we're saying to you you're coming to me you tell me you have apathy yeah no wonder you have apathy you know why because you you you once sinned 50 years ago like and that's still plaguing me yeah what do you think of course it does is it true of course it's true but if you have apathy how could you be plagued by anything apathy is like but that that's the plague apathy is the plague that's the plague that's the that's the whole problem so these things that he's bringing up are the things that are plugging it up that's what's causing the blockage and he's sticking it in your face trying to cause I mean I might even call it an ego death it's supposed to devastate you and then release the the blockage I mean that's the point is to release the blockage so I don't know I don't want to say often because I just spent like half an hour explaining that it's rarely applicable but yes but I do want to mention just just for the sake of being more accurate I believe that a lot of the um the Smashing of the ego that needs to happen oh I agree smashing the ego is is necessary for any spiritual uh growth but most of that ego smashing is pretty much covered by all the stuff that are the gifts that Hashem gives to us in our lives so I don't know that we need to run out and find extra methods for smashing ourselves life itself is pretty smashing right okay okay but what do you want me to do you want me to get you get up here and I should say Kavita our lives are difficult enough we're skipping chapter 29. in our lives avoid bringing in those types of experiences that diminish our ego you mean can you like preemptively do it because they are there I'll tell you what you can okay I don't want to get off topic but in one sentence I'll tell you what you can do preemptively you can remember every single day that we're not in control they say I got I'm not in control and then sometimes that helps that he won't have to remind you that you're not in control that's how I'll say it yeah yeah yeah at the time trying to fix a large constantly because the apathy is kind of the world you're living in now yep that's normally yeah but that's normal apathy this is not what he's told he's talking about a real serious condition that the person cannot he cannot fix any other way like normally it's like what you describing is like come on guys let's get motivated okay and that works here the person is locked he's he's just stuck yeah depression no no depression at least you feel something at least you feel so you feel awful but you're feeling this is um mm-hmm you're not your thought processes are not working well but let me let me disagree and say he says very clearly the beginning of the chapter this guy is meditating and he's meditating well and that's not his problem his thought processes are working perfectly fine it's that they're not penetrating his heart the problem's not cognitive there are issues that are cognitively rooted this is not he's meditating properly and yet the meditation is not penetrating his heart the blockage is on the heart and so his fix for that is smashing the ego yeah it's not you're smart you're not smashing any feelings you're smashing the feeling of complacency it's like it's you're smashing the the sense of I'm okay I'm okay you're not okay you're okay he's gonna have a very very difficult time realizing but then realizing that they need to start smashing well here's the thing the person understand I mean we spoke about this last week if the person's truly non-wise and why is he even opening the book because he can appreciate cognitively what the situation is he knows that he's he knows there's something wrong it just doesn't yeah of course yeah you could probably explain it to you yeah you could sit down and say yeah I have a problem uh I Daven and I meditate and doesn't really excite me and um having a hard time feeling motivated to go the extra mile and do to sanctify myself and anything uh in permissible matters I wouldn't do anything forbidden but I can't really get excited about going the extra mile Within permissibility of course the whole Tanya is for religious people of course this is this person's asking for religious advice Tanya is not a a a seminar proving the existence of God and the Torah was given at Sinai Tanya is a manual for someone who walked into the gym and said I want a personal trainer metaphorically speaking I don't want to get derailed there's not a whole discussion about okay I want to continue the beat down because I just don't want it to continue to next week I just want to finish let's finish the beat down over here okay okay now he says what if you say hold on a second thank God I emerged unscathed I don't have any Sins Of An Intimate nature I got through it I never did that or he says of a he says like grave level one so like okay but let's say the guy says oh no I know I don't have it you're trying to shame me about that stuff thank God I'm clean from that I don't have any of that stuff so he says okay no problem we found more dirt we kept digging oh yeah we gotta we gotta file on you this thick we didn't stop digging we didn't bring you in here until we were ready to make we knew that you were not going to leave this room without crying foreign you should take the heart with desire says to become an accountant of your soul you should take stock fearless and thorough moral inventory make a spiritual stock taking because think about every single thing you thought spoke or did from the time you were born until today were they all holy um think about anything you may have ever thought said or done that was not expressly for the purpose of glorifying God and if you remember in chapter six we said what is negativity it's called The Other Side the other side means it's just not for the service of Hashem if it's not expressly for serving God then it's the other side did you ever engage in a level of thought speech or action in anything that wasn't expressly for the service of God you ever put an extra squirt of ketchup on your fries and it wasn't for the service of God caught you then you get it then you have yeah then then we got something on you okay [Applause] um he rubs it in anytime you think holy thoughts nice America covered you become uh Chariot to the chambers of Holiness from whence the holy thoughts emanate but the opposite is true as well if you think or say or do anything that's negative you become a chariot to the negative energies you're their host at that moment you're their vehicle so how do you think you should feel about that that's not disturbing this whole thing is supposed to be disturbing basically okay yeah it's working okay let's finish it up another thing you should pay attention to myself [Applause] think about your dreams oh my God yeah your dream now normally listen guys obviously we're getting really really beyond what we normally would consider a moral dilemma because in any normal discussion would we ever say that a person is morally accountable for their dreams would we no no my dreams what do you want from me but in this case he's telling you hey you think your life's okay it's not okay your animal soul is running riot and it's destroying you and I'll give you another proof think about your dreams in fact he says most of your dreams most of them are silliness vanity and ruination of the spirit you know why that happens because your Soul's not going up to heaven while you sleep that's why you think you dream about stupid stuff yeah because your Soul's not going up to the Yeshiva in heaven that's why you're not dreaming about Toyota you dream about Toyota no oh okay so you're not so you're not so good then the commercial cost of me all about like it says and to heal him who can Ascend the Mountain of God one who has clean hands so they're not letting you into the Mountain of God meaning when you when you go to sleep your soul becomes untethered from your body and they're not letting you into the Yeshiva up there because you you stink wait outside go back down there hover around your body and dream about ridiculous things everyone understands again this is not the way we normally think okay asean hold on I gotta read like three lines of Aramaic it's not so easy here this is zoharic Aramaic the Inon citrin bishin Austin Miss so the negative side comes during his sleep to tell him crazy stuff in his dreams actually doesn't say crazy just said mundane stuff foreign by showing him false stuff in his dreams with side and lay they paint him in his dream by showing him whatever disturbing stuff like it says he gives you the source okay even if you say smile hamita yeah of course he's abating he said you can smash it on me don't you instead of my bill and everything you're still having crazy dreams okay let's continue the longer he thinks about this stuff in his mind and also by looking into svadim by the way there are hosts that are written in this style and you could read them if you if you like to torture yourself to make sure your heart will be broken within you the news and that you should feel totally despised in your eyes to bring you to a state of utterly despising your very life had a bizarre uh but listen here's the thing and this is the punch line when you get to that point you say I hate myself and we would normally never want you to say you hate yourself okay normally never but here you say I hate me I'm disgusting with myself ah but that's good because yourself false self is identified with the body and the animal Soul so therefore when you finally have this revulsion for yourself really you're having this revulsion for the negative energy of the body and the animal soul and then you bring it down to the ground and that brings it down from its arrogance so that's how you level its Pride and knock it down until now this negative uh energy was like lifting itself up and blocking the light of the Godly soul and making things dark so now you beat it up and then it's like and it collapses and it's like ah finally now the good energy can flow again can shine unobstructed let's continue a little bit the Garment also you should scream at yeah you should rage you should scream and rage at this uh body animalistic Soul complacency person should incite his good inclination to rage over his bad inclination you should be enraged the high note leader guys you should rage at your your animal Soul which is your negative inclination but Ashford with a thunderous voice an angry voice he says in your mind so you don't actually do this bedibor with verbal articulation but in your mind like all right we're going to do the little monologue now here's the monologue this is the rage monologue okay ready all right this is in quotes and I'm speaking to myself in the second person but I'm not speaking to my real self because I'm yelling right now why would I yell my real self is my eternal Godly Soul which I would never yell at but I'm yelling at my false self the false self to which I've become too attached my my body and my animal soul ego that whole package I'm gonna scream at here's my monologue you are bad and evil and disgusting and gross I told you some people learn like this every day okay um how long are you going to obstruct the infinite light I'm a Maliko almond which fills all worlds which is was and will be simultaneously Even In This Very place where I stand commission and the infinite light is right here right now just as it was everywhere before creation and you're obstructing that you jerk you're blocking the infinite light shanisi like it says I am God I'm still screaming at myself I am God I have not changed because he is above time God is above time so God is right here and you're not feeling him you you sick out you are disputing the truth that we can see that the reality is that everything is nothing before Hashem he is everything everything else is nothing and you could see this with your actual physical eyes and you're blocking that truth you think you're okay you're not okay you're blocking the the the obvious truth and so you're dysfunctional and you're causing me dysfunction and I am screaming at you stop this stop causing these these problems okay yeah that's the end of the monologue yeah yeah yeah but I definitely have blockages on that light right so I want to get rid of it yeah and you're asking you're so basically let me say back to what you're saying you're saying um I've been nervous about this chapter since we started because it sounds really really rough harsh but now yeah but yeah I'll continue but I'm actually entertaining that that's why I wanted to phrase it that way I've been nervous about this chapter since you started because it sounds brutal but I'm entertaining if it will be therapeutic I know it won't be fun but I'm willing to do it dead or yeah my soul yeah bring it on I think that's okay okay so first of all let me say that I don't know if you're just trying to impress me but I know you're not I I know you're not trying to impressive I know you're being sincere but that is the exact attitude that you should have when you read this chapter that is exactly the attitude should be listen this sounds awful I wish I didn't even know this existed but if somebody I trust can tell me there is a context where this will be helpful I'm willing to do it right but I can't do it for myself but this is this is the point you have to do it for yourself exactly the way that he described it I'm just being honest okay so you're asking another question which I've actually never considered and that is what if I'm ready to do this brutal self Beatdown as per chapter 29. what you know you have to be awake during a it has to be a conscious experience but you're you're questioning whether you would even be able to you're right you're ready to do it you're questioning whether you would even be able would you would just talk yourself out of it I mean you would defend yourself but it's yeah but it's not supposed to really be yeah we're saying that before yes yes yes yes right before you walked in I said by the way for most of us this ego death comes just from Hashem giving us the gifts of life that he gives us which break our ego all the time yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah 100 percent but obviously there is a place for this or it wouldn't be written here in Tanya so when those things make you miserable yeah really miserable yeah and now you have to be aware that now I have to Hashem is telling me something what's he telling me and now I have to work on what what he's doing yeah myself yeah well that's good when that works out that way yeah here we're talking about uh and if I even wanted to like make a story out of this not that I think really I could say that this is how Tanya was structured but I could make an argument that it is that the order of the chapters is also the story of a guy he had problems remember in chapter 26 the beginning of chapter 26 he had life challengesina he had family problems health problems money problems and he dealt with those and he had spiritual problems he had guilt about the past he had Shame about his Desires in the present so he's been through all that and now he's got a new problem that has a has has a unique cause and therefore has a unique solution I want to ponder this question this is a but I thank you for expressing that willingness to self-administer this uh very very difficult growth experience okay fine so we're a little over time anyway so let's just stop okay and God will see you next week