Towards a Meaningful Life - Rabbi Simon Jacobson

[Music] so I come from a different perspective I'm gonna try to approach this I wish I would have met dr. Frankel but I'll try to speak to him through through us all and I what I learned in my in Hebrew school and I think would have probably even radically transformed even dr. Frankel's insights I don't mean change it but seen it in a light that goes back thousands of years and so one thing we can pull rank about over anyone on earth is we are both the founders of neurosis as well as the founders of it's healing it's known to Radek as a Jew right and as well as but we have an expression Magnum to fool the motto that before the illness is preceded by the Cure so whatever challenge that comes our way we already have a cure waiting for to be released and it's our job whether whatever role and we play in people's lives in our own lives whether it's professional therapists or psychological psychologists or psychiatrists or marché be more mentors or the words in the Torah say Lahav appoint a mentor or a haver a friend different terms used is to help discover that healing that's already there any good humble doctor would always tell you the healing is already there we just have to either ignite it or reveal it no one is a healer we bring healing and that's why the Talmud says nutritious permission was given to the healer to heal which itself is interesting it means permission was needed but only to be a healer to be a channel for the healing that already exists in human nature and in the world in general especially when it comes to psychological matters it's even more profound so I will try to take this back to the beginning of it all and I actually find it very relieving to know that there are professionals like yourselves and those some of those that spoke here because that needs to be covered simply from the from the perspective of underground methodologies and modalities and enter mentions that have been proven and have a clinical and a professional scientific approach but I believe just as that's important we also have to have the other side of it and that is the root of it all and we both can inform each other and that partnership is actually what God wanted in the first place because we're not that that was not the case it would not have given us the opportunity to be able to understand each other and help bring healing to the world I remember years ago I was running a we were during the meaningful life Center we had a weekend camping retreat and by me camping I mean the real thing the roughing part of it when going to the details of that but I remember so we had a staff very good staff a professional staff because people come and when they're out of their own natural element and there's no human structure and it rains and anything else can happen you have to have people who are ready to be somewhat impromptu therapists actually to help people manage this so there was one woman who seemingly was really disturbed and none of the staff were able to deal with her she was just she was making everything was a problem so finally they burst they said to me you know that maybe you can speak to her so I called her over and we sat down and I saw that I was gonna get through to her so I just said to look we're here for the weekend we're here for you in any way we can help you anything you need I just being nice but I realize not gonna get into any type of argument because whatever I would say was not going to be received very well and that's what it was that Friday night anyway the next day Shabbos Friday we had the dominic and the prayer and it was Shabbos namu so I gave a talk before after the tour reading and I saw her there she was there in the back and I said the following I said you know there's a big question let's ask na communica mu is of course the haftorah that's read the Shabbos after Tish above the Saturday in the Jewish calendar which in a way you could say is the personifies all trauma and all sadness and all morning on all loss and everything we deal with and of course loneliness as the beginning of the book of lamentations a philosopher bothered the harshest thing of all that the Prophet Jeremiah realized is what that bothered alone loneliness not the destruction of the temple of the holy temple not the murders not the exile loneliness that sought to Shabab begins and I said but then afterwards God sends the angel to console us now hamana hamana me a double consolation but then there goes seven weeks of consolation which in itself I've written a few tense articles about how you can look at the three weeks of that the rustle of Polynesia and this shivered in the tempter the three weeks of affliction and the seven weeks of consolation is really a healing process seven weeks and each week it progresses the healing and the Ovid raha one of the commentaries that explains these the series that progress progression of these of tourists points out that first God sends the the Prophet to console the people and then the people come back and say why are you sending the Prophet you destroyed the temple why don't you come yourself and console us you know you don't send the messenger you came you hurt us now you come to apologize so to speak or console us and finally God says in the third week on a 10-acre human ahem-hem and yes he himself God Himself comes to console so he asked the question why is that the case why did God was anyway going to come to console him he could have initially consoled them why did he have to send the Prophet first so he was a thought the thought was that that that was the greatest gift God God can console human beings obviously created us created our challenges and can therefore console us but that humans can consult each other that's a real novelty why because we're all mortals and there's an expression impoverished masterís atsume a person who's themselves limited how could they help another so you would think we cannot help each other and God gave us a gift we can't help each other even though we ourselves are subjective and when we're in a situation we probably have our blind spots yet we can help each other and that's the gift that was given to us so that's the perspective I want to come from and talk about it and as I said some type of maybe a conversation with dr. Franklin's share with him some insights from Torah from where it all began and it's obviously surprising to many but if once you see the text you see that's not that surprising that Jewish thinkers and Jewish scholars and Jews in general have been struggling with these issues from the beginning of time it's not an Ummah phenomenon the 21st or 20th century the concept of of pain or suffering or psychotic or psychosis or any form of psychic issues and whether on mild form or extreme form so it's always good to go back to the beginning and saying how was it dealt with that's much less spoken about this I want to say a few key points in that regard and you know they tell when the Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel so she received a telegram those days you're old enough to remember free email there was a thing called telegrams you know when mail would go by camels and donkeys and stuff like that there was also a thing called a telegram and so she received a telegram from Henry Kissinger the secretary of state of the United States Jewish and he wrote to her I welcome you into the diplomatic community and I'd like to remind you and this was his tactful way of telling her that she won't get any preferential treatment though he's Jewish she said if you remember my first loyalty is a citizen of the United States my second loyalty I'm a Secretary of State and my third and last royalty is that I'm a Jew she was a sharp woman so she sent them back a quick telegram saying I'm sure we'll have a great working relationship because you see in the Hebrew and Israel we read from right to left so as it as it as it is also with you - of course so there's so when you're talking about science meets sec or so-called faith and with all the debates this is not the time to go into the battle between the two science meets faith and whether it's psychology or other sciences that meets religion faith often we see it as a clash and the truth is we have to see it as simply reading from the right to left or left to right and they can absolutely be not just reconciled but each can enrich the other that's so of course maybe the most important thing to state at the outset when you go to this topic now we know there's symptomatic medicine and there's preventive medicine or we'll call route medicine you can deal with the symptom the band-aids aspirins minoes advils whatever it may be or the equivalent in other in other areas or you can go and uproot the issue from the core so you solve the problem at the from the outset which of course is longer term but also longer term of work needed but longer term also results and obviously that's the thing we really would love to have because then you really guarantee a bright future and it's not about reoccurrence and so on and so forth so so they tell the this is what this is another taken from the kalam stories by the way our excellent psychological insights and I see a lot of us been seeping into the cycle the world of cyber psychologists because they're great funny and same time insightful Jewish insights into the human condition so there's the big classic one where the classic joke with the guys looking for his keys in the middle of the night and he's looking look he can't find his keys ur a neighbor comes by and says let me help you look let's retrace the steps where'd you lose them so you points like a hundred yards away 100 yards of ways is a pretty far away they said so while you're looking here he says because here's where the light is shining so we always look for problems especially our own with the light is shining that with a problem is obviously where it's comfortable you know that where it's uncomfortable nobody likes discomfort but when you get to the root of issues you have no choice but to go sometimes it's uncomfortable so if we go really back to the beginning of it all sounds because somewhat of a I guess you can call it a Kabbalistic mystical Hasidic take on the issues of dissonance and the roots of human what would shall we shall we say human anxiety is that a collective enough words you get the idea where does it really begin from so remember scientists and scholars they have no choice but to look go from everything from the bottom up you study you study those that came before you you study neurotic situations you experiment trial and error and plenty of that has done plenty of damage too but that without what other choice do we have and slowly you try to develop some theory that works it may not work perfectly but it works at certain circumstances and very possible the next generation comes and that Theory's upset because wasn't not everything taken in consideration so that's called in the Jewish theology and thinking mama Ptolemy approach you go from the bottom up and you use your empirical instruments including observation analysis testing different things over a period of time under different circumstances and environments and you try to develop a theory that works that's what dr. Frankel did his theories actually were pretty tall the costs and the Holocaust only confirmed many of his ideas and the same was with prior to him Freud and others and I'm not getting out into what's right and wrong here we're just talking about that what other thing what up on us what other option is there however when you're coming from a torah point of view and i'm speaking here to a tour audience and not expect I'm not but I'm not assuming that everybody except the Torah as being absolute truth and I'm not saying that in a sacrilegious way I simply mean to say just as a list well as a theory if I was speaking to a secular Lawrence I'd say exactly the same thing what is Torah besides the fact that divine a book a divine blueprint but it's also a collective story of the human condition that's the earliest documented challenges that the human beings dealt with so nothing else you learn about the jealousies the killings the pettiness the all the stuff that everything you know the Bible is the best novel soap opera on earth is gonna exist because it has literally every scenario sibling rivalry parents and children sexual issues you name it everything is there now if you throw in the divine component which I know that you all accept it only adds something that we don't have to necessarily go only momot element from the bottom up we can maybe look at things a little like a bird's eye view imagine you have a a microscope into the soul and you can actually see a soul not just based on observation but based on what we were told by the one who created the soul and by the one who created life now I would never assume as I said whether we speak into a person of faith or personal no faith I wouldn't assume you just accepted by faith it can be proven and shown because again if you're testing things anyway why not test a theory that was given to us and said this is what God says what the soul looks like why don't you try it out and if it works it's as good if not better than any of bottom-up type of observations so that's what I'm going to try to address as well in this view in this short a while I'm trying to do justice to it so I was looking where I could find a text there are many texts obviously and I will cite many of them but there was one text particularly because and just happened to be as graphical plot the divine providence that it was delivered by the Rebbe the previous Chabad Reber in 1931 so pretty much a Victor Frankl contemporary and it's a mystical text obviously a Hasidic text but it touches upon points that I think you're really fascinating if not mind-blowing and it talks exactly about how dissonance evolved you know when you see a problem and all of you see a problem no problem begins from when you see it there's something behind every problem in most cases people tell you the problem is probably not the problem at all they're sharing it with you how they experience the problem or the things they want to focus on so of course the best thing of trained I can do is try to figure out what is the problem behind the scenes like what is the cause behind the cause so to speak so here's how he how he puts it but this is really taken from a lot of writings of the ariza the great mystic of the sixteenth century and even from the Tsar and all based on verses in the Bible in the Torah which I'll be referring to so the first question first the first human being was Adam and Eve and they experience the first ultimate you can say psychological dissonance when they ate from the tree of knowledge because up till that point they weren't even aware that they were naked why because they were they were so seamlessly connected like a child's innocence they were not conscious of themselves and we all know self-consciousness is the root of most problems even though people think self-consciousness is like the root of all so all awareness but you know when you're not conscious of yourself like a child that's actually a very innocent and pure environment the problems when you do become conscious and there's the eye and the youth is the subject and the object there you have a duality and how do we reconcile between the duality of the you and the eye and that's what happened to Adam and Eve and you could see it in this story what happens after they eat from the tree of knowledge suddenly they sense themselves and they cover themselves because they were ashamed and then you have that that cryptic sentence verse where God comes to the garden and says I echo he's searching for Adam where are you so of course the obvious question what do you mean where are you God couldn't see where he was so this Rashi has answers in different commentaries when the ballot aneurysm of the ADI was in prison and the ministers saw they had a catch of a real scholar with him so they came to interrogate them and they were philosophers many of them so one of them asked them this question what does God what does it mean God's is asking Adam where are you and he first gave him the commentaries interpretation and the minister said that kind I know that interpret I want to hear your interpretation so the story goes that the alter rebbe was a tall man stood up and gazed him in the eyes and said to him this is the eternal question that God asked every human being you've lived 65 years you know of your life where are you I don't recognize you you know sometimes you're sitting near someone and they space out and you ask them where are you of course you know where they are their body's right there but where's their consciousness where is their mind which their heart are you with me in relationships you hear this all the time I have a spouse but are you with me not physically we're talking about psychology psychologically emotionally and so on so God was saying I don't recognize you where are you now what happened was this minister fainted because he was 65 years old and you know he didn't know what he was asking for he says you don't want Rash's comment ever you want mine I'll give you my commentary you know in other words so it's a unbelievable thought because the dissonance that took place you know they say that an animal will not attack a human being because they see that Selim only came the divine image on the face of the human being they of course the question is we see animals attacking humans all the time and the answer is because they don't see the face the divine face has been covered Daniel in the lion's den his divine visage shined so the Lions didn't bother him it was it's a natural thing animals are recognized the divine what happened with Adam is to put it in contemporary terms it's like you ask somebody who are you they usually give you their business card but that's not that's not who you are that's what you do and what you do and who you are is what you're most likely not aligned and that of course is another root of so many issues in our lives that what you do and who you are are very much not consistent with one another as a matter of fact most people the jobs they do statistics show they don't even like their jobs and even if you learn to like it it's because ok you know what - you live with it - you learn to adjust and then there's a few rare specimens where that people love what they do and what they do is aligned with who they are now of course that gets to the question Who am I before if we ask the question who what if you're aligned you need to know who you are and all this is in one word I echo in the precise the precision of the torah's approach two things one words I echo where are you now could if we could ask the start clients into our and that the people that come to us is bluntly that would be great but you can't always ask it's too sensitive a question and you have to take sometimes months and years of preparation just to get to that question now that doesn't mean people no have an answer but if you think about it it's a tremendous way of looking at the human condition and yes the duality and ultimately the duplicity that are that it evolves in which creates where are who are you I don't recognize you you were one person last year I remember before Rosh Hashanah someone sent me someone comes to one of my classes she lives down in Israel from France so he sent me a little picture she found herself when she was a little girl and she grew up in a very traumatic and dysfunctional home and she sent me this thing you know I broke my heart she writes sends me the picture and under the pictures she writes what happened to this little girl you know and that what captures question that many of us have you know what happened to us you began one way everything was so pure so hopeful dreams aspirations and something happened loss of innocence whether its overt abuse whether its passive abuse I mean I'm not gonna go through the whole list but something does happen we all go through they'll call the head it's a task experience it's not a one-time thing that happened back then we all go through it there's a innocence innocence is lost there's almost a sense of non consciousness you know they're just the seamlessness as I said of a child and then we start becoming aware of ourselves which has its virtues perhaps but also also has many drawbacks because we all know that when we are in the moment when you're in the zone as they say you're up at night and you're focused on something you love and you don't even sense that time is passing you don't even sense that you're hungry and suddenly it's the morning those are the most the most magical and purest moments of our lives because you were over there all together there you're not second-guessing yourself you're not trying to be somebody else you were there this is what we'd love to recreate if we can offer this to people come on that's what we want you want to have that ability to say this is where I supposed to be this is where I am I'm happy with what I am a simcha simcha so Haim with the life you have of course it's easier said than done but at least we can cry over the fact that we don't have that that's also awareness the worst of course is when people feel that's perfectly fine everybody is screwed up so what's the big thing you know that's that's the sad about some tough says that there are two types of darkness there's a darkness that you know it's dark and and you're waiting for the light to you're searching for the light and then this has to ask the apana that's the saddest one the darkness is so dark it conceals that it's dark you can convince yourself that mark that the bitterness is sweet and day is night night as day and and ugliness is beauty etcetera etcetera so going back ok so fine this is a dissonance that you can imagine if this evolves it can get far worse Adam and Eve at least had the sense because they were so created you see a cop of shellcodes particle they had a divine sense to at least not just cover it up and say everything is great they realized and then of course they were expelled from the Garden of Eden which is again caused an effect it's not some punishment it's because they're they no longer had the innocence of being able to be in a place like paradise so they at least nipped it in the bud so to speak but the human race did not things only got worse and from there on you have the birth of what I call duality before you can call it dissonance whatever word you wish and of course if it goes it gets worse and worse it ends up being what happens before the flood the world that completely self-destruct because the end of the day even subtle dissonance is going to turn into destruction there's no way around it if you don't stop it it will turn into selfishness and then it's a narcissism and then it's a compulsive narcissism and then whatever all the names you want to use and you get yourself a situation it's no longer containable it's become the human condition the Christians actually call it original sin and they say they can't even free themselves from it without the belief in some Jewish guy which is it's another discussion but we as Jews know that's not gonna help believing in a Jewish guy because we all have that same problem it needs something more than that so in this discourse from 1931 which is called omission yeah it's any of you want the actual source I can give it to you afterwards where it's printed he traces it back okay fine this is the distance of Adam but it didn't begin with there it didn't begin with Adam and Eve eating from the tree and losing their innocence something must have existed in them prior because if they had no temptation if there was no serpent or there was no what we call Yeats ahora or anything any other voice then they would never have eaten from the tree of knowledge which goes to the big paradoxical question everyone asks if they didn't taste some good and evil how could they have done something evil then tasted from it the general answer to that is they may not have tasted it but they knew of it and the curiosity tempted them and once you taste you can go back it's not like you say oh it tastes okay you know what let me spit it out and and let's start again it doesn't work that way the question is what was God's plan what's the divine plan here you set them up you put them in a garden you told this to trees one you eat from the other you don't it's very enticing the tree of knowledge good and evil Wow you know like the serpent had all the great arguments and you can't eat it what do you think is gonna happen it's like telling somebody don't open this book you know who doesn't open a book that says do not open you know the best way to get somebody to open it says do not open this you know so so I attempt them and some Madras erm it even says NATO ally la Binet ordem that God actually had like a conspiracy set them up basically now obviously there are many good answers to that question but with the biggest and most important thing is to go back to what is the purpose of it all and how did that evolve that we're capable of splitting into to who we are and what we do or however you want to define the dissonance of human of the human condition so using cabbalistic terminology but also from the bible what happens earlier where do we find a dissonance and a more cosmic level not on the human level you can say that the eating from the tree of knowledge is the first human experience of dissonance but what about on a cosmic level so you just have to go back a few days earlier on the fourth day of creation it says that the moon and the Sun were created two great luminaries named Mary sang daily and then suddenly he says my regard and why I caught the great luminary and a small luminary so obviously what's going on in there with are they both great or one is greater than other so the Talmud tells us the moon was jealous the moon came to God and said we cannot have you can't have one came with two crowns so God say ok that's the case you diminish yourself and the Sun will become the king now this concept this Meera talavana what's called the diminishment of the moon is not a small matter in Jewish thought it's a major one that's what creates fresh rightish which we celebrate them bless every month that was the beginning of the exodus from Egypt Petraeus's Elohim it's the symbol of Jewish life that just as the point of extinction the moon is reborn shameiess it in the Scottish Khmer say and when you go into the deeper text you'll find hundreds hundreds if not thousands of pages written on this mera talavana you're going to for example the writings of that reason I mentioned or the Zohar there's entire sections on what is the meaning of this diminishment of the moon so to put it in simple English it's think of it like the step of for dissonance a dissonance in existence itself with the moon and the representing two archetypes which I'll explain in a moment and they cannot coexist for the reasons being because when we live in a world of ego egos clash and when you're lacking what's called in the this language people a type of selflessness a type of not taking yourself so seriously and you're the center of the universe if you're lacking that you are inviting all trouble so the diminishment of the moon is not just some type of something about this as a celestial body a diminishment it's a diminishment in existence itself and it's sent it's centrally recognizing which as the the cobble has put it that the Sun and the moon represent essentially two forces in our lives one is called the giver and one it's called the receiver the moon of course reflects the sun's light but it has its own personality sometimes it's compared to the masculine and the feminine I specifically did not say man and woman because when you talk about these topics masculine feminine are archetypes there are many men that are more feminine there are many women that are more masculine but we're talking about two archetypes are definitely exist and they are they need each other and they complement each other because Adam and Eve as I mentioned were born created as one in the divine image and then they were split so they are in a sense like the Sun of the moon so that so the form that diminishment of the moon represents represents a diminishment that on one hand definitely demonstrates the ego of the moon because it was like a punishment for complaining but it also represents change and represents rebirth that the Sun does not have for example you'll see two people who love each other staring at the moon you'll never see them staring at the Sun even with sunglasses because the moon has its own haunting power here's not the place to go into it but let's put it this way it's a earlier step in the evolution of dissonance that starts with me it's Halle Vaughn I'm gonna get back to it because all this can be translated I believe in a modality that's psychological that can help us actually identify the roots of the dissonance or other issues of conflict that people are struggling with so what precedes the diminishment of the move so here comes the second verse in the Bible maybe the most cryptic of them all after it says Bray she's by the beginning God created heaven and earth then it says varlets hiya hiya vo the Haitian company had to him the ruin of the Kimura heavens open ami so everybody knows this verse it's number two it's Genesis 1:2 but does anyone know what it means and you learn the Rashi you can learn commentaries it remains a very cryptic verse first verse God created heaven and earth but then suddenly what is Toyo vo and the darkness covered the entire existence and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters the whole thing is beginning to end is almost indecipherable but when you look into again the Mystics this is a mystical verse to be honest the only way to understand it because what was what was physically tell you avoid what are you gonna exactly describe God created heaven and earth oh he didn't create a heaven and earth so where was there chaos tell you is often chaos now chaos is of course a word everybody knows what chaos is a chaotic life then you got yourself another psychological term Oh in retracing the steps the diminishment of the moon is preceded by yet an even more subtle form of separation and that is what's called the severe attack Kaylin the shattering of the containers that you hear about in Kabbalistic terms now this may sound somewhat above some people's heads it's not at all because I'm going to explain it in simple English and shortly but remember shiny containers if you think about it in a simple simple term simply means a person who is overwhelmed by trauma that can be called shattering of the containers it means that your containers cannot contain and you're overwhelmed by a condition that can be trauma that can be abuse that can be all the other things that cause people to have a shattering now it could be a shattering on a subtle level could be shattering in a very extreme level that always depends on what they experienced so that's step 3 back going back I'm gonna go back to it all again so I'm not done don't things that I've said it all on this and then comes the first of them all where is the root of Roots the mother of all dissonance if you want to put it this way the mother of all conflicts so this is called the Simpson hydration this is a doctrine actually called the say that Simpson the secret of the symptom the doctrine of that Isaac Luria who revealed or even they say innovated it's based on Zara and so on that describes how can existence exist if God is omnipresent so it begins with a theological and also psychological dilemma and that is this I'm so now I am assuming that one believes in God okay God created the universe we say innate malvada nothing but God exists so why are we sitting here and completely unaware of that but to put to drive the point home even further we know that we're all created by one force and we're all part were all like limbs in a larger organism as the euro Swami says is it conceivable that a right hand should hit the left hand no because it's one body and we have these these immune disorders god forbid with the body turns on itself is one of the most tragic things so how is it indeed possible that human beings turn on each other how can we hate each other how can we dislike each other how can we wage war with each other all the in justices of history now I know it's a klutz kasha but from a point of view of faith where's God like how is it possible the answer is because we don't sense the divine and therefore we can sense ourselves as being what we call existential loneliness but where did that originate from and that's where the result was struggling to figure out the capitalists perform and the Finkle perform could not fully understand explain at least how can there be this type of disconnect first of all between man and God and second of all between man and meaning and between man and man meaning person and person how is it possible you have to what what what theological model can explain this and his answer and brief this requires really a lot more than just a short but I'll just saying brief is that the GAR the same God that can create existence has the power to conceal his presence from existence and that was a prerequisite necessary to allow for independent reality how could we be independent individuals thinking and feeling and acting with freewill and so on if God's omnipresence is completely all the consuming which is the language of the reason that before this simsimi says that divine energy the divine ain't soft iron self filled everything obviously we mean conceptually so it's symptom is how he explains it and as I said these a lot more to do justice there's a lot more discussion but suffice it to say it is the divine creation that creates the first disconnect and it's a necessity for us to be able to exist or else existence cannot be as we see it as we know it without that Simpson so in essence you can really say that any form of dissonance in any form of neurosis in any form of anxiety or or a sense where we feel lonely or whatever it may be is really a divine creation absolutely and you can blame God if you like you know the Jews take God to the dinner and then they go and have a minute that's how it works so you can blame God but you know this is there's only one God and the point here is not to blame the point is first of all God secure enough that you can find that's why we pray and that's why we challenge and that's why Rama vino and Moses moisture obey no they challenge God but then the day there is one God but what happens here and I don't mean to I don't want to find they Adam I never find the right words I'm not trying to justify neuroses but an end of the day if we didn't exist we wouldn't have all our problems obviously as good as God says to job when he says to him why the wicked prosper he says to me you there when I created at all you asked me why they're suffering do you ask me why there's a joy you asked me why there's death do you ask me why there's birth you ask me why there's pain you ask me why there's good experiences we don't ask that question because we take that as a given we don't know the big plan and I'm not suggesting that I can explain it but we do know that our being here is not an accident so in a certain way and I just want to find make sure they're not say the wrong way not that human misery a human pain is a is a it was it was inevitable it's not but the root of it was always possible because that's no that's the pre-wet thats the necessity if you're going to give someone independence let's think about it simply from parents and children how many of you have children and grandchildren right who doesn't haven't felt the the anxiety or the the and what I want to use this even fear the first time your children go to school or the first time when they get married and they go out there and they have to learn from their own mistakes we'd love to be able to prevent them for learning the mistakes but there's no way a child's gonna learn to walk if you're gonna hold a child all the time so it's a necessity to allow the child to say I walk on your own I'm there for you I'll pick you up I'll catch you whatever but you have to let them you have to cut the umbilical cord so I'm one here you could say it's very sad I wish I didn't have to you know the the same out there ever once said to his in-laws because they had some money and he was impoverished when they got married and they said if you live here in our town we'll support you you know then there was no wiring money you had to live with your sweetie now they were fine people it wasn't a problem and the alter rebbe responded humorously he said you know it's a very enticing offer and I say you could davon you can right then you can learn and teach we won't get involved in anything but we'll support you he said it's a very enticing offer but we know what's even more enticing is to go back into your mother's womb there you don't even have to work struggle for eating or drinking nope are no issues actually I have the best sieve of all the mark himself comes and teaches you the entire Torah after that it's all downhill as we know you know no matter how good these Sheva system is so so the out there ever says to his in-laws he says very enticing offer it's even more comfortable to go back to the womb but there's one small problem the child has gotten too large and the space has gotten too small now in other words built in to life is in dependence and independence built into that is the possibility of a dissonance not necessity you know how much it says everyday God setting saw the creation by Emeril Hakeem miyano the Khimki Tov that it was good day one it created light it was good day three day four except on day to day - doesn't say Quito Eve why because on day two God created separation our separation is necessary for diversity separation is necessary for a structured universe you can't have everything being the same thing but you can't say tôi yet because it's a possibility that diversity will turn into divisive this day three comes and we all know day three is solemn cost of Ashley she the third verse that McCrea that that the reconciles day three Shalom and Judaism is not just to peace it means wholesomeness and day three it says twice good good for day two and good for day three because I'm day two we still don't know which direction is gonna go will diversity lead to beauty and and growth or will the lead to the war mark like us and day three we know which is why three is such a central number in in Judaism Torah mat and Torah the month of mountain Torah and so on so the point I'm making here is this that it all begins with the divine so-called concealment allowing for an independent existence to be is that itself a crime no but it could end up causing a lot of problems because once the God conceals himself we all know what can happen next humans can determine that God's not here anymore since God's not here I'm God and if you'll know how the Rambam explains the evolution of idolatry that's exactly what happened they then start worshipping idols they first said you know what gods - invisible we need something as a symbol etcetera etcetera so the point being is that it all begins with a dissonance on a very cosmic level on a divine level that in turn will turn into a soar call it a market correction which is called the shattering of the containers which in turn will become the diminishment of the moon which in turn will cause the head theta das the possibility for the Fed theta that's with the humans choosing the wrong choice and then of course it goes from there can just get worse and worse or better and better now why is this so vital you could say very nice very interesting so-called anatomy of dissonance that's such a no it's vital because you can you can be traced in any condition that you deal with well no matter what it is whether it's traumatic situations or it's abuse situations or other issues people deal with anxieties and so on you can actually find these four steps in each person's life you can find their choices they made that were bad going from the back from the bottom up you can find the ego that got in the way somewhere that caused a diminishment of personality you can find the shattering something broke it could be subtle for example if a parent a child day after day comes home and their parents are not around absentee even if there's no overt abuse what do you think happens after a while the child stops waiting they stop becoming disappointed that's when the saddest day is they you know they start adjusting to an unnatural reality they adjusting to parents that are supposed to be there to love them and nurture them and they're not there I'm using that example so something shatters what shatters maybe a hope a promise a belief in yourself self-confidence if you think of it the other way around when you have that nurturing then there will not be a shattering because you prevent that by creating the nurturing environment that any soul and every human being needs to blossom like a flower with water what happens when a flower doesn't have water it will wither and there'll be a sphere at Cailin so it doesn't have to be seen sphere doesn't mean necessarily that the whole world is the earthquake and tremors it's a subtle psychological tremors that people go through and then you get back to the root of the roots of all roots and that's the concealment that's the concealment I have no doubt that if we take these ideas and we what's our time here fine if we take these ideas and yes and we and we address them to with dr. Frankel I have no doubt he would come up with a brilliant way of translating them into the system that he uses because the end of the day the search of meaning is based on one key axiom that we are meaningful people because if you go with a quote whether it's a Hobbesian or a Darwinian Freudian model who says there's meaning in the first place maybe there's it's all meaningless it's one big accident the Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene survival of the fittest why is meaning even a word so it's all built on an axiom the axiom is that human beings that the deepest part are searching for purpose which means that there must be purpose and there must be designed now why they searching for it if they why don't they have it because somewhere that meaning was concealed there you go that Simpson if you go preach them some consciousness meaning is everywhere it's the divine energy that divine presence is there as soon as there's concealment then suddenly we're on our own so to speak at least in our consciousness so then we start searching we start to search how'd we get here why are we here why did this whole thing happen in the first place why did God create a symptom if you want to put it in those terms and then from there if it devolves what happens that that disconnect slowly turns into something that that lack of meaning which lets go back to the words I said earlier who you are and what you do are no longer aligned so what do you think is happening who you are is a person whose needs desperately needs for your survival and for your own welfare meaning in life what you do has nothing to do with meaning you're making money fine you have a good job you have influence maybe you're successful but that doesn't have anything to do with the purpose of your life or it just happens to be you're surviving in a material world and you're making and you're doing the best with what you have so there you have the disconnect right there how could that not create a shattering at some point there will be a shattering I mean it's it's strange for me to cite this but I was once invited in Cambridge to talk about there was a conference it was about affluence and spirituality so the topic I was given was money and religion interesting you know mix money of religion so I did my research I went through women went back to do my they get back to Adam Smith and capitalism and of course our good old Karl Marx and the Marxism etc so then I opened up my talk and I said I want to quote something I'd like you to tell me who said this he says like this the quote goes something like this that when you're at work you at home when you're at work you're alienated from who you really are because you're working for someone else you're competing with co-workers for promotion you're not even necessarily even working as something you're gonna benefit from so basically when your work your soul is not at home and we are at home you're not at work so there you have a split a psychological split so I asked who said this now scene scene they think I was a rabbi so they said the carts Kariba the baal shem tov you know i know they came up with a whole bunch of different names anyway I said no it's Karl Marx Marx not the Groucho but Karl Marx now Karl Marx you know was a self-proclaimed atheist and yet he uses the word soul because he was a brilliant man as much as we may not like his ideas but he was scathing critique of capitalism and a materialistic world and he had no what do you think so many Jews gravitated to him because his utopian vision was very attractive however it wasn't practical it was not viable but some of his critique is very interesting to learn from because it's absolutely true the workforce that we have here in the United States people working out their hours they work if you had this independence you sit down and analyze what does that do for the human psyche is it good for us are not good for us you know the conclusion would be now we don't have the power or the ability and we can't go fight the whole city hall and change the system so we have to find and that was my theme was how do you find and work deeper meaning how do you so-called spiritualize the material because Judaism is not about a monastic and ascetic lifestyle it's about engaging the world and trance and teaching and introducing transcendence into our material world fine but work itself what are you talking about look at look at how we're addicted and trapped to our contraptions to our gadgets I was sitting in a car with a friend I haven't seen him for a while we're trying to come here I'm trying to communicate I should say he's texting and texting and I saw this is not going anywhere so I decided to text them so I text him and he's sitting near me he says are you texting me because I can't this like suddenly like you know he was like disoriented I said yeah because I can't get your attention the understands what it tells the whole story so we live in a world with all the progress the dissonance is extremely profound between meaning and our lives what you do and who you are and therefore Frankel's premises are absolutely based on the these ideas that I shared earlier it all begins with the premise as I said that there is meaning and that in some way that meaning is hard to access if it wasn't we wouldn't be sitting here we wouldn't have a conference on this and frankly wouldn't have anything to say it's all based on not just that there is meaning but that were in search of meaning because it's not easy to find and even when you find it how do you integrate it into your life when you're ready running at 90 miles an hour and busy busy busy so if you're able to take it and trace it back and I'm saying this to dr. Frankel wherever he may be his spirit is here yeah okay is that if you as a good Jew would study with me and we study with us all the texts I'm note that we'd find deeper understanding in the search of meaning and also deeper interventions that we could actually use and find these models because they do go back thousands of years and these are not it's not my modern take on these verses if you look at the text they all talk about it they talk about it in cryptic terms it's a little more mystical but it's all defines essentially the evolution of how dissonance enters into our lives take away distance where we dissonance what we call the pre-tape that's a task consciousness you have a perfect world you have a world that's a messianic world you have a world where what Adam and Eve did was one with what who they were what do you think their punishment was people think wasn't a punishment it was cause and effect you separated yourself from who you are from your meaning so what do you think happens adam was told you now go have to work for a living you have to at the sweat of your brow possess a particular birth which should have come so naturally would now be painful and difficult why because you introduced duality once you separate meaning purpose from what you who you are and what you do what do you think is gonna happen you're gonna create a world of to at least duality if not plurality and they're all the fragmentation from there begins every business knows the business 101 is you cannot have a business without a mission statement other words a meaning purpose and a mission statement is short and unique Google's mission statement for example to organize all the information in the world and make it accessible to I think what Microsoft's Microsoft is a computer in every home in every office these are mission statements that sounds deceptively simple but they run 70 80 thousand employees all work under that umbrella when you ask a person and I've asked this too many people tell me what's your personal mission statement you know what everyone answers almost everyone one of the one of the few one of the few options here they say to be happy that's a big one to make money because then I can buy everything I need to have build a happy build a healthy family okay now all these don't call they're all great things but they're now qualify as a mission statement it would be the equivalent of a company saying our mission is to make money and have a happy employees every company's supposed to do that the question is how do you do it uniquely that's yours it's your and that's where people start saying oh you know what that I'm gonna have to develop I have something to say but I'll take a few weeks for me to share it with you or have a few options or I'm waiting til I retire that's when I'll discover my personal mission now you tell me if someone came to you for an investment in business and answered any of the above what would you do you would throw them a you won't even look at them you don't even know what your mission is you don't even know what that what so what's the function what's the purpose of what you're doing every day that's how sad it is that we live in a world with seven billion people and most people never even asked this question no one ever compelled them to has this question it's the first question that Hashem has other than my echo where are you I gave you a mission the of the la sombra I put you in a garden I gave you everything you need to serve to protect to actualize to realize the potential in this universe potentially your soul and you went off for your own some other agenda so essentially the search for meaning is the foundation of all of Judaism everything follows from there because if you don't have purpose then this was the meaning of Torah and mitzvot c-terminus is to fulfill that purpose when the Rambam and others write that Messiah is a Iker is a foundation in Judaism some ask why I understand that 613 mitzvahs Torah was given at sign but why is believing a mushiya such a fund that fundamental you know why because it's the realization of the purpose it would be the equivalent of saying that the world was created with design purpose and meaning but that meaning will never be realized we might as well say that there's no purpose if you're gonna say that so there's a realization there's a journey it's going somewhere so the foundations without even question of logotherapy are completely Jewish not just Jewish it's Torah it's everything I described earlier and what's even more fascinating is that we have a model of how things can go wrong and obviously as I said Magda will fool Amaka which is the healing preceding the illness how we can make it go right both two ways either to prevent that it shouldn't go wrong in the first place by keeping that focus and number two to do what we have to do to correct when things do don't work out exactly so I hope that I try I try to give that type of perspective and the end of the day is that all problems will begin with a vacuum and the void of this dissonance that I described that's exactly what that symptom is it's a void it's a vacuum the void of a person not having meaning I conclude with this I spoke for a group of teens at risk while ago and they were they were already on the rebound going to rehab and getting their issues is getting their lives together drug and alcohol primarily and I remember was it was an informal group and it was very like informal discussions I asked them all you know there's no human being on earth that's gonna say I want to become an addict nobody wants to be controlled by something else so how did you end up in trouble you know you didn't like set out and say I want to become addicted to the point I'm out of control and how I need to go to rehab no one wants that so what was the Ruth why did it start from so was interesting to hear the reactions one person said I was my parents were going through a very ugly divorce and I was just really just self-medicating to know myself a bit another person said I had bad friends and this is like a high and excitement and then suddenly gets out of control yeah it's too late and we were talking we told but I said yeah but I want to know why is it that some people who may have god forbid ugly divorces and they don't get themselves in that trouble and other people who who are bad friends and they don't necessarily fall what's what's behind it all I was trying to push to the get to there's at least consciously what they and one of them suddenly said which is what I was waiting to hear he said I was bored I was bored boredom sounds like very innocuous severe you know so we're all bored at times who's not bored at something but boredom is if you want symptom personified embodied in the human being is boredom you know nothing going on it's quiet you're lonely it's monotonous and you need some rush you need some high so if it comes from a good place great and if it doesn't like the thirsty person and the only thing is given to drink or something that's toxic you're desperate boredom is not is not per se the crime but it's the environment the breeding ground of all infection like any infections don't come from nowhere you create a breeding ground and then things begin to emerge and we started talking about it everybody in the room there even those that didn't even sense it said yeah absolutely if I was given something to do that was motivating and exciting it would have countered that problems I was that I was dealing with I had these problems I had nowhere to turn so whatever came my ways that's the thing I grabbed now it's not necessarily something I've set here that's revolutionary but it's putting it into a context so you have there at symptom a void of meaning a void of purpose is going to not guaranteed but is that most likely a cause for most problems wouldn't to say that without questioned now of course there are many other factors and that not that alone cannot account for everything but it's a tremendous point because it and also give meaning and purpose and passion to someone and the best pre-emptive medicine is it guaranteed of course that we all can get into trouble even the most purposeful people than people with driven and so on but if you're talking about preventive medicine talking about a helmet to protect you in those environments it's that purpose and drive so if you take Simpson which is the void which will lead to our sweetest I can in the somewhere something's going to give which will lead to a diminishment which will ultimately lead to a loss of what ma who I am I echo is the process that leads you from the void all the way to the worst but also gives us the refer the healing of how we can reverse that and turn it into a productive and meaningful lives and as Jews I don't have to tell you I mean we have unfortunately in the Froome world itself there's also dissonance where people can be from but they don't at all see how that's psychologically connected and they can be psychologically extremely dysfunctional and be the most from Jews that's another discussion which will do it another time anyway God should bless us all we shall have only healing in this world and should be a time we will not need anymore for thank you very much have a good afternoon [Applause] [Music] [Applause]