What God Really Wants (It's Not What You Think)

So the real question here is do you want to be holy or do you want to serve Hashem? Okay, those are two different things. Do you want to be holy or do you want to serve Hashem? And what I mean by that is like this. If you want to be holy, meaning you think of yourself as having come to a certain level in your spiritual evolution where you feel that you are above the the struggles that the rest of humanity still is burdened with. and and you're past all of that, then yeah, it can be a shocking and painful and and embarrassing thing to be reminded that you haven't graduated from the regular human struggles and you are still tempted by things that are forbidden. You are still drawn after uh and attracted to things that are not compatible with spiritual life. And and if you're trying to be Mr. holy or misholy. Um and then you get that reality check that you still do have these impulses. It's devastating, right? Absolutely devastating. But let's shift it. Are you trying to be holy or you trying to serve Hashem? If your goal is to serve Hashem, then I got great news for you, ladies and gentlemen. Serving Hashem means to do what he wants. You love someone the way they want to be loved. Okay? So you love Hashem the way he wants to be loved. And he told us in his commandments, I know a lot of people know about the ten commandments that those were revealed at Sinai at the beginning of the revelation of the Torah. But in total there are 613 commandments. And one of those 613 commandments is a commandment known as lossuru. Yes. In fact, Jewish people who say schma, the prayer shama here, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one. Um, we say this verse at least twice a day because in the in the complete Schma prayer, we say this paragraph which is actually uh not from the same paragraph that Schma is from. Schma is from the book of uh Deuteronomy Vimm. But there's another paragraph which speaks about the exodus from Egypt and it speaks about the mitzvah of the titus of the fringes on the four corners and it also speaks about this concept uh this is from the book of numbers from bidbar it's actually from chapter 15 of numbers uh verse 39u do not go straying after your heart and your eyes that lead you astray. In other words, the Torah acknowledges that there is such a thing as human temptation, that the eyes will see and the heart will desire that which is forbidden. And comes the mitzvah, the divine commandment, and says, "But do not go straying after those things." And what does that mean? Simply put, it means that anytime you have an impulse and you curb that impulse and you don't go following after it, you are fulfilling a divine commandment. Well, hey, isn't that what life's all about? Isn't it about serving our maker? And if our maker said, "This is one of his commandments," why wouldn't you rejoice over the opportunity to fulfill a commandment? Okay, so I know the answer. The answer is because you're going to say, "But that's a shameful mitzvah to do. I don't want to go brag to everybody that I did that mitzvah because if I tell people I did the mitzvah of sudua, I did the mitzvah of resisting my sinful impulses, then I'm admitting that I have sinful impulses, right?" Okay. So your your first problem is that you wanted to brag about your spiritual accomplishments. So then when you're full of pride, self-consciousness, ego, so already you know it's not about God, it's about you, right? And therefore you feel shameful about the fact that the way you served Hashem at this particular moment was by not giving in to your impulses. But if you're humble and you're honest and you say, you know what, it's not about me. It's about God. It's about God getting what he has asked us for, then it's a wonderful thing. Um, I was walking down the street. I saw something that my heart wanted, not allowed to have it. It's not something that is compatible with a spiritual life. And I told myself no. And by telling myself no, that that that internal dialogue of no, that itself fulfills a commandment just like any of the other commandments, just like uh commandments that people may celebrate. Uh you know, I'm thinking of a situation. I knew a guy, I didn't even know him. you knew a guy who knew a guy who made a big celebration um of of fulfilling the mitzvah of shoeing the mother bird away from the nest before taking the eggs. It was a whole thing. It's a it's an uncommon mitzvah to be able to fulfill. It's one of the 613 commandments. It doesn't come up so often. And I knew a guy who had a friend who was like making a whole celebration. He set out sent out invitations and he had a video crew. He's doing this mitzvah shoeing the mother bird away from uh from the nest which I mean that's beautiful that he's so excited about a mitzvah but you know my I didn't say this to him but my first thought was um yeah that's a cool mitzvah right that's a mitzvah that you want to like tell your friends hey uh come see me do this mitzvah but what about leasudu what about the mitzvah of hey I'm a human being I have a that means an an evil inclination. Um I have impulses that are not healthy and I resist those impulses. What about that mitzvah? You don't want to talk about that. Nobody wants to put that on their uh on their resume. So this is this is the basic question. Do you want to be holy or do you want to serve Hashem? And now let me get into why this is so important like really why this question needs to be answered. And um I want to talk a little bit about the the the the guilt cycle or the shame spiral. Basically what happens is when a person feels bad about their spiritual condition, you would think that that would lead them to become better, right? That's seems logical. Person feels bad about their spiritual condition and they improve it. Um rarely rarely. Usually what happens is a person feels bad about their spiritual condition and it leads to yosh which is the Hebrew word which means uh dispondency uh despair and this is so common place in the as far as a a phenomenon of the human psyche that the atahara the evil inclination that that that voice that's implanted in every one of us to undermine us uh it will exploit this feature of the human psyche in in in a very strategic way. In other words, this internal voice, its job is to ruin your life or to try at least. It's not going to come and tell you to sin because then you'll identify it for what it is and you'll resist it. It will come to you surreptitiously and instead of telling you to sin, what it'll do is say, "Hey, I'm a voice of conscience. I'm your conscience. I'm a holy voice. I want to I want to help you to be better and I want to call to your attention that you are uh spiritually ill and that you're a twisted sick individual and how could you and how appalling and aren't you disgusted with yourself and you listen to him because he sounds like this preacher. He sounds holy. But the reality is what does he want to get you to do? He wants you to say you're right. I am awful. And now what happens? Two things happen. First of all, you're in pain. Emotional pain. Well, no one wants to be in pain. It's a survival mechanism our creator implanted in us that we we don't want to be in pain. But where do you go to escape the pain? Well, you know, there's nowhere to go because the pain happening inside your own head. So, you uh numb the pain. How do you numb the pain? Distraction. What distraction? Well, I'm already feeling bad about myself, right? So, that's the second thing. I'm feeling bad about myself right now. So, when I'm looking for comfort or distraction, I'm not going to have very high standards about what I'm going to use to distract myself. And what ends up happening is I end up indulging in a way to anesthetize the pain and then I end up doing something that's worse than the thing that I was feeling bad about in the first place. Lather, rinse, repeat. And that's really how the internal voice um will can potentially destroy someone uh god forbid. So here's the thing. Get over yourself. We're all just humans. We're all broken. We're all struggling with to some degree uh unh wholesome impulses. But the fact that we were given free will and that we can control ourselves and we can choose to do God's will. God does not command us for not. God doesn't frivolously give uh unattainable edicts. If God gives us a commandment, it means that we have the power to rise to the occasion. And when God commands us, do not go straying after your heart and your mind and and your eyes. Um and control your impulses. So that's not something that's meant to uh just be like a you know an aspiration maybe someday. No, that that's a mitzvah commandment like what part of thou shalt not did you not understand? Used to be an old billboard that said that. Um like this is not a thou shalt not. It's actually a thou shalt. It's a positive commandment in case you weren't catching it. Pushing away the negative impulse. It sounds negative because you're not doing something, but it's actually a positive. It's a positive. You are you are actively not giving in to the impulse. So that resistance is the fulfillment of a commandment. You are doing the king's bidding at that moment. And what is there more to life than that? You're doing the king's bidding. Celebrate. Be happy. Be happy. Be grateful. Don't be ashamed. Don't don't be full of self-hatred, self-loathing. that only happens from the arrogance of the person who thinks that he should be free already from these types of impulses, but rather celebrate it that you were just given the opportunity to do a mitzvah. So every time you experience temptation instead of beating yourself up over it, I mean obviously if you give into it, that's a a whole other discussion. God forbid don't give into it. what I'm saying if you have the impulse and you resist and you don't give into it. So celebrate that as an opportunity to do God's commandment, become closer to God, make yourself useful to God. Um you know what could be better than that? There's nothing better than that.