Why EXISTENCE itself feels PAINFUL

hi this is rabish this is a little intro to warn you this is the second part of a three-part series on amuna and anxiety and this second part is really focused on the problem sometimes it's helpful to explain the problem if you don't understand the problem you can't fully understand the solution so if you don't want to hear any more about the problem and about the reasons why many of us are feeling overwhelmed with everyday life and about why we feel stressed and passed our limit if that itself is stressful then maybe just skip to part three where we're going to talk about the solution you've been warned okay here's the lecture all right so welcome back this is part two and we're continuing our discussion of amuna which means faith and anxiety which means anxiety and amuna and anxiety are did you figure out yet that they're sort of uh opposites yeah yeah yeah that sort of a law of inverse proportions the moruna the less anxiety the less amuna the more anxiety yeah um so I want to reiterate and maybe go a little bit more into depth about something that we we spoke about last week um if you and and if you weren't here or if you're watching online and you haven't seen class one I'll I'll just tell you one pertinent thought that we shared last week and that was that um Hashem the Creator and His Infinite Wisdom endowed us with a survival mechanism to aler alert us to stimuli uh that may be dangerous uh so that we can be vigilant and make choices that will that will keep us safe and we're we're grateful that we have that ability the problem is when that system is working over time and we begin to become consumed with it and then as we spoke about last week we even start constructing a mythology I called it a mythology a personal mythology where we make up stories to explain why we feel agitated and then those stories take on a life of their own and become um sort of a a false narrative about our lives so that that's that's what we spoke about last week sounds familiar more or less yeah okay but I want to speak a little bit more about the the alarm system and I wanted to acknowledge that every single one of us was created differently we all look differently no two human beings have the same exact face even identical twins don't look exactly the same and our sages tell us that likewise in fact they compare one to the other just as no two people have the exact same face no two people have the exact same mind so uh we're all wired differently and uh there is a range of what's called normal although I don't know what normal is because no two people are exactly the same but I guess there's a range within which uh you're similar enough to everybody else that um you're considered normal when whatever that may mean um but we're we're all we were all endowed with with a unique way of experiencing our reality around us and and some of us experience it more intensely than others I I wrote a book over 10 years ago called God of our understanding spiritual uh Jewish spirituality and recovery from addiction and in that book I uh I coined a phrase uh the well the canary and the Coline is an old expression but I I gave it a Twist I I referred to the spiritual Canary in the spiritual Coline and what I explained is I was trying to give people an understanding of addiction I I think I even mentioned this last week in passing I said that addiction is self-medication it's not the addict's problem it's their best attempt at a solution it's how they're trying to treat the problem problem is being uh existentially uncomfortable so the the drug of choice is a way to distract oneself from that and I was trying to explain in in the book out of our understanding like why why does this person need that uh that self-medication more than the average person and so I said you know in the old days they used to go down in the mine and they opened up new areas in the m it would sometimes they would uh when they open up a new area there would be poisonous gas toxic gas but the gas is invisible it's uh odorless and uh therefore it's incredibly dangerous because you don't know it's there until people start dying so they used to bring a canary down in the M shaft with them and the canary would tweet and tweet and tweet and then if the canary would stop tweeting they go take a look oh why is the canary not oh the Canary's taking a nap no he's not taking a nap everybody get out of here so why was the canary the first to know that there was poisonous gas in the mine is the canary a toxicologist no the canary is just sensitive to the same thing the human beings are sensitive till he's just more sensitive he feels it first so that which would have killed the miners uh later kills the canary earlier and that's the canary and the coal mine so I I made an assertion there in the book book out of our understanding that the people that we refer to as addicts are troubled by existence and existence itself and if you ask yourself well H how could you be troubled by existence itself like if you tell me you have a specific problem right now okay I understand that but you find existence itself troubling and and my answer was as a rabbi especially aidic Rabbi who studied the spiritual metaphysical mystical teachings ofus yeah you bet you existence is troubling if if there's nothing but him if there's only the one then having a conscious sense of Separation which we call the ego or the egoo the edging God out you bet you that's a problem so why wouldn't somebody want to numb that or take the edge off of that or be distracted from that the only thing is most people who are quote unquote normal they can sort of uh ignore those pangs of the soul that says like why do I have to feel separate from the Oneness and from the all and then there are other people who are just more sensitive to it we call those or I I I refer to them as spiritual canaries and that's why and this is what I based this assertion on we find this really weird peculiar thing uh that A Spiritual Awakening has this uncanny ability to relieve the condition of addiction alcoholism and why should one have anything to do with the other and there's a lot of misunderstanding about it why is a spiritual awakening uh related to to overcoming addiction and and I explain very clearly if somebody has an existential problem that embodiment itself is painful being being an entity unto myself and conscious of it and aware of it that itself is causing me pain and then I find something to self-medicate to distract myself from that condition so that's what we call the addiction but you remove the self-medicating uh distraction I haven't really been alleviated of my problem in fact I'm left with my original problem which is existence itself is uncomfortable however when you introduce a spiritual awakening which allows one to have a sense of being at one losing that sense of separate selfhood and becoming United with a with something bigger with something greater with something unifying so this has this very strange um outcome of alleviating these underlying feelings of being uncomfortable in one's own skin and then you don't have to self-medicate because the thing you were self-medicating got cleared up through the spiritual awakening so I I wrote that book 10 years ago and I never wrote a followup to that book uh but if yeah yeah but if I were to write a followup um well one one idea I had right away after it came out was just to take the same book and tear the cover off and put a new cover on and take out the word Addiction and just give it to everybody but if I were to revisit this subject I think I might expand some of the definitions uh to include other people who are UNC comfortable in their own skin and I've just become more and more aware of this as the years go by uh and I think there's a lot of overlap between these different labels um somebody pointed out to me I had like a beginning of an Awakening of an aha moment uh five six years ago and somebody said to me um a woman who's in multiple 12-step programs and then told me that she has Aspergers and she said yeah but I'm sure you've noticed that the rooms are full of people on the Spectrum high functioning people on the Spectrum and I was like I hadn't noticed until now but now that you say that that makes a lot of sense something sort of clicked for me um what what you're talking about is People For Whom The Business of life itself is taxing not because they have any particular exacerbating situation going on right now although certainly when there are exacerbators that that certainly uh makes things even worse but we're talking about I'll I'll tell you a term I'll share with you a term that I learned a few months ago so I I'm I'm really into using the term uh it it it was very helpful for me the term is allostatic load I think it's spelled a l l o s t a t i c allostatic load or allostasis um so that basically means the stress that it puts on the organism just to go about life and everybody has a different capacity a different allostatic load that they can handle and when they get to their uh their threshold where they cannot handle anymore so this obviously causes um various different uh dysfunctional responses unless somebody quickly diminishes the allostatic load uh that's being placed upon them so we would see that where would you see that you know somebody who had gone through something exceptionally uh stressful so even somebody who generally is very well balanced and has a lot of tools for living and whose perceptions are very even Keel and is not super sensitive and and and and and overreactive uh but if they go through something really intense that intense experience could tax them to the point where they are at their alistic capacity and then they wouldn't be able to function very well until whatever stimuli that are causing this would subside right that that would that would we'd all understand that if someone would say to you you know what I can't deal with this right now I'm going through some intensely difficult things right now and we'd all understand what that means okay what's harder for us to to to to understand is when somebody says you know what I can't handle this right now or ever because not that I'm going through anything super intense I just I'm having a really hard time just being here in my body right now okay I'm having a hard time just being in the universe okay my capacities are totally at their maximum right now just being here like this the stimuli is a burden for me so maybe you haven't known notice but there's a guy in the third row who's breathing funny no I'm joking not right now but if there were I I would certainly notice it right or the fluorescent lights or or whatever you know the sound of the air coming on okay these are things I told you last week that I have tinius so I even do it internally to my own I'm picking up on stimuli that's not even you know tinius is in the brain it's not in the ear there's no actual sound so I'm hearing stuff that's not even there how much more so I'm hearing everything that is is there a guy told me about he he took acid he took LSD and he was like it was amazing I was walking down the street in my neighborhood and I walked by the shop and I looked at the sign and I noticed every brush stroke in the sign like i' had never seen it before I said you have to take acid in order to do that like I I I'm noticing the brush stroke in the sign now what's interesting is I'm noticing the brush strokes and the sign but I'm not noticing uncoming traffic so I don't really get to control it so much what I'm really hyper aware of and it's like driving me crazy and then there's like basic stuff that everybody else is aware of and I'm totally clueless totally clueless especially you know like social cues you know that that can be a difficult thing you have to be very deliberate about about thinking about that um so yeah and and you can call it whatever you want to call that um but I'm just I'm just telling you for me I I I I relate to the idea of life itself being inherently uh Al estatic overwhelming okay and you have people with ad and ADHD and everything's coming coming at them a mile a minute and and so it's not that it's not that life itself um or that the situation itself is particularly intense it's just like you have people who are just thinking very quickly and they're they're processing overprocess and then one thing distracts them from another from another thing and so yeah there's going to be a lot of overlap between these types of uh segments of the population the addicts and people on the Spectrum and people with ADD and ADHD and and just people who are generally all around sensitive with with with things we don't have a term for we don't have a label for we don't have we don't have letters for it yet but you know this the sensitive souls and uh I think that one thing we've we've come to understand more at least I've heard more people talking about it is how trauma can affect people's ability to process regular stimuli in other words if I had a traumatic event in the past or a series of traumatic events like with complex trauma so my alarm system may be broken to the extent where I'm hypervigilant and I recognize a threat where there really isn't a threat and I think that's a lot more acceptable today people understand that I don't even have to really explain that to you it's interesting which ideas come into fashion in which order because if I say that to you today that you know a person could have a traumatic event and now they're hypervigilant and they're recognizing nonthreatening stimuli as as threatening and I bet you well there's probably an over representation in this room because you came to a lecture about amona and anxiety probably 99% of people here know what I'm talking about you understand those words right okay because the past year or two I I started hearing about trauma maybe 10 years ago um I I was at a I was I was at a talk from uh from Dr uh Bessel vandel in in Chicago uh he came to Chicago was he was with The Meadows in Arizona and then he gave a talk there I saw him and John Bradshaw from The Meadows speaking there and that's when I started hearing about about 10 years ago but it's interesting so nowadays everyone knows trauma trauma trauma it's like a very dour uh term I I I just want to though tell you where probably people are going to start uh increasing their awareness is that yeah there are people who feel things that aren't really there or they feel a level of intensity that isn't really there because their system their their their senses were broken because of trauma I want you to understand that also and I believe that science will will especially Popular Science uh for all I know this already is proven in science but I want who am I when I say science I mean Popular Science I mean whatever I glean from secondhand from whatever TED Talks are popular nowadays right but I believe that people will start to realize that it's not just trauma that causes people to feel things overly intensely I think that people will start to realize that even people who don't have a specific trauma uh or maybe if you really like to use the trauma narrative to describe it I would say there are people for whom embodiment itself is the trauma in fact I I I I I passed this idea in front of a trauma uh trauma expert I was speaking to uh Dr Reggie Melos and there's a video of a interview that I I engaged in with her where I asked her some questions but uh I I I believe it's in the video I asked her if there are people for whom embodiment itself is the trauma and she agreed that that was something that exists so here here's what I think we're going to increasingly understand that maybe you became hypervigilant and over sensitive because of something that happened to you maybe you're hypervigilant and oversensitive just because you intuitively realize how bizarre it is for an eternal Transcendent being called a soul to be plunged into this container and have all of its uh default senses of spirituality completely covered up or or um to be bombarded with with uh other stimuli with physical stimuli and how inherently how inherently uh stressful that is for our true self for our true self meaning our our our soul and I do believe that sidus an understanding of sidus will help people to understand these things more and more when when we start to understand again I'm not a doctor I'm not a mental health professional that's not my training um but I see in the world the awareness the sensitivity uh the the willingness to understand different conditions and I believe what will eventually occur is that we'll start to understand that those are disturbed by the condition of embodiment itself are 100% correct those who were lucky enough to not be consciously disturbed by it um nobody's Wishing Upon them that they should suddenly develop a sensitivity but those who do have that sensitivity whether we want to say it's because of trauma because of autism as bers ADD ADHD or or or whatever um these hypers sensitive people who are just feeling everything more intensely I think we're going to start to realize that that's actually not so crazy and it's actually if there's any problem that's a real problem in the whole world that's the one real problem what's the one real problem the one real problem is that Hashem is everything he's absolute Oneness so how in the world can I be having this experience of separate selfhood what do I even do with that and I think that's where the desire for self Annihilation comes from Freud called it the death wish he says the people want to get rid of themselves Shakespeare spoke about Hamlet is contemplating suicide he says to be or not to be that is the question he doesn't say to live or not to live he says to be or not to be it's not living that's the problem it's existence existence means taking up space that this this Podium here exists it doesn't live but it exists you understand living means having a function that's not that's not so bad having a function having a purpose that's great as long as your existence doesn't get in the way existence means taking up space and having an identity separate from the one from the all that is absolutely maddening if you think about it so somebody asked me I gave a talk I gave many talks on this subject years ago but one particular version of that talk um by by virtue of pecul peculiarities of the internet algorithms there was one particular talk I guess that got out there more than others I think it was called how to be here it was actually recorded up in armun in uh I think it's Westchester County doesn't even matter the point is there's a version of a talk that I've probably given 200 times to various different audience and um I think the recording is from about 10 years ago it's interesting I saw last last spring was it last spring when the Ukraine war broke out and the people were evacuating or starting to evacuate about a year ago already wasn't it yeah was that when it was end of February was the end of February okay so it's almost a year ago now and a short time after that there was an interview with a young woman an American girl who had done a crazy thing because laicha said that if you really love every Jew and you want to show it then go out to communities and devote your life to providing Jewish resources to Jews and so uh she became the schl together with her husband she be she or they became the schim that adies in chernov Ukraine so this uh young woman young mother Alisa Silverstein is speaking online somebody sent me I was blown away by the interview she's being interviewed on kabad org and she's speaking about evacuating she's a war Refugee um evacuating with her children having literally no place to call a home right now living out of a backpack uh and she says you know but bar I was calm and I'm calm right now and she says um because you know Hashem is M him raak hasem sends the healing before the the disease so she says sometime before the war broke out I had a difficult pregnancy and I I needed something to help me just to deal with all that stress so she says I found and she said a perfect plug it was perfect it was per she said I found a video called how to be here from Rabbi shaab on soulwords dorg like she did it perfect it was amazing she even said the website name correctly some people say. I finally bought. if you go to soul soul words.com it'll redirect to Soul words.org but it's originally Soul words.org she said it it was part it was amazing it was amazing anyways so so she says so I watched this this this this video called how to be here and uh I had the tools for remaining present in my situation as stressful as it was and I was blown away by this that see here's the confession I don't talk about anything that I don't actually do that's not a confession I mean that's but I I would I would I would hope that would assume that of me but the confession part is the fact that I'm able to speak about amuna and using Faith as a tool for coping for going through life I could tell you what it says in the books because I'm a rabbi but the fact that I'm able to speak about it in a in an experiential way is because I I actually do it okay but here's here's the confession part I didn't learn how to do it because I was ever a war refugee I was never thank God I grew up in Chicago I'm I was never a war with Refugee okay and thank God I Never Had A traumatic upbringing and I know today it's it's it's somewhat fashionable to not believe someone when they say that no go look again go look again go look again I can't tell you that I ever experienced anything trauma with a capital T but I can definitely tell you that from the time of my earliest memories which were when I was one or one and a half between the 12 to 18 yeah so right there anyone who can remember being 12 months old you know is not normal right okay okay right okay but and and I I remember being that young and I remember being stressed How could a 12-month-old be stressed what's stressful childhood is a time when everybody is happy and free and they don't have a care in the world I was always stressed and I remember as a little kid I used to fall on the floor crying sobbing because the tag in my shirt and my mother had to cut out the tag in the shirt right so I don't know if in the 70s we had terms like sensory processing disorder maybe we did maybe I don't know I if we did my parents would have known it my father's a psychologist my mother's an educator and a speech and language uh therapist and uh I'm sure they would have known it if such a term existed but that's not the term they ever used around me um they were very careful about that to try to not make me more weird than I than Hashem already made me remember they gave me a childhood IQ test and they would never tell me the results till this day they won't they won't tell me what I got um but yeah I would fall on the ground crying because of the tag in my shirt now is that trauma like being a war Refugee certainly not no thank God no but if you're that kind of person then you do have to sort of figure out some type of tools for living right so I obviously well I don't know if I should say Obviously uh but after I say it maybe it's obvious I don't think for anyone spirituality is the first tool that you go to if you're having a hard time with life I really don't think for any it's the first first thing you go to and I want to tell you something um I mean since I was a little kid I I grew up with ideas of faith and and Jewish observance that wasn't anything I ever looked to as a response to why is life so difficult uh I went to Yeshiva I became a rabbi I I I learned all the books I taught the books I did not look to that as a way of handling life I kind of looked at it as two separate things like yeah I know I'm I'm I I get stressed out and life is difficult and and but I'm I'm what does that have to do with W with faith like what how is Faith an answer to that um and it took me years to realize how to take Jewish Spirit spiritual teachings more seriously um like really seriously and to internalize them as actual tools for living and when I did then a lot of things started to click and a lot of things made sense but I just I'm just letting you know I'm not a spiritual person I was a rabbi for years and I did not consider I still don't consider myself spiritual I'm not that's not my default that's not not the first place that I'm going to go but through trial and error I I realized that for me to be be spiritual and for me to be God conscious is not Pious it's it's just basic functioning basic functioning and if I don't do that then it becomes very hard to deal with day-to-day life so that's where my expertise if I have any degree of expertise that's where it comes from it comes from just being a person who used to cry about the tags in his shirt when he was a a kid okay yeah can religion become the addiction can religion become the addiction well we don't want to talk about that in public oh you bet you yeah I was invited once to speak about addiction in Lakewood this is maybe 10 years ago thank God I was I have been invited back to Lakewood since then it was your t i was for bringing actually in likea this year which is a A Small Wonder in of itself but I was was speaking about addiction and uh that's the topic they gave me I I don't like to speak about addiction in public because I think it's so misunderstood and it just it's laborious for me to to explain it because it doesn't mean at all what people think it means um like I was saying before it's not the problem it's the best attempt at a solution to the real problem people have a hard time with that maybe not in this room but like I'm say this room naturally skewed toward people who have more understanding of these types of things um so I someone was I forget what what they were asking but they the typical line of question could this be an addiction I'm yes could this be an addiction yes could this be an add they get I said everything can be addiction I said it's not the what it's it's the why why are you using it that way so I said basically ultimately if you're using something as an escape um because you can't handle life as God is creating it I used overtly religious terms because it was like what I mean thought I should be comfortable speaking religiously in other audiences I don't know if I would necessarily speak that way um because there's no point in uh making people uncomfortable uh but to to them I said look if you're uncomfortable with living in life as God is creating it and you're using something as an avoidance tactic or ritual uh or distraction from that then that's an addiction whatever it is and so I said like as I thought this would be very helpful I said like Li TOA could be an addiction a person could use delving into TOA as a way to actually avoid God and I don't think it went over very well yeah so you say you're not a spiritual person yes you're talking about what other word would you use other than spiritual well I'm not a naturally spiritual person I'm not naturally interested in amona I would much prefer to be normal and not have to I would like to be a normal Rel I'd like to be religious and normal and auna could be like icing on the cake of a normal life like when I feel like being spiritual I could do it and then Pat myself on the back and say wow that was meaningful as opposed to if I don't say m Ani I'm going to get myself in serious trouble within 10 minutes of waking up I don't want to be in that position okay so what I'm saying is my spirituality is is is by necessity okay it's like it's like paying taxes it's nothing that I relish it's something that I have to do in order to a function um which is by the way what I realized I I realized this long ago that there are different types of crowds uh different types of crowds and and those people for whom spirituality is something that enhances and adds meaning to life those people don't like me cuz yeah I I'm not sure exactly why because I have a hard time reading it I have a hard time projecting myself into that uh perspective but I I think most people they view spirituality as well spirituality of course is not a practical thing so obviously if you're pursuing spirituality you're doing it for the the depth and the meaning and the the higher purpose and and I'm sitting thinking like no actually no no that's not no that's that's I I wish I had that love y I wish I were in that position that's not why I talk about spirituality it's because I have a hard time doing what adults need to do to function in a world if I don't remain godc conscious so it's not a luxury for me it's not something that enhances the meaning of my life it's it's a basic tool for living um and I think that there are a lot of people like that now a lot of those people how oh you about you're asking about religion so for some people religion is the distraction religion is the avoidance tactic I once explained to somebody asked me uh cynic about isn't isn't Faith um a form of of of self-deception and now as I'm I'm like thinking out loud right now as I'm talking to I realized now why he why he asked that cuz he's normal now it just clicked for me that's why normal people are cynical it just occurred to me okay so I'll tell you what I answered him he was saying it isn't faith and avoidance tactic or isn't it self-deception um so I said you know there are two words that often get used or substituted for one another in the popular discourse and that is fantasy and Faith but if you know what either of them mean then you realize they couldn't be any farther apart from each other than they are they're they're actually opposites people tend to conflate them but really they're opposites what's the difference between fantasy and Faith fantasy is is is an idea that I cling to in order to avoid facing reality faith is an idea that I cling to in order to have the courage to face reality they almost sound the same until you actually unpack what those words mean they're opposites fantasy I'll say it again fantasy is an idea that I cling to in order to avoid facing reality faith is an idea that I cling to in order to have courage to Faith reality okay so when I'm speaking about faith here I'm not speaking about dogmatic faith I'm not speaking about 12 principles of faith I'm speaking about beliefs of a metaphysical nature things that we cannot empirically observe the the scientific method cannot demonstrate any of these things um but they are narratives which we have as Jews because we've inherited them as an unbroken tradition a Golden Chain of of a Mida a tradition that's come down to us but these are metaphysical principles that we lean on not to avoid life but the exact opposite to show up for life so what does it mean to show up for life for somebody it means she needs to pack up her kids and Evacuate the town where she's lived for 10 years because there are bombs going off and she needs to do that without making her children more panicked and she needs to she needs to be able to to put one foot in front of the other and do something that would overburden anyone's alistic load and how did she do it with faith she tells herself it's okay Hashem is with me I can do this not Hashem is with me and therefore I don't have to do anything Hashem is with me I can do this let me put let me put one foot in front of the other and that's called using Faith as a as a practical tool for other people and and this is what I'm trying to bring out to you and I and I'm I'm sensing that this room is disproportionately sympathetic to this idea disproportionate from the general population um that you will find people in society or even in your family who we observe them or or or identify them as having uh disorders and and what I'm telling you is there's another way of looking at it which is um maybe these people are just more sensitive to a truth that is true for all of us objectively but it's only that acutely an issue for these people subjectively okay and therefore and therefore if we'll speak about the amuna that somebody with sensory integration issues has to use in order to function I believe I guess that's my whole premise here that that's an incredibly effective language for speaking about auna to a general population in a way that's accessible and relatable and feels practical so I guess what I'm saying is that there's a lot of accidental spirituality that has emerged in various communities of people who are coping with different issues that spirituality is a gold mine of terms and tools that the general population can learn from in order to make these very lofty idea is more relatable so uh yeah I had a whole bunch of stuff here I was gonna I was going to tell you but uh what thank you Hashem the whole movement yeah I don't think that that's coming from people who who can't cope with life without it I think that that's a normal mainstream movement but I think that I would suggest you know I was on this uh podcast very popular it's the Crown Jewel of the five towns is the meaningful people podcast and uh I will say N I told you one thing I didn't want you to do is don't say anything about me in the intro that would make people further mistake me for a therapist and then you went and did it okay so I'm still correcting that okay but now you guys understand I'm not a therapist I'm just a guy who happens to have a difficult time living life happens to have already studied the things that would help for that but didn't know the things I was study you understand when I was learning I was learning because that's what we do in kabad it didn't occur to me that these were living skills I was looking elsewhere for living skills um but so when I was on the meaningful people p they asked me like what's my takeaway what's my bottom line I said you know a lot of the speaking that I do is special interest groups um I don't think people realize well I'll tell you this if if if you are a member of one of these groups which are groups that most people don't want to be members of I'm talking about you're a member of a a sub category a subsection of society um that nobody really wants to be part of for instance you have a sick relative you have an incarcerated relative um you have um a child who's not well um just think infertility uh I'm just thinking about the different groups that that that bring me out okay so nobody wants to be part of those groups but barem the Jewish Community is incredible at providing support for people who do have various different issues and um so a lot of the speaking that I do is I'm brought to you know I can't tell you how many times I've spent chabus in that Crown Plaza in Stamford you know what that is like every group that has a brochure and a website has to do their yearly yeah it's not Crown plasma it's called Armon can I get a discount at the yeah so yeah Stamford Connecticut so it's it's a Jewish hotel and I I've been there I don't know I must have been there 20 times uh and every time it's a different group um and and they're all special interest groups they're groups of people who H are are united by some problem the most quote unquote normal group that I was ever there for was uh kid of tuni but you want to know something half the people I saw there I'd seen at other groups it's a spiritual Seekers K of Tony it's people who are spiritual Seekers people who H people whose lives are difficult enough that they don't care about the stigma that the Orthodox Community will actually find out that they are spiritual speakers and so they say you know what I have nothing to lose I'm ready to out myself as somebody who wants to find spirituality okay and and and those twoo those people I'm telling you they're like me they didn't come to it for fun some of them did I I can't relate to those are the guys who sing too much and I don't know the kumzits guys I I don't relate to them but most of them are there because they have a problem or series of problems or life itself is a problem that's how they got there so anyways meaningful minute I was tell I was telling I'm talking to uh Nai Gordon and I'm saying uh what's my takeaway here's what I want you to know there are so many groups like this people who are going through issues and what I tell them what I tell every group I speak to um is that a lot of rabbis come and try to give to these groups that they identify as being weak you know it's not an insult to call them weak it's just saying look you're going through a lot and you need to be lifted so I'm here to give you and that's the way the most rabbis speak to them I don't speak to them that way I say that you know in school they give you the lesson and then you get the test in life they give you the test and then you get the lesson or like kazal say a there's no one as wise as someone who's gone through the School of Hard Knocks Nan often is translated as experience but it's more than experience and means a trial a test so I always tell them listen you didn't volunteer for this but the reality is that you have this intense stress in your life and you're still with us you're here and you're functioning and even if you're going to claim you're not functioning well it's okay I mean I get it we all have better days we have worse days but the reality is you you're still you're still here you're showing up you're you're spending a shabus you know you got out of the house and you did so you you you're here you're here that's a victory I don't know if everybody understands that but somebody who's going through something that's a prolonged stressful situation whether it's you know any of these these groups that I speak to whether it's people Couples married for 10 years with infertility that's a prolonged stressful situation families where you have a child is not only off the DK but an incredibly dangerous in a crisis situation it's going on for Years or or where they you have somebody with a prolonged illness God forbids you know cancer and these things are are stressful these things are very stressful and you you get out of the house and and you come to this event and and you decide I'm going to have a meaningful shabas you guys are heroes but here's the thing that means you are the teachers you are the teachers and how often do I hear people complaining within the Orthodox community that the way they hear spirituality spoken of is not it doesn't feel relevant or or or people will complain and this to me is an indication that their complaint is sincere it's not just an excuse they'll say why do I have to read secular self-help books to find inspiration why do I feel like people who say that that shows that they're sincere because it's not just somebody who doesn't want inspiration they act they clearly do when when they don't find it in Yiddish kit so then they keep looking and they until they think they found it and what I say to these groups is God gave you a difficulty to force you to have to learn how to live life on expert mode like you're playing the video game at at at the toughest setting and you're still in the game that means that we need you to go back to your community and you need to speak to your friends and your neighbors about what faith means anyone who's going through difficulty and handling with Grace if you're here tonight if you have a prolonged stressful issue in your life and you're here you got dressed you left the house you're sitting here you're a hero but that's not enough that you're a hero you have a duty and that is I promise you I promise you how do I know how can I promise this to you because I'm speaking about myself now you have a way of speaking about spirituality and faith that is going to sound more relevant and practical and actionable than somebody who's just trying to take it from the book books and translate it into English you're not translating it into English you're translating it into life and and therefore you are the communicators you are the teachers there's a there's a paradigm of the I guess it's something of a Trope of the Wounded healer which I guess is supposed to be something of an irony how can he heal if he's wounded ladies and gentlemen I don't know any one capable of emotional healing who's not wounded I how can someone who's emotionally wounded be an emotional healer I don't know anyone who's an effective emotional heal who's not emotionally wounded that's like the first prerequisite I'm not saying that we should find the person who's the most dysfunctional Basket Case who can barely get their life together and say teach me give me advice I don't mean that but I mean the people who are living in spite of some factor or factors which place extra burden upon the AL estatic load that they are carrying from on a day-to-day basis and here's the thing not everybody advertises their problems but if for whatever reason you know somebody who is good going through some type of prolonged stressful situation or who's not neurotypical and therefore life itself is a prolonged stressful situation okay then these are the people who need to be given a platform these are the people who need to be asked to share their experience and and I think that the professional teachers of faith will learn a lot from the amateur teachers of Faith professionals like I used to be a professional I'd speak about faith because I was a rabbi I had to speak about it what else am I supposed to speak about and then I went through my own experiences of realizing everything they had taught me in Yeshiva was what I needed in order to be able to function and then I was able to speak about it to other people in a totally different way yeah so if you're in this room I think you could probably identify to everything identify with everything I'm saying on at least one level at least one level and what I'd encourage you to do is I don't want to take much more time here but maybe leaving this room tonight think about ways in which by necessity uh you have become a more spiritual person in your day-to-day life not because it's the right thing not because it's Noble not because you think that's what you're supposed to do but think about ways in which having uh a relationship with God talking to God um thinking about God thinking about Divine Providence thinking about the Oneness of all creation uh I would ask you to consider ways in which you may take for granted you probably do take for granted that those tools are are allowing you to live and I think you should then identify that as a skill set that you have which is extremely valuable and that you wouldn't want anyone else to have to pay the price of admission to have to to gain would you want somebody else to have to go through what you went through in order to know what you know I can't imagine anyone who's spiritually sensitive would want anyone else to to suffer at all so if we can spare other people suffering by sharing what we know then then we have a duty to do that yeah so people who are experiencing difficulty need them to grow yeah but you're being God's attorney or I'm getting ner that you're being God's attorney you're saying that people go through difficult things in order to make them grow I I I don't want to say that I'm saying something almost I'm like close to what you're saying but different because I I don't want I don't need to be God's attorney um I'm saying that clearly if you've been through stuff you've grown I'm saying as a fact I'm not justifying oh you want to grow hey let's get some suffering in her life and help her grow not suggesting it I'm saying it more like look if you've been through stuff you've grown like I said okay so you know some stuff now okay that's just a fact what are you going to do with the stuff that you know that's all I'm saying you know things because of whatever experiences you've been through you wouldn't wish on somebody else to know it that way so share what you know that's what that's what I'm saying almost saying exactly what you said I think the the Practical outcome is the same okay so that was a pretty good description of the problems that a lot of us face but we didn't speak about the solution so I'm going to invite you to watch the third lecture in this series where we're going to really focus on the implementation of practical tools for faith that will help us achieve better balance in our day-to-day lives that should be here right here I think it's here [Music]