(Way# 41) LIVING IN REALITY: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi uh aaron david poston uh who has been teaching us for quite a while now we've been going through the 48 ways to wisdom uh by uh rav noak weinberg of blessed memory and uh rabbi poston was one of his students so nobody better to share the material with us and last week's class was excellent on making others meritorious and i know he's got an even better one for us today and i think that this course keeps ramping up with more and more wonderful things that we can acquire uh and integrate into our life to draw closer to hashem and i encourage everybody to go back check every one of these out they're gonna they're each one of them will have a distinct message uh for an attribute you can you can uh work into your life they're just beautiful and i'm so thankful that rabbi poston takes time out of his busy schedule to share with us so let's just jump right in and see how the rabbi is doing tonight in jerusalem shalom rabbi we know hanukkah is coming tomorrow you're going to have a very busy week i'm sure in jerusalem yes thank you dan yeah we're looking forward to hanukkah and um yeah i'm just glad to be back and i just want to like let everyone know this is part of a long series right it's 48 ways to wisdom we're on 41 now we're doing well we're getting through her but i i just want to it's like a a disclaimer right because i want everyone who's listening and really enjoys the series to go and see the book which is over my left shoulder either the book itself or go online to h.com and you can do a search for the 48 ways you can get a very similar to the book um pretty much chapter for chapter but it's been revised a little bit so there's the book there's the video recordings as well which you can find on the website or there are actually quite a few other students who have also spoken about these 48 ways and nothing to do with asiator per se not necessarily you know the rosh shiva he was reverend weinberg was a roshiva vegetarian but this is all ancient jewish wisdom based on the mission in percyavo and jews all over the world have written about it and spoken about it for millennia yeah and i don't feel that i could you know i really justify so what we're doing here is you're just scratching the surface getting people interested in what the perfect level for noah though beyond the seven let them realize that there's much more beauty there that's for sure that's for sure so tonight's topic even though it's called in hebrew mamido ala ms which is really hard to translate in a single fashion way but it could mean standing up for truth it could mean um standing firmly uh getting into reality so basically he translates for the for the sake of this chapter living in reality keeping it real keeping it real ah that's great that's great um there's a famous set of books called strive for truth uh robbie destler one of the roshiva's of last generation two generations ago in gateshead called strive for truth or miktov in hebrew which just means the letters of elijah but based on his name but it was translated to strive for truth okay so we're we're talking about like how do we how do we say this many people are living in an illusion and it's it's their fault i mean part of its society the way we were brought up um but let's say as you're training to be a rabbi so one of the things that when you're asked questions or there's a a a quarrel right you have people who need a resolution and they're in front of you like king solomon right the famous story king solomon what did he do this woman says this baby's mine if everyone knows the story i don't get so much background right for those who are not familiar i'll quickly get go through it unfortunately uh a woman was nursing her baby in the middle of the night i think she squished the baby whatever it was the baby had passed away and uh apparently she traded her dead baby for a live baby the other woman and they come before the king solomon who is a judge just a very smart man and one of the smartest men that ever lived and the famous story is how is he going to decide who's the real mother because each one is claiming that the the live baby is theirs right obviously one is telling the truth and one is lying so what did he say he came up with this idea okay uh let's just cut the baby in half and uh he wanted to see the reaction of the real mother so let's just say the the fake mother says yeah yeah okay i mean i don't know how she came up with that solution but what what can she do but the real mother says no listen it's really my baby but let the baby live let let this fake mother hold on to the baby and have my own baby die and so whatever the exact words were king solomon realized who the real mother was striving for truth to get to the real truth how do you know the truth how does anybody know the truth and i think that this is a dilemma that every every human being right jew and non-jew alike you know what i'm going to say yeah we we try to think torah for sure i'm going to assume i i could be totally wrong about this that it's probably a bigger dilemma for non-jews but with that being said in other words if you're brought up in a home where in in a home a jewish home should be a place where yes we do tell the truth to our children right but we also allow them that's something that is so fantastic i'm going to use the word fantastical it's absolutely fantastical that we encourage questions that the child as he's growing up or she's growing up understands the other side and then you tear apart you know the fallacies and that's what happens in a jewish when you're learning you learn with a partner and each one is basically sharpening sharpening their sword so to speak right sharpening the knives you need to sharpen your own wit you need to sharpen your own you know stance against the other person and be honest that's going to be the main thing because when you hear the fallacy in your own argument then you realize the other person's is giving a more correct reasoning or or rendition or reading of whatever it is you're trying to decipher so i think in a jew i think in a from a religious jewish home with a torah upbringing you are going to encourage this type of learning where you are have to be brutally honest and stand down when you you know there's no ego involved right you just want to get to the truth and that's what you're taught because that's what abraham did right abraham stood for what he was let's just say the truth he left the place of illusion that's how we describe babylonia right babylon and he came to earth israel which is a land of clarity okay a brutal honesty and that's what he represents and that's what he instilled hopefully into his children and so i would believe that at least the religious jews that i'm around this is how you bring up your children and i hope i did a good job with mine um but anyway so that so the question is when you're taught oh there's such a thing as santa claus and you're not told until i don't know i don't know what age i can't even imagine maybe they never even tell them that santa claus doesn't exist i have no idea but at some point you realize that it's all it's all it's all lies right as that front uh here in canada to patronize the uh lgbtq community uh they've got a new book out this year santa claus has a boyfriend that may talk about fantasy i mean look without getting banned from facebook without talking about too many things that are controversial and the reason yes we believe there's truth but there's also compromise keep in mind that we have a very important message and it's not worth what's the word getting banned from facebook because everyone knows if they want to really speak the truth you do it in private sometimes right my rebbe told me some things you think you don't say and some things you say you don't put it to print and some things you print you don't publish it's so you have to have patience okay we're not we have to stand up for truth and there's going to be times where you have to okay you have to go out on the limb and put everything at risk but in the meantime i just want to mention about these these groups that you mentioned without mentioning the names of these groups well maybe i have to say certain things we all know that in terms of science in terms of biology there are basically i mean i don't even know the binary ice idea there are two um genders there really are not 75 or a million and two and not only that but there are grades in between we have to admit that i mean science you know there are children who babies who are born with multiple limbs or right in all kinds of chemical um uh distributions with various variations but we're talking about the norm okay right so at least when you're looking at science and there's no ego involved so then you will see the black and white okay um and of course they're going to be gradations um but uh anyway that that's going to be an issue i'm not going to deny that but basically when you're dealing with objectivity there has to be a certain amount of objectivity in this world right in other words you're going to strive for truth or stand up for what's true so the only way you can really do that is if you are objective and you don't you take the ego and put it outside um and in terms of like what's the word um we're talking about gaining wisdom acquiring wisdom so when you have your ego involved it's the biggest uh impediment to getting to the truth we talked before many times about a word called cognitive dissonance okay people can look it up how do you spell it like it sounds cognitive which is probably the easy word to figure out and dissonance i believe that's how it's pronounced d i double f then you can have and yeah you can have all the evidence staring you in the face and that's what you need evidence when you're looking for truth and it's they talk about emotion so the emotion or the emotional response something deep-rooted that's preventing you from seeing or let's say accepting the truth i'm going to just simply call that ego obviously it's probably much more complicated become subjective and um so the the idea of let's just say a rabbi has to be trying to get to the truth of truth that's that's the bottom line you have to get to do so what about the layman the lay people well also you're living your life let me just ask you a question rabbi mati burger from asiator gave a famous lecture series and it was basically like it basically goes like this you know is there a god and you could say okay maybe yeah maybe no whatever is there a god but if there is right it's going to make a difference in my life in other words is there a god and what's the difference does it really matter you know that it does right i'm talking about how you speak how you act how you think right especially how you act right all this is going to make a huge difference so you do want to get to the truth you need to get to the truth so in other words if this is a way to acquire wisdom i think we need to discuss the honesty part the getting rid of the ego apart the knowing and recognizing where your emotions are taking you uh having a a strong pull and just being aware of that is i think the first step um so based if you take talk take a look at the words to stand up or living in reality standing up for truth living reality the the problem is meaning the opposite is the illusions all these illusions and something we say in judaism is this world is an illusion they're it's we're just it's full of illusions so we have to figure out what are those illusions the illusions and and try to uh to stay away from them um i have so much here to cover i had a friend i still have a friend bro hashem uh i don't want to mention his name but i'll call him sf okay if he's ever watching this he'll know so he was diagnosed with cancer now this person when i met him in jerusalem he had told me about as he went through life he went through such soros a lot of a lot of a lot of pain with relationships as well as health issues he had brain surgery he had stomach surgery he had all kinds of surgeries that the doctors told him he wouldn't survive and yet he did and anyway so i don't know how many years ago seven eight years ago he was diagnosed with cancer and they told him who are they whoever they are right these doctors told him that he had six months to live that's it i don't think more than that and the truth is it could have been ten years ago but it was over seven years ago somewhere between seven and ten years ago and um i didn't know how to react how do you react to someone that tells you that the doctors just told you you have six months to live you're not gonna live longer than that so i did i prayed on it i really thought about it and i'm not even sure i said the right thing but i'll tell you what i said to him and he did appreciate it and i think he still appreciates it to this day this guy's going to outlive us all i said to him with tears in my eyes and a choked up choking up saying how lucky he was you are so lucky because all of us are living in an illusion that we're going to live forever and here it is i mean i don't believe the doctors but let's just say you know you give some credibility to them so what are they saying they're saying that you're you're gonna die well you're you're walking around knowing that and we're all walking around not knowing that meaning forget about the six months but they told you you're gonna die and you're living with that idea and you know what he did he took a certain amount of money and he took i don't know how you call it cruises he went and saw the world and the guy is still alive to this day and he wrote books um and he's helping people he's so involved with people and he's just such a sweet guy um and i'll tell you the truth i mean again if he's listening i hope he's not gonna take it personally he was a little bit of a difficult personality a little bit and i'm going to tell you he's softened up he's just he's even more sweeter than he was then um he's just a terrific guy anyway so that's my that's my experience with with one person who i guess we all live in this especially you know again i don't want to get too political but there are certain people who walk around thinking that if they get a jab of some sort they're going to live forever okay well yeah but there are some of those that think if they don't get it they're they're they're gonna they're they're yeah so i think they're gonna die if they get it some of them you know it's it's yeah okay like i said i don't want to get too political but there is this you know reliance on medicine the reliance on certain pills or certain procedures that is going to change their life forever and keep them and that's an illusion like you said if you want to say the other extreme is also an illusion okay so what do we always face with evidence right and there's especially in this situation nobody knows what to believe right because the evidence we all know from both sides that someone has an agenda somewhere so the question is you know which one is more plausible okay without getting into anything too political um we we just have to realize that we do need to investigate evidence as best as we can and realize when there are people that are presenting the evidence that have a have to flesh in the game so to speak and i'll use the word big pharma right whatever that means right and there were always people doctors who were anti-establishment right that were anti-big farmers that was their whole deal and you know what they're having a field day so you have the two extremes their agendas like they're they're they're hot to try they're ready to go to spill it all and and make it like real for everybody but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle now also a thing called relative right the we're what we call relative reality unfortunately as you already mentioned about the uh this alphabet soup right that there is no reality it's like whatever you you make it and that's also not that's it means you're basically saying there is no such thing as objective or absolute reality or absolute truth yeah there's no walking around to walk on right so we'll let we're going to get to that point that's also a major problem for this generation right where subject people don't they don't believe it all in absolute truth um i described before how in judaism we already discussed it now how you have a hebrews system but let's say even a kabura you have three or four people sitting around talking about what is absolute truth so i gave the example you have a bottle take a bottle of um i don't know healthy apple juice okay but either way it has a label and it's sitting in the middle of the table and everyone's looking at it from their angle and we want to say we want to conclude what is the absolute truth about this particular bottle which each one of these five people is only seeing even though you would say 20 percent of input is coming from each one each one is seeing 180 degrees right up until whatever is behind the bottle they cannot see sure each one will describe what they see each one is not describing absolute reality it's impossible because there's some things beyond them they cannot see or perceive but when you have all five people looking at whatever we're going to say 20 of it of well it's really 180 degrees each one but 20 vision out of the five people each one is seeing something different but if you put it all together all together they will come closer when they describe what it is that each one's rather than on their own to a absolute reality now is it absolute still they have what's underneath we have what's above yeah what's inside it you still don't come to a 100 sure but you are closer and this is the way to go so you realize there is some thing called relative reality but it's based on reality of a certain perception so when you have this dialogue hopefully you will get because you have to know there is such a thing as objective and subjective reality and you want to go with the objective reality as much as you can to stand up for something because if you don't stand up for it you stand up for nothing we used to say in our yeshiva days when we first back 30 some years ago right oh yeah i'm open-minded right this is like a big joke you're so open-minded that your brains will fall out on the ground right okay you have to be open-minded there's no question about it but again it's the evidence not just a fleet and fluted thing okay so let's get into the nitty-gritty of everything so the reshiva wants to let us know it's not just about you it's about setting it straight for others if we actually go back to some of the ideas uh in the last few chapters right love correcting other people right uh give giving to it's also for yourself but you feel there's a responsibility to to give rebuke to others um carrying the burden right you feel the responsibility okay judging others favorably meaning helping them move in the right direction even metaphysically and and spiritually in that sense and this this idea of setting someone else it's not just yourself helping others see reality it's all part of this um let's say a subset of these groups of uh me don't ever want to mislead knowingly that's for sure right but the main thing is they all start with yourself right they always start with if you can't do it yourself how you expect it how can you really help anybody else so um this is the idea most of us allah said a lot of us at times we live a life filled with illusions what we need to do is get ourselves straight get rooted in reality and once we are in that position where we're as close to reality as possible we can certainly help others and we should feel the responsibility to do so now instead of running away from your problems this is the idea love life life is full of yes challenges but accomplishments right and you should feel that way yeah and and you should look every morning to conquer whatever's whatever challenges are coming your way um but this is one of the ideas to achieve genuine greatness instead of living in a fog of self-delusion i mean we're talking about reality here okay and not um i mean there's some people that are way out there and we'll talk about how insanity itself is also contagious okay so unfortunately we do run into people maybe ourselves included where we have such a muddled idea of self-perception of ourselves um some of us are depressed we think we're weak we think we're no good and i can just imagine people brought up in christianity look it's everybody we're all human we're all flesh and blood and we all have trauma growing up and we have daddy issues and mommy issues in right um um self-esteem issues but if you were taught if i'm just saying if you were taught that you are evil from your youth right and um sex is what they knew about it and you were born in sin and you know the only way you're going to find any salvation is through whatever you know these these uh i mean what kind of i don't know what kind what can you accomplish in this world right but when you're taught that your soul is pure and god yes he gives you challenges right and you have a yates in her on the yetzer tov you have a constant well called a battle you know of internal battle of making choices and god wants you to choose good he knows you can choose good and he loves you and he's giving you opportunities after opportunities to do good and he's giving you the strength to do good i think it's just set you off on a whole nother wavelength of life it's called positivity i mean it's okay but so i can imagine that people who are brought up especially in christian homes maybe the muslims homes that have um you know totally submissive to certain uh ideas anyway um that one should feel good right getting up in the morning and ready to tackle the the next opportunity so like when you help people so it's you have to be objective right and that that's usually the case right when you're experiencing your own problems a lot of times you're very subjective and but when you're object when you're a friend listening to your friend right listening to a friend who's complaining or whatever as an outsider there's a little bit more objectivity so hopefully through helping other people and you're consistently hopefully being objective that should help you in your own life in other words even like in the 12-step programs that we've spoken about so much that doing 12-step work as a i'm a graduate you never graduate but let's say as someone who already went through the first 11 steps having had a spiritual awakening as a result of those steps helps other people you're consistently helping other people it's because that will help you stay objective on your for yourself so in other words helping others is i mean let's it's like it's like where does the wheel begin right was it the chicken or the egg but hopefully by the 12th step you have experienced a tremendous amount of rigorous honesty i just for those who are not familiar a lot of the steps have to do with this and the counting of your soul looking at your motives looking at your actions how you've hurt people making amends right the willingness and the the desire to really change your heart stuff for sure so hopefully after having already gone through that you have an idea what it means to be honest with yourself and therefore you're helping others and by constantly helping others hopefully you're like in this uh in the rhythm of being honest and objective uh with yourself so that's uh you can see why this also is a way to acquire wisdom standing up for the truth okay um not letting your i don't know your friend lie to himself right kid himself um you know whether it's he's experiencing as we say cognitive dissonance or he's just living an illusion you know you want to wake him up to reality but how you have to do with loving kindness um [Music] you know when you're trying to help somebody you don't want to just do a cosmetic um uh make it you want to want to make you want to make it yeah you don't want that just a patch because the patch is going to fall off eventually you want to help that person make these real changes in their life so you're listening to them and listening is so important when you're trying to help somebody i do catch myself i'm sure we all do you know we're so excited about having this new relationship but really if the other person is experiencing pain let them talk it's going to help you being able to help them by letting them talk basically you want to get to the root of the problem you know i recently had i don't know why i do get people who i don't want to say a lot of people but probably more than most people who are suicidal or people who claim that their friend is suicidal when you finally meet them they're not suicidal at all they're just going through some you know major issues and they're very depressed and they're very down but um the last person i dealt with i i i pretty was i was pretty sure that they weren't suicidal but it doesn't matter i mean you're talking about life or death so you take it seriously and you treat them with you know kid gloves in the beginning and i said to the friend that wanted me to be involved in trying to help this person actually the person themselves said they wanted help they want to talk to a rabbi who's willing to explain to them while why why suicide is forbidden according to torah law and i thought that's very strange this person that's not what's bothering them that cannot even be close to reality that they want to talk to a rabbi who's going to convince them there's something else really going on and i want to get to the bottom of it i want to get to the root of it and and i realized very early on in our conversations that this person is hurting so bad that their whole life they created an illusion momish an illusion um i don't want to go into too many details structure is not real an absolute illusion about who they were their identity and everything about it and i knew it from the very beginning and uh later on arrogance works that way he actually does it around totally totally the ego was so big and this person wanted to live more than anything else you know but uh they created such a a trap for themselves you know this illusion that they were going to get found out anyway let's move on this is something that we need to help people get to the root of their problem so it's not easy i remember when i first became religious i heard this from raviolis you should live and be well in miami beach he said that if you come to a place and let's say you're a rep repair me and your ass let's take a refrigerator and you're asked to repair it well first you have to find out what's wrong with it so if you come in thinking you already know what's wrong with it you're probably not going to find out what's wrong with it because your mind is fixated and it's not able to see it's too subjective yeah proper diagnosis is yeah it takes a lot of objectivity which means the ego cannot be there you're looking at it with fresh eyes and you'll well i mean eventually you'll find it but how quickly yeah and at what expense and at what expense yeah you don't want to replace the compressor if it if it needs something else so when the person a human being which is much more complicated than any refrigerator even the most modern uh high-tech fridges a human being is just beyond that it takes a lot of objectivity you know another thing they ask they say about rabbis is you really need to learn a lot of psychology now i don't know if it's book psychology or street psychology or just as you take on the responsibilities of people that you'll figure it out but basically it's very true um so basically you want to find out what it is that they're missing what you you'd like hope and pray to god that you'll say the right things that will change their life for the better and i think that you know but i think you have to pray i think besides whatever books you can learn from or people you can learn from it takes a lot of we call siata deshmaya a tremendous amount of assistance from hashem to be able to help people used to submit yourself to say i want to help this person i need to see the truth i need to be out i need to get my own ego out of the way and it's a real a real request from hashem with which with every person you meet because as soon as you walk in there with any kind of subjectivity how can you possibly help them you've already you know labeled them or nailed the problem and i'm not going to say you're you're wrong but in a lot of cases you're probably not right and it takes a lot more time than just looking at somebody and say oh i know their problem is right so and yeah yeah well there's still there's just so much to talk about anyway he mentions a few examples here so about a father and a teenager right we all know they're pretty difficult uh ages but imagine a father the father of a teenager is frustrated his son doesn't listen to his advice well wow okay so at home there's constant tension and fighting between the two the father's no idea how to communicate with the son and get him to listen so what solution can you suggest to the father i mean come on listen we hopefully would be more objective right so we would simply tell him right that um stop telling your kid what to do i mean what's the father supposed to do you have to tell them right i mean you're talking about god gave you this important life and if this you know if you don't do your job but it's not rational to hold them to full adult standards is it no for sure not but one of the ideas is to be an example right if you feel your child is not listening to you you have to examine yourself okay that's just one of the things you want to tell a father who feels his kid's not listening to him and it's usually the case i'm not saying it's full-blown hypocrisy but let's just take you know a a jewish example a kid in shul um let's say the kid is not paying attention uh and doing his you know maybe his att maybe adhd maybe he's got all kinds of other issues but let's just take a normal case simple case um if the father is looking at his cell phone during uh prayers or the father's just looking around or the father is always late for sure so if the if the father is trying to tell the son how important it is to be on time or to be attentive just to look in the book well what's the father doing right if the father's not looking in his book and he's not paying attention to what he's supposed to pay attention to so how do you expect the kid to so that could be a very uh objective thing and usually i'm not going to say it's always the case but a lot of times it really is the case so um um let's just see and then basically with the father is in an illusion right to think that he's not even part of the problem right he's gonna be part of the solution uh here's another example okay it's not a very nice example but let's just use it it's a theoretical example okay so let's say a son who's really you know doesn't feel his father loves him right yeah so he comes to the rabbi so the rabbi's gonna say listen let's say you were traveling in europe okay you were by yourself maybe you're with a few friends i don't know but you end up in a hospital because of uh who knows what it could have been infection it could have been hit by a car but whatever it is you're you're flat on the back in a hospital bed who do you think is going to travel 5 000 miles to come and see you or be in your bed right you think your father hates you you you have all kinds of resentments against your father he's the only one that's going to be there for you okay maybe the mother but i'm just saying like the either way either way it's the mother of the father and you have this this i don't know this illusion it's an illusion of animosity so it goes both ways like the father thinks he's not listening to me because you're not acting the truth is you're not acting proper and the kid thinks his father hates him but the truth is the father really loves him more than anybody else in the entire planet so we we want to help people like wake up to reality smell the coffee this is the truth but we're all living in our own daydreams our own illusions far too often yeah yeah far too often so i'll just read the lat the last line here understanding people's problems and helping them solve them is a very difficult endeavor every person is different and complicated it takes time patience and commitment but the efforts are well worth it so just keep this in mind right to help people you have to be objective you have to be able to zone in uh on the truth and the only way to do that is really get rid of the ego and try to be as objective as possible um now personalizing problem-solving in order to help others get into reality you need to become a truth-seeker yourself you need and eliminate your own internal fuzziness and blind spots which mask reality and breed ignorance which is an interesting idea do you know that life is beautiful i mean if i would tell this to some of these people i work with oh they just have a list of complaints oh no no that's the illusion right that life is not beautiful and how do you break that but we have to do it ourselves we have to start with ourselves we have to know the life is beautiful right and proclaim it right seek to understand the meaning of life to identify where you are lacking and to discover how to bring out your full potential tackle your own root problems and strive to resolve your core issues look beyond the restrict the constrictions of your mental box and see the bigger picture because in order to get someone else into reality you first have to understand it yourself um just he may he suggests making a list of your own challenges that's holding you back um select a couple of them figure out their root causes and then make plans to solve them so here i have an asterisk here that objectivity is crucial in all problem solving especially when the problems you're trying to solve are your own unless you can remove yourself and your ego from the picture you're not going to be able to see the reality of the situation right the ego is huge and it's holding us back now although you need to get into reality before you can try to some other solve other people's problems solving other people's problems will bring you clarity will increase your unclarity i mean surely hopefully about yourself right once you experience success in external problem solving by helping others you can apply then you can then apply that to yourself the same methods which you have developed in helping others and there's a few other examples here and this is i'm not going to say it's common but let's just say it's a little bit more easier to to relate to um so this woman goes off to new york to her best friend's wedding and i guess what they ever would i guess what they call a bridesmaid gown something very unique and special maybe it matches the colors of all the other girls i don't know exactly what it is but um so either a child or whatever somebody spilled some coffee on her on this beautiful dress and she was ready to she was about ready to go to the to the wedding now what is going to be her attitude seriously she spent i don't know how many years building up this time for uh a vacation for her from her job where she spent x amount of money well but it's her best well called her best friend one of her best friends wedding and she came there to celebrate to have a good time and now what is going to be her attitude she's got a few choices uh i mean she could be late to the wedding going to one of these places for one hour cleaning spend a lot of money dry cleaning whatever it is she could um she could wear a different color and then she'll be like i don't know maybe she'll the the bride will be pissed off or surprised or people looking at her i thought you were like her best friend and you didn't even know what color to wear i mean all kinds of things can happen and or she could go she can go to the wedding with the stain and just know that she's there to have a good time and and when people say oh what is that you should say oh no it's not it's nothing and really feel like it's nothing because the joy of spending that whatever a couple hours with her friend that her wedding you know celebrating this joyous occasion it's it's nothing so what okay maybe i'm the guy so maybe i i don't understand it but this is this is what this is the example he brings in the book right you have to make the decisions you make is is right develops your attitude and the added the attitude you have is a decision that you made and here's another example he wants to give right so let's say how many people would be happy with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in their bank account you know i know almost everyone we know would be very happy okay that's because you and me that we would be happy what about a guy who just lost five million dollars you know what why wouldn't he just be as happy as we would be with 150 000 really you could do a lot with 150 didn't we just say that i mean 150 000 a lot of money for us so the guy just lost 5 million and all he's got left is 150 000 you know what he can do people have have made five million dollars with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars so why does his attitude it's an illusion his ego i i was on top of the world i had this i had that or everyone looked at me a certain way now i got nothing no you're not you don't have nothing you have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that all of us would would kill for it i don't care their perspective has been so happy so this is we have to realize that it's our attitude right it's not it's not objective reality it's the ego um he writes here like if you decide right it's based on your decisions the world's a mess and it's a drag to be here then that's how you're going to live that's how you're going to live but if you decide life is good it's a pleasure to be here but we have some challenges to tackle then that's how you're going to live now i i mentioned this before and i'll mention again my mother i asked her as a young child i can't remember the age i'm going to guess it was probably around six or seven years old just his curiosity i asked her what is heaven what is hell what is this that afterlife what happens after we die and what's it all about and in with such grace and and i'm obviously must have been well thought out for her as a jewish mother right she said what is unbelievably so true she said the world to come is an extension of this world meaning what you make of this world if you have a miserable life full of you know whether it's crime ignorance that's what's going to be for you over there but if you do everything you can to make the best of this world you're going to have an unbelievable time in the world to come and uh it's it's just it's such a jewish concept okay um here's a box i put i put in a box so i want to read it make the choice to live in reality remember that's our topic standing up for reality and embrace the beauty of existence even if circumstances force you to wear a dirty outfit right when you see the ugliness in the world you have two choices you're going to either complain about it and do nothing or undertake to clean it up and fix it which is obviously such a jewish concept one of the things that we have decided right the jewish world is you ask any jewish parent they all want to have their kids have a better life than they did and i most parents of our generation do yeah you know without getting into any politics but apparently there is you know certain attitude in certain uh urban areas or certain uh certainly non-jew where you won't find jews right that um i mean people don't even know who their parents are their parents just abandon their kids i mean there's just no family structure no nuclear family structure no no idea of trying trying to give your kids a better life than you had it's just a total abandonment um for material things i don't know what to say about it but okay so you have two choices you either complain about it and do nothing or you're going to undertake it and fix it up it's all in your attitude don't sit there and say i wish the world were different it's not going to happen you got to do something about it i mean there's so many holocaust survivor stories where people said if i survived this and it was hell if i survived this i'm going to make a difference and so many holocaust survivors i don't know if that's even the word to use but you know people that experience the holocaust have gone on and i know there's a lot of impact yeah i know there's a lot of dysfunction i know trust me i mean i i'm aware of that i'm not trying to down little and you know bring down this idea um but it destroyed people destroyed people but there are people that picked up their bootstraps so to speak and um and excelled where it's just miraculous against adversity yeah yeah so the beauty is the beauty of life is that you can change the ugliness every situation can be approached in so many different ways right it's your decision which one to choose i always say rabbi i often say you know with most scenarios you're faced with either to live with it or to deal with with the scenario that comes your way and uh when you're dealing with adversity you either ask yourself can i live with this or should i have to live with this or is it something i got to deal with and you act responsibly right right so the very end of this um chapter he discusses this idea of relative versus absolute uh truth and he goes he goes at length to describe the problem of today's generation um people taking you know the university liberal arts education right that's like who knows everything's relative there's no absolute truth right so this is how he begins the idea one of the greatest obstacles facing our generation is the prevalent notion there's no point in even seeking the truth because there is no such thing as absolute truth it's all relative right everyone's right it's just one opinion against another right and go on and on and on but the truth is there is there is absolute truth if you believe there's no absolute reality it lead it actually leads to closed-mindedness right some of these i don't know i don't know what label to give them um talking about the people on the left far left um progressive right they um they say there's no point in examining wisdom or ideas if there's no real truth out there to discover and he claims this is the scourge of today's typical university liberal arts education and he quotes a professor alan bloom i think he passed away already there's a book called the closing of the american mind he discusses these ideas he does give an example i'm not going to go through it right now but this is how he concludes this idea we need to fight this insanity okay now this is not political i'm just talking about extremism in that sense okay but truth exists for example either there is a god or there is no god both cannot be true right i mentioned about rabbi burger is there a god if there is a god what difference does it make and it makes a big hell of a difference i use the word hell of a difference right it makes a hill of a beat god does not start existing when you decide to believe in him nor does he disappear when an atheist denies him it's absurd to think that the truth regarding his existence is relative either he's there and the atheist is making a mistake or he's not there and the one who believes him is making a mistake so who's right we this is where it comes down to search search honestly and diligently examine the evidence and all the relevant arguments think things through and decide where the truth lies um our daily lives are full of experience that demonstrate our belief in an absolute truth he's gonna get somebody who says i don't believe in absolute truth you can pin him down so easily and you'll realize yeah there actually is you know it comes to murder this that and the other thing yeah they absolutely believe there's no absolute truth right right there you go uh often in an argument we feel that if the person we're talking to would be just a little bit more open-minded he would see the truth we only argue because we're convinced there's only one right way how often will they argue because they believe their way is the right way even though they say there is no absolute truth unbelievable um so this leads us into one of the ideas i spoke about at the beginning of i think the 48 ways but it could have been at the time of the six constant mixes and that is what we call five finger clarity right how do i know with absolute truth that i have five fingers on one hand right i have i'm looking at it of course that's how clear i have to be about everything and that requires diligence um searching a lot of prayer to hashem to reveal to me the truth um but it takes my efforts um and therefore that's where that's really what we're saying in other words it's a way to to acquire wisdom is to know there's an absolute truth and to try to figure it out right and that's it that's where we're going to end today i mean i do have quite a few notes but i think this is um i think i covered everything basically um well it's so critical it's so critical a point to live in reality i i yeah so many places people uh they live in their own individual fantasy and their own world and then it imposes on others when he when you believe in falsehood uh can you elaborate maybe on how that encroaches on others and um more than just somebody's ideas there are those out there that would just force you know incorrect thought and uh it it replicates and it causes mayhem and pandemonium and confusion and yeah so i will give a little bit of a boost for uh jordan peterson meaning people should check out his um videos some of his books i mean there's a whole bunch of other people i think i think he's the last least controversial person honestly i mean yeah obviously he's involved in some aspects of controversy but in my opinion he just straight straight shooter right the least controversial and i'm one of the best well articulated people to discuss this idea um i will end with another idea two two two more things right if you ask people is it better to be happy or wealthy if you had a choice i i would assume most people would say happy but it would be like a toss-up right a lot of people can't figure that one out um another idea and this extends to the it also could be quite controversial about the holocaust god has told us he loves the jewish people and he he says we're going to be around forever so what's going on here so he also says don't assimilate he does not want us he didn't want us to assimilate and you know what was happening i don't want to get into so much but basically the con and anti-semitism has raised its head over and over throughout the generations it's one of those things that actually keeps the jews from assimilating it's the father that loves us so much that sometimes he you know sets um some reality that's uncomfortable so that you know there was i think it's called nuremberg laws not the ones that came after but during the hollywood before the holocaust that it was germany that said you're not allowed to marry jews see it already says in our torah the jews are not allowed to marry non-jews but in germany i don't know if it was 65 or even higher 65 percent into marriage which is was huge you didn't find that poland i think it was three percent or less maybe one closer to one percent of inter-marriage right communities jewish communities also it's true it's true but it was also due to uh a lot of anti-semitism generations before that helped create those tighter communities so you see even within the the darkness remember we're saying standing up for reality seeing it is not an illusion knowing that look even as a result of the holocaust a lot of jews have experienced anti-semitism in different ways that were already seemingly full fully assimilated and yet there's something that shook the world and woke up the world i mean i have relatives based on going to poland going they were totally secular and said i'm only going to marry jews and i'm only going to have jewish children as many as i possibly can totally secular but something you know had awakened them on a call to reality but what's the real reality the reality isn't you're worthless the reality is i love you god's saying and i want to keep you around forever and if i have to make a little bit of a sacrifice in this case but it's a wake-up call and you've had that's the big holocaust but you've had pogroms we've had anti-semitism and we're having it today and i'm just telling my jewish friends out there my jewish brothers and sisters that there's a reality and it's what you choose right it's your attitude and your choice but you have to examine the evidence and that's what i implore you to do okay so that's beautiful rabbi uh so so you know we need to live in reality but we also need you know hashem's intervention so often and we just we just you know really pray that uh yeah this hanukkah season we hope that uh the jewish people just just you know have a sense of identity and come to understand how much they're loved and uh we're just so thankful that they're starting to share the light of torah on scale uh with the rest of the world and uh we hope that it opens up more opportunities you know specifically for the fulfillment of what hashem has birthed them as a nation for and uh that we get to the other side of the whole of the matter and that his name be won and uh the world come to understand that more than anything that we all are interconnected at one level and um yeah we can learn to uh love one another and yeah it's exciting stuff and i think that's exactly what the message of wisdom uh continuously uh puts but you're never gonna get there unless you're living in reality and be honest with yourselves and if you're living in discomfort be honest with yourself and adjust it change it do something to uh uh you know as a man i've always found uh joy to be something that's escaped my hands often you know always looking to do something else to be fulfilled and in reality you know i got to learn to have joy in the journey and um we've been at this course now for a while and we got only about seven more weeks to go but as we were chatting earlier we're not on next week right rabbi we're not doing part 42 next week because of hanukkah the following week that's correct all right so it'll be two weeks from today before we're back with beyond the seven um uh and we look forward to going down that last stretch uh in finishing off that book and then you also mentioned uh last week you mentioned something called thomad devorah you were you wanted to uh go into maybe down the road right new york seriously think man i i looked at it i looked at the safer again last few days um i'll make it i'll make a decision soon but if we we're going to have to choose another safer anyway topic or something so if if there are certain chapters that i don't feel are uh fit to give over i still think the concept in going through certain chapters uh would be so uh i so far that's that's the uh the direction we trust your guidance as as as a rabbi and i know that uh you're doing so much work there with yebene uh and folks you can find him on his website uh or his uh facebook our youtube page ybnay uh or his website um and we know that you're involved in so much uh giving there in jerusalem and uh i i understand you'll be coming up with an annual drive soon and we hope that uh people will consider supporting you uh and look forward to everything you've got coming out in the near future so rabbi we're so thankful uh to hashem for you sharing this course with us and may we all learn to live in reality uh and adjust what needs to be adjusted to get rid of the the fantasy to get rid of the delusion um i even heard your message the other day uh when you were talking along those lines uh the one message you had about the the gear in the in in the history and that uh even the hebrew people need to have that mindset uh not to live in any illusion we are just uh as as it says this world is just the proof's door prudent means it's the entrance way to the world to come we are not to make a permanent dwelling here we're supposed to be like aguero as it was directed to abraham to isaac and this was a i called a mistake that jacob himself sought shalva tranquility in this world this world is not uh designed not the permanent dwelling uh jordan peterson will tell you all about this world is not for tranquility it's for suffering according to him he still has a little bit of a uh a christian worldview but nevertheless um you know he's a psychologist so he's talking from a psychological psychological point of view um but yes it's for growing growth requires friction i think i mentioned this in one of the other classes it was a t-shirt they call safe spaces right so there's no growth in a safe space like you cannot possibly grow and that's what unfortunately we spoke about the universities many of the universities are just find the safest space just to not be no challenges right that's what universities used to be it was to challenge your mind and i don't know whatever it is it is i can't uh but a yeshiva that's all you find it's a battle of ideas and challenges and hopefully the universities will you know come back around full swing but anyway in the meantime so that's where we're at all right all right well we appreciate today's lesson rabbi so we're not back for for we'll be back in two weeks we will not be back with beyond the seven next uh week uh this time and we wish you and all uh israel especially in jerusalem you guys have a happy hanukkah and we will miss you next week rabbi but we look forward to seeing you in two weeks so have a wonderful wonderful hanukkah rabbi bye for now [Music] is