Transcript
Good morning boker tov, welcome back to Living with Emuna, our weekly chizuk group to be mechazek to strengthen one another, to live with emuna in our lives, to realize and recognize and find the role of Hashem, to see His guiding hand, to feel His loving embrace, to know with confidence that He's in charge, that He's in control, that nothing is coincidence, nothing is chance, nothing is random, but everything is by design. These are concepts and ideas that need chizuk, they need strengthening constantly, and that's why we get together each and every week in order to strengthen ourselves. And I continue to thank you, those who send me the emails, their emuna stories of how things have worked out and when they tapped into that reservoir of emuna, I deeply appreciate. I want to thank our generous sponsors of the series for the year, Dr. Avi and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut, who was a paradigm of living with emuna and leaving this world with emuna, and in memory of Bella's mother, Dr. Ellen Chanzer, who lived a life of service and chesed to the Jewish community. Thank you so much for that generosity and sponsorship. And a reminder, you can sponsor a particular shiur, email me at brsonline.org, lee@brsonline.org. Okay, we continue with our learning. We've been learning B'yam Darkecha, which is a magnificent new sefer quoting the teachings of רב יצחק מאיר מורגנשטרן, a beautiful, beautiful book giving us the path of how to live our best lives, of how to achieve the most, of how to be the most tapped in, of how to be the most connected to what is above, to what is greater than ourselves, which after all is what we all want. So we've been developing the notion, the idea of dveykus. How can we cling to God? How can we stick to God? How can we glue ourselves to God, to feel His connection and to recognize His role in our destiny and to live with that confidence, not with any sense of fear, not with any sense of anxiety or worry, but to know that He's here. So we defined what dveykus is and we spent time on the capacity, the belief in belief, the belief that we can live that life, to see and to know people who live that life and to attach ourselves to them, to want to emulate and to want to imitate them, to know that we can be that way. The way we left off this perek, this chapter, he says, כל יהודי יהיה מי שיהיה משתדל ויתייגע בזה, every Jew, whoever you are, whatever level you're on, don't under-sell yourself, don't be an under-achiever, don't give in and think, ah, that's for those holy rollers, for the righteous, me, I just try to squeak by, I just do my thing, I mail in the davening, I mail in the chesed, I mail in the mitzvos, check, check, check, check, check, I get away with the bare minimum, I do what I can, but that's all. Realize that you're a holy Jew, you have a holy spark, you have a piece of God inside you. Whoever you look at and emulate and you say, wow, they believe, wow, they talk to God, wow, they live with God, know that you can too. You can submit to a higher power, you can feel His role, His love in your life. Mishtadel v'yisyageia baze, if you work on it, it takes effort, but b'vadai yizkeh, you can merit ברחמיו יתברך לטעום מאור נועם עליון דביקות באלוקים חיים, you can take a taste, ta'amu u're'u, taste and you'll see how delicious a life with Hashem is. Just taste it in earnest, for real. I don't mean fake it, I don't mean imitate, I don't mean get away with the bare minimum of it, I mean taste it in earnest for real, give it all you've got, apply yourself, try it, and you will see ki tov Hashem. כי כל יהודי יש לו הרגשות אמיתיים הנמשכים מהניצוץ הפנימי שבו. There is a spark inside us, there are moments that we've tapped into, and as we've shared so many times, whether it's a kumzitz or a shalosh seudos, whether it's singing, whether it's getting lost in song with a chazzan or davening, or whether it's being at a national park or the Grand Canyon, the Swiss Alps, or being in the Golan of Eretz Yisrael, which is the greatest and holiest to be in Eretz Yisrael, to be in the holy land of Israel, whether it's the birth of a child or whether it's when something came together and you were bailed out of a crisis, or whether it's when something was seemingly an impossible coincidence and you feel there was something alive inside you, there was a neshama, there was a soul that was nourished, that was vibrant, that was alive, you lived with a confidence in who you really are and what life is really about. That's a spark. Bottle it, hold on to it, grab on to it, and then expand it. השם יתברך שוכן בתוך בני ישראל, because God dwells in us. God dwells in us, sometimes you just meet someone and you're so impressed, you're so wowed, you're so moved by that person, you say, wow, that is an individual who's godly, they are an agent or messenger of God, I feel more alive, I feel better, I feel like I'm reaching and stretching, I'm ambitious for the best part of myself when I'm around that person. Know that there is that spark in each and every one of us. God dwells in us here and now, and don't give up, and don't compare and don't compete with others. You know, if you decide I'm going to get my health in order, so you say I'm going to go to the gym, not talking corona times, I'm not making a comment about going to the gym in corona, I'm saying you say I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to get a trainer, I'm going to start. So you look at that person who can hold the plank for six minutes, you look at that person who is bodybuilding and can bench press 400 pounds, and you say, you know what, who am I kidding? I can never compete, I can never measure up, it's never going to happen, why am I going to bother? So you know what I'm going to do? I'm gonna come to the gym and I'm gonna walk on the treadmill really slowly while I'm on the phone, while I'm watching the thing, just so I could put a check next to I went to the gym and I worked out. You're not really invested. You know why? Because you apply yourself and you invest yourself, you maybe worried what you're going to find. Maybe, maybe you're worried that you're going to fail so it's easier to not try. Maybe even scarier you're going to succeed. And this is going to be a new life, a new life of eating habits and workout habits and the consequences of that new life. And so our mind has these incredible abilities to not even try because we're afraid of what we're going to find, whether it's success or whether it's failure. And the same is true in the spiritual gym, in the spiritual realm. Don't compare or compete. Don't look at the person who's davening so long or seems so sincere. First of all you have no idea what's going on inside their head or heart even while their body seems to be occupied with davening for so long. Don't compete with the person who learns so much or knows so much or seems so righteous or seems to always intuit or do the right things, but rather only compete with ourselves and know that you have it in you. Every one of us can be emotionally, physically, spiritually healthy. We have to use the tools available to us. We have to use the support systems and networks available to us. But first and foremost, what it's predicated on is that we have to believe we're capable of it. If you think that you'll never be healthy and you think you'll never be happy, you'll never be healthy and you'll never be happy. But if you believe that you're capable and you believe you're worthy and you believe it can happen, then you can make it happen. And the same is true with dveikus. The same is true with clinging to God, with living that life of mindfulness, of living that life of awareness of Hashem, of God, of His role in our life. It is possible. It is possible. We can all have it. We have to apply ourselves and not give up. That's the first step is to believe in ourselves and to believe that we are capable, to believe that we are capable of it. So we move over to the next chapter, Perek Beis, which once he's defined what dveikus is and what a life looks like and the belief that we can do it, now he moves over to Darchei Kinyan HaDveikus. How do you do it? What is the path? What are the tools? What are the steps? What do we need to do? So here's what he says. ואתה עולה מאליה השאלה הגדולה. And now comes the big question: Eich zochim lidveikus? How do you achieve it? How do you merit it? How do you make it happen? איך לזכות להרגיל להרגיש את מציאות השם יתברך. How can we get to a life and a lifestyle where you say there's God? So I'm stuck in traffic, I'm running late, I'm worried about the interview, I'm worried about the business deal, and you take that deep breath and you say, you know what, it's beyond my control. Take my initiative, I do my part, and then I let go and I let God. I was just talking to Rabbi Moskowitz. He's making a Bar Mitzvah the Shabbos, his only Bar Mitzvah, his beautiful son Moshe, a wonderful amazing young man. The weather in Florida right now, if you live in Florida, and I hate to be rubbing it in the face of those who don't, yesterday might have been the nicest day maybe of all time. It's possible. And today seems like it's not going to be any worse. You can't find a cloud in the sky. There's a cool breeze, a little chill, but the warmth of the sun on your neck, you can feel a hug from the Hashem. You feel His love, you feel His hug. But if you look at the weather, it tells you that the Shabbos is supposed to rain. Now the good news I told him is that if on Tuesday, because this was yesterday, if on Tuesday it says it's supposed to rain the Shabbos, one thing I know, it probably won't rain. Whatever they predict the weather is in Florida that far out, unlikely to happen. So I'm talking to him this morning about what the weather said yesterday and he's a little bit nervous and his Bar Mitzvah and the whole shul and they've been planning, his son and he's been practicing, but he said to me, he goes, you know, the weather's out of my control. There's a lot in my control, a lot of work I needed to put in to get this Bar Mitzvah, to plan this simcha, a lot of responsibility, make sure to write the speech and the speech comes out well and help Moshe practice so that he'll do well and he's going to do fantastically well. But the weather, that's one thing I can't control. By the way, the rabbis tell us that, the Gemara says in Taanis, that Hashem holds the keys to three things. He says to us, here's the keychain. Here's the keychain, not just the Hatzalah guys. He tells all of us, here's the keychain. Go and conquer the world. Study, learn physics, chemistry, biology, technology, advance in medicine, advance in every sphere. Go conquer the world. Put man on the moon, take over the universe. Three keys, says God, I'm holding on to. And they are the key of the weather, rain, the key of conception, life, and the key of the resurrection of the dead. The common theme of all three keys is it's all about the source and the core of life. So we can't control the weather. We may want to, no matter how badly we may want to, we cannot control the weather. And that was a perfect example, I'm quoting Rabbi Moskowitz, because that is exactly the life of dveikus. When you cling to God, you take that deep breath and you say, what am I going to panic about weather? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I'm going to ruin the time with my family, I'm going to ruin the time counting down and anticipating this simcha over something I cannot control, the weather. It's foolish. It's absolutely foolish. Why would you sabotage your own happiness? Why would you sabotage the time that you have? Why would you undermine and compromise the very simcha for something you can't control? So a person has to know what we can control and that we take responsibility for, that we should be driven for, that we should be ambitious over, and then there's so much that once we've done our best, we absolutely cannot control and that's when you have to let go and let God, the weather, this pandemic, and so much more. And when you live life in that way, you're happy. You have a skip in your step. He's in that room with you. He's worried. He's working on it. He's supporting you. He's demanding of you, he has expectations of you. How can you feel His presence? ואיך לעורר את הלב להרגיש בורא האלוקי. How can you arouse and awaken the heart to feel the light of Hashem? See, we all have that capacity to feel. We have spiritual nerve endings. When those nerves fray, that's a very dangerous thing. Physically, there are all kinds of nerve diseases, neuropathies, where you can't feel and that's very dangerous. You have no awareness when something painful is happening. You don't know that your body needs treatment or needs care. And spiritually, there are people whose nerves have frayed. They've abused or neglected their nerve endings, and their nerves, there's a spiritual neuropathy. They can't feel. They're dead even while they're alive. We can't ever let that happen to us. We have to l'orer es halev. Wake up! Wake up that heart! Walk outside if you live in Florida in Boca Raton today, and don't just say, "Oh, it's a nice day," and go on with your day. Take in a deep breath. כל הנשמה תהלל קה כל הנשימה. Take that deep breath. And as I said, feel the rays, the warmth of the sun on your neck, as you're bundled in your Uggs or your fleece or your sweater that you're so excited to have taken out of mothballs. And look up at that sky which is a magnificent blue, and see not one cloud there, and say, "Hashem, I feel Your presence today. What a world, what a day." modeh anachnu lach. I don't need Thanksgiving last week, I'm thankful today. Every day I'm thankful. What a magnificent day. Incredible, absolutely incredible. So how can we be me'orer es halev? There are invitations and opportunities all around us and throughout our day. You sip that hot cup of coffee on a cool day, oh, what's better than a hot cup of coffee? Coffee, if you're learning with me by now these few months, years, you know my bizarre emotional relationships with things like coffee. Coffee's not just a beverage, it's not just a drink, it's an experience, it's an emotional reaction to a hot cup of coffee on a cool day. HaKadosh Baruch Hu invented the coffee bean, and the farmers who pick and grow them and who package them and ship them, and someone grinds them, packs them into little pods. And there's the invention, the ability for all of us to be big machers and not be drinking instant because you have a Keurig, Nespresso, or whatever you have, I'm sure the coffee snobs now are going to criticize even those two examples. But you drink that cup of coffee, you say, shehakol nihyah bidvaro. The metzius of Hashem, my heart, my soul is aroused, is awakened. There's a God in my cup of coffee, there's a God in the magnificent weather, there's a God in an internet connection that works, there's a God all around me. How can I awaken my heart to say, "Hashem, I love You, I feel You, thank You, that worked out, that was a close call, that's amazing." And להרגיש בורא אלוקי להתחבר באהבה אל השם יתברך, u'lirtzos es kirvaso, and to long for His connection. If you've ever been in love, if you are still in love, then you long to feel connected. Your heart skips a beat when you see the other person's name come up on your caller ID. I'm not talking about when you're dating and your courtship, and I'm not just talking about when you're engaged, and I'm not just, by the way, when young people have consulted me, not that I'm an expert by any stretch, and they should consult experts, I think too many people are outside their lane, rabbis and teachers and educators who act like professions that they aren't trained for, so I want to be clear, but when they've consulted me, in addition to the professional consultation, and they ask, "How do I know this is the one? Or my feelings, or I'm confused." One of the barometers, one of the metrics I always pose and ask them is I say, "When your phone buzzes or beeps or rings, and you see the other person's name on the caller ID, does your heart skip a beat? Do you say, 'Oh, I can't wait! Oh, they're calling. I want to tell them about my day, I want to hear about their day. I just want to hear their voice. I want to yell at them about something I'm upset about,' but I can't wait to be connected. Or do you go, 'Ugh, can I ignore it again? I ignored it the last time, is this too many times that I'm ignoring?' You start looking around and wondering, 'Do they see me and where I am, and am I on my phone and I'm pressing ignore?' If you're pressing ignore, then you have to ask yourself if this is the right person. Because if it's the right person, and I don't mean at all times and all places, sometimes you need quiet, sometimes you need to disconnect, sometimes you're in the middle of doing work, you can't always say yes, you can't always take the call, but when you see the other person's name, does your heart skip a beat? Do you say, 'I love to feel connected'?" And the same is true with the Ribbono Shel Olam, the Almighty. As we're living our life and it's that beautiful day, it's the seeming coincidence, something has happened, it's an opportunity for mincha, does your heart skip a beat and you say, "Oh, it's You, God! Thank You! I got that light turned green exactly when I needed to because I'm running late to that appointment. You were just calling out to me." That was a message. The hot cup of coffee just when I needed it. I dropped my phone, I picked it up and it didn't break. Thank You, that was You. You are sending me messages, You're communicating, You're talking to me all the time, God, all the time. And when God communicates, do we say, "Not now, ugh, another maariv, another shacharis, another bracha I have to make, another benching I have to offer. Oh, ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore. Not really interested." instead heart's not skipping a beat, need some time away, ignore. Or do you say, ooh, God's sending a message, he's calling out, connect, my heart skips a beat. We're capable of it. Not all the time, and not always, but we're capable of it. And you have to know that you, you and I were all capable of it, and attach ourselves to people who are living that way because it is contagious. Spirituality and *dveikus*, clinging to God, sticking with God, it is contagious. At first when you're around those people they're really annoying. Those people who are like *Hashem* is everywhere and I love *Hashem* and isn't everything amazing, *Hashem* is the best. You're like, that's a little annoying. You don't want to be around them. But if you hang out just enough, if you can get past that first stage of nausea, then it's contagious and you're like, you know what? You're right. I feel alive, I feel better about myself, I feel more connected, I feel more calm, I feel happier when I'm around such a person. וננסה בעזרתו יתברך לפתוח מעט את השער להיכנס לחיי אמת. What we're trying to do, my friends, is to open the gate, we're trying to open the window or the door, we're trying to get a glimpse of a world of truth, of a world of truth, חיים עם השם יתברך, a life with the Almighty. I never reference pop culture, I don't believe in it, to support *Torah*, but I will tell you several years ago the film, the Matrix, was in many ways a description of what really a life of faith with *Hashem* is. This whole world is an illusion. The illusion that we're in control, the illusion that we're in charge, it looks like an illusion that we have free will, but really behind that world of illusion is a matrix. And the matrix is the hand of *Hashem*. There's a world of truth, *chayei emes*. There's a world of truth and there's a world of authenticity and there's a world of God. He's programming, he's pulling the strings, he's in charge. How do you reconcile that with our own free will? Complicated, important topic, not for now. We discussed it in the past and undoubtedly we will discuss it in the future. But for now the point is we're living in a world of illusion. We think we have this illusion that we're in charge. As I've said many times throughout the last eight, nine months this pandemic has reminded us what an illusion it is. We're not in charge, we're not in control, we barely understand, we don't know, we can't anticipate, we can't predict. Not the pollsters with an election and not the meteorologists with the weather and not scientists with a disease, with a virus, with Corona. We are not in charge, we are not in control, there's a matrix operating underneath, in the underbelly of the system of the world and we on the surface are living in this world of truth, and this world of illusion. And our whole life here, in many ways our whole mission here, is to peel back the cover, to peel back the superficial or the surface and to look at that matrix and to see the way it's working and to realize it's all him. That's what we're trying to do. And when you live with *dveikus*, you got to go back to the world of illusion, you got to go back to the world of free will, you got to go back to the world of initiative, you got to go back to the world that looks like and feels like and we want it to be that we are in control. But every now and then with every *bracha* we make, with every *mitzvah* we do, with every pause to *daven* to *Hashem*, we are peeling back the layer to give a peek, to give a kick, to give a look and to see through that gate, through that window, to peek and to peer through the crack in the wall and to see the hand of *Hashem*, חיים עם השם יתברך, ולבאר עיקרי הדרך איך לזכות לקנות דבקות בהשם יתברך. That's what we're trying to do, that's what it's all about. *Omnam*, however, *tzarich leda'as meirosh*, you have to know from the beginning, שכל דרכי הקניין שיתבארו צריכים סבלנות והתמדה. Says Rabbi *Itamar*, the two things that you need for success, the two things from the beginning, from the outset you need to know, the two things that you need for success are *savlanus*. Let me explain to you in sign language, *savlanus*. This is the sign, the universal sign language of *savlanus*. *Savlanus*, patience. We're all going to need patience and *hasmada*, diligence. You're going to have to apply yourself, you're going to have to be invested, כי כל דבר אמיתי נקנה בעמל. Because anything real, anything authentic, anything true, anything lasting is acquired with effort, with toil. Otherwise it's a wish. I say I want to wake up tomorrow morning and be 20 pounds lighter, I want to wake up tomorrow morning and be able to jog, run, bike, bench press, that's a wish, it's not a resolution, not have a plan, there's no metrics to measure how well you're doing. And whatever you're trying to do in life, whether you're trying to earn a degree, whether you're trying to grow professionally in your career, whether you're trying to improve your health and wellness or whether you're trying to grow and progress spiritually, to awaken that *neshama*, that soul inside you, for your *davening* to be a real *davening* and for your life to be a life for *Hashem*, it needs the combination of those two qualities. It needs *savlanus*, it needs patience, and it needs *hasmada*, it needs diligence. Because if you're not diligent, if you give up easily, if you give up and walk away, say well I tried it for a week and I didn't lose that much weight, I went to the gym three times and I still can't compete with the other huge steroid-induced guy on the machine next to me. They require you to stick with it. Requires patience, requires effort, and requires a sense of stick-with-it-ness. Is that a word? Stick-with-it-ness? We just invented it. You have to stick with it. You can't give up. You can't give up. I'm focused I guess today on a lot on relationships, but that's true about relationships. They are hard work. They take patience, and they take hasmadah. We're seeing tragically a lot of young people, broken engagements and early divorces and relationships that are in crisis and failure, because this is a generation that doesn't stick with it. It's disposable. I turn in my car every three years, I turn in my phone and I get an upgrade, I turn my laptop and I get an upgrade, I upgrade everything in my life, I turn it in, it's disposable, nothing lasts, nothing do I keep. I update, my wardrobe is disposable, my car was disposable, everything's disposable. So why shouldn't my spouse be disposable? When they no longer meet my needs, when my heart no longer flutters, when I no longer skip a beat when I see their name on the caller ID, where's the upgrade option? How do I download an upgrade? How do I turn them in for an upgrade? How do I get the newer version, the newer model? How do I do that? Relationships take savlanut, they take patience, and they take hasmadah, they take diligence. And if you don't know that from the beginning and you don't go in with that attitude, then you are on a path towards failure, towards catastrophe. And the same is true with our relationship with Hashem because that's what this is all about. These Wednesday morning conversations and this conversation about dveikus ultimately is all about a relationship with Hashem. Tragically it's what's missing. We go to Jewish school, you can go through 12 years, 16, you can go through a lifetime of Jewish education and never talk about Hashem once. I could tell you the 39 categories of creative labor, and I could repeat back to you all the holidays, and I could tell you the minutiae and details of halacha, and I could repeat back to you verbatim all the characters, dates, and places of the stories of Tanakh, and that's really important. All that's really, really, really important. Halacha is the framework, it's the platform to live a Jewishly rich life, all really important. But you could go through all of that and never talk about God, never talk about the fact that He loves us. He loves you, He loves us unconditionally like a father. We spoke about it a few weeks ago, the guy who I told who hasn't spoken to God in a long time. It's okay, call Him. A parent wants to hear from a child. You could call and say, God, I know I haven't been in touch in a while. It's on me. Haven't called in a while. But I need You and I'm calling You now, Dad. Will You be there for me? He, He wants and He's waiting for us. So this is a relationship, and a relationship takes time, takes patience, takes diligence, takes effort. A relationship takes stick-with-it-ness. These are all parts of a relationship with Hashem. And if you're going to go in and you're going to bail out and you're going to walk away and you're going to give up easily, then you're not going to succeed, you're not going to succeed. He says here in the footnote אם יתמיד באלו הדרכים שיתבארו עוד ועוד אזי לאט לאט יזכה להרגיש שזה ממש יותר ויותר בעומקי לבו ויתקרב לשמו יתברך. Stay with it. Slowly, incrementally, you're going to grow, you're going to experience, you're going to advance. Stay with it. Awaken your heart, awaken your soul, feel His presence. Stick with it and you will succeed. Stick with it and you will feel His presence עד שיזכה שהמחשבה בהשם יתברך והתשוקה אליו until you merit that your thinking about God and your teshuka, your thirst, your drive, your longing to be with Him tifos et kulo it's going to overtake you ולא ירצה להסיח דעתו ממנו יתברך אפילו רגע. Here's what's going to happen. Here's what Rav Itche Meir promises us. He says here's what's going to happen. When you start, you have to remind yourself that He's there. Oh yeah, He's in the room. I'm panicking? Take a deep breath, He's right there. I'm experiencing something marvelous? Oh yeah, don't forget to thank Him. When you start out, you have to remind yourself that He exists and He's there. However, if you succeed, if you stick with it patiently and diligently, you'll get to a place where not that you have to remind yourself He's there, but lo yirtzeh, you're not going to want to stop thinking about Him. You're going to say, you know, you got to eat, you got to sleep, you got to go to the bathroom, you got to shower. No, no, no, I don't want to. I'm just talking to Him. I love Him. I feel connected to Him. I'm alive. I'm awake. That's where you can get to. Ki betchilat ha'avoda at the beginning of this effort יש לאדם רצונות אחרים. We have all kinds of external drives and interests והוא צריך לכפות את עצמו להיכנס להרגשה רוחנית and we have to force ourselves. You got to force yourself, just like you have to force yourself to exercise, to eat right. You have to force yourself sometimes to do the right things that you don't want to do. You have to force yourself to pay the bills and force yourself to brush your teeth and force yourself to do things that you're not always in the mood to do. Here too וזה צריך להיזהר מאוד you got to be very careful לעשות את זה במידה נכונה מעט מעט לפי עניינו. You got to go slowly, patiently, and you can't go too fast. If you try to skip steps, if you're in the gym and you try to bench press 300 pounds when it's your third time in the gym, you're going to experience a crush on your chest. You're going to collapse. You're going to injure yourself. yourself set yourself back, and not only won't you be capable, you won't be interested in going to the gym again for a long time, if ever. And the same is true spiritually. If you skip steps and you pretend something that you're not and you try to act with a level of emuna or spirituality or take upon yourself things that you don't understand you're not ready for, then you're going to implode and collapse, you're going to injure yourself spiritually, you're going to be turned off, you won't be capable and may not be able to come back anytime soon. Person has to go slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. You know, we read last week the story of Yaakov has the dream of the ladder going up and down and up and down. So first of all, Rabbi Blumenthal told me a pshat, he brought down some sources who say that the ladder wasn't a ladder, it was a ramp. The word sulam doesn't mean a ladder. If you look in other uses of the word sulam in Torah and in rabbinic literature, a sulam means a ramp. Because in Judaism we don't believe in stairs or steps. A stair, a step you can be stationary, stagnant. You can climb up five steps and then stay there. We don't believe that. Life is a ramp. You're either moving up or you're sliding down. I could tell you in Pirkei Avot I know that's true in my own life. You're either moving up, you're working on certain things and you're growing and you're feeling connected, you're either moving up or you're sliding down. You don't have the option of staying stagnant, there's no plateau, there's no place to rest, there's no place to remain, there's no place to stay. So that's what he told me. Yesterday, Rabbi Yanky Horowitz told me a different pshat and he told me the reason that it's a ladder, not a ramp, it is a ladder is because a ramp you could run up. If you've ever tried running up a ladder, you may not have lived to tell about it. You can't run up a ladder. A ramp you could run up. A ladder you have to go step by step by step. And that climb, that bridge from heaven to earth, that effort to awaken and arouse our sense of spirituality, it has to be step by step by step, incrementally. If you run too quickly, you skip steps, you're going to fall, you're going to collapse. אחר כך זוכה לעלות לזאת, then you're going to have a מתהפך להיות רוחני יותר ומרגיש שזה רצונו ולאט לאט הוא מרגיש שאין לו חשק כל כך לדברים פחותים. And you know what happens? The holier and the higher you become, the more awake and more aroused your soul is, the less tolerance or interest you have for narrishkeit, for silly small things. You can live down here, you can live in this lowly down world of narrishkeit, of small, silly, petty, inconsequential things, or you can be living in a place that's up here, a place that really matters, a place that's real. You could be making contact with immortality, you could touch the world to come, you could peel back that layer and be have one foot in the matrix. And when you do, the more you make contact with that which is real and that which is great, the less tolerance, the less interest you have in that which isn't. וככל שמתעלה כך הרצון מתגבר. And the higher you become, the more your ratzon, the more your drive, the more your will grows, עד שמגיע למדרגה שאין לו בעולם שום חשק ורצון אלא להשם יתברך ותורתו ועבודתו. And then all you see around you is Hashem everywhere. You see Hashem through the other people. You see Hashem through his Torah, you see Hashem through nature, you see Hashem through history, you see Hashem through work. We are capable. It's a very high level, don't skip steps in the attempt to get there, but we're capable of it. So let's move over, number one. Number one he says, so savlanut, you gotta be patient, and hasmada, gotta be diligent, and with that we're all capable of acquiring and climbing step by step this with a lot of effort and toil to be able to live this life of mindfulness, there's Hashem, I'm awake, I'm alive. How do you do it? He's going to offer us a few different steps that we need to do. He has seven different things we need to do. Number one is not surprisingly, emuna. שורש הדביקות הוא בהכרה הבהירה במציאות השם יתברך עמנו. Number one is if you want dveikut, you're not going to cling to something that you don't believe is there. If you want to cling, you want to attach yourself to someone, then if you think they're a figment of your imagination, if you don't really believe that they're there, you're never going to succeed in attaching yourself to them. So step number one is emuna, emuna. To live and to put the time in, to think and to meditate, to reflect, to investigate, to analyze, to study, to know that there's a Creator. There's a Creator of the universe. And he didn't just create a universe and move on to his next project, he created this world, he created this universe and he has an intimate personal relationship with me. He knows about, he cares about, and he's involved with me. ובודאי כל יהודי מאמין בהשם יתברך אלא שלפעמים זה מתכסה. Really all of us know that there's a God. Every child knows that there's a God because they know I have parents who have parents who have parents who have parents who have parents who have parents, and all you have to do is stop and think about that for a moment and you say whoa, if you go all the way back, everybody has parents, who are the parents of the first people? Ah, there must be a God. If you look and you say everything that's created has a creator, well if that's true about everything around me, the physical, then it's true for all of us, it's true for this world, true for... So we all know, we all intuit, we all instinctively believe that there's a God, there's a higher power, there's a source, whatever name you want to call Him, there's something greater. What happens? Lifamim ze miskase. At times it gets covered. At times it gets concealed. כי כאשר אדם רואה את הטבע ועניינו זה עלול לגרום לו לשכוח את השם יתברך. You know what happens? We say well, there's physics and biology and chemistry, there's a world of nature. Who says it's God? Maybe it's nature. You know what else happens? We either have a difficult experience. Someone failed us or frustrated us, particularly if it was a rabbi or rebbe, particularly a religious personality who so failed us miserably that we relate or associate with them religion or God. We blame God on the behavior of others. Maybe there's a religious Jew who cheated us in business or acted rudely to us, or we're so turned off by people's negligence when it comes to safety and security and health and well-being that we say, if that's religion I want no part of it. But these are cop-outs. These are excuses. That's like seeing the guy at the gym who's eating a candy bar in the corner, sneaking something unhealthy, and you're like, I'm not working out. If that trainer or that healthy person could eat such junk food, then what's the point? I'm... Who you punishing by not working out? Only one you're punishing is yourself. So that's foolish. That's foolish. So we live a life where the instinctive, internal faith, the knowledge we have that there's God, there's a creator, there's something greater than ourselves, it gets covered. There are layers that cover it. Life experiences that cover it. We develop a callus over it and we don't make contact with it, either because of people, because of experiences, or because of God that many maybe perceive as not been there the way we hoped or dreamt He would. ולכן תחילה הדרך להשיג דביקות היא the beginning of the path to acquire and to achieve dveikus, to really attach ourselves and cling to and connect with God, להגביר ולחזק את האמונה. The first step is to work on emuna. To work on our belief. But it's more than belief, again we've studied, we're up to number whatever we're up to, closing in on 200 emuna shiurim, so we've spoken about all these things many times, we just reinforce it each and every, we just say the same thing every week. We just figure out a new way to say it. It's the same thing, just new vocabulary, new text, new way to say it. If you haven't figured that out yet by now, that's what we're doing. If you don't want to listen, it's still worth it for me. So we've said many, many times that emuna, we have to work on that reminder. It's so easy to forget. It's so easy to escape. The coffee's from Hashem, the magnificent day outside is from Hashem, the green light's from Hashem, the phone didn't break, it's from Hashem. להגביר ולחזק את האמונה והשער לאמונה הוא כוח הדיבור. We'll start with next week, so how do you get to emuna? How do you get to emuna? You go to another Discovery seminar? Read Bible Codes? Take another class in the evidence of God's existence? How are you going to work on your emuna? What's going to get you there? So we'll start with next week, it's the koach hadibur, it's the power of speech. He'emanti ki adaber. It's what you speak about and how you speak it and what will reinforce it. That's what's going to get us there. Look forward to continuing this with you next week. Until then, stay happy, stay healthy, and stay holy tonight 9:00 go behind the bima with the great Rabbi Yoel Gold. We'll talk about his new video coming out for Chanukah. Very, very exciting. Wishing everyone a wonderful day filled with emuna. Continue to share your emuna stories with me. Please email me, I will with your permission use your name or anonymously share them with the group. It gives great chizuk to people to hear that emuna. So please continue to share it with me and have a fantastic, wonderful day.
