Alei Shur - 14

2:36 You may have many reactions to this. A person who is aware of himself will be b'shalva. What does b'shalva mean? Serene. And he will tell himself in a peaceful way, every taina that this guy who hates me has on me, they're not new to me. I already know and I already feel these things inside of me. This rabosai is exceptionally hard to do. Knowing yourself doesn't just mean that you know things about yourself. It's saying, if you listen to the person who hates you the most in the world, it doesn't bother you. Because you're so aware of it, and it's so real to you,

3:39 that it would be like, what's the difference anyway? That is an exceptionally high level of knowing yourself. See, what we could do is we could sit in a room together and you might be able to tell yourself all of the tainas that you have on yourself or all the tainas you think people have on yourself. But even if you knew that and you were standing behind that door, what would the feeling you have be? Come on, you can't say one nice thing about me? You can't see any mylas that I have? If that's the reaction you have, then you don't really know yourself. Because if what he's saying has some element of truth to it. that you already know it about yourself, then you'll be beshalva. And that's a very, very high level.

4:47 On the other hand, Revolbi says, a person who is not self-aware, to the degree that if he was standing behind that door, lady, could you imagine you're standing behind that door, if you really know yourself, you're b'shalva, you're at peace, you're saying not nice things about me? It's okay, I already know these things. Nothing he said is new. He called me arrogant, I'm more aware of my arrogance than he is. He called me jealous, I'm more aware of my jealousy than he is. I get it, I can understand why he experiences me like that. Yet most people, how far removed. are people who are not like that at all. And they're living in an oil of madimya, they're living in a land of make-believe. They don't know themselves at all. They never had the guts to really look inside of themselves. And not only that, they don't want to puncture the bubble that they live in. They don't want to... burst that world of imagination, because they're enjoying the world of imagination that they live in. And not only that, they want to acquire for themselves the title of an Oved, a person who's working on themselves. So in their Olam Adimio,

5:48 not only are they unaware of their arrogance, their jealousy, their anger, whatever the bad midos that their Sone is saying about them, not only are they not aware of that, they think, I am the biggest Balmusser, I'm the biggest Oved in the world. And they never look into, where is this Olam Adimio coming from? You know, some people, they have what we call an over-identified persona. What does it mean, an over-identified persona? The persona is the part of yourself that you show to the world. We all have inner negative beliefs, a poison box, if you will, of things that we keep inside. And then there's a persona, the way I want people to perceive me. So, you want to live in this world of your imagination that you're this amazing person, so you think that way, and then that's what shows on the big screen, and that's what you're trying to show to the rest of the world. What's the problem with that for most people? Most people will see right through that. And when they see through that false persona that you're creating, what do they see? The real you. And you're the only one that's unaware of it.

6:56 So, you have anger issues, but you're not aware of your anger issues. Why? Because you think, what do you mean? I'm an Oved, I'm a Baal Musa, I'm the real deal. The problem is, the other people in the world, even though you're putting on this farsani and you're trying to pretend to the world that you're this frum guy, they see right through you, and they see your midos raus. So, you think you're an Oved and a Baal Musa, but the truth of the matter is, it's all a facade. Because you're not willing to look, you don't have the guts to look into the chaos of your life and to find the spark that's within that chaos. And that, by the way, is the big secret. And that's something that Revolvi is trying to reveal to us. I'll try to spell it out for you a little bit more right now. Because awareness of the self doesn't come from, like, I know myself. It takes the guts of looking in in a very real way of, like, acknowledging the hell of your existence. That's really what it is. It's hell. And it's acknowledging, like, this place that I've been in my life or that I have inside of me, it's this chaos that I'm afraid to enter. But until you enter it, you won't really know yourself. Until you understand your own monster, you're not really going to know yourself.

8:02 And when you understand your own monster and you've become, you're not afraid of your shadow, right? Because the monster really is just a shadow. For most of us, we're not going to do terrible things, right? But until you know that you have the capacity to do some terrible things, you may not be aware that you've done some of these terrible things. And that is a tremendous revolution. So it's like, I never realized I had anger issues. Do you know how many people I know that are totally calm that have major anger issues? And yet you'll never see it from them, right? Because on the outside, they don't have anger issues. But when you get to know them, what do you see?

8:34 They're seething and boiling, but it doesn't really come out. They're like working so hard to keep it in. And then you say to them, you know, it really appears to me that you have some anger issues. And they go, what are you, crazy? I don't have anger issues. I'm like the most calm, relaxed guy in the world. Well, really? You didn't know that about yourself? Well, why don't you know it about yourself? The answer is because you never had the guts to look in the mirror. If you don't look in the mirror and confront the monster that you have inside of you, then how are you really going to know yourself? And if you would hear your Sone talking about it, you'd be like, please, my Sone doesn't even know the half of it. He thinks he's seen my anger issues. Trust me, I have been inside myself.

9:05 I know my anger issues. But because you know your anger issues, when you hear your Sone talking about it, you're not sitting there and saying like, oh, come on, how come you can't just judge me positively? You know why you're not saying that? Because what he's saying is true. At least it's touching on the truth, right? It may not be totally true, but he's touching on the truth. He's identifying something inside of us. By the way, when we hear other people say things about us, that's a call to action, right? If you hear somebody say about you, or if somebody says to you directly, hey, you know, I'm perceiving in you this negative me, that's a call to action. That's like a, whoa, you know, like, I never thought of myself that way. It's so interesting that he experiences me that way. So that's Adhara, but that's not something that you should be running away from hearing. That's something you should be running towards hearing. Going to your abhaman and saying, give me Musa. I would love to hear your perception of me. I would love to hear how you feel, right? Because it's not uncomfortable. It's a massage, right? You ever get a massage? Massages are not comfortable, right? If you get like a really good deep tissue massage. And by the way, I've only had one in my life.

10:08 So how do you walk out of it? In the middle, you're like, oh, they're killing me, right? And only at the very end are you like... Because it's a massage, so it could be uncomfortable, but at the end, that's how you work the king's head. And if nobody ever gives you the opportunity to hear another critical experience of yourself, where are you ever going to have that tension to grow? Because all of growth requires tension. So when you hear your soni talking about you, you're like, okay, I know those things about me. It's not shocking to me. And in that way, you really know yourself. And on the other hand, we have people that are walking around, with this olam adimio, trying to convince the world that this is who they are. They don't want to have their bubble burst. They don't want to have their imagination punctured. They're just, yeah, this is who I am. Yeah. How do we know when to tell those things to people.

10:56 Well, first of all, I would definitely not advise. Yeah, I'm not saying to people. I'm just wondering. It's an easy saying. It's like a call to action. Again, sometimes there's a parent. And sometimes as a Rebbe, sometimes as a friend, we have to say tough things to the people that we love who may not want to hear them. We have to say them with compassion. We have to say them in a way that they're going to be able to hear it. And we have to know when to hold and when to fold. And that by itself is a whole Avodah. But, you know, I will share with you that some of the most growth-oriented times of my life have come on the heels of hearing things from my friends, my Rebbeim, my children, my spouse. Some of the things I really, really didn't want to hear were some of the most growth-oriented times of my life. So I don't know that Revolbi right now is speaking to the person who's giving Musa. I think he's speaking to the person who's receiving Musa. I think our attitude has to be open, curious, ready to learn. Why is that person experiencing me as... as aloof. Why is that person experiencing me as holier than thou? That's a big one, right? Okay. By the way,

12:09 it doesn't mean that all, the time they're right. I should clarify that, right? There are times when a person will hear something and they'll go, I honestly think that's a little bit more their stuff than mine, right? There are times like that. But nevertheless, if that's your attitude, you're probably never going to learn anything from the people that, are around you. And the capacity to learn from the people that are around you is enormous. It's enormous, especially in tight circumstances, right? One of the challenges of divorce is, that you can only learn the art. of differentiation in a marriage. Make sure everybody understands what that means. Do you guys know what differentiation means? Like from the word different. Like, you are different than me, so I don't have to be enmeshed in your emotions, right? And that's really healthy. When people are not differentiated in a marriage, it causes a lot of shalom bias problems, right.

13:00 What's the attitude you should have. So the attitude of, if I get divorced, right? Did you mean from before. No, I meant right now. Yeah, so the attitude is differentiation. I'm not you. Right. So just because you're having a bad day, right, doesn't mean I have to get wrapped up in that. Right. And the fact that you're upset at me, that I'm not upset more with you, right? I can be empathic without, like, losing myself, right? That's your codependency. That's your enmeshment. That's your lack of differentiation. There's a way to deal with it, too. For sure. Obviously, you don't have to be connected, but you can have a connection to that person. Correct. And that's the... You understand and listen to what they say. Mendy, I agree with you 100%.

13:40 That's why it's called an art, right? Because it's not one way or the other. It's a balance, right? I can be empathetic to what you're going through without losing myself. Yes. Right? But the thing is, when people get divorced, and I'm not saying that there's not a time for divorce, but when people get divorced, well, they never learned the art of differentiation. Right? So now they get remarried. And what happens? It's the same thing. Because the problems that are inside of you come with you wherever you go. So this is why people all the time are like, oh, well, if I'll just switch yeshivas, I'll just switch seminaries, I'll just switch jobs. Well, the problem is the next job is going to have the same problem. Why is it going to have the same problem? Because the same thing that got you to point A is going to get you to point B. So it doesn't really make a difference. Yeah? You are. Every one of us is hiding something. Yeah, maybe, but... Yeah, well, again, let's say you don't have the opportunity where something is telling you something about yourself. I recommend journaling. That's something that works for me, right? Really spend time thinking deeply.

14:51 about not who you are necessarily in the existential way because that's like, then you start to get involved in that great ponderous, like, who am I question? You don't actually do any real work on yourself. And then all of a sudden, and most of the time it just becomes, like, sociological. Like, do I want to be in this community? Do I want to be in that community? That's not what we're talking about here. But, Ezra, the place you don't want to go, that shadow that you're afraid of in the dark, that monster that lives inside of you, that's where the gold is, right? Remember when, you know, the dragon is always hiding the gold, right? If you're willing to confront your monster, that's where you're going to find the treasure. The treasure is there, so don't be afraid to confront it. What was that? That's true. Well, it's not really, it's not Jordan Peterson that came up with it. It was Carl Jung. I would like to read that book, actually. I've listened to him before. I think he has a lot of intelligence. It's bad.

15:59 There's a lot of Jesus stuff. I understand. In the beginning of any Avodah Atzmias, there's first Hakkaron. But before you can work on yourself, you have to become self-aware. Now, that's obvious, right? But that's like, Revolvi is spelling it out because it's so important. I'm working on myself. How? Well, I'm working on this midah. Yeah, but... How do you even know that that's like the mida that you should be working on right now? Like, where's the hakara? Where's the self-awareness? Now, I know that sounds simple, but gaining a hakara of yourself, that's a real avodah. Becoming self-aware, becoming a curious observer of self, that's a real avodah. Mishelo zachol ameyod, oshar avodah, apratah sagor b'fanav. And if you're not going to become self-aware, then this entire thing is closed off to you. Because the whole point here is we're trying to get to a place where we work on ourself. Well, how are you going to get to a place where you work on yourself if you don't know what you're working on to begin with? So you have this amorphous concept in yeshivas, like, I'm learning musr.

17:04 What does that mean? I learned mishelo zishar. What's that got to do with musr? You understand what I'm saying? That's learning a sefer, and more power to you. The more you learn, the better you are. But don't confuse that with working on yourself. Just because you read a sefer doesn't mean you learned anything about yourself. Learning about yourself, and remember, like the Vilna Gaon said, like we learned before Pesach, you're the only one that could teach that to yourself. So don't be afraid to look deep inside of yourself and confront who you really are. What's this person's life going to be like? He'll live tranquilly, nice spiritual life. He'll fall where people fall. He'll do good things like every Jew does. And L'maise doesn't get one ounce of scar. Why not? Why not, guys? Because he's not a truthful person. He's not a person of integrity and authenticity. Why not? Because he's totally not self-aware. If you're not self-aware, then you can't be a Ben Aliya. What does it mean to be a Ben Aliya? To be transformative, right?

18:13 Being transformative is a core part of being a growth-oriented person. The willingness to shed your skin and to say, like, okay, like, that was a version of myself. That was a 16-year-old version of myself. Here's an 18-year-old version of myself. There's a 22-year-old version of myself, right? The constant willingness to engage in transformation, which, yes, I agree, does come from fearlessness, right? Right? The constant willingness to transform yourself, that's called being a Ben Aliya. And that can only happen if you know yourself enough to transform. So, like, for example, let's say a person says, I know I'm lazy, okay? So they say, if I put myself in shiurim, where the rebbeim aren't makbed on attendance, right? And I miss, then nobody's going to say anything to me. But if I put myself in a shir, where if I don't show up, the Rebbe is going to smack me over the head, that's a very high level of self-awareness. Because not only is the person aware of the negative me that they have, but they're actually transforming themselves. They're doing something that's actionable to make sure that they do it. That's a positive thing, right? The person who doesn't even know that he's lazy, who's just blaming it on everybody else,

19:21 yeah, the shiram aren't interesting enough for me, or this or that, coming up with a million excuses, they can't transform because they're not even really aware of the problem they have to begin with. They're going to just blame everybody else. Ha'yediya atzma al atzmeinu meromemes. Just sheer knowledge of yourself will be meromim you, will elevate you. Lefnei shanu makiram es atzmeinu, and I have these words double underlined in my sefer. Before a person understands themself, anu nitzam betoch hatahom. You find yourself in the middle of the tahom. You guys know what the tahom means? What was that? Yeah, meaning, like, yeah. You're in the pit. Yeah, you're in the void. Where's that from? Yeah, you're in the void. Yeah, that's really where you are. And by the way, if you've ever been there, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you ever had a situation where you learned something about yourself and you're like, whoa, like one of those, boom.

20:24 How did I not know that about myself? If you've ever had that, then you realize that before that you were in a bad place. Because imagine how many people knew that about you before you knew that about yourself. That's horrifying. Isn't that while you're working, while you're hunting. Yeah, it may be, but, like, the day that you discover that everybody about you knows the thing that you didn't know about yourself is a bad day. That's a hard day. That's like a, like a, so what has everybody been looking at me like for the last 18 years of my life? And when you go to them and you'll say this to them, you'll be like, did you, like, think that I was pretty arrogant? And they'll be like, oh, yeah, I mean, I love you anyway, but, like, everybody kind of knows you're arrogant. And you're like, really? Like, how did I not get that? Right? How did I not know that? That's like a, like, you almost feel like you want to apologize to everybody you ever were with because you don't even know you were in a to-home.

21:17 It's not necessarily a depressing experience. I hope it won't be depressing, but it might be a bad day. It might be a rough day. Right? And then, but when you learn about yourself, And just the sheer knowledge of itself, even before you go through some transformational Ben Ali experience, the knowledge itself already begins to take you out of that place. Because once you start to become aware, let's say a person makes you aware that you're arrogant. And then you're like, oh, I'm arrogant. Yikes, I want to be arrogant. I can't imagine, because I know arrogant people. And the last thing in the world I want to be is like them. So that by itself, just the sheer knowledge, it already starts to take you out of that place. Adam she'enu makir atzmo, but a person who doesn't know himself, hu atzmo zoh em kol negiyosev eretzonosev. Etzim ha'akara mafrida beynenu lebeyn negiyoseinu. V'im ki adayin he'im pa'ilim banu, u'macham olanu imayim, hare'ani sh'lanu omeid me'al l'eretzonos eylem. The problem with knowing yourself is a very, very simple,

22:24 but very hard test to challenge, which is we all have bias. We all have desires. I don't want to have to transform myself, because l'maysa, I have desires. Right? I think I once told you guys about the Rebbe, and again, I disagree with this approach. But the Rebbe who every time guys would come to him to talk to him about, I don't know if I believe in God, his response would be, I tell you guys about this, Rebbe? His response would be, what's her name? What's her name? So, again, it's not my approach. To be clear, it's not my approach. Well, no, what he's saying is, again, it's not my approach. But what he's saying, he's like, you don't not believe in God, but God comes with responsibility. You don't want to have, what was that? The Rebbe has a point. Okay, for sure. Again, it's not my approach in terms of, it could be. But it's not my approach only because I think that people deserve more respect than that. So even though there's a part of me that does believe it, I'm not going to do that. But, again, he's a very, you know.

23:33 Don't take that spoonful of sugar. The medicine will go down anyway, and they'll grow from it. You know, like one of those types of rebellion. And you're just mollycoddling all these guys. And he's just coming along and saying, stop it. You do believe in God. You know you believe in God. But you just want to be able to do whatever you want to do. So I'm not going to have that conversation with you. Get honest with yourself. And if you'd like, we can have the conversation then. But by the time you get honest with yourself, you're not going to want to have that conversation because you'll be like, that's a waste of time. I want to go learn Gemara. Right? But it's like, and again, I'm not saying that's the right way of approaching it. But LaMaisa, right?

24:04 Somebody called me the other day. They said they were having a conversation with an atheist. And the atheist was saying, there's no historical evidence that Yisrael Mitzrayim ever happened. First of all, there is a tremendous amount of historical evidence that Yisrael Mitzrayim happened. But without getting into that, I asked him, I said, this is a very simple question. Did Abraham Lincoln exist? He said, yeah. Did you ever question if Abraham Lincoln exists? He said, no. Why not? Because Abraham Lincoln doesn't come along with any responsibilities. Whether I believe in Abraham Lincoln or don't believe in Abraham Lincoln, I don't have to wake up in the morning and put on tefillin. Because Abraham Lincoln existed. Right? So we're all sitting here and we're saying like, no, I know myself. Dude, wake up. You have biases. Those biases are blinders. Right? And so you're fighting this war because if I really acknowledge that this is true, right, or I'll give you a much more sophisticated one. Right? How about the guy that in the name of knowing himself just goes, but this is who I am. The guy goes, I'm lazy. Like, that's who I am. Like, I don't know if I'm ever really never going to be lazy. Right?

25:33 And now what's anybody going to say to you? Okay, well, if you know you need to work on it, so do it. I'm really trying. No, you're not. Yes, I am. And it's like, and the guy doesn't move. Well, why isn't he moving? Because his bias is blinding him. It's blinding him. And his own admission is really just a form of fooling himself. Yeah. Okay. Wait. That case is like, that is who he is currently, but your point is that he could be better and he can learn more and try harder. But I'm saying that sometimes a person is willing to acknowledge that they have a media that they need to work on because it stops people from really getting to the core of what's going on. Like, yeah, I'll tell you, I'm lazy. So now I as a Rebbe, what am I going to say to him? No, no, no, you're lazy. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I just said that.

26:22 Yeah. Okay, well, maybe we should work on it. I'm trying. The problem is I'm so lazy. Nothing about anyone in particular, what would be the thing that he should think and do. And from that place of acknowledging that they're doing that, they'll start to be like, well, wait a second. Maybe part of the reason that I don't have this motivation that I'm being lazy is because, you know, in my life, I've always been giving everything I want on a silver platter. And honestly, it's a bit uncomfortable for me that I've been giving everything I want on a silver platter because I never really had to earn anything. I grew up in the generation of I get a participant trophy. You don't get a trophy for participating, but if your entire life you never had to earn anything and everybody just told you you were awesome and now somebody's coming along and telling you, hey, man, you're going to have to work for it and you're afraid of failure, right? Now you're starting to get a little bit deeper into it. I'm afraid of failure. What happens if I don't get a trophy at the end? What happens if I am just ordinary? What happens if I do show up and I can't learn because I'm just not as smart as I wanted to be, right?

27:46 Right? So I'm blaming a million other people, but the truth is I'm not taking ownership, right? That would be, again, one example of a trillion examples of what's going on inside of every person. Okay. Many years ago in the Ashkenazi lands, they found a person who in his life, he always lived in the cellars. In his life, he had never seen the light of day. He never seen a person. He never left the cellar. And once he learned to speak, so it became clear that from his childhood he was totally alone in that cellar. As this person becomes aware, so he starts to realize, what he thought was his entire world. Imagine if you never left your world. So you think that's your world. So then he never had to confront the larger world. So too it is when a person knows themself.

29:29 When a person starts to learn himself, so then it's like, whoa, this whole time I've been living like in this cellar and I never engaged, I never had this like expansive life, right? But knowing yourself, even though at first you might think to yourself like, I don't really want to know my bad midos, right? Like, I'm not really so interested in learning that. But it's actually just the opposite because as long as you're not self-aware, you're living in this very enclosed space and you actually, you don't even realize how tightly wound you are because you're exerting, first of all, a lot of psychological energy to not learn those things about yourself. It's like, you guys have heard of Stephen Covey. Yeah.

30:11 The Roche quotes him. Stephen Covey wrote a book called Seven Habits, yeah? And in that book, one of the things he talks about is, a driveway that has a pothole in it. Now, you'll have to put a certain amount of energy into fixing the pothole in the driveway, right? But let's say you don't want to do it. You don't want to actually dedicate the time to doing it. So what you do is you have to drive over the pothole every day in such a way that the car, the tires, won't go into the pothole, right? So how much energy does it take just to do that, right? Just to move your hands a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right.

30:43 to make sure you go over the pothole. It doesn't take that much energy at all, right? So that's how you never fix the pothole. But when you add up all the amount of times that you just did that, just that one little tilt to the left or tilt to the right so that you make sure not to hit the pothole, think about how much energy you've exerted. Over the course of your life, it's much more energy than it would take to fix the pothole. Just as a, again, as a similar example of this, my daughter pointed out to me that the ceiling kitchen in our home had become very, because I don't know if you guys know this about me, but I like to deep fry. I assume some of you might know that about me at this point in the year. So my brother-in-law has a deep fryer that I borrow, and it's an industrial-sized deep fryer. So when I see people in Yeshiva and they have these little deep fryers that they can make a couple poppers at a time, if you can't put in two full things of chicken at once, that's not a deep fryer. That's like a pot of oil that's in a rectangle stamping up, right? Deep frying like a man, right? And my whole house, when you deep fry, it smells of deep fry, right?

31:49 It's like you could break off a piece of the banister and eat it like Kentucky Fried Chicken, right? This is like, that's what it means to be a man. My daughter pointed out that over the last whatever amount of years, eight years that we've been living in the house, our kitchen ceiling had become a little dingy, a little oily. So we decided to paint the kitchen ceiling. So the day after Pesach, I think that's Sunday. We painted the kitchen ceiling just now. So this, by the way, I don't know if you guys realize what it takes to paint a ceiling. It's not so simple. You have to cover up everything with plastic and you have to tape all the corners to make sure that it gets done well. And by the way, even rolling a roller on the ceiling, right? It's not like rolling a roller on the wall. It's real energy and you have to do a couple of coats because you want to make sure that they can't see through. And so we did it. We invested about two and a half hours into painting one ceiling in one room. Now, I imagine if you were a professional painter, it would probably take less, but I am far from a professional. So it takes time, right? And here's the thing. Now that we've painted the ceiling, the whole room is brighter.

32:51 It's like you walk into the room and you're like, oh, that's the way the kitchen is supposed to look. I just kept replacing the bulbs, thinking that the problem with the kitchen was they just didn't have enough light in the room. No, it has a tremendous amount of light. But if the ceiling is basically covered in oil, it's not going to have the feeling of a light room. And now the kitchen is so much more of a pleasant place to be. And it's the same thing. We're living in this constrained life, and most of us don't even realize that we're living in this constrained life. Why? Because we never had the courage to fill the pothole. We never had the courage to become self-aware. We never had the courage to look and say, these are my mitos or else. And the thing is, those are the shackles, right? Because if you're wrapped up real tight in these ropes, but you've become accustomed to just kind of like sitting back in them, well, you don't realize that if you'll just... cut the ropes, you'll be able to do that with your hands. You'll be able to be expansive. And it's the same thing. We're living in this cellar, and we're totally unaware that the cellar that we're living in is constraining us, if we would only have the courage to cut the ropes. Does that make sense? Okay, we'll stop here for today.