Alei Shur - 15

2:52 when each one can get the other one off? The Guff will say, wait, it's not me. The Neshama animates me. The Neshama will say, it's clearly not me. It's not where I want to be. So Amar Le, Rebbe answers and he says, I'll explain this to you with a mashal. There's a king. And the king has a beautiful pardes. What's a pardes? A beautiful garden. And in this beautiful garden, he has beautiful fruit trees. So he posts two guards in front of this beautiful garden. One is lame, and the other is blind. So, the lame one says to the blind one, I see beautiful fruit trees. Why don't you ride me? And I will bring you, why don't I ride you? And I'll guide you, yeah, to the fruit trees. So you, the sumo, you can walk. I'll go on your shoulders. You'll walk. I'll tell you what direction to go. And we'll be able to, we'll be able to get the fruit tree. We'll be able to get the fruit. So, eventually the king returns. And the king returns. The king returns.

4:27 And he says, what happened here? What happened to my beautiful fruit trees? So the lame one said, You can't blame me. I clearly have no legs with which I could walk to take them. And the blind man said, You can't blame me because I have no eyes to see. So what does the king do? He places the chiger, the lame one, on top of the suma and he judges them as one. So too, God takes the neshama, puts it in the guf, he throws it in the guf, and he judges them as one. What's the deeper message of the Gemara? Because the Gemara is not just Stam telling us, what's the deeper message of the Gemara?

5:30 The nefesh that we have, the soul, and the body, are both shomrim in the paradise of Hanna that a person in his world has. What's the difference between the nesham and the gof? The kohus ha-gof is the body, and the kohus ha-nefesh is the soul. The kohus ha-gof are blind. The kohus ha-nefesh are intelligent. Why do we have taivas? Here, Revolvi is going to start to say something very deep. Why do we have taivas? We have taivas for different things. Why? Because the taivas make sure that we protect our lives with everything we have. For example, taivas ha-min. For example, we all have a sexual appetite. What's the point of having a sexual appetite?

6:39 Why do we have sexual taivas? The reason is because a person is going to have children in this world, and that way he's going to continue to build the world. So we make a very big mistake, when we start to bash the concept of a person who has taivas. Hakadosh Baruch Hu created you with taivas for a reason. The psychology of the taiva is that it ensures your existence. A person has jealousy. So you can sit there and you can say, jealousy is a terrible thing. It's true. But most of ambition comes from that yisod of jealousy. I want to have a good parnasa. I want to be... And we're supposed to have a parnasa. We're supposed to have a parnasa in which we could support ourselves in a meaningful way. So you could sit there and say, it's terrible that we suffer from jealousy, but that's an immature perspective on what a taiva is.

7:41 Because the taiva itself is not a bad thing. Ad rabba. The taiva is what ensures that you're going to have an appropriate parnasa with which to support yourself. A person has a taiva to love his children. Well, what's the point of that taiva? The point of that taiva is that you'll actually get involved with your babies, and you'll hold them, and you'll play with them when they're little, and that's an important thing. Now, it's not logical, right? Imagine an adult, a person who's in their 30s and 40s, and they're sitting with their little kids, and they're playing magnet tiles. It's not exactly, I mean, if they're all alone in the room, and they're just playing with magnet tiles, you would say that's very weird. Something's very off, right? But when their little kid is there, and you see them playing with their little kid, we don't think it's off. What's the difference? Because you know that they're not playing with magnet tiles. I know I'm being oddly specific here. They don't have the problem. Exactly right. I have the problem. When I'm playing magnet tiles with Mikey,

8:46 tonight is going to be a shock for Mikey, because... It is. We play with magnetiles and he builds big towers of magnetiles and then he dances around it singing Bar Yochai. Because that's what he thinks. He thinks that's how you play Bar Yochai. Tonight I'm going to bring him to Maduro's and he's going to be like, where's the magnetiles? All I see is giant fires. Why do we play with little kids? Why do we enjoy playing with little kids? It's a weird thing in a certain way. No, it's the point. The point is it's part of raising your children. These are unbelievable things that a person has. You shouldn't denigrate a taiva. A taiva is an amazing thing. But they don't know what they're protecting us from because they are blind. So what provides the intelligence. So the taivas are blind. I just have a taiva.

9:48 It by itself has no intelligence. A taiva has no intelligence. It's just a power. Right. And that's why you'll see that when there's no intelligence with the taiva, the taiva is out of control. It could become an addiction. Hashem ra'atikei ha'ati ha'adishama. So what provides the intelligence? He haro es ha'matar. He yachola lasis kivun l'chayenu. El ma'alishav. Letnei mi la'ave. Ma'al ha'asig. The neshama sees purpose, gives us a kivun in our life, gives us a path, gives us something to strive for, gives us something to sacrifice, so gives us something to serve, gives us understanding. All of these things are the things that give meaning to our lives. Zeh hu en yina neshama b'shemiras pardes ha'chayim. This is the role that the neshama plays when it comes to being shomer, the pardes of our life. To ensure that we don't use our powers. for nothing. And it makes sure that it guides us to a meaningful, intelligent, particular purpose. You see, when a person isn't rational, when a person isn't logical, when a person is not elevated consciousness, when he's not mindful of what's going on in his life, what's going to happen if he's spacing out through life, so to speak? So life is what happens, this is the famous phrase, life is what happens when you're not paying attention. That's why you see some people,

11:19 they wake up, they're 40 years old, and they go, what just happened to the last 20 years of my life? I woke up one day, I had a job, I had a family, I had children, right? I wasn't paying attention, and I ended up in this life that I don't want. So what do we call that, boys? Midlife crisis, right? What's the crisis? The crisis is, I woke up, and who gave me this life? Where did it come from? And if you think I'm exaggerating, it not much happens. You wake up, you don't realize, life goes by in a flash. I remember being 18 years old in Medasar. It wasn't that long ago. I remember sitting with my roommates and talking about the last man of yeshiva, and what are we all going to say on the roof. I remember it like it was yesterday. 20 years. 20 years went by like that. 20 years, college education, going for smicha, learning, becoming a Rebbe in Medasar, and had a life. I mean, I hope I continue to have a life, but I have a life. You wake up sometimes, you're not paying attention, you go, wait, how did that happen? Because you're on autopilot. So an elevated consciousness is necessary towards guiding your taivas.

12:23 Otherwise, your taivas will run amok. And all of a sudden, you'll have this life that you didn't even realize you were having. And it happens all the time. A person has a job. And they're pursuing success, which is important. And success brings them a certain amount of money. And so the consciousness starts to slip away. And they start to have that taiva for money, which bats him as a good thing, right? Because that's what's going to be, that's going to support your family. But what starts to happen, because they lost the consciousness, the money starts to overtake the very reason that you were making it to begin with. So I was making money to support the family, but now I'm making so much money that I'm spending so much time in work. that my kids have no relationship with me. How'd that happen? Because the pikeach, the intelligence of the neshama, was not being applied. You were on autopilot. So when everybody else on the outside was looking at you and it looked successful, on the inside, what was going on, it was taivas run amok. You had a question.

13:10 Yeah. Are we saying that all these unique kokos are coming from universal taivas. Everybody has, on a certain level, universal types. We have to know what's playing a role in our particular lives. Some people are going to have more of Taiva's mom, and some people are going to have more sexual Taiva's. Each one in his own way. But on a grand level, we all have some of them. Right? But it's a question of manipulation. It's like, okay, so I have to know myself. I have more of this one. So it requires shmirag. It requires, like, okay, so what am I doing with that now? Right? It's very important. Make sense? Yeah? Right. But on the other hand, the neshama is lame. The neshama by itself doesn't have these drives. So the neshamah requires the body. So it's like the body provides the ambition, the taivas. The neshamah drives the car. Okay, where should we take? It's a powerful tool, this body. It has unbelievable ambitions. And those ambitions shouldn't be squelched. See, that's so important because a lot of times when we think of Mussar,

14:18 we think like, ah, this is a bad midah. I have to get rid of it. Yeah, if you do that, that's called suppression. Midahs are not meant to be suppressed. They're meant to be guided. They're meant to be channeled. That means you have to be thoughtful about them. It means you can't be on autopilots. That means that a person who's not taking an inventory of their lives on a consistent basis is in an autopilot mode. That's what's happening. And that's natural. And there's no other way around it. The natural state of the body, the natural state of taiva, because it doesn't have intelligence, is autopilot. So the moment you take your hands off the wheel, it's not the shot the car stops driving. The car is driving. But there's nobody home. And you can get through semesters of college like that. You can get through years of your job like that. You can get through your marriage like that. People do amazing things. Amazing things when it comes to autopilot. They just shut off because they can't pay attention. It's too difficult for them to rise in their consciousness. Yeah.

15:09 How do you know you're in the middle of, like, you're in the middle of autopilot, and you know that if you go back on the wheel, you know, you're probably going to crash. So, like, in a woman of the situation, if you go back on the wheel, you're going to crash. You know, you don't know what's going on. So, like, how is it when you're in the middle of, like, driving in your life that you know that when you get back on the wheel, you're not going to fall off and, like, off a cliff. Two things. Number one, I totally hear you. I think a lot of people prefer sometimes to be on autopilot for that reason. Because paying attention to the thing that's bringing them so much pain is so difficult that it's easier for them to stay in autopilot. The thing is, they're crashing the car every single day, they're just not paying attention to it. And the amount of damage that they're doing to themselves by not paying attention outweighs very often the actual paying attention.

16:05 So it's like, you may not end up in therapy right away, right? But you'll end up there eventually. Because if you're on autopilot, because consciousness is so painful, right? And you're like, if I actually pay attention to my life, things are going to fall apart. It's like, if I have... Whatever's going on in my life, I have an abusive boss, right? But I can't pay attention to that abuse, because I need this job so badly to support my family, right? So the abuse is still taking its toll, right? So it's taking its toll whether or not you're paying attention to it. So you may as well pay attention to it, you understand? Because if you're not paying attention to it, but you don't want to pay attention to it because there's so much fear involved in paying attention. And I can understand that fear. That fear is there to protect you, right? But at some point, it's going to become so debilitating, right, that you're going to say, okay, I have to pay attention to it. And you may as well do that sooner rather than later so that you can minimize the amount of damage. You keep it to a muscle.

17:00 If you're on autopilot, you're also not looking at the gas meter. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's a great motion. No, it happens to be it's excellent what you're saying because you can't continue like that. The entire field of psychology is basically just people that their lives aren't working, right? And then the question becomes, well, what's going on in the system that it's not working? Somebody once told me that the definition of therapy is to lower the emotions, to return thoughtful choice, so that a person can regain control of his life, to the extent that any of us can control life. So it comes out that the guf and the neshama, they're mashlim, each other, they complete each other. So a person must pay attention to both, and that's like against every shmooze you'll ever hear in any other Musser Saver. In every other Musser Saver, what's it like? Ignore the taivas ha-guf, right? And what's Revolvi saying? Taivas ha-guf are important. They're mashlim, the neshama. Without the taivas ha-guf, the neshama itself wouldn't be able to do what it does.

18:10 Ha-guf naysen es ha-kerches, v'ha-neshama es ha-tzura ha-kivun. The body gives you the power, the neshama gives you the form. The derisor. The derisor, the power. And when you have this proper Then both of them can come to their proper rectification. Now all of a sudden these exceptional powers that are blind that the body has, they can be used for elevated purposes. I'm going to say this in my way, but I think this is what Ravolbi means. And now the spiritual pursuit, right? And I'm going to use the word meaning, is now endowed in all of the actions. In other words, the action by itself has no meaning. It's only meaning is whatever actions we're doing in our lives, right? But the action by itself, it's like the machine is only doing what it's doing. It's only designed to sustain itself, right? You would never design a machine that's there just to sustain itself.

19:18 Right? That wouldn't make any sense. Why do you make a machine? You make a machine to do something. Well, the design of the body is to sustain itself. That's what it is, right? Everything we do is just this. Why do we work out? Why do we eat? Right? Why do we have a sexual appetite? Everything that we do is designed to sustain ourselves. What's missing from that system? What's missing is the reason for the machine. Because from the outside, when you look at the machine, what do you see? You only see the machine exists to sustain itself. Well, that's not a normal machine. That's not an intelligent machine. So what's missing from the machine? Right? What's missing is meaning. And everybody knows this intuitively. But if you don't pay attention to it, it's more comfortable for the machine to just do what it does, which is to sustain itself. And once you endow meaning, so that changes the entire picture. And that's what's exceptionally exciting. Right? Because the neshama has a natural desire for meaning. And you look around in the world today, and what happens, and this makes sense, right? What happens when you remove? Spirituality. What happens when you go to that nihilistic world.

20:20 of nothing means anything? So then the only thing that makes sense is just whatever is going to sustain me right now. And the moment that something gets uncomfortable, what do you do? Just shut it down because it's not worth it. So I'll put myself in the Musser seat for a second. When I talk to guys that work out, and clearly I don't, when I talk to guys that work out, I always have the same complaint and they always have the same answer. What's my complaint? I'll work out for a day or two. And what gets me? So sore. I'm so sore. You guys, I don't know if you've ever seen people that just started working out again. You see them doing the strangest things with their arms. It's like their arms are just like hanging there. They can't go down and they can't go up, right? And they're walking through the halls and they're just like, ow. Every step they're taking, ow. Then you talk to somebody who's like a guy who works out three, four times a week and he sees that guy. What does he say? I'll tell you what he says to me. Every single, everything.

21:21 He goes, if you get through this, it won't be like that. If you'll go for a week, two weeks, three weeks, then what happens? The soreness goes away. Am I wrong? No, you're right. It goes away. So what am I doing? You do, right? I'm sorry. I shouldn't use you as an example. Say that those of us that are holding in this union, it's true. You talk to somebody who's on a diet, right? In the beginning, what do they say? I'm so lethargic, right? I'm missing those important sugars that I need. First of all, you don't need those sugars, right? But your body needs them right now. If you'll just break through. So what will you feel? I reached a whole new level today. I'll brag a little bit. I reached a whole new level today. I did something I've never done in my life. I made cauliflower pizza. I literally spent the time, to put cauliflower in a food processor,

22:23 turn it into like a dough, bake it, and make pizza out of it. No. It's cauliflower pizza. I mean, it's okay. I mean, it's cheese and sauce and onions on cauliflower, but it's much better than, you know, white flour, right? It's cauliflower. The, what's, if you would have told me 175 days ago, 175 days from now you're going to have cauliflower pizza, I would have told you, I'm not going on this diet. Right. And today, it's more normal to me to have cauliflower pizza than it is to have regular pizza. It makes more sense in my head. Now, Ruben's sitting here saying, uh, no, it just makes more sense to go to the gym three, four times a week, right? And then you can have whatever you want like a normal human being. Yeah. Right. I'm saying, that makes sense to you. I hear it. You're probably right. But the point is, once you, what's the failure? When you go to that gym, when you go to the gym that first week, what's the failure? The failure is that you have not ascribed the proper meaning.

23:20 to the activity that you're doing. Otherwise, the benefit for sure outweighs the pain. And even though in your head you might say, no, I know I've got to do this, you haven't reached the state of consciousness where you've endowed enough meaning in that activity to actually push through. And you know this is true about any great thing you've ever done with any tension in your life. Anything that you've succeeded at doing, you reach the tension, what happens naturally? Forget it, I'm out. What gets you over that hurdle? What gets you over that hurdle is the meaning. that you ascribe to it. And you know, it's not that you need to be convinced of the meaning. You know the meaning is true. What you have to do is you have to take the meaning from just being like regular conscious to elevated consciousness. That's how a person actually makes a move in their life. Yeah. This is a specific question, but when he says that you can use your typos for good... Especially with regard to sexual stuff, that's not really applicable.

24:17 Absolutely applicable. Right now, though. Absolutely. Because the desire to build a family, right, is exceptionally meaningful. And by the way, not everybody is blessed to have that taiva in them in the same way. For some people, it's a real struggle. For some people, the fear of building a family that's not going to be successful outweighs their sexual appetite. So it's a healthy thing right now. And it's not that we have to suppress it right now, but this is the time to be endowing that appetite with meaning. So when you see somebody who's behaving inappropriately, and they're sloppy about their sexuality, because intimacy means exclusivity, and once intimacy means exclusivity, it's just a question of when does exclusivity start? Or when a person, let's say, is being sloppy about their sexuality and sharing it with many, many people, and it's not endowed with any meaning whatsoever. So what's happening to them is they don't realize this, but they're debilitating their capacity to be intimate. Right now, I have that appetite, but I have to, as an 18-year-old, but I have to endow it with meaning now so that I'm appropriately prepared to enter into a meaningful relationship.

25:28 Does that make sense. Yeah. I don't understand exactly where you said that. If you don't get it straight now, right, especially in Ardhar, where we have so many challenges in this realm, If we don't understand the difference between suppression, and with Sa'araynu, there are so many Rebbeim out there that are preaching suppression, right? Not healthy people, but unfortunately, there are too many people that are just preaching suppression, because they see something bad, and they say, well, that has to stop, right? And Rebbeim that you know, right, that I won't quote any names because it's being recorded, but there are more intelligent Rebbeim that say, okay, let's work on this one thing at a time. First, let's maybe work on Shemir Esenayim, right? And we can separate that from other activities, because there are things that are more healthy, and things that are less healthy, things that are more understandable, and things that are less understandable. Understanding where those taivas come from, understanding how they're helping you, understanding how they're hurting you, understanding what you want your future marriage to look like, all those things are birurim, they're clarifications that you can create right now. And if you never had the appetite, you would never need to do it, right? So it's like, what do you want to happen? Well, okay, this is what we want to happen.

26:35 Obviously, this is not true, and this is not real. Well, I think I'm going to get married around the time I'm 23. So let's just have my taiva kick. at 23 years old. No, that's not the way life works, right? We have a certain biological makeup, right? But I don't just, again, I want to, your question is a meaningful one, but I don't want to limit it to the realm of the, you know, of building a family. It's literally in anything. A person has a type of, and many people have this. You see this in yeshiva every single year. There are some guys that, like, they talk about themselves like, I am the next great entrepreneur. It's like Shark Tank is their Bible, you know? And it's not just Shark Tank. You see them, and they're walking around with, you know, like, these books from these, you know, great CEO moguls, and it's like what they do, and they talk about the businesses that they have. And it could be that they'll be wealthy, right? It could be. And I wouldn't want those people to not be wealthy. But what I would encourage those people to consider is why they have that elevated appetite at this stage in their lives, right? Where are they running to exactly? You understand what I'm, it's a sensitive issue, but you have to understand yourself. You have to know where you are. Okay.

27:39 Can I say another small point? Yeah, absolutely. So where's the line between suppression and guidance? Because obviously for every person it's different, but I see myself a lot of times suppressing things because I don't know how to properly guide them. Well, first of all, I think for every single person it's individualized, right? But one general claw that I can share with you, at least what I think is true, is that you'll know when you're suppressing because the system will be very taxed, right? Whereas when you're channeled, it's flow and it feels natural, right? So it's like the activities... that I, you know, engaged in when I was 15 years old, right? So I don't engage in those activities anymore, and I'm not suppressing them. They're just not in my worldview, right? So when I was 16 years old, I loved to play this NHL game that I had on my gaming console, whatever it was back then, Nintendo 64 or something like that. I don't remember what I had, right? So I remember there was the EA Sports. It's in the game. That was like, does that spell their slogan? So I loved that game, and I had it in my room, and it was like, how can I not do my homework or convince my parents that I did my homework.

29:02 so I could just play that game all night long? And I don't want to go to sleep. All I want to do is play that game. And it wasn't even like today where a person's like on their headphones talking to like some person out in Arkansas. I was like, you know, whatever. It's not, without getting into too much details, if you know what I'm saying. I'm not saying, I'm just saying that's a little creepy, yeah? So, um... it's not I'm not suppressing that appetite you understand that came out 40 years old I'm not sitting there going like okay like how do I get out of my house I could like go play EA sports there's like I'm not gonna tell you I. don't have like it still exists I guess if I was in front of a gaming console and like somebody handed it to me I guess I could play it for a couple minutes but it's like you know it's like it's not in me anymore it's not it's it's I've grown out of it you understand I'm saying so it's more like that it's like if you're suppressing it it's like you really want this I really want this don't do it right because you come to like an appropriate awareness of what it is it sort of just fades to black. A person should not be mazalzel, a person should not denigrate the kohos that are revealed inside of themselves.

30:12 Every single one of them is so important. Every single one of them plays such an important role. What's our objective? Our objective here is to strive that they should be in the appropriate balance. I'm just trying to clarify, Rebobbi is trying to redefine the title of his kohos. He's not redefining them, he's saying that's what they are. He's defining them, not redefining them. He's saying that everybody who's defining them as negative is missing the point. Yeah. What if you have bad temptations, like to kill someone or to steal someone, that really have no benefit to them? Steal something. To steal something. To steal someone is a type of kidnapping. Well, I would ask you if that's really the type. Is the type to steal something? Or, if we trace that type of back to its root, right? So, to me, it might sound like a person who has an impoverished mentality, right? Who identifies or ascribes a certain meaning to a particular object, right?

31:17 So let's say, let's be very practical about it. Let's say a guy is selling something in the halls. He's got a table out with snacks, okay? And we all know, sadly, this happens, right? He says it's five shekels for this, and a person just walks by and swipes it. What happened? In that moment, if you would ask him, did you do the right thing? He'd say, no. Well, why'd you do it? So there's some certain pleasure that he gets, from like, this is something, and I don't have enough to get it, right? And now I have it. So it's like, the same guy wouldn't walk into a pizza store and not pay, right? Because he's in public, right? But there's a tithe, not from the actual theft, right? But there's a tithe from the entire picture. It's like, this makes me worthy, right? Like, having food makes me worthy. There are people that have that, right? So they might steal to fill that tithe. But the tithe is not for the theft, the etze, right? It's for the result of the theft, right?

32:20 And the same thing might be when it comes, let's say, you speak about murder, right? I would speak more about anger, right? Anger is a powerful... It's a powerful tool that a person has. You talk to somebody who's got anger issues, and you see people all the time, like, you might just get angry. They get, like, seeped in, like, a certain worldview, and they get, like, angry about it. Well, that's protecting them, too, because if you're angry, you can defeat things. So it's probably they learned when they were younger that that's how they dealt with bullies. Anger was an exceptional tool to keeping people at bay. So when they get older, that taiba comes with them. The problem is now it's being taken out on their children and on their spouses, right, on their co-workers, on their friends, and they're miserable. So murder is just, like, it's not the taiba for murder. It's the anger, which is very powerful. Does that make sense? Yeah.

33:07 I think just going off of that, I think I heard somewhere that, like, in a different say for a quote from someone, that every mida has, even bad midas have facets of good except for cause. I think I had to do it. I think you started talking about chalazah, can I also. There's different mamari chazah when it comes to chas, and that's the question of is that when the chas comes out or is that the chas inside, right? But even chas, right, you could pull it back one step and understand where it's coming from, right? Chas is just mis-channeled passion, right? Make sense? Yeah. Okay. Very important. There's something called pleasure that we get from these powers that we have. It'll become clear what it means in a second.

34:34 From the time we were mamish born, a person, let's say, gets hungry, right? So what does he have? He has an appetite. So what happens? So he tastes food. And what happens when a person tastes food? He gets pleasure. And then what happens? He becomes full. And what does full feel like? Full also feels pleasurable, right? And the opposite, halilah, is true, of course, right? When a person feels that pleasure, he can start to imagine it. It starts to fuel his imagination. So what happens? This imagination creates like the feeling of pleasure, right? And it becomes a tachlis by and for itself. So let's examine. So let's say a person has a koach to be shown around his life. You have to be careful. You have to be careful in your life, okay? So what happens? He gets hungry. What does hunger do? Hunger pushes you to eat, okay? So the moment he gets hungry, what arouses in his mind the picture of the pleasure that he's going to get? So it's like, imagine you know you're going to...

36:07 ... prime grill or Abigail's. There's some hush of steakhouse in New York, yeah? And you know you're going that night. You start to get hungry. What do you start to do in your head? You start to imagine, right? You literally start to imagine the steak that you're going to get. What happens to your taste buds? You can start to imagine yourself like, you know, it's like Homer with the donuts. If you guys are holding your Simpsons. It's like, we had a guy in Yeshiva that used to do that, literally. He loved bagels. He'd go, oh, bagels. And it's like, this is a bagel, man. You know, but like, it aroused. Yeah, no, he was always referring to American days. But it arouses your type, right? It's like, oh my God, I'm going to a crazy barbecue, I can't wait, right? So what starts to happen? You start to think of this pleasure that you're going to get, and the pleasure itself is the purpose. See, that's the important part here, right? In other words, we start to conflate pleasure with purpose. The pleasure becomes the goal.

37:08 So it's like, why am I eating? I'm eating in order to live, right? But now why are you eating? In order to get pleasure, right? And so what starts to happen? It's this unbelievable move. If I was only eating in order to live, how much would I eat? What type of food would I eat? I'd eat the appropriate amount of food, right? But if the goal becomes pleasure, what starts to happen? This is an unbelievable shift, right? Now all of a sudden it's not what's the appropriate amount, it's how much can I possibly fit inside of myself, right? And if that, because like, you know, it's like, there's an alcoholic who had a great line. He once said, he goes, some people can have one drink, that doesn't make any sense to me. He says, if you could feel this good from one drink, why wouldn't you want to feel that good from 10 drinks, or from 20 drinks, or from 30 drinks, right? Well, if that's the case, right, why stop at 30, right? It's how much can I possibly, the answer is, because you're destroying yourself, right? But the shift happened way before that. It's once he said, oh, that's enjoyable, I want that much enjoyment all the time. That's a very sophisticated move that Revolvi just made.

38:17 Shomrei pardes hachayim, shochem yad, be'bikoros ha'noz sheve pardes. Now these shomrim, the guf and the neshama, they're sholey achyad. To these delicious fruits that give a person pleasure, that are in the pardis. Now, a person has a natural life. Natural, organic, healthy, normal lifestyles don't require that level of pleasure. But because we conflate pleasure and purpose, where the pleasure becomes the purpose, what starts to happen? You start to abuse the pardis. And that's where it all starts to be m'kalkalos ashura. That's where things start to fall apart. The kohos themselves are not bad. They're exceptionally powerful. But why do people... See, Rav Obi is giving us an insight now into why people suppress. Because they've made that mistake. In other words, it's like if I, let's say I made that mistake, right? I'm no longer eating because it's healthy to live. Why am I eating? Because I want pleasure, right? So then the question is not what I'm going to eat, it's how much of the most delicious type of food I can have always. You got the move? So now what starts to happen? You start to look at these cocos and you start to say, these cocos are bad things, so what do I need to do? I need to suppress them, right?

39:51 That's really all the questions you were asking before, right? But Rebbe, the cocos are doing bad things to me. Yeah, yeah, because you lost the meaning of the koach. The meaning of the koach was to provide you with the capacity to live. And you made it the purpose, right? It wasn't the purpose, it was a means to an end. The purpose was life. The food was just a vessel to facilitate life. But now the food became the purpose and the life is no longer the purpose, which is why people will literally eat themselves to death. Yicha? So, what do we have to do? Don't look at the kolkos and say the kolkos are bad because they're destroying your life. It's not the kolkos that are destroying your life. It's the unbridled aspect of the kolkos that are making you lose your life. Because they're not intelligent. They're not being guided by logic. Don't try to be oker these things, to remove them, or to be mevatel them, to nullify them. It's this exceptional anah that's in life. And you have to be, you have to be, you have to, it's a beautiful life that you have to have. What we have to do is we have to make sure that we're not abusing the life that we have. We have to make sure that the life that we have is appropriately balanced by the intellect, the hainu, the misham.