Pesach - An IFS Approach to the Four Sons

1:54 So at first I was like Miraculous, derech ateva. It's an unbelievable thing, but it's derech ateva. I realized very quickly I was very wrong. What happened on Matzei Shabbos was nothing short of a miracle. First of all, we all know the anxiety that we felt. I imagine many of you, like me, got the reports Matzei Shabbos that an attack is coming, which is a very strange thing. It's not what we're used to. It's like a funny thing to even have to think about. They'll be in a couple of hours. What are we talking? I'm used to a siren going off. It happens, out of nowhere, out of the blue. And so you run. Here we have the psychological aspect. Sometime between two and three o'clock in the morning they'll be here. What? People told me they like delayed going to sleep, made popcorn and waited up for it to popcorn, just to as an exciting thing, see what was gonna happen. They were not scared. They were right. That's a very, they knew they were taking care. That's what I could say. They were also Israelis. That might be a higher level than my head.

3:02 They were so exciting. The Israel was gonna. So there is a level of derech hatava there that Baruch Hashem we have been in a situation where we have the iron dome and we have the Arrowhead system But even beyond that, I don't know if you saw. These are not k'tusha rockets that they're sending over from Hamas. These are rockets that are bigger than this apartment. These are missiles. These are ballistic missiles. One of them I saw today was the size of an 18-wheeler. These things could have wreaked devastation and chaos. On our land, on our people, on our community, the threat was right over our heads. These UAVs are massive; they're not like a small little thing like the size of this table. These are like planes. And the fact that ninety nine percent of them were shot down is one level of miraculous. The second thing I just want to say very quickly is we had Arab cousins in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt participating in this fight against Iran.

4:01 The person could say al pidar chateva that they're also against Iran. In fact, there was a senior official from Saudi Arabia that released a statement today that said b'feirish that the whole Hamas attack on October seventh was just to avoid Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and making peace with Israel. You could say al pidar chateva made sense for them to do it, but the Emes says it makes no sense. It makes no sense what happened on Matzah Shabbos. And as we're coming into Pesach, even though this is Bchalot, what the Shir is about, I would be remiss if I didn't remind all of us that as we're saying Hallel on the night of the Seder, in just a short week and a half from now, or even less. We should be thankful to the miracles that are happening. By the way, not a small thing that we're living through these times, and it was, I do believe, very much the finger of the Rebbeinu Shlom. This could have gone very, very differently.

4:51 And Baruch Hashem, it wasn't. I had a chaver of mine in America recently who said to me a couple hours ago. He said he didn't understand why Friday wasn't like the Rabbanim didn't call for atzom throughout all of Klaliyos so that we should have been fasting on Friday. I said nobody thought it would happen on Friday. Friday we were all sitting here going, it's another bluff. It's not real. They're not going to do this. In fact, Matzei Shabbos when the reports came out and they canceled cheder, so I imagine many of you were doing the same thing that many of the women were doing in my neighborhood, which was going, I can't believe they canceled school. There's a ballistic missile attack, but all the women are going. I have to pay haklin and have the kids home. It's not going to happen, my friends. The insanity that it would take for this to happen, because they would be going against their best interests.

5:37 And they did it anyway. And mamish, unbelievable nisim. In a certain way, it was ma'achid. It was ma'achid us in the region. We have to see yada shemir. That's not what the shir is about, but it had to be said. Usually, when you say it has to be said, it's like for a bad thing that you said. It's like you didn't need to say it. You said it had to be said. It didn't need to be said. This one, mamish, had to be said. Do you see the meme that was going around? I don't. The one of the most. They're all beautiful, but one of the most. One of the most well-known, famous, classic parts of the Seder is the Arba Banim. There's a lot to say. Do you know? I just learned that the Hagada, after Tanach, is the most commented Sefer in all of Yiddishkeit.

6:42 There have been more perushim; thousands and thousands of perushim have been written, more than on any Gemara. It's on the Hagada, which is unbelievable. There's a million varlach on the Arba Banim. I want to try to share something that I think is particularly meaningful. This is a well known question that the Baal Hagada did not need to say the word echad. We know how to count. Can I get Arba Banim Deber Torah Chacham Rasha Tam V'sheini Yodei Lishol? That's what ought to have been written. Grammatically, it's strange to say echad, echad. It's a strange thing to do. In fact, if you look at the English translation of the Hagada, what do they say? The one who is wise, the one who is wicked. Or better put, the one who considers himself wicked. But it could have just said, "There's four sons" Wise, wicked, etc. Didn't need to say "achad."

7:36 That's the famous classic question, especially because we know that that's not the way the Torah counts. How does the Torah count? First of all, we don't need it to count b'chol. But even if the Torah was going to count it, we know how we say how we count. For example, the Torah says, 'Es hakavas echod taseh bavoker ve'es hakavas hasheni taseh bein arbayim.' If it's gonna count, it should count like it counts in the Torah: one, two, three, four. However, I saw very interesting that when it comes to children, this is not the first time that we see this concept of echod, echod, echod. We see it already in Parshas Yisro by Moshe Abinu's children. Moshe Rabbeinu, his names of his children. Listen to how the Torah records it. As Shnei Baneha, Asher Shem Ha Echad Gershom, Ki Amar Ger Ha Yisib Be Eretz Nachriya, V'Shem Ha Echad Eliezer, Ki Elokei Avi Be Ezer Be Atzilini Micheriv Paro. So here again, by Moshe Rabbeinu, we find this concept of Echad. We would have expected the pasuk. First of all, it didn't have to say. It says that Shnei Baneha. It doesn't have to say Asher Shem Ha Echad. We know.

8:37 We know Asher Shem Ha Echad. But if it's going to say it, we would have expected it to say Hashem ha'echad garishom v'shem ha'sheni Eliezer. That would have been the more appropriate way to count it. So the fact that when it comes to our children, the Torah seems to only count one is interesting to us, and it requires us to unpack this. The classic answer I'm not going to give. I imagine many of you know it. It's a beautiful she'er, but we're not going to do it now. Which is that every child is unique. That's the entire she'er, by the way. It's just 45 minutes of that. You tell a story. You tell a different part, but you all know that part. So this is a different approach. How many of you in the room have heard of something called IFS, Internal Family Systems? A couple of you. Internal Family Systems was a psychological model that was established by a guy whose name is Richard Schwartz. Dick Schwartz. Richard Schwartz is not Jewish, believe it or not.

9:42 Think he's a psychologist, and his name is Richard Schwartz. His father was Jewish, and his mother is not. So Richard Schwartz came up with a model of psychology that, when I first started learning about it, which was about twelve years ago, I said this guy had to have known the Hagada. What's the model? The model is like this. Or if not the Hadada, at the very least, he must have learned some Torah. Turns out he did. He has this thing where he looks at a person as self and parts. Self is what he calls the you. That's you. You are the self. I actually had the opportunity this year to study IFS for a couple of days with a woman whose name is Doctor Aynat Bornstein, who's famous in the world of IFS. And a not does not consider herself an Orthodox Jew, although I'm not sure how she doesn't because, first of all, the morning that I took the class was Rosh Chodesh and she woke up for Vasiqin at the Kotel.

10:49 I'm like you're doing better than me But she said self is your nefesh alocus. So I was like you're from lady like I don't know how observant you are, but you're definitely connected. She so this concept of self is your nefesh alocus. And these are the features of a person that are natural to self. He has this thing called the eight Cs and the five Ps. Things like compassion, clarity, confidence Persistence, playfulness. These are features of the self. These are he has the eight Cs and the five Ps. I think there's also three As, but I don't remember them. These are features of the self. That's what it means to be in self connectedness. When a person is connecting to somebody, they're connecting self to self. Then there's what he calls the exiled pain. And he used that word, exile. This is like a wild concept that he really tapped into something we've been speaking about in Yiddishkeit for a long time. The exiled pain is things that we all develop through the either capital T or lowercase T traumas.

11:58 That we have in our lives, and every one of us goes through something. Even something small, by the way. It's not like this trauma is a very natural part of who we are. We all enter into these traumatic experiences. We left our children in Gan and they cried until they realized we weren't coming back. There's a lot of things that could create trauma in a person. And basically, what we do is we exile the pain of these traumas because they're too difficult for us to contend with. And that's what he calls your exiled parts. You exile this pain and you try to keep it. When I was a kid, before I learned IFS, I thought I had this box inside of me. I called it my poison box, where I put all the things I don't want to think about and I lock it up real tight. You know that poison box? Every once in a while, you go to visit that museum of intolerance. You open it up and there's no gift shop. It's a terrible place to go. Here's all the terrible things.

12:54 Have some chocolate, and then you close it up and you're okay again. That's your exile pain. What our parts do? These parts are called managers now, and as we'll see in a moment, firefighters. What our parts do is they help us manage everyday life to avoid pain. In extreme cases, when our exiled pain is coming up to the fore, those parts become firefighters. Our parts could be anything that's not self. Our parts are not bad. We shouldn't think of them as bad or good. They're just things that have positive and negative impact. An example of a part would be assertiveness. Assertiveness is not a core feature of self. And it could have a positive impact. It could also have a very negative impact. For example, if somebody's coming into a big meeting, let's say they're meeting with their boss and they need to have a level of assertiveness to say, hey, I deserve a raise. So you want to call on that part to be assertive. We ideally want that part to be self-led. But have you ever gotten yourself worked up into a frenzy before a meeting like that? Have you ever start telling a story? I don't mean talk to yourself like talk to yourself.

14:10 I mean that's possible too. You ever start telling a story to your spouse for an hour before the meeting He's always like this or he's always like that. We make up these stories and we get ourselves all worked up, and then you walk into the meeting way overly assertive. Because there's a difference between being assertive and being aggressive. And if we're trying to avoid exiled pain That part could become a firefighter. Or it could become a manager with negative impact. And you walk into that meeting, and you're all of a sudden in a totally different universe. Does that make sense? Let's give an example when it comes to our own children. What does it look like if we parent our children from self? Versus if we parent our children from apart. I didn't plan on saying this, but I'm just reminded of the story of Weinberger Shlita.

15:08 Was sitting in the dining room of his house on Chol Hamoed Pesach And one of his children comes marching through the house with a bag of pretzels in the middle of Pesach. And Weinberger looks at the kid and he goes Where did you get that? And the kid totally like a small, sweet little boy, looks at him very honestly and goes, 'I hid it from you because I knew that you were going to take it away from me.' Rav Weinberger said that his wife was watching this whole interaction, and she looked at him and she said, 'Now, Moshe, there must be some way to separate the chametz from the child.' If we're coming from a place of parts, imagine that we spent our entire two, three weeks before working, and we're working during the day and we're cleaning at night, and then in the middle of Pesach, you see your little kid. I hid my chametz from you under the mattress because I want you to take away my pretzels. Is there a part of you that might want to?

16:13 I learned the narrative to show that sometimes sorer gim are meant to keep us from throwing our children out the window, and not necessarily from keeping people from coming in. Is there a part of us that wants to wring the kid's neck and go, 'What did you just do?' Of course, there's that part of ourselves. But in self We might behave very differently. In self, we might make choices to be compassionate, to be kind, to be understanding, and yes, if our child needs, for whatever reason, for us to be more aggressive, we might call on a part because our parts are something we want inside of our car, but we want to be driving the car. Does that make sense? So there's this thing called self, and self doesn't always sit in the driver's seat. In fact, I would imagine, because we're all human, that for many of us hearing this year right now, if you ask yourself who sits in the driver's seat of our car, it's more often parts or self.

17:06 When I started doing this work, which is again like I said about twelve years ago, I realized I don't know when myself had ever sat in the driver's seat of my car. And it's like we are very often operating from parts, and we're not necessarily operating from self. To be in self is a massive level of achievement, and that's obviously what we want because it's the foundation of all of the connection that we seek in our life. Let's start from a very basic premise. Can we connect to the Rebbeinu Shalom if our parts are sitting in the driver's seat? Of course not. Why not? Because if we start to think about what is self Self is the chelak elokam mimal that the Tanya speaks about, right? If you think about the soul, what it is like the rays of the sun. You can't separate the sun from its rays. When we think about the nefesh elokis, what we're really thinking about is that this is an expression of Hashem in this world. Where do we meet Hashem?

18:07 That's not an obvious question. Where do we meet Hashem? In ourselves. It has to be in ourselves, because if we try to meet Hashem outside of ourselves, what exactly are we meeting? Someone who's in self may see Hakadosh Baruch Hu everywhere. Someone who's not in self They might fake themselves out, but they're not actually meeting Hakadosh Baruch Hu there. Even the word lehitpalel. It's internal. We meet Hashem every single day inside of ourselves. That's the point of connection that we have with Hashem. It's a line I think from Rabbi David Aaron. It's a cute line. He says, "If a kid ever asks you" How do you know there's a God? He has a good answer. He says If the light bulb would ask me, 'How do I know there's light?' 'You're shining right now.' The same way I would say to that person, that kid. That light bulb, you're shining right now. I would say to the kid, 'Who's the you that's talking to me right now, if not an expression of Hashem?'

19:08 We meet Hashem inside of ourselves. Tell me, this is uncomfortable. How many of us dated our spouses from parts? It's an uncomfortable one to think about What was the part? By the way, whenever I give this shiur and I say this one, you should know, 75% at least have an uncomfortable look on their face. And the other twenty-five percent are excellent poker players. Everybody did this. We think back. Remember that nineteen, twenty, twenty-one-year-old girl who was dating. Remember some of the features of maybe it was the desperation or the fear or the anxiety that we were experiencing. Maybe it was like there's a lot of things that could come up for us when we're dating. The connection that we create within our relationships may have at first been very parch-driven. But as things don't necessarily always go well in our marriage, what does it force us to do? It forces us to be self It forces us to move back towards the internal to deal with some of that exiled pain, so that we can actually be in self and meet the other person that we're actually married to.

20:16 Here's another uncomfortable one: How many of us parent ourselves from our parts? Think about the kid that drives you most crazy. And think about the thing in your life that you're either overcompensating or undercompensating for Super uncomfortable to think about. When I did this training with Aynat Bornstein earlier in the year, what she had us do was make a whole list of our parts, and then a whole list of parenting things that we want to change. And it was like, those are the same, right? For example, let's say you had a mother that was very overprotective. It's common for when those children become parents either to be super overprotective, even though they swore they never would be, or to be exceptionally out of the picture because I'm not the overprotective parent. But either way, what you're doing is parenting from a place of pain. Does that make sense?

21:08 As opposed to parenting from a place of self. So all connection, whether it's with Hashem, whether it's with our spouses, whether it's with our children, in our jobs, in our communities. Here's a good one. As a nation. If we're not in self, we're not connecting to each other. Here's a classic one. Let's make without taking any sides, without being obtuse at all, and saying something ridiculous. Let's all just take a moment. Is the lack of achdus in Klal Yisrael a function of parts or self? It has to be Because if we were in self, what would we naturally recognize? You or me? Because if I'm in self, then what I'm going to do is recognize the self in another. All these conversations that we're having in the country right now, if you listen carefully, are all fear-based. It's all like, but what's going to happen if and protective, right? It's all this type of. If you listen carefully, you don't have to even listen that carefully. A lot of times, it's just like straight overt, right? It's from anger, it's from frustration, it's from resentment. It's all these parts of ourselves that we've developed. To protect ourselves from each other, when in truth we are each other, we're all just branches of the same tree. So we cannot be connected as a nation unless each one of us is moving towards being in self.

22:28 That's why, by the way, all these achdus shemusin are a little silly. They're a little silly because what do they say? Every achdus shemus sounds exactly the same to me. We have to be in a state of achdus. Of course. Why? Because if you're not in a state of achdus, you're not protected. Why? Because the self, in order to be in self, you realize once you're in self, you don't need protection anymore. Imagine this is a hard one to hear. Imagine if the following was true: you're not actually under attack. I'm not talking about Iran right now. That's obviously an attack. But how many times have we felt from our spouses, from our children, from people in the community, whatever it is That we're under attack? But what if you weren't? What if you weren't under attack? What if the other person was just protecting themselves, and that was the best way they knew how to protect themselves?

23:21 Or what if you were in self And you discovered it doesn't matter what another person says or does? I'm actually okay either way. What would happen to that attack? Be a little bit of a different perspective. I understand there can be some complications sometimes. A particular shul and who should occupy that shul, or what schools should be in a particular neighborhood, or what is the character of a particular neighborhood. How many times do we whip ourselves up into a frenzy from a place of parts? If we remember that we're all the same self, we would probably respond very differently. Does that make sense? Here's the big move. All of that was just a preamble to say the following. There's something called being unblended. Any of you familiar with this terminology? To be unblended means as follows. Because we have lived with our parts for so long We start to identify as them.

24:28 Right? Like, I'm an anxious person. Did you hear someone say that? I'm an anxious person. I'm a depressed person. That's what I am. As opposed to saying. A part of me gets anxious when things happen. We identify as the part. I'm an anxious person. I'm an angry person. I'm a resentful person. That's not you. That's a part of you. Even though I do believe very much in the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, there's always one thing that I've struggled with in terms of AA. I am an addict. In a certain way, sometimes when you speak to addicts, they're over-identified with their addiction. That's why it's the only thing they know how to talk about. Because what do you mean? I am an addict, and if you say to them, "No, a part of you is addicted," they get very nervous. They go, "No. If I say it's a part, then I'm going to let that part run right out of control." It's like, "No, it's okay. It's just a part of you. It's just a part of you.

25:27 We become very identified by the way that we are. A lot of the relationships in our lives If we don't move into self, will reinforce that blended modality, which is not true? The relationships will tell you that. You ever get feedback from your husband? I'm not. I shouldn't say this. You ever get feedback from your husband? You are a fill in the blank type of person Why is that? Why is that so painful? And by the way, if you haven't gotten it from your husband, you'll get it from your kids. And if your kids aren't teenagers yet, they'll do it soon. We tell people they are their parts. And so what happens is that since we have this belief that we are our parts, that's actually what we put out into the world. We put this thing out into the world, like I am an anxious person, and then people relate to us. They say to us, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly, in the way that they treat us, they reinforce this idea that I am my parts. Remember, you are not your parts, and your parts are not their burdens. It's possible for a part to release its burden.

26:49 But what first has to happen is you have to separate from the part. So you have to be able to say, rather than saying I'm anxious, there's a part of me that's anxious. Do you hear the difference? That's a huge. By the way, just those words alone. I never cease to be amazed by this. Just by changing our language, we change so much of the problem. Just by speaking differently. I've been thinking about this for years. Why is language so critical? Just from reframing our language, so many things change. I know that it's true. I specifically know that it's true. On Pesach, even the word Pesach. Chazal say Pesach is the freedom of language. Everything about Pesach is language. The Asarim Amaros that Hashem created the world with, when they were destroyed by Noach's table, when that whole story by the Malb Chazal tell us al pi Kabbalah that those ten utterances fell into Mitzrayim.

27:43 The ten Makos that we experienced were actually Kineged the Asarim Amaros. You can take a look at the Maral, and then we got the Aseret Hadibros. By Harsinai, which is the restructuring of the language that happened by Asara, by the original Asara Mamros, it came down now in its Torah form, and Jews go down to become Verom Amtonu Mikol Lashem to become elevated language. I don't know why this is true. I've been thinking about this for a long time. Why language is so central to self, but I know that it's true that the way that we speak changes the way that we see things. Just from saying the words, if you try this, it'll work. Just from saying the words, the next time you're in a part, the next time you're having a conversation with your husband, the next time you're talking to a friend, instead of saying I was so anxious, just say there was a part of me that was really anxious at that moment, and you'll see just the language alone starts to unblend you from the part.

28:36 And what happens is now it's this thing that you can manage, that you can deal with. You could start to unbury it. You go, okay, I have this part of me that's anxious. I know it's trying to help me manage. I know it's trying to help me protect myself. How does it do that? If you did that, by the way, in a non-judgmental way, what would it sound like? I really, by the way, I'm not. I'm not doing it now, but I would love to do this one time as an exercise. I'm not doing it right now. I do it in yeshiva with the boys. I'm not doing it right now. But if I ask you just quietly for a second to think about yourself, take a part of yourself. Remember, it's not you. It's a part, right? And just ask that part What are you protecting me from? Take a second to do it now. This part of me that's anxious What's protecting me? I'm making something up from failure.

29:24 It's not a bad part. It's just protecting me from failure. This part of me that gets angry, this part of me that gets controlling, whatever words. What is it protecting you from? You can do that. You could start to ask yourself what it's protecting you from the moment you're unblended from it. The moment you see it as this thing that you can pluck to. So the key is to be unblended. The truth is, tonight I have to move a little bit faster just because I have to get to Shavuot. So I apologize; I can't take so many questions. Are any questions, Yosef? So far, so good. In order to be unblended, this is the last move for the night. And then we'll pull it back to the Hagada. In order to be unblended These parts need to feel safe. Because let's say I'm making up a story now, but it could be relevant to anybody here.

30:20 Let's say As a child, you developed a part of you to protect yourself. So I have to adjust for the audiences. If I give this shit to men and women, it's very different parts that I'm dealing with. Let's say here's a part that seems to be more prevalent in women than in men. Let's say I'm a perfectionist. Not bad. About sixty percent of you. Thank you. Let's say I'm a. I have a part of me that's a perfectionistic part Right? And I always had to do well on my tests because otherwise I disappointed my parents, and it was very important to me not to disappoint my parents because if I disappointed my parents, that meant that somehow I'm making up a story. Somehow their dreams were unfulfilled through me. So I became a perfectionist. I might have just hit on the head for about five percent of you. I apologize to anyone who I hit on the head with. We all have our own stories. So let's say you had that part.

31:25 Now that part, when you speak to it You know what it'll tell you if you listen to it. I'm so frustrated with you because I have been protecting you for so long and you have hated me. Because when I was a perfectionist. And I was that teenage girl that wasn't going out to hang out with her friends because I needed to overstudy like crazy to make sure that I got the perfect score on my test. And you're sitting there hating me because you wanted to hang out with your friends. Remember, I was protecting you from those disappointing looks from your parents. So very often, what happens is that our parts are unwilling to let go and sit in the passenger seat, and they have to remain blended because they're protecting us and they don't feel safe with us. So our job, and I'll then I'll say the entire full sentence, pulling everything together. Our job is to create safety for these parts So that these parts can unblend from the self.

32:25 So that they can become self-led. Say it again. Make sure everyone gets it. We want our parts to feel safe with us. I know that means they need to feel appreciated. They need to feel loved. They need to feel respected, so that they can unblend from self. So that they could say, 'Oh, you do appreciate me,' and then they could let go a little bit of that driver. Just like the way that I heard it once is like, imagine you're carrying very heavy luggage. The luggage has wheels. Why are you gripping the handle so tightly? You ever Anyone here travel? I travel a lot. When I'm walking through the airport, I very often realize that I'm holding the luggage much tighter than it requires. It'll move the same way if my hand is like. Most of us are holding onto luggage in our life very tightly.

33:16 And if we can unblend from these parts, it allows us just to loosen the grip, even if not to put the luggage down. Which is a very important thing. So we want to create safety so that our parts can unblend, so that they can become self-led. That's what it's called. If you wanted to know, what does it mean to be a human being in this world? That's our goal. Our goal is not to get rid of our parts. Parts don't get retired. All parts are welcome. But what we want is to be in self, And we want to be leading our parts. That's what it means to be an adult. If you ever wonder, we're adults now in the room. But we all know that we're not adults. We and it's like Like in my I know this sounds strange I'm 43 years old and I'm a grandfather.

34:03 But inside of me, I'm still 18. I'm telling you, I'm still shana aleph And when the shana aleph guys do ridiculous things Sometimes inside of me I'm like, that's awesome. Like, I don't necessarily think it's a good idea what they did. But if I'm being honest Like I would have done that. You know what I'm saying? Like I can't do it now because I'm like all rabbinic, but really I'm with you. You know what I'm saying? There was even a time this year that I had to call two boys into the office because they did something ridiculous. It was ridiculous, and they needed to be called in. But also inside of me, I was going, I totally would have done that when I was their age, and even now, I still think it's hysterical. I couldn't tell that to them. It was a funny thing that they did. They found some sort of tub, they filled it with water, they lit a fire under it, and they made themselves a bath.

34:56 Was that a bright idea? No. Where was it? It was right outside the base manager area. And there were pictures, and I wouldn't mind. There was a little bit of damage. I wouldn't mind that if it wasn't for the damage. But it's ridiculous, right? It's a very immature thing to do. I totally would have done that. I think even when I called them in, I was serious with them because what they did was not necessarily the most clever thing. But I get it. It's like it's funny. It's like good yeshiva fun. Maybe if it would have been just a little bit done differently, it would have been better. But the idea here is that. We think of ourselves as 18 year olds, but really we're adults. So when does that happen? When does it click? Like at what point? Like I'm a grandfather now. So at what point do I grow up?

35:44 It's an amazing thing. We don't know. Is it an age thing? My grandmother, Alay Hashem, she used to tell me all the time, age is just a number. And she was a very young woman. Even though she passed away at 90, she was a very young person. She was very growth oriented. She became a balish tshuva at seventy. Who becomes a balish tshuva at seventy years old? Only somebody who's very young at heart. R' Frayfeld Zecharia of Rachel once said that. He says, I see so many young people who are so old, and I know old people that are so young. What does it mean to be an adult? What does it mean to be an adult parent? What does it mean to be an adult spouse? Sometimes

36:21 I don't know if this is true for you. I feel like it's true for me sometimes. You're dating, and you decide to get married. Then you're just a couple of kids with kids, like you know that kufa I'm talking about. When you have your first kid, you're like, now we're adults. You're not, right? You're just. Remember, before you had multiple kids, you're kind of just like, like we have it figured out. You have one child, you know nothing, right? And then you're like, I've got three or four kids already. I'm an adult now. You're not, right? Wait till you have teenagers. I remember once I was talking to Rev Isaacson early on in my career. And I said to him, I said maybe I should offer a parenting class, and he's a very humble person, so he said it to me very nicely. Your oldest child is like ten, you can't give parenting classes. You have to live through the trauma of parenting before you can give parenting classes, right? It's true. At what point do you actually? Sometimes it just happens, oh I've married off kids now, so now I'm an adult. But it's not true because I still feel like a kid. The definition of an adult is when you are in self And you are able to manage your parts, that's the goal.

37:31 Let's go back. Our parts are children. We developed them when we were very young. Think about a part. Think about its age. That's a really hard thing to think about. When I first started doing this work, I was like shoot I think that part of me first came into my life when I was six. And then I realized it might have been there even earlier than that. It's very—I don't think it's possible for parts to develop when we're in our thirties and forties in that way. We develop these parts of ourselves when our children. So listen to what the Freydekareba says. Unbelievable art from the Freydekareba. He says, "echad is from shmai Yisrael Hashem alokinu Hashem echad." That's what it means. What is the Rabban Shalom? The Rabban Shalom, in this case, we'll call him the Self of All Selves. That's a good way of thinking about God. He's the original self from which all other selves emanated.

38:27 And another way of thinking about this world is that this world is like, so to speak. If you misunderstand me, it's kvira. I'll try to say in a way that is not kvira, but also you try to not misunderstand me. In a certain sense, this world is parts Just to make sure that we're not cut from here. Obviously, the Rebbeinu Shalom does not have any parts. The Rebbeinu Shalom is one; he's echad yachad u'miyuchad. And this world, which appears to be other than him—that's our experience of this world—from his perspective, it's all one. But this world is an expression of him. Because God is the ultimate self, from Hashem's perspective, the world, which we see as a part, is really one to him. So Judaism doesn't actually believe in monotheism. Monotheism is a very soft core belief. Judaism believes in something much more hardcore. Judaism believes in oneness.

39:23 That is to say that all things that are in the world are godly. All things in the world are godly expressions, like the Balshanto said, "Kadosh Baruch Hu is constantly speaking the world into creation. All of the letters of creation are constantly being spoken into being. From Hashem's perspective, everything is one. Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokei No'Hashem Echad is the belief that there's an echad to everything. That everything we see that appears to be disparate is really one. By the way, you should know it's not obvious even on a technological level. It's very difficult for them to create self-driving cars because it's very hard for them to program what is considered something and something else is considered something else. Because it's not obvious. On a molecular level, are really any of us different from each other? Like this table At the core of this table, there's a level where it's connected to the floor.

40:22 On a molecular level, it's hard to know when one thing begins and another thing ends. It's not obvious. Even on a scientific level, there is something called oneness. As we get closer and closer to the coming of Mashiach, what is everybody being met with in the scientific world right now? They're trying to find the unified theory of everything. What's the one theory that comes through everything? Because the world projects a certain level of oneness. It demands oneness. We want to understand how all things work together. That's why even an amazing piece of Torah You ever hear an amazing piece of Torah where forty things are put together and you're like that's crazy Why is that so appealing to us? If somebody's like, 'Did you know that David HaMelech is the gematria of fourteen, because he was the fourteenth generation from Avram Avinu, and he was the lead up to Shlomo HaMelech? Shlomo HaMelech is called the full moon in the Zohar; he's the fifteenth, and that's why Shlomo HaMelech was the one to build the Beis Hamikdash because it's the moon at its peak. And fifteen generations later is when the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, and the Beis Hamikdash comes like waxes and wanes. You hear these tirades, and you're like, 'In the world did that come from?' And that's why. Fifteen is the bechinah of Pesach.

41:31 Which is on the fifteenth of the month, and it's the first yomtov. There's fifteen steps of the Hagada, and that's why we have the fifteenth The fifteenth generation, which is the generation of Shlomo Malkh. That's why we read Shir Hashirim on Pesach. You ever hear these pieces of Torah and you're like, 'This is my not so subtle plug for Nitzotzos. This like you ever hear these pieces of Torah and you're like, 'Wow, that's crazy.' It's because oneness is very appealing. There's something very natural about oneness. What does oneness do? Very simple. If you have a child And you say to the child, "You're a chacham." What did you do? You blended the child with their parts. Your child is not wise. Your child is not wicked. Your child is not simple, and your child is not the one who doesn't know how to ask. You know what your child is? One.

42:20 There's a self. There's a shemayis shalom Hashem alkeno Hashem echad. There's something that came before all the disparate manifestations of that child. It's called the echad, the godly soul. That's what your child is. And then once you know the child is, then you could say, and there's a part of him that's wise. And there's a part of him that's wicked, and there's a part of him that's simple, and there's a part of him that doesn't know how to ask. Understand the difference? Echad gives us permission to unblend from our parts. It's the way that we raise children. That's why Moshe Rabbeinu, when he spoke about his children, he didn't say one, two. That's how you count sheep. That's not how you count children. Each child is echad. Not just in the sense that they're unique. That's the obvious part. The deeper part is they are echad. That's what they are. You can't. That's why we don't count people. We don't say one, two, three, four. Because that's not the appropriate way to relate to people. The way we relate to a person is you are echad.

43:19 That's how we want our spouses to relate to us. That's how we want to relate to our children. Hopefully, that's the way we want to relate to our spouses. We want to be able to see the inherent goodness and godliness that's inside of every single person. By the way, when does marriage break down? When we stop relating to people by their self and we start relating to them by their parts. How many times do people come and they say, "He's this, she's this." No, a part of them A part of them. You hear the difference? What gives us the safety to unblend from our parts, knowing that you are Echad? Imagine you came to a party and you said to that part, "I'm a godly soul. I'd like to introduce myself to you." As a godly soul, I am infinite. I can handle it. It's okay. You can come under my employ. You can sit in the passenger seat, confident that I've got this because I am a godly soul. The key to all the work. That Richard Schwartz did all this work, all this notion of self and parts and exiled pain and unburdening the self from unblending the self. It all begins with this idea that the Balagoda wrote.

44:28 Which is echad, echad. The Torah was saying, kin neged ar babanim. There's four parts. There's four children. But you should know that none of those parts define the person that we're talking about. The person that we're talking about is echad, and from a place of echad, now we could relate to the parts. You have the safety, you have the unblending, and now the parts can become manageable. It's unbelievable. One word in the Haggadah, and I want you to know, in case you think I'm just making this stuff up, I once heard B'shem Rav Nach Orloik, one of the great Mashgichim in Yerushalayim, who's a brilliant person. He said to a friend of mine who was learning in Mir Yeshiva, and he went to all these Musarvadim, and he said, 'How come I feel like I've learned more in therapy than I have from all the Musarvadim that I went to in the Mir?'

45:16 So Rav Orlofik responded because psychology gave language to what Chazal meant. And it's true. If you know these terminologies, when you learn Mesilas Yesharim, when you're learning Derech Hashem, when you're learning Kesidus Shemarim You're opening up the world that was said already But it was hard for us to understand exactly what was meant. We needed these terminologies to help us explore this. So I believe Beimuna Shleima. That Yitzias Mitzrayim, which is what we're all about to experience, is not historical. When Chazal say that every single Pesach we're supposed to experience as if we're coming out of Mitzrayim, it means that there's an energy on the night of the Seder that we're supposed to tap into that allows us to come into self. The 15 steps of the Hagada, by the way, are literally steps that we can walk individually on the night of the Seder in order to come into self, which is our way of leading of leaving Mitzrayim. I did this one time a couple years ago with my family. It was amazing.

46:15 We stopped and we went through each stage of the Hagada and we said, 'What does this stage mean to us on a personal level of leaving Mitzrayim?' For example, Kadeish is the godly soul. That's what allows us to sanctify the world. Orchat is the animal souls, the physical soul that you like to wash your hands, but you don't yet make a bracha. Karpas is all the stuff buried underneath. Yachatz is the breaking that inevitably happens from all the stuff that we buried. Magid is the stories that we tell and reframing those stories in order to leave. There's a special shkula on the night that we left Mitzrayim. Historically all those years ago, every one of us has the opportunity to leave Mitzrayim. I think very often, as we get older, we sort of have a chalishos. Can I still come into self? Remember in seminary when you were young and fresh and you're like the world was your oyster and you didn't have the pain yet. Of anything, life was just going to be amazing. And so there was this exploratory period in your life where you were able to be whatever you want.

47:11 And then you get older and it's not so easy to daven because how you daven with a kid like tugging at you the entire time, right? Can you really get five seconds for yourself? Right? You know that thing at night where your husband comes home and you are like I haven't had five seconds for myself, and he's looking at you going what? And you know that feeling of resentment that you have towards him. I am talking about. Good. Was that right? Mincha, Ma'ariv is a gift from God. You know why? You know why Ma'ariv exists. Yaakov Avinu had twelve children. It's brilliant. It's not over, and we shouldn't have a chalishus. That person that we aspired to once become, we can't still become. And that's the Avodah Nissan. That's the Avodah of this chalishus of Nissan, the flowering that occurs in the spring, the Shasham coming in the summer. This idea of returning to self—the greatest shmira that we could have for what's happening outside in the world—is for us to be maximally in self. The benefits are enormous. As parents, as spouses, as Jews, as a nation, this is the thing that we need most. Blessed Hashem, we should be zeicher to use these opportunities to remember we are not chacham, rasha, tam, or any yodei lishol. Fundamentally, we are all acher. Chakasher v'samech.