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When you're starting a new When you're starting a new zman First of all, everybody welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be back. When you're starting a new zman, are you inishir? You want to start with something new. And I have a whole slew of a mixture of new ideas and kli. That I want to present to you. Also, to start, we're going to start going to Davening soon in the Sitter. We're going to start actually with Shmoneh Esrei, and then work our way back. That's basically how I like to do it. Start with Shmoneh Esrei and then go back to Brachos and go through Pesukah deZimra, etc. Work our way up to Shmoneh Esrei again, then Pas Shmoneh Esrei. So that's what's coming down the pipeline. I really wanted to finish off today. I mentioned to you that my goal was the last she'er of the zman. That it was really I was trying to cram two she'erim into one, and I did not succeed. We did a lot, but we still have what to do.
So we have about 35-40 minutes to try to finish it up. Just as a brief chazara We spoke last time about the fact that we spoke about hespedus. We spoke about talking to Hashem in our own words. Then we spoke about the fact that connecting to Hashem is more than just speech. Connecting to Hashem, a person has to go deep. And has to go deep into himself. The deeper you go into yourself The more you connect to the essence of yourself, which is your neshama and your subconscious. The more you connect to the source of that soul. Which is Hashem, and this is what we spoke about when we said the Nefesh HaChaim says that the essence of a person's soul is a Chelik Elokis Manish Is a portion of God Manish. We used it to explain and we said I don't know if we said it but I'm dented to say it That quoting that Gemara The idea is that everybody, all of existence, is within God.
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And so therefore At our source is Hashem. So by going deep into oneself, a person always says, "When I sometimes feel when I'm going really deep in my conversation with God, sometimes I feel I'm just really connecting deeply to myself." And I always like to say that ha'inu ha'ch. It's the same thing. It's not like two different things. Connecting deeply to yourself and getting deeply into your essence is connecting to the godliness part of you. And that the source of every neshama is Hashem, who supports the neshama and is behind the neshama. And that's the Gemara that says that let the neshama come and call out to Hashem. The neshama that has these five qualities should go and call out to Hashem that has these five qualities. And that was the Gemara that we quoted. I don't know if you remember that Gemara. We went through that Gemara.
And so, part of the goal of davening becomes trying to go deep. And that's the big mistake we make with davening—that we kind of look at davening as a whole bunch of words that we just have to say. And it does somehow this magical work up in heaven And check, we did it. And what I tried to show you the last time was that actually the words in davening, their significance are not only in terms of the words. They are definitely significant. We'll speak about the words another time. But it's really what the words are meant to do to you consciously And how deep they're meant to make you go. We gave the shir last time, if you remember that meditation we did. The meditation of being on the beach and going up to see the planets and the moon and the stars, all the physical world, and then going to the world of the angels and then going to the world of the transcendental forces and then feeling the love of Hashem and the oneness of Hashem and then you walk into that white light and you talk to Hashem and we felt how amazing it was to be able to talk to Hashem from such a connected place and then I showed you.
How everything from Baruchu until Shemona Esrei is essentially doing that, and that really davening is the words are meant to be a guided meditation. They're meant to get you to a certain state of consciousness to go deeply in oneself to be able to connect to Hashem in a meaningful way. That was basically in short in two minutes. That was the shir from before we left today. Is more of a practical shear, which is I want to give you some tools to try to work on connecting deeper in davening And to be able to give you some tools and some tactics that you can use to help you concentrate better in davening and to be able to help you go deeper. This is a little bit of a meditative type shir, and as I told you, tefillah is going to have two components: there's the intellectual part of it, but tefillah isn't just intellectual. Tefillah is experiential, and you have to be able to do it. So I have to be able to show you actual practical techniques that you can use to go deeper.
Techniques that have been tested, techniques that I myself do and others that I know do will certainly help you. What I want to do today is do three different things. One is a very general type of thing that will help you. Another one is a little more specific to show you perhaps how to gear some of the brachos in davening and how to be able to connect to them better. And then finally, I want to do something outside, which I'm not going to tell you yet what it is and what the purpose of it is. But by the end, hopefully you'll know. So let's even though it's hot, let's shut the window. Two seconds. We're not going to be indoors for long. We're going to be indoors for about five minutes. And then I'm going to give you something to do outside, and then we're going to meet and do something else.
Okay. Very often A person finds it difficult to. There's one inside. Another one. There's three. There's three windows. How many Jews? Let's take the closed window. There we go. Very often Very often during davening A person can find it difficult to concentrate. And it's hard. You're reading through the words, words you mostly don't understand, and even if you do understand what they mean, you don't understand what they really mean. And besides the fact, I don't need to ask how many people in this room are during the milshvanesh or thinking about the basketball game, thinking about everything under the sun. Except for being able to concentrate, and a person leaves shnaisrei. Sometimes he doesn't even remember if he davened it. Did I? I know I took three steps back, but I must have said something there in the middle. So I'd like to give you a little bit of a meditative technique that I personally use, that I find to be beneficial. I use it in varying different ways. I'm going to teach you in about five minutes.
Just to be able to maybe start using it this week in your davening. Everyone, close your eyes. Breathe in through the nose Out through the mouth. In through the nose Out through the mouth. You're walking in a field. The weeds and the grass are high. Barely anyone can see you. No one can see you. You're walking through the grass in comfortable clothes. Sits as overalls on top of your clothes, wearing them out And you're feeling very connected Very holy and very spiritual. You see a stream in front of you. And that stream leads to a pool of water. A natural mikvah. And you take a second to prepare yourself And you go into the mikvah. Imagine yourself—you're all alone outside in this field.
And you're about to dip into the mikvah. The mikvah is not cold; it is a nice temperature. And you chill in the mikvah, and you're dipping, and you're feeling connected. Then you come out of the mikvah. Dry off a little bit. Get dressed You pick up your sitter And you start davening. You're all alone. You feel so holy. Spiritual and connected. In your davening, whatever you're davening Shmonesri, whatever You just see the nature, you feel the nature. Just came out of the mikvah, you feel holiness and purity. Just take a second to visualize yourself davening with holiness and spirituality. When I count to three You're gonna clap And we're gonna switch scenes. Three. You're in a shack. A rickety wooden shack Alone in the middle of a forest And you're all alone.
You go out to the porch. And it's starting to drizzle And then the rain picks up And you have this fresh mountain air in the forest And it starts to pour, And it's pouring. And you hear a little thunder and lightning. And you're not scared. It's not a scary storm. It's just beautiful nature. And you see it raining. And it's raining hard. And there's just enough light that you can manage to see some words in a siddur. And you pick up And you decide to start davening Maariv. See yourself davening Maariv and Shmona Esrei Standing on this porch in this wooden shack All alone in the forest. With beautiful rain. An occasional thunder, an occasional lightning far away pouring down You feel connected. You feel spiritual. Take a moment to feel connected through that scene. When I count to three We're going to clap and switch scenes.
Two, three. You're floating effortlessly through the clouds. You're all blown up in the clouds Effortlessly looking down and seeing the cities passing by And you feel connected. You feel free. Nothing bothers you. You're above it all. You feel lightweight as you effortlessly float through the clouds. Pick up your sitter. Recognize the oneness of Hashem. Say Shema. Visualize yourself saying Shema. And going through VaHafta, VaHayyav, VaYomer As you're effortlessly floating through the clouds. On the count of three, we're going to clap and switch scenes. Two, three.
You're standing by the entrance to the kotel, but this time the kotel looks a little different than what you're used to. Because the beis hamikdash is here. And even though normally it is only kohanim that are allowed to go into the beis hamikdash and deep into the beis hamikdash. They're giving you special permission. And you go ahead and imagine yourself walking up. If you've ever seen pictures of it, and if you haven't, just imagine it—the ultimate splendor and beauty of the Beis Hamikdash. Light is shining from the Beis Hamikdash. It's not a light like the sun; it's a light that is spiritual. A light that just being in the area makes you inspired and connected. And the Kohanim are sitting there opening the doors into the sanctuary. And you walk in And you're just blown away at the beauty Effortlessly, unbelievably clean, gold Magnificence of the Beis Hamikdash.
And you walk deeper and deeper, and you just feel so connected. And finally As you walk through. You see in front of you the Kodesh Hakadosh. You see the Kruvim. You see the Aron. The place where only the Kohen Gadol is allowed to go once a year. But today You get special access. Imagine yourself walking into a place that is literally the portal between this world and the next. And pick up your sitter. And take whatever tefillah you want to take because you only have thirty seconds in here. And take a second to daven to Hashem in the Kodesh Hakadosh. Visualize it, see it, feel it as if it's real. One, two, three. Open your eyes. This is not specific to any tefillah. As I said, this is a tool to help you connect deeper.
I use this all the time in davening, and you would think a guy who basically knows all of tefillah and knows what it means doesn't need this. You're wrong. You need this. I have thousands of scenes like this that I didn't read anywhere. I do it on my own because I'm using things to help me connect. So I do this very often in Shmona Esrei. I do this very often in Davening. In fact, once you start learning the words and the Siddur, the cool thing is starting to create scenes that relate to the words. And so when you say the words, like we did from Baruchu all the way till Shmona Esrei. I gave you a meditation that is actually connected to the words, and actually the words were meant to give you that meditation. But the kind of meditation I gave you now is what I'll call a freestyle meditation. It's a meditation that is not necessarily connected to any specific tefillah or any specific word. It allows you. Sometimes I'm blown away by the Aron Kodesh and Panevich. It's like this beautiful in Benei Brak. This beautiful blue, beautiful golden-plated R'Ein Kodesh.
So sometimes in davening, I'll imagine an R'Ein Kodesh a hundred times that size, and I'll be standing alone in front of the R'Ein Kodesh. You can kind of like Rav Salavitch says in The Lonely Man of Faith. The challenge of a Jew sometimes is to be in a minyan and to be amongst others while at the same time being able to be by himself. And so you're there with everyone else, but a person can use his visualization to transport himself somewhere else. Now I'm going to say one thing because it could apply to some of you here. The average person is a visual person. People, generally speaking, learn visually much more and much better than they learn through reading or more concrete ways. There is about 10% of the population that has zero visual capabilities. So there might be a few of you in here that can't do this. For me, I'm a very visual person. I can actually see things when I close my eyes. I can actually visualize. It's a very unique—I don't know what it is—a talent, ability. I can actually see things, like really see them. I can close my eyes and I can imagine an arm. I'm not imagining; I'm seeing an arm.
I realize that's like less than one percent of society that can do that, right? But it's not, and I don't have that in terms of I don't have a photographic memory at all. Like I can't do that to like Gamar, unfortunately. But I can do that to, to like I see a table and I can visualize the table and see the table. Most of us, when we visualize, don't actually see it, but we kind of see it in our mind's eye. Do you know what I mean? Like you don't actually see it, but you see it in your mind's eye. And there are some people who, when you tell them to imagine themselves standing in a forest, they just blank. And if that's you, it's okay. So this won't be for you. So then you can't do this. But there are some of you like that. Don't bug out. There's nothing wrong with it. It just means that you know not every technique is for everyone. Now there might be some of you that are capable of this on some level. You just have not used to it yet. You haven't worked on it. So this is something that also you can get used to and be acquired. So it's something that you can do as well.
I'm gonna jump to something else here, quick. So we talked about the only meditation being part of many. This whole idea of visualizing, why don't we, as a minion, I know they used to do this in Shabbat for Kabbalah Shabbat, we used to go out to the mountains. I know. Why don't we, as a minion If, if, if that is What you're saying Is the main way to connect to God and Tzila? Why don't we go out and be beautiful mountains and this and that and everything? I know. Why don't we do that? I know. First of all, there are people that do, but we I don't want to get into it now. When I talk about she'er, I give a she'er about the concept of shul and minion and things like that. We'll talk about it more. In fact, in halacha, it's even brought down in the Mishnah Rura that it might not even be appropriate to daven in terms of certain shmones or outside. Why that would be, and rather, either I can talk to you about it after she'er, or it's something maybe I'll include at a later point. I just don't want to get sidetracked right now dealing with that issue. But to a certain extent, you're right. Meaning, it would be easier to connect.
Although I would challenge you, I'll just say one quick thing. I would challenge you to think everything when it becomes normal ends up being normal. In other words, can you imagine living on the beach? That must be awesome. But after a week living on the beach is like living anywhere else. Remember that. It sounds very cool because you're in a building. But if we were to dive in every day outside, it would be the same thing as diving inside of the building. Just something to think about. It's nice to do once in a while, but I don't know if it's something that would really impact us tremendously if we did it on a daily basis. Next thing I want to do. It is now. It's 3:47. I have a choice. I have a choice. Life's about choices. I can't do both of them. I can only do one.
Which one do I do? Right or left? Let's go. Come follow me outside. We'll do this one. Let's go. Can I put it in my pocket? Okay. Shh. So everybody should be Everybody should be near something that you can grab onto, away from other people. With enough room, at least a body's length away from someone else. Preferably something that you can grab onto with two hands and hard. Turn facing the thing that you're grabbing onto And close your eyes. This is going to require a little bit of your visualization abilities. But even if you can't visualize Try to feel the emotion of it. It's pitch black. You're in the middle of a forest, all alone. It's pouring outside. And you're getting poured on. The wind is howling. Thunder and lightning. And opposed to the scene before
It's actually terrifying. Take a minute to visualize this. Feel the fear of being exposed out in the middle of the forest Pouring rain. And the only thing that's keeping you safe is this thing that you're holding on to. So hold on to it and start to grip it a little bit It actually matters. Because as long as you hold on to this The lightning won't hit. And you start to hear some growling around you And you realize. That there are wild animals Perhaps a jaguar Perhaps a lion And you start to hear lots of animal noises, coyotes rummaging nearby. And once again The only thing that's keeping you safe is holding on to the thing you're holding on to. But the wind is getting very strong. And it starts to push you back from where you're holding on to. Take one step back while still holding on to the thing you're holding on to.
And you're starting to panic because the rain is only getting stronger and harder. The wind is only getting more fierce. The sounds of wild animals are only getting stronger. And louder. And you're simply praying that you should be able to hold on with all your might onto this thing to be safe and to be protected. But the wind is getting the best of you And it pulls you almost all the way off the thing that you're holding on to. Take one or two steps back while still holding on. And the wind is fierce and strong, and the animals are sitting there, making noise and waiting. Waiting for you to let go, so they can feast and have dinner this evening. Feel the fear. Feel the desperation. Imagine yourself being tugged. And you're starting to lose your grip And finally, take one step back until you can no longer reach the thing that's in front of you.
Move far enough back that you have to let go Let go of the actual thing you're holding on to, and reach for it, but you can't touch it. Reach for it as hard as you can But you can't reach it. And you call out to Hashem in desperation Because you know that if you don't reach it If you don't touch it It's all over. And you're trying, you're reaching as hard as you can But you can't touch it. Feel that fear and desperation. Open your eyes. Come on in. Where's them? Now I know what you're thinking. What in the world has Rogan smoking? We thought of this idea. And I have some good stuff. But I want you. As I mentioned, there are different ways to visualize. You can visualize. Just by using the words as a guide to help you visualize what Chazal intended you to visualize.
You can freestyle visualize, which means you can just use your own imagination. Put yourself anywhere, anywhere, Anywhere you want to go. Any of you ever travel? You can travel anywhere you want. I'm traveling all the time. I've visited the whole world. I don't know what the world looks like, but I've visited it. Right? Because a person through his mind. Can imagine and see himself anywhere, and feel and allow himself to go deeper and feel connected. What was this? Sometimes when I lose concentration It helps sometimes to do physical things to help trigger visualization. Just like there are words that trigger visualization, there are physical things that we can do to help trigger visualization. So imagine in the middle of Shemoneh Esrei. Now I know that whole thing I just did to you. Now I don't need to go through that whole process anymore. I could just go like this in the middle of Shemoneh Esrei. No one knows what I'm doing.
Hopefully nobody's looking at me. And I could immediately feel Hashem, I need you. I hear the animals around me and I hear the growling and I feel the force winds. Hashem, I need you. It immediately puts you in a place of desperation. Hashem, I need you. I need to be close to you. And by doing something physical, sometimes by actually moving your hand like this, it can trigger a visualization that allows you to feel more connected. How did I come up with that idea? Again, what was I engaged in that allowed me to think such a weird type of thing? I'm here to tell you Just like I did last time when we did that. Meditation, and then I showed you how basically that was birchas kriyas shema. This was not my idea. This was Chazal's idea. How do you know this? Any of you go like this before Shimon answering?
Three steps back, three steps forward. I know that Jews tend to be overweight. But why did God want us to walk on a treadmill before Shimon answering? Slachlo no avinu ki chatanu. I wonder sometimes if a guy walks in and sees everyone going Right? It's like, what's that a dance? You're bowing forward, you're going like this, you're going and bending the knees, going forward like that. And then the best is when we do the pop up and down during kedusha, boom. Again, getting a whole workout. We're getting the walk back and forth. We're working on our I don't even know what. When we go up, we're working on our calf muscles. When we're popping up and down, what in the world is going on? What are we doing? Rava said, "This is what you're doing." Chazal understood that the purpose of davening is to help you go deeper.
To help you meditate and visualize, this is what the Hasidim are shown and were doing for three hours. They were using davening as a catalyst. As a meditation to go deeper. They saw the words of tefillah as a gate to open up a person to feel more connected to himself and to feel more connected to God. And there are certain physical activities that we can do if we understand what we are doing when we do them. Can help connect to the thing we're about to do. Remember, we said in after Baruchu We bow down in Baruchu before Hashem. We're about to enter this meditative state. We don't talk. We go up all the different levels from Asiya to Yetzira, from Yetzira to Bria, from Bria to Atzilus. All these different levels that we spoke about. The physical world is Asiya, the world of the angels is Yetzira, the world of the transcendental forces, and the Midas of Hashem is Bria, and finally Atzilos is that white light, that connectivity, that there's nothing but Hashem there, and our consciousness that's connected to Him.
So we take three steps back during davening, so that we can take three steps forward. Asiya to Bria Bria to Asiya to Yetzira, Yetzira to Bria, and then Bria to Atzilos, and we're in. And then when we finish Shmona Esrei We gotta go back through the three worlds, back and bring it down with us to Asiya. When we enter into Shmona Esrei We have to bend our knees. We're lowering ourselves and recognizing in front of who we stand. And that we recognize that a person has to have hakna A person has to have humility. That he stands before Melech Malcham Lachem in Shmona Esrei, we prostrate ourselves before Hashem, and then we straighten ourselves up because we believe that when we say the name of Hashem Yudkei Vavkei, Hashem wants us to straighten up because Hashem straightens us, Hashem supports us. All of these things have meaning. Why do we bounce up and down in kedusha?
Why do we keep our feet together? In Shmona Asrei, why do we keep our feet together in kedusha? Why do we bounce up and down? The answer is, we are angels. We are with the angels. Have any of you ever visualized being one of the angels while you're saying Shmona Asrei? That never happened. Maybe you throw to the California Angels little team, Los Angeles Angels. Anaheim, whatever. But you never thought about real angels. Did you ever see yourself and visualize yourself as an angel? Chazal wanted you to do that. They have your feet standing together. They want you to see yourself as an angel. And when you say kadosh, you're saying shira before Hashem. They wanted you to bounce up and down in excitement, just like an angel would. But how many of us use these tricks to visualize and to feel connected to our tefillah?
So Chazal believed in this concept. Of connecting to davening through visualization. They wanted you to visualize in general. They wanted you to connect to the words, not just understanding the meaning of the words. But to be able to understand what each tefillah is and what it's supposed to be doing to me consciously. What I'm supposed to be thinking about, how I'm supposed to be connecting, and then to try to visualize that. They even went as far as doing what I just did. With the hand, I made that up. I made that up. But what's the difference? I made that up, and Chazal made up what they made up. Obviously, what they made up is more significant than what I made up. But it probably has much more meaning than what I made up. But the point is, you don't have to go like this for the sake. There's nothing holy about going like this.
There's nothing like Suddenly in the spiritual worlds when you go like this, the whole world shakes. That's not what's going on. It could be also what's going on. Maybe it is. But Chazal created these physical actions, taking the right hand Which corresponds to Chesed And taking it and clapping on the heart And apologizing to Hashem and knowing that our heart sometimes leads us astray. And Hashem created the world out of Chesed, and we have to see that Hashem did everything for us. How could we rebel against Him? And we take our hand and clap our heart. That our heart has led us astray. We need to believe that Hashem is unity, but we live in a world where everything is multiplicity. There's no unity as far as we can see. So we close our eyes and cover them with our hands, so we can shut off from the world and visualize what unity must feel like.
Because the only thing we can see that's unity is when we close our eyes and everything shuts off. Chazal didn't just say to do that because it's a healthy thing to do. Chazal wanted you to connect deeper through davening And you could do that through your own visualization. You can do that through visualization by connecting to the words, and you can even do physical things that will help trigger visualization. And so I want you to try over the davening over the next few days to try to connect to this, to try to use some of the tools and tricks that I taught you. Make up some of your own, because when you make it up on your own, it's even more meaningful than using something I gave you. And try, at the very least, when you start to do the physical things in davening Try to connect to them.
Try to visualize yourself when you're walking back and forth. I'm about to walk into Melech Malchayam Lachim. I'm walking out of Melech. I'm going falling down all the different levels Going in through all the different levels Clapping, slach lanu. Thinking about that, my heart is leading me astray, and I'm taking and I'm recognizing that Hashem gave me this life out of chesed. I didn't deserve it. And He gave it to me for free. And at the very least, I could do is repent and follow His will. I'm going to take that. I'm going to say slach l'novinu kikhatanu. I'm going to see myself when I have my feet together in shmona esrei, and I'm going to visualize myself like a malach floating through the space with all the other malachim that are around me doing shirat to Hashem. When I bow before Hashem, I'm actually going to see myself standing in front of Melech Malchey Hamalchut, bringing myself hakna and having humility before God.
And seeing myself straightened up before God. That God literally, when I say Hashem, I feel Hashem lifting me up and saying, "son, I've seen you bow down to me. Now stand up, be confident." And do your tefillah. Start to think of these things and try to connect to them in a meditative way. That's basically finished with the meditative part of the shiur. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to do something a little focused on a different aspect, a different dimension of feelings.
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