There Is Nothing More Whole Than A Broken Heart - Part 1

2:37 There are things I want to do. If I just accept that I'm depressed, then that's nice that I've accepted my depression. But I don't want to be depressed. So there was that, right? I don't want to be content with where I am. So there's this very interesting tension that exists between radical self-acceptance. And working to get out of where we are. Here, the Katskur Reb is saying something that requires a lot of unpacking. But he's saying that within the brokenness itself There's something that's exceedingly whole. Or to say it a little bit differently There could be no sense of wholeness without a sense of brokenness. Yehuda will say,"I have no idea what that means. Right and rightfully so." What does that mean? There's nothing more whole than a broken heart. How could that be? If by definition it's broken, then it's not whole. What does it mean that I can't achieve completion without brokenness?

3:41 Got the question. There's an interesting question at the heart of Judaism. If Hashem created us And He says, "Go down to the world" Do my mitzvos Get schar And then after you die, when you come back up to Shamayim You'll have your reward. You've heard this concept before. Probably many of you grew up with a Judaism like that. There's a problem though. The soul before it was born. If you could ask the soul, how are you doing? What would the soul say before it's born into a human body, before it comes down into this world? What would a human soul have said? And the Shema up in Shamayim, living with Hashem. Would the soul have been content? It might have said, "I know everything" But I haven't done anything yet. " Perhaps. But is the soul content? I don't want to hear that. But I think more or less, the soul is basking in Hashem's glory. The soul is pretty good.

4:55 Understood. Perhaps, but maybe it doesn't have a need to accomplish anything. Doesn't know anything else. It's fine. It's good. In fact, the Mishnah Avot says that we're born against our will. Because the neshama. Why would it want to live? Why would the neshama want to come into a body? Why would it want to leave Hashem? And so we're sent down into this world to get rewarded to go back to where we were to begin with. Just leave us And then we'll be good. Does that make sense? Hear the question. The same exact question exists in marriage. In fact, it exists in the first marriage before Chava was created. Where was Chava? She was the back of Adam. Hakadosh Baruch Hu split Chava off And then Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives Adam Marishon and Chava a very strange Mitzvah. He says, "The halu lebaser echad" Go become one.

6:01 What's the obvious question? We already are one. We just were one, right? In fact, before you split us, we were literally baser echad. That makes sense. So now, Hakadosh Baruch Hu splits Chava off of Adam and says. Go become basar echad. I can't be basar echad. I'm me and you're you. You understand? So the saint, it's an exact parallel. Beforehand, the soul was fine with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. It was one with God. Then the soul split off, was sent down into this world, and said, "What's the mission? Supposedly, what's the mission?" Go back up and be one with Hashem again. I just was one with Hashem. Same question exists in marriage. Got it? Other Marishon says, "I just one was with. I just was one with Chava. Now you want me to split off and become something that's one again? I don't understand. Why didn't just keep us that way to begin with?"

7:02 It must be If you're thinking logically, it must be that the initial state of wholeness is actually lacking. In other words, if Adam and Chava were truly basar echad, then what would Hashem have said? New Rabbo say In other words, if there was already perfect intimacy, then Hakadosh Baruch Hu would have said, 'You are already one. Why bother leaving?' So it must be that something was missing. What's missing in that case? In the case of Adam and Chava, where she is his backside, what's missing? They're one. They're absolutely one. There's something missing. What do you want to say? You might be right, but first go a little bit less. You're jumping levels here. Just go very simply. What's physically missing? If they're one, if they're one goof And she's his back, and he's the front. What's missing? They've never seen each other. Is the correct answer?

8:11 There's they've never faced each other Because she looks this way and he looks this way. The same thing could be said of the soul in Shamayim. The soul is missing something with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. What's it missing? What do you think, Rebbe? You started saying it before. A position. Do you say opposition or a position? Opposition is true, but go less. Again, less, less high level first. What has the soul? The soul has never been. In other words, how does the soul see itself in Shamayim? As a soul, does it have an identity? So there's something that the soul needs to have in order to be its truest self. It needs to leave. Does that make sense? You see the brokenness already occurring. One second, get to you. One second. You see the brokenness already occurring. There's a movement away, which is actually a movement towards.

9:18 The movement away is Hakadosh Baruch Hu says to the soul, right now you are delighting in my presence. The soul can be compared to a diamond in a Tiffany's box, right under a perfect, in a perfect glass case, under a perfectly lit case. You ever walk into like a diamond store and see like it's in that plush velvet case and the light is shining down perfectly and all the like light is refracting off the diamond in the perfect way. If you could speak to the diamond in that moment What would the diamond say? The diamond could speak. What would it say? Perfectly content. This is awesome. But the diamond is missing one thing. It's not behaving the way it was designed to behave. Because the most pristine place for a diamond ring is not in a Tiffany's box. The most pristine place for a Tiffany's diamond ring is to be on a finger.

10:18 Yeah. Very good. So we're going to show. Very good. So clearly, it can't be that if the diamond leaves the Tiffany's box and it goes onto a finger, the goal should be to go back to the box. It must be that the goal should be the finger. So what we said before about the soul coming down into this world just to go back up, it must be wrong. Because it can't be that the soul was supposed to go back up. If the soul was meant to just go back up, it could have stayed there to begin with. I guess maybe really the starting point. Or perhaps our initial calculation was wrong. Maybe the revolution, as we'll see, of Dirbe Tachtonim, was that it's not that the soul wants to go back up. The difference is that a man and his wife are one, like we're one with the Shen.

11:27 Completely skip the actual getting to that point, which is the main thing. I'm not hearing the question. Help me understand. I'm saying you're saying if I understood correctly, which maybe I didn't. Revi said that why would we why didn't if our goal is just to become one with the Shem and a man's goal is just to become one with his wife, like why didn't the Shem just create us that way? There's no problem but like. But like. So it must be based on what you're saying that it was always supposed to be that there was a value and initially In the diamond being in the Tiffany's box But then it needed to move from the Tiffany's box onto the person's finger. In other words, the neshama being by Hakadosh Baruch Hu is a good starting point. But it's not the end goal. It's important for it to start there.

12:22 That's what we're going to suggest. We're going to suggest that it's not true, that the end goal of the neshama is not to go back to Shamayim. Because otherwise, you'd be right. Very good. The purpose of the neshama seemingly is that it has to have the sort of self actualization to its best version. That's exactly right. The self actualization can only occur when the soul gets an identity. And the soul can only get its identity once it's left. Right That's what we're going to start to unpack. I think what you're saying is true. Meaning that if even if Adam and Chav were lacking when they were one and when they split up, that's how they became perfect. They wouldn't have been perfect without their relationship. They still have to become. They're still lacking. Meaning their oneness was not a true oneness. So similarly, Anushama both. And both before it receives a go is lacking, and during that time, when it has a go, it's also lacking.

13:21 It's only maybe, maybe it's perfect. In its broken state. Don't jump. That's gonna be one of the moves we make. I'm not getting too ahead of what we're doing, but in terms of the quarter, you're then going to say that for the heart, it's important that in that moment in which it's broken, it's experiencing a different level of emotion. And that self actualization is closer to being realized. I think you're right that you're getting ahead of yourself, but I think you're definitely on the right track. That in the deepest moments of brokenness, there is something exceptionally whole about those moments that needs to be accessed on an emotional level. If this is a person who has a quote unquote broken heart, Is experiencing a different level of emotion than before. It was. For sure. Emotions, not feelings. I'm not sure I know the distinction, but we're definitely talking about emotions.

14:23 We'll see. Maybe both. How are you doing? Are you following this so far? You're getting it. Makes sense. So far, so good. You've heard these concepts before. Where'd you hear them from? You how we doing? Good. What we've suggested so far is as follows: the soul is actually not complete when it's by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. It's perfect It's content But it's not complete. That there is a difference there Because it's like a ray of the sun. When it's still embedded in the sun, you can't distinguish between the ray of the sun and the sun itself. In order for the ray of the sun to become the ray of the sun, it needs to leave the sun. Then you can identify that it's the sun's ray and not the sun itself. Why is there value in that? We'll see. One second. Let me see if I can move this a little further.

15:31 So it goes like this. So the neshama comes down into this world. And there's something that the neshama is designed to do in this world Something that it can't experience in Shamayim. What's that? What can't the neshama experience in Shamayim? Self, physicality. Both of those things are the same thing. The self and physicality are the same thing. Which is also the same thing. Because Torah and mitzvot is about expressing yourself within the physical world. Has no sense of self. In other words, once the neshama belongs to a gof. This is where I am. It takes up a space now. The neshama existed beyond the world of time and space before it was born into this world. Exactly, it could not possibly be defined. Because what would it be? So now, once it gets this dignity of self, once it gets this physical notion, once it has the opportunity to do.

16:36 It becomes Which is an amazing thing to think about. Last line, and then I'll take your question. The thing is this: this is a pretty wild thing to think about. The notion of becoming The notion of growth The notion of self-actualization Is lacking. In the spiritual world That's why the malachim are called by Chazal omdim. They're standing. There's no sense of movement. What the neshama is missing is the dignity of movement. But in order to achieve that, it needs to be separated from Hashem. So there's a catch twenty two. In order to have the dignity of self. A person must, a neshama must leave its source. But here's the catch. Twenty two. Here's the paradox: the neshama needs to begin its journey by Hakadosh Baruch Hu because that's what gives it its inner dignity. Another way of saying it is like this. I want to make sure you guys get this. This is a pretty sophisticated point.

17:57 Could Adam and Chava achieve intimacy if they were never one to begin with? Meaning, Hakadosh Baruch Hu creates Adam and Chava as one. Shalom Rosh Shiva. Could Adam and Chava have achieved intimacy if they were never one to begin with? That's the point. They need to start off as one. But when they're one, are they truly one? Because they don't face each other, they're not truly in a relationship. They're just one. But that state of oneness, that initial state of oneness It's lacking something. But it's also setting. It's not just setting the goal. It's imprinting the possibility of oneness. Even though this is not true oneness, it imprints the possibility of oneness. So if they never would have been one To go and tell them become one. What do you mean? How could we become one? So the initial state of Adam and Chava being one is what gives rise to the capacity to become one. But in order to truly become one, what do they need to do?

19:10 They need to separate. And then they could be told Go achieve unity, intimacy. Intimacy means oneness. Same thing with the soul. If the soul never would have started off by Hakadosh Baruch Hu, would the soul have its godly dignity? What gives the soul the capacity to cleave to God? It's that period, so to speak, where the soul itself is one with Hashem. But that in that space is the soul itself. Is the soul an identity? Does it have an identity that it could go and achieve and become in this world? The answer is no. Of course not. So it needs three stages. Stage number one It has to have its inner capacity, which is defined by its first state. Step number two, it needs to separate. To achieve its own independent identity, and then step number three, it somehow needs to fuse back together. Let's take some questions now.

20:06 What if the soul is like a reincarnation? What if it's coming back and it already had an identity before? Even if it did, it had that identity. It needs. If it comes back, it needs to continue that identity. It means there's something that it has not yet achieved, or even if it did achieve it in that lifetime, there's something that it needs to continue to achieve in this lifetime. But the identity is still fundamentally there. Does that make sense? Kind of. Which part are you missing? You said even if he achieves it Or even if he's In its first Gilgal, it achieves everything that it could have possibly achieved in that hundred-and-twenty-year period. But that soul still has a mission. Over the course of the six thousand years of creation. So the soul could come back, because it has something left to achieve in the cosmic notion of history, rather than in that particular time, or alternatively, the soul didn't do what it was meant to do in that first hundred twenty-year period, so it needs to come back to complete its process of self-actualization. But either way, even if you're speaking about a gilgal neshama, remember it needed that initial period where the soul was one with Hashem, in order to say, 'I have the capacity to connect to God.'

21:27 Now, once you have that initial capacity, it needs to separate because there was something lacking. What was lacking was this notion of identity, the ability to become and achieve. And then, ultimately, this third stage, which somehow we haven't spoken about yet, which is the merging of spirit and physical. So But are even today, we get married. Our main goal is to be one with our wife. That's correct. But like Does that mean us and whoever we're gonna marry were also one at one point? So first of all, that's exactly what Chazal say. You should know that on two levels, this is true. Number one Remember that Adam and Chava contained within them every single soul throughout all of time. So what they experienced as that initial oneness, you also experienced it. So your kala, when you find her bais racham, you'll literally be finding your other half, all the way back from other melchava.

22:27 But even more than that, Chazal say that before a soul is born, it splits into a male half and a female half. And marriage is not the union of the soul; marriage is the reunion of the soul. So even on a micro level, every individual soul is actually this process. Happening again. So if you don't like touch Shem, if you don't like marry your bashert, if something goes wrong, then it's just impossible to actually like. We would say the opposite way. We would say that it's impossible to not marry your bashert. If you walked down the aisle with her, it means she was your bashert. That doesn't mean that marriage is going to be easy. It doesn't mean that marriage can't end in divorce. But there's no such thing as the wrong thing happening. What if you remarry? Say that it means that you had multiple, your soul is split multiple times, but there's no such thing. Of course, there's no such thing as a soul. It wouldn't work. It's like it's a puzzle piece. The godless of walking down the aisle. The reason why we have this very sophisticated process of the chuppah, which also gets to a very deep idea about matan Torah, and the chuppah mirrors matan Torah exactly, because it's the union of God and man that occurs by matan Torah. Same thing. So it's impossible. It's like two puzzle pieces. If you stood under the chuppah

23:45 Even if the marriage didn't make it out of Shavuot brachos, you married exactly who you were supposed to marry. A marriage should only dissolve when the marriage is abusive or immoral. If a marriage is hard, it's supposed to be hard because it's designed tension because you are separated from each other. If you guys were back to back, there would be no friction in the marriage. There would also be no sense of self. Who would she be married to? How are we doing so far? Not really getting. It seems like the first step and the third step are totally different. The first step and the third step are going to be totally different. That's correct. Why do we need the first step in order to get the third step? Because without the first step, the third step is not possible. In other words This may make more sense when we get to the third step.

24:38 But it's like. You can't. You can't think about a puzzle. Before Before you, you got the puzzle in the box. All the pieces were broken up. But before that, what was the puzzle? At some point, the puzzle was a picture. And then it went through a machine that cut it in a very unique way, so that you could have the fun of putting the puzzle back together. So of course, at the end in step three, something more needs to be achieved. There has to be something more. But in step one, if there was no picture, if there was no complete, so to speak, picture, then there would be no way to fuse these things back together. So Adam and Chava, or the soul and Hakadosh Baruch Hu, needed to be in that initial state of oneness in order for the Fragmentation to have the capacity to recreate that oneness.

25:48 If there was no initial oneness, there could be nothing to put back together. That might be Delving the muscle, but you can make two different pieces that fit together without making them whole. You could force them to, and they might look like they do But at the end of the day They're not actually. They're not one. Those are just two things that are next to each other. When we say intimacy, intimacy doesn't mean physical intimacy. Physical intimacy is a symptom of true intimacy. True intimacy is oneness. So just because something is very close to each other doesn't mean it's one. Right? For something to be one, it needs to be one. We have no sense of oneness really in this world because everything in this world, by its very definition, is fragmented because it's physical. So things are always disparate from each other. Oneness can only exist on the spiritual level.

26:41 You understand. By this, much we just get by the puzzle and fitting two pieces together that aren't actually meant to be together. Could the same not be said when it comes to people who are in a relationship and everyone's saying that no, they're really, really like it's really not right. It's not good. It's not healthy or all these things which align with this idea of shlimus and nachos. Could the same not be said that these were two pieces of a puzzle that both people tried to force themselves to fit together? For reasons that were more subconscious than that they weren't in touch with, that thereby would mean that they weren't actually in each other's ba Ba share. Are you talking about a couple that walked down the aisle? If they walked down the aisle, then it's exactly what was supposed to happen. Remember that nothing in this world happens.

27:27 Exactly. So if you stood under the chuppah, it means you know. There's no such thing as an actual reality in which there are these two pieces of puzzle that are forced together. That's right. Unless and that's why the parsha of divorce is not we don't like each other. It's not we couldn't make it work. Was the marriage immoral? Was the marriage abusive? Short of that, keep working at it. Keep working at it. So I mean, there are those that don't end up getting married. And also playing a little bit of a numbers game. If there are those who can get married twice, marriage, divorce, re-marriage, then it is conceivable that somebody would never get married because the person who was one of the conditions to get married, one person got married once. I don't think I can answer your numbers game question. And also wait. So you said that nothing in this world happens that wasn't meant to happen. So it may have been meant for this other person who may have had a bishar but never actually got married.

28:36 Our responsibility when it comes to bashert is not to ask ourselves, "Is this my bashert?" As my Rebbe said to me, the job of dating is not to find the one, but to find someone you could become one with. If you found someone that you could become one with, there's an intimate possibility there for a healthy and enduring relationship. Then that's great. Kolakavot means you found somebody that you can be married to. If you walk down the aisle, it was bashert. After that, that's up to you guys. I can't answer the numbers game question. And so the Torah doesn't believe in one soulmate. Else. I think the possibility for more than one soulmate certainly exists empirically. We don't believe that you're with one person forever. Was the concept of having multiple wives just a product of its time, or is that a very good question. How does polygamy work? What does it mean that Yaakov, for example, married both Rachel and Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah?

29:45 So there, it's more sophisticated. Because Bilhah and Zilpah, in a certain way, were extensions of Rachel and Leah. But even if we narrowed it down to two. How could I say that intimacy means exclusivity? The creation of oneness if man has multiple wives. That gets into a very complex question about Yaakov himself. Was Yaakov one person or was he two people? Because remember that Yaakov took upon himself the mission of Esav, and Leah was supposed to marry Esav. So when Yaakov marries Leah, which part of him marries Leah? Maybe it's the Esav part of him that marries Leah. That would answer perhaps Yaakov, but it doesn't necessarily answer Avram. Marrying both Hagar and Sarah, even in that case, there's a very specific answer of the creation of Yeshmol that comes from that. Adam only married Chava. So where exactly does the notion of polygamy fit in the Torah? Alpi Kabbalah, very important question. Simcha. Rebos, I will stop here for today. We'll pick it up with part two tomorrow.