Understanding How Your Soul Works

there is a very talented man who writes and composes music his name is a.b rothenberg i'm not a big expert to jewish music believe me i just happen to know this who composed the song a really wonderful song that he calls little neshama the little soul and it's a story about the soul and the story goes that the soul is sitting in some lofty heavenly perch in an environment that's completely consistent with and supportive and embracing of the soul and what the soul is and means and so forth and along comes an angel and says to this wonderful soul living in this incubator in this um of of warmth and light and love and says to the soul okay it's your turn we're gonna take you out of this wonderful environment and we're gonna place you in a body in a world that is alien to everything you know as a soul and you're gonna live there and the soul says to the angel in effect amy rottenberg doesn't use this language i am why would i be so stupid why would i want to go away from this incredible haven this wonderful supportive environment into a dangerous and a risky place that's not compatible with my wish with my nature my tendency and so forth so the angel says to the soul there's reward this reward the payback and he takes this little soul and he flies takes one flyby of the earth but he shows him only the shules and the yeshivas and the places people are studying and doing mitzvos and being kind he skips all the other neighborhoods if you know what i'm saying and he says to the soldiers look these are your opportunities and the soul says to the angel i i can see it now sounds like a plan but it is very very important that i take along with me into this endeavor into this journey my memory everything i know as a soul in a soul-like world should be part of the hard drive should be the the innate the built-in knowledge that i carry with me unto this endeavor so that i will be loyal to this purpose and the angel says to the soul that's not going to happen we're going to take you out of gunaiden paradise and we're going to place you in the body of an unborn child and i'm going to slap you on the lip that's what the talmud says and you're going to forget everything and the soul says to the angel but so how am i going to find the shules and how am i going to find the yeshivas and why am i going to be interested and the soul says by the angel says bye-bye too late and disappears and that's the end of the story the soul is born and lives and i suppose we could say at least in most cases he does a little good and does a little not good wins some battles loses some battles has better days and worse days and one fine day here comes the angels taking him back to heaven and the angel soul says to the angels you again now am i on your good list or your bad list you know last time i saw you you made me forget and the angel says on the good list i'm taking you back to a better place than the place you were before it's a wonderful song and he does it a lot better than i tried to repeat it and i apologize i'm not much of a singer and i'm not much of a storyteller either in this case but this is the story the journey of the soul i believe that the idea of a soul resonates with people in other words you don't have to prove it to sort of know it's present it's almost like god you don't have to prove god to have a sense of god's presence it's just it's just true the notion of a soul in yiddish this was a yeshiva classroom it is the issue of a classroom but it's a little bit a different student body perhaps you would say it just seems just it seems correct it seems right that there is a soul the phenomenon of a soul is something that without even having to argue it and prove it seems to be comfortable in our minds and our hearts and our souls proof for a soul is a complicated situation my humble opinion is that if you were able to prove a soul you would in effect prove god because god is on some level at least the soul of the entire universe just like your body has a soul and the earth as a soul the universe has a soul and on a certain level god can be seen as the soul of the universe but let's leave proofs alone the soul is something that appeals to us everything has a soul a human being has a soul an animal has a soul a plant has a soul and according to kabbalah even inanimate even minerals have some kind of order and that that order exists because something is animating it making them be what's the appeal of the soul what is it about the soul that makes us like the concept and this is my sense this is my feeling this is my opinion we live a life no two people are alike can i know there are many people in this room and by the way i would like to take this opportunity to announce that i have a website and if you like what i have to say please visit me my website is inside inside hasidah c-h-a-s-s-i-d-o-s that o-r-g inside hasidis.org it's audio it's hundreds and hundreds at this point probably thousands of audio classes on all kinds of topics i think the menu is very easy to figure out please visit and enjoy it's all free and i hope you can share it with people my only request is that if you like it you'll tell everybody you know and if you don't like it you'll tell only me okay so please this is my this is my my greatest joy was to gain more students in any case this is why i think the soul appeals to people because there's so many people in this room each one of us has a different life nobody's life is perfect some of our lives are simpler or easier or at least we think they may be we all have challenges different types of challenges challenges on different levels challenges in different ways and challenge and weakness and failure and frustration define who we are we're not even always in control of ourselves to tell ourselves to do something and do it or tell ourselves not to do something and refrain from doing it we're we're uh quite imperfect let's just say that and as a consequence the best those of us who have the best of lies the most blessed of lives have frustrations whether they're real serious frustrations or narrow immediate frustrations we have many many frustrations i think the appeal of the soul is the idea that resting within our person within our with the space of our body there is a spiritual parallel there was an ashama there was a soul which is like the twin the sister of my body but in my soul there is harmony in my soul there is peace in my soul there is self-control in my soul there's joy in my soul there is freedom all the things that we wish that we spend our entire life trying to acquire the soul is already in possession of those things and the awareness that there is this dimension first of all is very heartening it's encouraging and it says every wonderful but real human experience real human experiences which is joy and love and freedom and not being afraid i don't mean eating tasty food that's nice but that's not about the soul that's about the body but every real human experience is already ours on the soul level it's not about getting freedom or joy it's about permitting freedom and joy to emerge from a subconscious to a conscious from our soul to our to our controlled selves and i believe this is why the soul is an idea that people naturally love not necessarily people who are mystically disposed the idea of a soul makes sense because it says parallel to the world of struggle is a world of peace now in the texts that you read you read about five levels of the soul it's sometimes called five names of the soul amongst early jewish theologians there's so many opinions about this it's not even worth getting upset about how many souls are there there are three there are five there are two there are different opinions and of course one of the issues is do we really have five souls or is the soul really one thing that just represents itself that makes itself available in a variety of different levels and some rabbis say it's many souls some rabbis say it's one cell with many parts i have a suspicion that all the rabbis agree to all of the issues it's really perspective a soul is in essence a soul is one and the division of the soul into parts of any type shape or form is simply about the availability of the soul the soul is a resource it's a it's a source of life and life is much more than energy and this source of life will play itself out in our experience in our lives in so many different ways so we'll refer to it as so many different souls or so many different levels but it's our experience it's our accesses to the soul that define the variety the levels as opposed to as it is in the soul per se isn't this all by itself and i want to share an idea with you which is brought to netanyahu which ties in somewhat to the text that you read and as i explained to you in my very first remark i'm not going to go so much to your texts i want to you read what you read now i want to share with you what i want to share if we can fuse these two together i think we'll have something that's at least on some level whole the soul is defined as a point or a circle for those who are familiar with mysticism you know that one of the very very frequently employed metaphors is the metaphor of a fetus an unborn child is all curled up and that condition of being curled up ego a circle or a point is seen on the one hand as representing immaturity under development a lack of detail lack of being opened up and developed but at the very same time that same point that same globe that same ball is representative of infinity infinity and immaturity infinity and lack of development are two sides of the same coin because lack of development is simple infinity is also simple the soul is a ball or a point it's infinite and singular if you would meet a soul in paradise there are no eyes there are no ears there's no mouth there's no nose the soul sees the whole soul sees when the soul hears all of the soul hears there's no division there's no parts it's just an essence the journey that allows for a soul to enter into a body requires a series of events that amount to splitting separating this point this essence has within itself an infinity but you cannot or it's impossible to link a infinite soul and a complex and finite body it's not a match in order for the soul and the body to match a lot of evolution a lot of change a lot of development must take place in order for the body and the soul to meet so this is how it's understood this essence this infinity has a higher level and a lower level and i'm going to use these words the following words are classic mystical terms but i'm using them because it serves my purposes the higher level of the soul is called light light that means it's infinite the lower level of the soul is called life life that means finite something that can enter into a body that needs to draw life from the soul in the journey of the soul from it being that infinite point to entering into our body the first division that needs to take place is that the level of the so-called light needs to depart from the level of the so-called life so that the life can enter into the body and that the light the life can enter into the body and the light won't interfere with it so try to visualize it in the following way a soul enters into a body the soul divides into the life enters into the body and the light becomes the halo it's the light around the body it envelops the body if you read the texts and you saw the idea of the soul entering into the body versus the soul hovering these are the concepts in other words the five levels that you just read levels one two and three would be called life while levels four and five would be called light levels one two and three means that the soul has the capacity to become incredibly specialized and tailored here's an infinite ball but it's not only an infinite ball because infinity believe it or not is as useless as zero you can't eat infinity if you had infinite number of dollars you would be infinitely crazy infinity is not very useful the soul is infinite but it's not only infinite it has the capacity you know like an elephant can pick up a twig with its trunk the soul has the capacity to descend to limit itself to apply itself to give life to my pinky so that infinite ball that infinite point is much more sophisticated than a simple infinity and in the process of the soul and the body joining the the life levels of the soul descend enter into the body and make it alive you know what alive means life means i am not a machine with a soul inside me i'm not dead flesh and blood being animated like electricity runs through a a mechanism my flesh is living my flesh my blood my very physicality is alive because the fusion of the soul in the body is absolutely perfect but the the accommodation that needs to be made to allow this to occur is that the infinity the light of the soul separates and becomes the makif it hovers around us and the the life becomes the me the life enters into the body and accommodates the body the life that provides us with intelligence is very different than the life that provides us with feelings higher emotions and certainly more basic emotions and certainly than the life which is the basis for our mechanical function on a metabolic function these are all different layers of life that one soul is going to provide all of these levels and purposes another thing i want to share this is one of my favorite hasidic insights about the soul and that's the following according to jewish theology and mysticism the soul is by nature which means at the level of its very essence the soul in all of its infinity is by nature loyal loyal loyal means you cannot put one soul into two bodies loyal means you cannot put a human soul into an animal body it's a it's a bad match loyal means the nature of the soul that has to connect completely to this that it enters into a human soul enters into a human body the fusion the coming together the soul the body is absolute the soul connects to the body why is that important i'll tell you why that's important it's important because we're all living we're living because life has entered into our body but hovering beyond the life that has entered into our body is the infinity of the soul that we're calling the light of the soul that's without that's outside that's beyond that's bigger than me but because the soul is loyal even the infinity of the soul all the power and infinity of the soul belongs to us in other words if you were to look at humanity and ask a question on average what percentage of the souls possibility does the average human being use i have a soul how much of it do i use and of course the answer is going to be not very much and the answer is also going to be different people use the soul to different measures a person who uses his mind incessantly develop the intellectual soul much much more than a person is not much of an intellectual a person who's very very emotionally in tune and sensitive uses a lot more of the emotional soul than somebody who's passive and underwhelming not that exciting and excitable and so on and so forth so there's different measures of how much of what the possibility that the soul provides that we take advantage of but the whole soul is mine if i use one percent of my soul the other 99 are not available for another purpose my soul is all together mine and one of the symptoms of this is what happens in crisis what happens at special moments at extreme moments when a human being suddenly becomes so much more than human when a human being suddenly accesses resources powers within himself or herself that they had no idea they possessed now biologically they connect it to adrenaline the adrenal gland glands mystically it has to do with the light of the soul the infinity of my soul is mine and under certain conditions when there is a stress or alternatively to give you an idea which is much more comfortable when a person is moved for chuva when a person is moved to make major changes in their lives in a positive direction that energy comes from the soul because even if we're only using a small percentage of our soul the entire soul is entirely mine and it's fully in at my disposal let me give you another insight here and see if i can tie it into the light and life metaphor that i gave you which would you prefer but think think before you answer and if i know this audience no one's going to say anything but now that i said it everyone's going to speak at once which would you prefer honesty the truth or love and kindness which would you prefer love and kindness honesty don't look at me i don't want to answer the question you're making me nervous that's 80 of the answers by the way which think about that question which would you prefer the truth or something less than the truth that feels right [Music] oh why do i assume they're mutually exclusive because i'm not perfect and as a consequence i know why are you trying to lead us into that trap because i don't think it's a trap if i thought it was a trap i wouldn't lead you there i think it's i think it's the [Laughter] but if somebody's truth loving and kind they're going to be taking your interest to heart so honesty may not be as important wait wait wait we're not talking about somebody else giving you we're talking about you giving yourself you know they say the truth hurts you know why because it does that's why they say the truth hurts because it hurts um i had a friend who studied in a very very exclusive music school very exclusive musical he said to me people had nervous breakdowns on a regular basis the criticism that their professors gave you never ever got a compliment you only got criticism and even the compliments were articulated in a critical tone but they produced the greatest musicians in the world if you want excellence you have to put up with the truth with honesty but truth hurts it's much easier to be told i mean we live in the age of empathy i mean we have made empathy into a religion we're always worried about hurting people's feelings beginning with ourselves and if i may say the truth if we were a little bit at least to ourselves if a little bit less empathetic and a little bit more honest we'd be a little bit more in control shall we say but this is an interplay the truth doesn't have a heart it just says it the way it is we have hearts when my truth speaks to me you know when i look in the mirror i don't like what i see what do i do i break the mirror or look away rather than fix the model it's easier one of the ways of understanding the interplay between the light of the soul and the life of the soul is exactly this the soul gives us life how much life does our soul give us the the amount of life we permitted the amount of life we permitted now since when do i give my soul permission to enter into my body and the answer is because so much of the meaning within the soul in the body has to do with the correction the refinement the improvement of the body i said it before a person who uses his mind more has developed far greater intellectual tool and technique and method that means that there's literally more life in his brain there's more life more of the soul has found the space into this person's mind because they invited it in we have no control over our soul we have a lot of control over our body the more we develop our body the more of life will enter into us the same is true with human emotions we all have a nature we all have a personality right and in some cultures my nature my personality is my excuse why am i a rotten person god made me that way why did i just smash a window i have an impulse it's not my fault and some coaches actually get away with that a person on the other hand who says god gave me a nature it's my job to improve it is working on their heart as it's called in our culture you're working on the human emotions and when one refined human emotions and develops really the most difficult things in the world are to develop forgiveness a kindness showing appreciation i met um mrs rosen is her name who spoke last night at dinner mandel that's how good i am so i had a little bit of a conversation with her after yesterday's class about gratitude gratitude is a difficult thing to learn why is it a big deal to say thank you it is it's the development of the heart the more we develop our heart the more life enters into the heart from the soul you see but the truth is always there it's hovering in the background the light of the soul is the honest truth it's the absolute truth and when we are prepared to get a little bit more of the truth our subconscious translates a little bit more of that infinite light into life and we become a bigger human being a bigger human being because more of what our soul is has merged with has entered into has joined with who we are as human beings now i want to finish with two more thoughts okay five minute warning the first is very very important and the second is a story that i just recently saw one of the core beliefs of lubavitch if you really want to get at what is unique about lubavitch which is of course not lubavitch it's the and what said thousands and thousands and thousands of times to every person he would encounter in the effort of reawakening in the hearts and minds of jews of value in judaism was a simple argument you never give judaism to a jew it's his or hers already i'm not giving you something you don't have you're not giving me something i don't have it's ours the pursuit of a religious life the pursuit of knowledge associated with god than a religious life is simply accessing a resource a potential that's already ours where is it ours in our soul the light of everybody's soul is deeply connected to god um if if you have immediate access to your uh readings reading 13 says in truth the name yehida which is the highest level of the soul is derived from an illusion to a phrase in the prayer the one who who unites with and clings to you the unique one affirming your oneness hence there's no need for nullification since it's essential existence is unification and clinging to you in other words the soul on the highest level doesn't have to humble itself before god the soul of the highest level is an expression of god and the idea that all of judaism is innately the property of every single jew is present in the halo in the light of our lives in the soul that surrounds us and it's our duty and our function to somehow draw from that into our consciousness and i want to finish with a story i get every month the living torah from gem and i'm imagining that some of you perhaps many of you witnessed the videos that they show once a week of the rebbe um it's about 15 minute clips so as soon as i get the film i put it in the computer and i watch the whole hour and then i'm bored for a month so i just got one about a week ago and uh there was a very very poignant encounter between a man he tells his story in great detail a man who grew up religious he spoke yiddish was his first language and he grew up in the 60s so when he turned 18 he rebelled he went away he went off to college then he left college got involved in music and he met a former friend of his who got involved in buddhism and this fellow was explaining to him everything there is to know about zen buddhism and as they were discussing it he says i don't know why but i got this the spiritual awakening and the question that formed in his mind was is it possible that the jews have it right and everybody else has it wrong that our god is the correct god it didn't seem to make sense to him so he called up his shliyak he went to university in buffalo new york he called the bravo gurari and he says you know you know you've been bothering me all these years i haven't been interested well now i have a question for you and he told us a question so rabbi says to him there's only one person who can help you and that's the lab and he told him to go to 770 and wait for the rabbit outside and when the devil would come back from the resting place of his predecessor the previous rebbe he should stop him and talk to him now when the rebbe went to the resting place of his father-in-law for those who do not know he fasted he only drank he didn't eat and he had stood on his feet all day long this man described it as a frigid a freezing january day he comes to 770 and he waits the rabbi gets out of a car he stops him right outside in front of 770 and he introduces he says to the rabbit yiddish are you the la bhava his life ever said yes to that question um the rapper's response was what is your name what is your name and where are you from which was an affirmation without an affirmation so he told that his name and where he was from and who his parents were he says i want to ask that every question and then i said ask and then i was holding this big heavy bag and it's freezing cold and he describes uh a magic moment for those of you who have never met that in person it's impossible the one thing you'll never ever be able to understand about is his eyes if you've looked into the rabbi's eyes it was a force you have no i was so powerful he would look through you like like an x-ray and this person got that the devil looked to me i've never seen such eyes and they stood locked like this on the front steps of 770 for 15 minutes in a conversation and he said to the river where is god so that i've assessed him god is everywhere now he was ishiva right the rebbe couldn't run circles around him he was you know he was an initiate he knew it all he says i know he spoke in yiddish i'm just saving time i know but where is god and that i've assessed him in everything everywhere so he says i know but where is god so the rebel starts to develop it in a stone in a tree it gives them examples whatever you see around you is god he says i know but where is god so finally the rebbe shifts and says to him to use your form in other words to give you the answer which will resonate with you god is in your heart then he shifted to english he says he couldn't speak philosophy and yiddish he says could it really be true that there's so many you know that there's the god of the jews and the god of the indian and the god of the black men or is it not true that we all have it's all the same god it's all the same truth and the rabbis said to him as follows the essence of the black man i i hope i quote this correctly because if i don't it'll be bad but the essence of the black man is to to to fulfill to realize the potential of a black man the essence of an indian is to realize the full potential of an indian the essence of a jew is connected to god through to mitzvos in other words we bring out the god within ourselves through our religious life and then the rabbit told them to do two things that he should study the kits of what teaches laws how to be a jew behaviorally practically and to start to put on to fill in so he didn't do it right away it took him a few months he eventually got himself apparent film that he put on the field and this man finishes the story by saying that his four children are grown and they're all jewish thanks to that meeting with that and it was a pleasure to meet all of you i'll see some of you later and hopefully on many other occasions if you like that video hit the subscribe button and notification bell below for hours of the best jewish content online [Music]

Channel: Jewish Learning Institute

Views: 18,249

Keywords: jli, Jewish Learning Institute, composition, emotion, humility, kindness, soul, truth

Id: J8E4hJIq7u4

Length: 35min 6sec (2106 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 03 2022