Rising Above Our Competitive Nature
12/9/19
With the pnimius of Torah we are taking the elevator inwardly and rising up the ladder of hishtalshalus on a soul level. Digging deeper into the roots of self - at the same time reaching our branches upward toward Shamayim.
As we break out of the competitive modality of existence we enable ourselves to expand and support each other in our ascent. We flow from an inner tohu and turmoil to a sheket pnimius. (Bilvavi). An inner peace which reigns in our heart. ie the rise of malchus. The process of elimination of anochius broadens the space for that inner peace - no matter what the externalities and circumstances are… seemingly in turmoil. The the burgeoning bubbles of our dimyon inflate on que. Each one embodying our story / relationship negativity / attachment patterns. Animating our nefesh beheimus.
With our ratzo vshav, connecting to HKB”H they either get popped or deflate. Our avoda and tools of the recognition of H’ in every situation, we imagine less and less false bubbles. Where did they go? We have more space to breath with calmness and accomplish our mission unhindered by the barriers holding us back.
The inner peace is generated by this recognition of H-shem as the compassionate creator. As our Kli Rishon awareness increases, our drive compete becomes minimized!!! We actually gain when we help each other win! When we rejoice in each other’s simcha. We all rise together.
Because if our friend wins. I win. We are all one body - klal Yisrael - on the same surf. Competition / sinas chinam / judgments of those who are different have always caused us pain and nefila (falling).
We have the Torah, to learn from our avos and imahos and all the tzadilim and tzokanios of the past centuries as our guiding lights. Their mistakes and stories are recorded so we don’t have to again attach to any negative false patterns of complaint or negativity. Our ancestors are in Shamayim cheering us on, guiding us, to becoming our future selves / our nefesh sheini / true selves. Our geula consciousness is wholeheartely committed to Ahavas Yisrael. accepting one another zeh mi zeh., glorifying H’ Echad together.
This vessel / container we are are creating is built on the essential middos of keter. The point of convergence is the midda of anava. H’ is Anav. We are becoming G-dlike when we have compassion on our selves and each other. H’ has compassion on us with our imperfections created perfectly for our tikun.
How can I fulfill my mission to bring light on the world - both my world and the world of those involved... in this moment?
How can I be a bracha in this moment?
The bracha is exponential! When we recognize the seething fire of the Shechina in exile from within ie. Rage, lack, loneliness, anger… we have the opportunity to metaken the moment. Instead of negativity, we transform the moments of bracha, peace and simcha… For us and everyone around us.
And in turn, each of these recipients of bracha - pass it on in all their relationships. Children, siblings friends, spouses, bosses... The compassion spreads like wildfire. The burning passion to experience truth and connection with H’ Echad.
How do we metaken the avaira of the eitz ha Daas which was based on the premise of COMPETITION, The false belief that we can compete with H’… or even to rise to His level. We need to recognize and rise above our nature of competitiveness. We need to mature from the patterns of our childhood, which taught us we had to be better.
By engaging in our natural impulse / nachash of competitive thoughts and behavior we nullify H-Shem instead of nullifying our ego.
Let’s mindfully - with kavana - not fall into thinking we have to be better / richer / skinnier / prettier /smarter / more popular / more of anything. Because that’s our individual and collective down-fall.
Let’s cultivate to a mature Daas recognizing tov v ra from the innermost roots of our Creator’s design ... in His divine plan... He is existence...we are at a buffet of life and the FEELING of real existence because HE is giving us, from His Chesed, that experience... yet it is for us to recognize that we do not have Independent existence and thus every second is full of gratitude and opportunity to flow light into the world from whence it might be otherwise waylaid. How? By asking for Divine mercy and clinging to Him.
12-9-19
Thank you Shuli, for bringing all these teachings together… for us bringing geula to our consciousness. May you be have much brachos and siyata diShmaya to continue this process of revealing the light ✨ in our darkness.
The Mentality of Competition
By Shuli Kleinman
https://madmimi.com/p/6439df?pact=617240-155730686-11893112342-12cb85f6ecda35b7b70269ebba72afd63404adf5
The mentality of competition is to crush the other person. How do we sincerely with all our heart bring in a flow that changes the natural mental competitiveness into something that makes our relative existence pleasant?
Recognize that there is a Creator and that we are His Creations, that He has designed the soul as well as the world and that He has given us a purpose and mission through nullifying what we naturally feel as independent existence, an awareness of Hashem and of Hashem as doing everything out of love for us that expands our subjectivity and brings a flow of His revealed love and light to the world.
Rabbi Mendel Kessin helps us understand why nullifying our sense of independent existence is so difficult and yet necessary in Who is Hashem Part 1
It is a mitzvah to know that Hashem is the first Cause. To understand Hashem’s Name is a positive commandment. The Rambam says this on the verse – Know this day that Hashem is the Master and Lord of the Heavens above and the earth below, ein od. It is thus a mitzvah. Satisfy our heart to know this positive commandment.
Satisfy your heart – this indicates that it is a tremendous labor because our heart is agitated. We have to work hard to know who Hashem is.
Why does Hashem express it as if it is so difficult? What the Torah tells us is that it is not going to be easy, it is going to be a difficult labor.
In the Navi, it says “Let not someone who wants to pride himself on his wisdom and someone who is strong, let him not take pride in his strength, nor a wealthy man take pride in his wealth. If you want to take credit in productivity, take pride in understanding who is Hashem. If we want to feel accomplished, then the greatness of what we can aspire to and take pride is in knowing who is Hashem.
Knowing who is Hashem is the greatest achievement we can do, more than money or strength.
It is a passuk.
It is a mitzvah and it is the only thing we can take pride in, to know who is Hashem
Thus we know that we CAN come to know who Hashem is to some degree!!! There is a path to have knowing of Hashem, and this is our greatest achievement.
When we answer for our life and can say we know who is Hashem, we can quote this passuk and gain entry to olam haba.
This is the job of a person.
Unfortunately, we have childish ideas about who is Hashem –
such as is he male or female? It is possible to go incredibly deep within ourselves, within our prayers, to realize we are praying to an unlimited Being.
There is a place in Torah that tells us who is Hashem, and that is Shema. Hashem is One.
One and not two.
How do we quiet and satisfy our heart?
If we say Hashem is One, which takes three seconds, what is the reason that we must satisfy our heart? Oneness is simple in sounding but it is quite profound.
Rabbi Kessin’s shiur explains Hashem is One, Hashem is Singular, and Hashem is Unique – three expressions, with a fourth to follow in Part 2 next week.
Let’s take an elevator and go inwardly, deeper, to the floors below the surface.
Hashem is One: Hashem is absolute Oneness. There cannot be another nor duplicated at all. This is Echad, absolutely One. There is something about Hashem that defies this explanation.
Hashem is Singular: Hashem Himself is only one thing, there are no parts. He is compassion. Everything in the world – all the atoms – are all constructed from Him, from the indivisible Hashem and it cannot be made into less.
He is the subject, the action and the object of the verb.
He is identical to the memory that He has and He is identical to the act of remembering. Hashem is one. He is not separate from what He knows.
The Rambam says this flows from the concept of pashut, that Hashem is a simple being with no parts. He is identical to everything He does, He is identical to the act itself.
Everything that exists is its essence, its soul, with attributes that constitute what it is, and a vessel, how it exists. There is essence and existence, that appear to be two things.
Hashem does not have existence, He IS existence. His Essence is His Being Itself, He is existence per se.
Hashem is Omnipotent He can do anything He wants. He is existence and can make anything He wants. He is the faculty of Being and therefore anything He wants He can do. Nothing can oppose Him because He has to enable the opposition to oppose Him.
Haazeinu tells us Hashem gives life, kills, and cures…and from My Hand there is no rescue.
Never give up hope. The only question is will Hashem do it?
Hashem is Omniscient. He knows everything. In order for something to exist, He is giving it existence and that is how He knows about it. He knows everything. He is the active cause and never forgets.
Hashem is Omnipresent: He is all over. His Glory fills all space, everything. Hashem gives everything existence by Hashem. He encompasses all creation, which is much greater than the physical universe. The presence of Hashem is everywhere. There is no space devoid of the presence of Hashem.
Creation is an act that brings something that does not exist into existence. If He is existence, He can give existence to anything He wants by making it part of Him. That is how He Creates.
What is unique about Hashem is that He must be. We may or may not be. There is no reason for us to exist at all. But Hashem cannot leave existence, He must be. His existence is necessitated. We who are given existence if He removes it, we do not exist. But Hashem cannot remove Himself from Himself. He Is.
He is timeless. He always was, He always IS, and He always will be. He is enduring.
The Ramchal tells us that Hashem is perfect. It has everything, it is not missing anything. There is no lack.
What is reality? It is whatever exists. Reality is part of Hashem. Reality is whatever existence makes. Reality emerges from Hashem because He is existence. He is real. There is no separate thing called reality. He is reality, a part of Him.
His Name, yud k and vav k, comes from the verb to be. He is being itself. His Name is being. Hashem answers Moshe “I am” meaning that He is the “Am”.
Since Hashem knows Himself, He knows us, we emanate from Him. That is how He knows everything. He gives us existence which emanates from Him. We are not external from Him. We emanate from Him.
How do we satisfy our heart? Everything emanates from Him and He is One. Everything is from Him. He creates everything and maintains our existence, but in the end, it is all Him.
No one can ever know who Hashem is because He is existence itself. Only Hashem knows who He Is.
Hashem is unique:
When we were at Har Sinai, it says we were shown to know, that Hashem is the lord and master, ein od milvado. What does this mean? There is nothing else. There is no one besides Him. This was the main revelation at Har Sinai. Hashem shows a central experience – Hashem did not make a creation – even after Hashem creates everything, it does not really exist.
Imagine someone is sleeping and having a dream about people drinking coffee. One says to the other, we don’t really exist. The other says, we are talking. The first says we exist relative to ourselves but to the one dreaming we don’t exist, we don’t really exist like he does, we are a mental abstraction of his mind. He exists. If he woke up we would be gone.
Our existence depends on Him but our existence is not even like Him. We don’t have a true existence. That is what we saw at Har Sinai. We have been shown to know that Hashem is Elokim the master, besides Hashem there is nothing else, even after the creation. We surely don’t exist the way He does. Only we think we really exist. We think we are, but in true reality we don’t exist at all, in some way Hashem has concealed that from us.
Do not think that we have existence, surely not like Hashem. We who have to be given existence must know it is still Him. We must be sustained from one instant to the next or the whole creation would annihilate. We are nothing. He is thinking “be” over the entire creation. He allows us to form within Him. It is delusional for us to think we exist independently from Him, for we are a shape like a cloud within Him.
Rashi says in Devarim hei, Hashem opened the heavens and showed the Jewish people He is the One of creation. How they could realize that and continue to exist, no one knows. We are just shapes within Him. That is what it means to be One.
One relative thing can kill another relative thing. But one cannot make a mistake and think he is existing independently from Hashem.
Moshe asks Hashem to show him Hashem’s ways and His Glory. How can Moshe speak to Him when Moshe doesn’t exist? Who is Hashem? If it is ein od, how can Moshe talk to Hashem? That is the idea from the Navi that Hashem says I have not changed. Hashem never did anything, nothing really exists in His terms. We exist relative to each other. Moshe understood this.
This is why humility is the greatest, the realization that we are nothing. The illusion of self as an independent being is impenetrable, the arrogance of man, that we believe we can cause things.
There will always be this delusion because otherwise we cease to exist. This is why Torah starts with bais, there is Hashem and there is a soul that is in a delusion that it exists because if that delusion ever realized its own nonexistence, it would cease to be.
In the future world we will experience the existence of Hashem, as an Infinite climb.
There is no other force in the universe. The Nefesh HaChaim says that if we are faced with a threat, if we say there is no enemy, that enemy is Hashem in the form of the enemy, then when we recognize there is no other, nothing can oppose us. Hashem has to give existence to what relative to us opposes to us. That opponent will cease.
the Brisker Rav Went to Ein od
The Brisker Rav when fleeing Europe got stopped by a Nazi and the Brisker Rav went to ein od, the Nazi does not really exist, the power must come from Hashem and I recognize that. What happened was that the Nazi who stopped him looked away and walked off.
When we penetrate the delusion and spot Hashem, He activates our belief that He is activating the power and He takes the power away from the enemy.
If you listen to the very beginning from Rabbi Kessin on who is Hashem, he says there are four barriers Hashem places between us and knowing Him, 1. the feeling of independent existence (and I am wondering if this is water/desire) 2 being spiritual and Hashem being unknowable and not spiritual (I wonder if this is gas/flightiness)3. physicality itself, the body, the world (I wonder if this is earth, sadness) and 4. the zuhama, the tohu and vohu that falls into the poison the soton injected into Chava which is the strength of our imagination and deceptive beliefs (I wonder if this is fire/radioactive/anger/fear The reason I mention this is that our task is to hold steady as these strong influences attempt to latch onto our life force and divert it towards darkness ...telling us of course promises of pleasure, honor and survival.
This strong vessel is an Inner eye
Perhaps this vessel this strong vessel that we aspire to, is an Inner eye of sorts, one that can catch the messages from the orbital cortex, recognize that a gold mine of compassion is trapped there, shower compassion upon it, resist the lack of really understanding who is Hashem because He is above our perceptions and we can only connect with taanug to emunah and strengthen that emunah, stand strong in the face of the "reality check" the deceiver throws our way in order to knock us back into its playing field of subjectivity and darkness - stand strong with the pleasure of emunah, of knowing Hashem is doing everything, that He is thinking us up, that His Love is constant, and thank Hashem for the opportunity to breathe all the strength from within our anger, fear, jealousy,desire for honor into mitzvahs with full comprehension of that being our entire purpose
We are a channel. A pipeline
it is our ability to move from the knot of messages from the orbital cortex to the reinvestment of that power into the world in mitzvahs - as we discuss here - but really seeing how this pathway is built through faith, trust, love and intention in doing mitzvahs.
3rd Eye
We have an inner way of looking at things, an inner insight called a third eye....in the forehead...it has to do with our will power, fo what we want, we have insight into, and we can use it to serve Hashem
We need confidence that the mitzvahs are what need to be done here and bring everything forth as intention for that.
Satisfy your heart
This indicates that it is a tremendous labor because our heart is agitated. We have to work hard to know who Hashem is. Hashem is our friend. Never give up on our soul that is an emanation of knesset Yisrael, That has holiness and tzidkus, that can serve Hashem no matter what.
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