In life, we know what we must do. Why do our actions often contradict what we know to be correct? This week's Torah Podcast explores the concept of "a good heart" and how to convert thoughts into action. Good Shabbos!
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Why did I stub my toe? Why did I get a cold? Well, it was because I left my weight on the floor. I didn't see it, and I stubbed my toe. I got my cold because, well, I shouldn't have gone outside when it was freezing cold in the New Jersey winter without wearing a coat and maybe a hat. And while those are true reasons, I believe if I stop there, I would be totally missing the point. See, we exist in this world as a spiritual being, living a very physical life. We know this. The Mers tells us there is not a blade of grass in the world that doesn't have an angel telling it. Gik Gik grow, grow. Everything in this world while is tangible corporeal. It is all powered by the spiritual aspects. It is all powered by spirituality. When I stubbed my toe, yes, I did leave my weight on the floor, and I probably shouldn't have done that. But there's also one message that God is telling me. Maybe I was lazy with my feet. If I just settle on the fact that I got my cold because I didn't wear a coat, well then I might overlook the icker. The main reason that I got a cold, they are messages from God. It's even clear from Ravi Lovitz's writings. And once Ulva has Talmud actually commented in a similar vein that all of my talks are trying to display how ous, how spirituality is real. It's here. You can touch it, you can see it, you can feel it. And while to the discerning eye, it is unmistakably evident. It still requires effort to live on this playing field. And one of the main concepts that re Roku explains about this is that the same way there are limbs to the physical body, a vm, our legs, our torso, our arms, our head, there are a VM to our spiritual makeup. And this concept actually goes as far back as Rco Emden, and even the Rambam and Theum and his eight chapters. And there's many comparisons between the physical body and the metaphysical spiritual makeup of a body. Most notably that the energy of the body, the main power source, the driving force of all actions, both in the physical body and in the spiritual makeup come from the heart. We know, God forbid, a person cannot live without a heart, catastrophe can strike if it even misses just one beat. And ink[inaudible] with all the heart. The heart is where it begins. The heart is where it ends. A la tove, the mission of us describes one of the highest mitos. A person can have a good heart. God forbid if a Avera is committed a sin, well then you can stuff up your spiritual heart.[inaudible] It's called called someone consumes a non-kosher product. It can literally stuff up his arteries. And we pray for the day that God will circumcise our heart as the PA Devar tells us.[inaudible] that God will circumcise our hearts. Indeed, all actions come from the heart. There's no greater spot for us to pick than an hour partial to show this truth. Pyro could not let the Jews go. El hardens pru's heart. Sk. I've hardened his heart. If Pru's heart was hardened, the Jews weren't gonna leave. And now it's time for God to show his ultimate control and dominion over the world and all over the Egyptians. All this is fine and dandy and it's nice because it's not really about us. This is pyros issue. However, things get a bit sticky when we read the words that we actually testify twice daily[inaudible] that you should know today[inaudible] and you should return it to your heart. Words, we say twice daily during the El new prayer. It creates a certain problem because we know also what we need to be doing. We have the knowledge of what God wants from us, but our actions don't always follow that wisdom. Our hearts are not always in it. And our entire job in this world is to get what we know in our heads consciously into our hearts so that we can actually start to change our actions. There's this clear discrepancy between what we know, what we accept as right, and what we accept is wrong. Yet our actions do not follow. So we're stuck at this crossroad where everything runs through the heart. The heart is the central point of the spiritual makeup of our beings. It is the focal point of the metaphysical universe. The universe called me. The universe called you the universe of each person's mission in life. It's all at the lathe. And we just need to get these ideas into our heart. Why doesn't it work? The answer is actually remarkably simple. Andummm explains. People miss one valuable and critical piece of information. That is that the heart has an entranceway, there's a portal to the heart. And while all of these concepts that we know to be true also fit inside of our hearts, they don't fit through the doorway. Our doorways are much smaller 3000 years plus from Harini, tma, the Jerusalem TMA actually explains in[inaudible] in the name of Schmo, the son of[inaudible][inaudible] the earlier generations, those closer to CE than we are, they would plow[inaudible] and they would seed kruk. They would do all the necessary things to create food out of their crops, and then they would eat them.[inaudible] But us, but we, we don't even have a mouth to eat it. Due to the spiritual decline over the generations, we don't have the same opening to our hearts. We know that the entire Torah is actually comprised, says the Ramban inside the 10 commandments S. And not only that, but all the SDIs are inside the one word of an nok. And the could understand that. They could see that. But we don't have the same opening into our hearts to understand these concepts. So we're stuck. What can we do? We need to know these ideas. Our life depends on it. We know them in our heads, but we can't get them into our hearts. So what should we do? There are two answers. Rev review, flimm explains, and I'm going to give my best interpretation of the two answers with a muscle, and we'll take it from there. Now that we have knowledge of this fact that we have small mouths, the opening is quite minuscule. So let's say that we're kind of like a newborn baby. When a newborn baby wants to eat, they're reaching for the challah. So the mother maybe would give it challah, but you can't give it a full piece. You cut it up very small, mini bite size pieces of challah. A baby at a certain age can eat harder foods. You just have to cut it up really, really small piece by piece. This is the way to ingest these concepts, this massive idea of yes, us shamaya, this huge integral thing called[inaudible]. It doesn't fit through the doorway, but if you caught it up into really tiny bite-sized pieces and you move it in piece by piece, that's the way to get it into the heart. [inaudible] I'd like to give an example of how we can see this practically. I live in a basement apartment here in Lakewood, New Jersey, and when we purchased a desk for the home, there was a problem. The desk, while it fit inside where we measured against the wall in the office, we didn't happen to measure the doorway to our apartment. So what to do, obviously me and my friends tried to, you know, just move it this way and try to finagle it inside if we just flip it backwards. But ultimately there was only one answer. We took the desk apart, we brought it in piece by piece, and we reassembled it. You can move an entire desk through a tiny hole if you just cut it up.[inaudible] The prophet Ishaya tells us, we actually read it in half tire about a few weeks ago, piece by piece, line by line. That's how we can get it into our hearts. A second[inaudible] Again, taking the baby muscle a step further, let's say mommy's not okay with giving the baby challah at this point in its life. So it's stuck to baby food. Why is baby food any better? Because it's mushed up, it's smooth, it's creamy, it's easily digestible and edible. For a baby, it says Rabbi Roku. If you could go ahead and take a concept and smash it up and clarify it to such an extent, go over it and over it and over it, and za it and Kazak until it's like baby food to you. Well then now that it's smooth and creamy, it slides right into your heart. Turn it into baby food. For example, the pillars of Una. You will find in[inaudible] common at the end of our partial Pius bow about this piece. Actually, revol has said that every Jew should know it by heart. The foundations of belief, una. And to get it into our hearts, revol said, memorize it. If you can open up your head, open up your mind, get into the learning, you go over it and over it and over it, review it again and again and again. You're smoothing it out. It eventually becomes soft paced and that can go right into your heart. Power was doomed from the get-go because his heart was hard. Our actions all come from the heart, the center point, the heart is the birthplace of our actions. It's imperative that we can learn to push downward the concepts we know in our head, into our heart. With these two different pieces of advice, we can now change the way that we learn. We can either cut it up very small and move it in piece by piece or clarify it until it's so smooth that's easily digestible, easily edible, even for a baby. And with this[inaudible] we should fulfill the words
Speaker 2:Nineish.