Tanya Chapter 16

Beyond Technicality: Cultivating Heartfelt Connection with God OK, so we're going to, I feel like I needed a drop of a review so because I had like a one week break. So I'm going to my my quick review. Literally in one sentence though, is without reviewing the entire story of the Banani. One thing we know for sure is that the Banani has the capacity for Maya Shalit al Aleve, right? This is what we know about the Banani. The Banani can rule over the heart, meaning that regardless of what I'm feeling in my heart, I have the the capacity to master my behavior. Hopefully we get to choose which narratives we allow our mind to engage with. We get to choose which words come out of our mouth. We get to choose what we actually do and this is obviously this is an incredible level of mastery, but we're going to bump what we're going to engage with in this chapter, chapter 16 is that in some way that's also very technical, right? To live my entire life feeling one thing and then constantly having to manage that, constantly having to suppress it while acting out of commitment or responsibility or you know, I mean, in a committed relationship with God and I want to show up, but it but it's still it's such hard work. It's, it's almost like it, it feels unsustainable if we're steadily, steadily having to live that way in a relationship. So what the odd driver begins to address here is that we can actually work on generating feelings. We can work on developing a relationship with God. That isn't only a committed relationship, but it's also very heartfelt. You know, just a silly little story that came to mind as I was putting these thoughts together. I remember once reading about it was just an analogy about a couple that goes for counseling and and the wife is expressing that she doesn't feel her husband's love and she'd give us an example that he never buys her gifts. So the husband comes up with what he thinks is a a brilliant idea and he comes home the next day with this massive box and she's imagining that there's like a dishwasher in there or a washing machine, something huge. But she opens the box and inside she sees 100 individually wrapped gifts. And she asks for an explanation. And he says that whenever you're feeling like I don't love you, just come to the box, take out a gift, and these are my gifts to you. Now, I don't know the end of the story, but the part that struck me is that there's so much, there's technicality here. There's such a technicality here. So many women that complain about the issue with their husband is that they don't want to have to tell them what they want. The minute they tell them what they want, then they're feeling like they're not, you know, they're not reading my mind. I need them. When they read my mind and they're able to, you know, attune to me, then it means that they they love me. But that's that's actually not the truth. Sometimes you have to communicate this story here is a has a little bit of a different twist here here. There's such a technical element to his engaging with her. He's showing up. He's doing the things that he's supposed to do. But somehow what's missing is the feeling behind the gift. She doesn't just want an object or a check box that says, my husband gives me gifts. She wants to feel that he thought about her. She wants to know that she wants him to know what makes her happy and and that this gift should be an expression of what's happening in his heart. So in a certain sense, this is where we're up to with the Banani. The Banani shows up in his relationship with God. He learns, he does mitzvahs. He stops. Again, forgive me for using the heat. It's just a general term. He, he, he controls his speech, he redirects his thoughts. He lives with commitment. Now the altar of it says, you know, your relationship with God could could be much, much more profound. The, the Benini could generate emotions. And we've all learnt about this. We learned the basic structure of what happens through Hama bin Adas, right? Emotions don't necessarily appear out of nowhere. We can't expect them to, especially especially when it comes to such an abstract idea like God. We learn about God, we contemplate it. We we meditate on on the nuances and the details of everything in creation and we could develop a a deep feeling. So with the altar eventually that will give birth to an emotional the altar begins. This chapter here is describing that ideal that through contemplating the greatness of God, the Benini actually awakens a feeling of love and awe in his heart. And then those mitzvahs are no longer things that we just do because we know we have to. They're being animated by this living relationship with God. But then the altar of it addresses the next question that I think so many of us live with or we've talked about it here also is what's if I can't generate those feelings? What's if I do contemplate and I do understand? What's if I intellectually I know exactly why I should love God and I stand in awe of him, but my heart isn't feeling it. Experiencing God: The Felt Sensation of Love and Awe This is what we're going to explore in this chapter. But before we do, before we we discuss what the altar of it explains here, I first want us to understand what he means when we talk about actually feeling love and awe of God. What does it mean for an emotion to move us beyond something that we understand in our mind, but it becomes something that we literally experience in our heart and it and to do that, I want to actually there was a Hayamyang last week. I think it was last week on Monday, as a matter of fact, the Friedrich Rabbi gave us in Nyam A visceral description of what genuine emotions feel like and what it means to love and have all of God. It's not just something that we understand, it's something that we feel. Now, just just to clarify, the hyamiyam was a very brief paragraph because that's typically what the hyamiyam is. The rabbit compiled teachings from many of them are from the Friedrich Rabbi. But you look into the Frida Korba's words and I, I did, I looked in the source. It's an elaborate, literally a page long description. And I, I translated it for us. I didn't translate it. I gave it to cloud to translate. So just to briefly talk about the hayam, I'm quoting the hayam. I'm directly, just as with the mitzvah of tefillin, there's a designated place for them on my head and my arm. OK. For a man's head and man's arm, you feel literally visceral weight of the head, tefillin on the on the head. You feel viscerally the tightness of the hand to fill in. So to the mitzvah of Abah Nira, the mitzvah of love and awe of God. The Frito crab is what is he doing here? He's comparing the action based mitzvah to an emotional experience. He says they're supposed to be the same. You think about to fill in. It's not something we know about. You actually feel them. There's a place on your head for it. There's a place on your arm for it. They're tangible physical mitzvahs. So the Freda Grub is saying that the love and awe of God, they're tangible. There's a designated place in our heart, and we're meant to feel them with the same kind of reality. So he's essentially telling us what we already know, that emotions are felt senses, right? They're not ideas. They're called feelings for a reason, because you're supposed to feel them, right? And he elaborates and he gives an example. Like I said, this is literal translation. I, I just loved it. I don't know, something about it was so moving to me how he shared this. So he writes, he says this was in the safe arm. My arm couldn't trace him. Like that's where the original source was. He says, just as we plainly observe in people's natural behavior, when a person's walking along and they may be preoccupied and troubled by their thoughts, by their fears, by whatever it is that's going on. Suddenly you happen upon a devoted friend and your whole heart fills with feelings of love and affection in a bodily sensation far beyond that momentary stirring that fills a heart with a feeling of love which might just come from the suddenness of it. Beyond that, the very sight of his friend makes him feel good, and that good feeling comes over him in a tangible, real way. Indeed, Again, I'm quoting directly. Even if God forbid he had sorrow in that moment, he forgets it because his heart feels good and he senses actual pleasantness and sweetness in his body, in the very flesh of his heart. And this also acts to elevate his spirit. It lifts him out of distress. This is because we see that even if he had anger beforehand, he was upset with his friend over something or that his friend had wronged him somewhat. The stirring of the heart sense of love towards his friend is enough to make him forget his sorrow entirely, and even On the contrary, it soothes and settles it. For the arousal of love strengthens his heart and encourages him to think good thoughts with simple faith that it will surely be good in the end. All this comes from the sense of goodness felt in the body's heart upon encountering his devoted friend. So here are the altar. I would just, I'm sorry. The Frida Greba elaborating on the felt visceral sensation of what it feels like to bump into somebody who you love. And then he gives us the opposite example. He says, imagine coming suddenly, coming face to face with a ruler. The sorrow, my shell. He says, who has the ability to decide on your life or death? A person would fall into great fear and dread and his heart would tremble within him. So too, again, he's giving the example of awe. When you encounter a great and wondrous siege, you have a sense of awe, of the greatness of such a wise person. Again, these experiences, this is his words. They differ. Love expands the heart, fear contracts it, but they share something essential. They're not merely thoughts, they're felt in the flesh of the heart. And he continues to say, and here I'm paraphrasing, they move through the body, they change your posture, they change your inner state. They are real. They immediately affect how you think, how you feel, how you respond. The Frida Karev is saying here that this is what the mitzvah to love and fear God is meant to be, to to have love in awe of God. They're not simply about a God that we agree with intellectually, but they're living, embodied experiences that are sensed in the heart with the same immediacy, the same tangibility as a love that we feel when we see someone who is dear to us or when we experience something that's dreadful and fearful. The Alter Rebbe on Love: Revealed Emotion vs. Concealed Knowing And this is, this is how chapter 16, this is just my introduction to chapter 16. Chapter 16 begins with this idea. Now because many of us read this and we think I understand why I should love God, I understand why I should have awe of God, but I don't consistently or even ever experience this kind of visceral, heart filling emotional relationship to God. So the altar of it addresses this here. He he distinguishes between what he calls a revealed emotional love, which is Frida Grebe described here, and another form of love and awe that live primarily in our mind. And it's not experienced with this overwhelming desire for connection or this trembling in our heart. But nevertheless, what the Altarb is telling us is that they are very real because they guide, They still guide our choices, and they still define the idea of the Benini. So the Altarbin describes this chapter again. He begins by affirming that what the Friedrich Rabbit just described through this is ideal. OK, A Benini is not just meant to master our impulses, which I mean simply he starts by saying this is the abide of the Benini. We master our impulses. I like how I'm including all of us, right? And he says how this could be achieved through meditating on God's greatness, right? Which then gives rise. I'm repeating a little bit because I saw a few people come on, but I'm so I'm just repeating now in context of the chapter, this, this can happen when we have a vivid awareness, when we have a, which then becomes a lived experience and our heart actually extends with love or it contracts with all. And those feelings then, like I, like we said before, they're tangible, like the weed of tefillin is on a, on a person's body, which then allows the divine soul, which is in our brain to rule over the natural impulses that of the animal soul that sit in our heart right now notice the order. I'm again, I'm just repeating this because I want this to become a, you know, I, I want us to, to understand this, this just like with it with our eyes closed. This is this is the order of the the work for the BN. Any we have contemplation, it develops. Then Hochman, there's Bina, there's Das. It's no longer just information. It becomes a genuine feeling inside of our body and emotion. And when this love and awe are experienced this way again, they're not just feelings, they shape how we live. All is going to create a natural resistance to anything that's going to distance me from God. We're naturally going to want to stay away from anything that God asks us not to do. And again, I'll try to emphasize not only the major prohibitions in the tar, but even the smaller mitzvahs that were established by the sages. And at the same time, the love awakens within us this deep longing to come closer to God. We begin to genuinely want to fulfill his mitzvahs, to learn his tarot, to take every opportunity to strengthen that connection. In other words, when love and awe are lived realities in our heart, they don't just change how we feel, they are going to change how we live. This is the the the work of the being in the ideal. Now, the altar of a again, I'm repeating a little drop here, the altar of it turns to the reality that every single one of us encounter every being in the encounters. I could spend time contemplating God's greatness. We could understand these ideas. We could arrive at deep convictions that they're true, and yet our heart might remain relatively unmoved. We don't necessarily experience what the Frieda Greba described in The Haemian. We don't necessarily feel our heart overflowing with love or trembling with awe. So what then? Does this mean that our meditation was a failure? Have we failed to fulfill this mitzvah of Avanira? Or is there another authentic form of Avanira that could guide our lives even before our heart is fully, fully awakened? So this is this is what chapter 16 answers. The other bit acknowledges that again, ideal love, love and awe field, you know, love and awe is felt a visceral sense in the heart. But that's not everyone's experience. There are many sincere people who understand God's greatness. We know that we should love him and stand in awe of him. Every single one of us sitting here. And yet those feelings, they never they don't ever emerge as palpable, palpable emotions. And again, wait, maybe we thought they did. But then when I describe it, the Frida grab is describing about a when you meet a friend, you're like, wait a minute, is that the same connection I have when I think about God? So the author but then tells us instead, there's something else that's happening. He says Arka ABBA masuteris bimaikai, the saluma sliebre. He possesses a hidden love, and again, I really do believe that each one of us will be able to read the relate to. This part possesses a hidden love in his mind, and it can end concealed in the recesses of the heart. So the Outrep is not saying you don't have love, and he's not saying that you failed to contemplate deep enough. And he's certainly not saying that where Aravaida isn't genuine, he's saying that it's a love that exists in a different place. Instead of being a revealed emotion that fills our heart, it's a love that remains primarily in our mind. In other words, we could come to truly recognize God's greatness and we could understand that compared to God, compared to Him, the infinite One, everything else is insignificant. Koola Kumaya Kalakshif we could appreciate that the most natural response of the soul, we get to know what our soul is. All of us here have learned what is our soul and we get to appreciate that the most natural response of our soul is to long to forgot and to cleave to God. And yet we're not actually feeling that longing as a as an overwhelming emotion, right. So our understanding is real, our conviction is real, our conclusion is real, but the emotion remains concealed in our mind rather than revealed in our heart. And, and, you know, outside of, of these emotions with God, I even believe that this is something we could relate to in our own lives. We spend a lot of our lives living in our minds. So many of the conversations that I have with people is there's thoughts about what we're feeling. There are explanations for what we're feeling. There's stories about what we're feeling, but we don't actually feel those emotions in a deep embodied way. I think this is something that therapeutic work has taught us that that healing doesn't happen by changing our thoughts. We also have to learn to become present to the emotions as they're experienced in the body. To notice the tightness in our chest, the heaviness in our stomach, the warmth and the openness or the tension, whatever it is, we begin to realize that these emotions are not just ideas, they're lived experiences. And for many people, that's actually a new skill. It's learning to notice that what we're feeling, instead of only thinking about what we're feeling. It's it's recognizing that these feelings are lived sensations in our body. And I think it's this is a helpful way of understanding what the altar of is describing here. He's saying that there are people whose understanding naturally gives birth to a fully felt emotional experience. They contemplate God's greatness and almost automatically their heart awakens with love and awe. But for many others, there's there's this gap between the mind and the heart. We understand, we believe, we can even explain these ideas beautifully, we can teach them. But those ideas haven't become a lived emotional reality. Now, the author of is saying that this isn't necessarily because we haven't contemplated enough or we haven't tried hard enough. He actually points out in this chapter that sometimes this is simply the way that our soul functions at this stage. The emotions are there, but they're still concealed. They haven't been born into conscious, embodied experiences. Some souls are are their emotions, just like in the spiritual realms, the emotions are in a gestation period where they're fermenting and then they're in the in the birth period where they're actually expressed in the world. And when your soul, when a person's soul, let's say, comes from hesed, but it's from hesed in the, in the gestation period, that person might not yet be able to experience felt sense emotions. There's something that would take a lot more of I do a lot more work. Whereas if a person's soul that comes from hesed, but it's from it, from the birth, from where hesed is already born and expressed in the world, then their soul will have an easier time going from that space in their mind and being felt in the heart. But so the other essentially is telling here is that instead of concluding that there's something wrong with me, he's saying, no, this is simply where you're, this is where your work begins. Your work isn't to pretend you're feeling something that you're not. And it's not to be discouraged because your heart hasn't yet caught up. Your work is to continue contemplating, to continue living according to what you know to be true, to continue living aligned with the knowing in your mind, even if it's not yet a felt sense. And when you do that, this really has already become an integrated part of your emotional world. And, and perhaps the more we learn to do this, the more we learn to be present with our human emotions, the more capacity we develop to experience are spiritual ones as well. So this Avaida of, you know, presencing with the sensations in our body, it really, really will lead from my experience, it will lead to being able to have a felt sense of these spiritual emotions, the emotions in relation to God. Bridging the Gap: Connecting to God Through Torah and Mitzvahs Now the author takes us one step further, one second. He goes on to say that even if a person doesn't yet feel this powerful love and yearning for God, we still they they could still come to recognize that this is the most authentic desire of the soul. In other words, even if I'm not experiencing an overwhelming longing, you know the altar we uses this Chuka this like literally this I the soul just desiring to cleave to God. I might not wake up in the morning feeling that, but I could understand that if my soul were fully revealed. When we learn about the Nephesh Elikis. When we learn about the make up of it. We begin to realize that if there was nothing blocking its expression, this is exactly what it would want. And so the altar of us introducing this subtle but a very profound distinction. There's a difference between saying I feel this and saying, I know this is the deepest truth of who I am. So it's true that maybe none of us here can say we wake up feeling this. But through the work that we're doing right here, we absolutely could wake up knowing that this is the deepest truth of our identity. I might not experience this yearning emotionally, but I could recognize that this yearning belongs to my godly soul. I can know that beneath all of my conflicting desires, beneath all of the distractions and the habits of my animal soul, this is what my truest self longs for. And that recognition alone is very powerful. It gives me something to align my life with. I know what my choices should be, even if my emotions haven't yet fully caught up. And Altar explains why there is this gap. Well, our soul might long to completely cleave to God, but our soul is clothed within a very physical body. We experience reality through the limitations of our physical existence. So we don't perceive God directly. We aren't spiritual beings necessarily. We're caught up in the mundane. We are spiritual beings. But unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of blockages in the way, so we can't simply look around because the fact that my soul is trapped in this body, I can't simply look around and experience God's presence with the same certain thing that I experience my physical world. When I'm hungry, I feel my hunger more intensely than I feel my soul's hunger to be in God's presence. As long as we're living within a body, there's always going to be concealment. Our thoughts can't fully grasp him and our emotions can't fully experiencing experience Him. And, and I think this is an important point because sometimes we imagine, and, and I've, I've had these conversations with women, we imagine that if I was just a little more spiritual, then I'd naturally feel this overwhelming love for God all the time. I do believe that this is a process we could evolve into, but the outer of it says that this isn't necessarily the natural reality of the vanity. The limitation isn't something that you're not trying hard enough. It's that you're human. We're finite beings trying to relate to the infinite, which means that there's always going to be a gap between what our soul truly is and what we are able to presently experience. And yet that doesn't make the yearning any less true. The soul knows where it belongs. The soul knows what it wants, even if the heart can't yet fully feel it. And so now the altar of it brings us into a very beautiful, you know, conclusion. He, he, he explains it, even though you can't yet grasp God directly and you can't experience this overwhelming love in a revealed way, you still could cleave to him. How? Yes, through Tara and mitzvahs. The altar reminds us of something that we learned earlier in the Tanya, that when we study Tara, when we perform a mitzvah, it's like literally hugging the king himself. So just think about that for a moment, OK? You might not be able to feel. And again, and I'm emphasizing this because this is a conversation that I have with so much, so many women. You don't feel this yearning in your heart. You are stuck within the confines of your body. You're not able to completely dissolve into godliness. Sometimes. Sometimes we hear other people speak of this and there's something that's like, wait, what's wrong with me? So we're not able to experience steadily this fiery love that the Frida Greb is describing, but we can do a mitzvah, we can get stuck, or we can speak words of Torah. And that at that very moment, whether you're feeling it or not, you are embracing God. And I think this is a very critical point. The altar up is saying that our inability to fully experience God doesn't prevent us from fully connecting to him. Our emotions might be limited, but our connection isn't. And and then he says something even more profound. He goes on to say that if a person deeply reflects on this truth, that Tara and mitzvahs are the way we embrace God, and that understanding and, and, and that that understanding becomes our conclusion. I know this. Then that understanding is what is going to animate my actions. It's going to move me out of the realm of these are just abstract ideas, these are abstract teachings and it brings it into real life. My mouth begins to speak words of Torah. My hand's performance was my daily choices reflect what I know. In other words, the understanding isn't staying in the mind. Octre was telling us that this love and this emotions, they live in our mind, but they don't stay there. Even if they don't enter our heart, they move into the world of action and the altar of it says that because they move into the world of action, this is the emotion. This understanding could become wings for our mitzvahs. When Thoughts Become Deeds: God Joins Our Intentions to Actions He, he goes into a different topic here, which I want to emphasize a lot. I want, I want to, you know, spend a little bit of time here. He talks about the emotions of our mitzvahs being the wings of our mitzvahs. In another place, he elaborates on this. Normally those wings are the fully revealed love and awe that we have that becomes the wing of a mitzvah that allows the the mitzvah to soar. You know, that's allows the mitzvah to become not just the technical gifts that the guy bought his wife the emotion. So it allows it to become a a a face of connection. The altar of it goes on to say that even this more concealed love, even if the, the, the obviously the deep emotion is what allows the, the love and awe to become the wings. But he goes on to say that even though you and I might not experience that viscerally, our understanding of it will allow it to become the wings. How and why? How do we know? And I'm really, I, I, I feel like I'm, I, I'm emphasizing this so much because it's like a, it seems to have been a question that was showing up a lot for our, for our group. Like we were talking a lot about this in relation to davening, you know, like, like, I don't feel it right. So I'll drop it once to emphasize to us he goes, even if you're not feeling it, think about this very practically. How do you know that this hidden love and awe are real? If it's just in your mind, how do you know that it's real? Look at your life. If you had never stopped to contemplate on God's greatness, if you had never come to recognize that your soul truly belongs with God, then you would not be spending your time here right now. You wouldn't be performing mitzvahs. You would simply be preoccupied with all the mundane needs and desires. You'd be occupied by all the other stuff that takes up space in your life, which many people in the world are. A great percentage of the world is preoccupied with something else right now. But the very fact that you're choosing to be here over being somewhere else, the very fact that you chose a mitzvah over a convenience, the very fact that you are orienting your life towards God is itself the evidence that this hidden love and awe are very much alive within us. It's true that they're not dramatically felt, but they're very profound. They're very profoundly real. And I think this is the most encouraging message in this chapter. The altar. But isn't measuring our love for God by how intensely we feel it. He's measuring it by your deepest by how this, this deep understanding moves you. Your actions reveal the direction of your heart, even if your heart isn't, isn't there yet, even if your heart is still learning how to feel. And again, you know, just to go back, I don't want to use that, that example of the husband and wife because I, I, I'm really not crazy about the way he chose to show up. But the fact is, sometimes, sometimes there isn't an intense love and feeling even in, in, in our human relationships. But the fact that we're committed, the fact that we stay loyal and we keep showing up, it shows a lot. It shows that even though I'm not feeling this viscerally in my heart, this matters to me. This is and I'm making choices that are aligned with, with with with with what I prioritized in my life. So now the doctor goes to explain another important point about the difference between these two kinds of love and awe. When love and awe are actually revealed in the heart, when I really feel them, they naturally become part of the mitzvah that I'm doing, right? The emotion moves me. The emotion gives energy to the action. Again, like we said before, it becomes the wings that allow the mitzvah to rise. And he explains in a very logistical way, why. Simply put, the feelings are feelings in a heart. They're they're already, they're embodied. And we talked earlier how visceral these emotions are. Right when we give the example, the three de Greba, love isn't just an idea. Fear isn't just an idea. There you feel your heart open, you feel your body tense, you feel your breathing change. It's a very physical state. So when love and awe of God are felt emotions in our heart, there's already this Natural Bridge from the mind to the body. The emotion is already has already bridged our understanding with the physical action. And because the mitzvah is something that's done in our body, the emotion, the emotion connects the body to the to the knowing. The love I feel flows directly into the mitzvah that I perform. My heart wants closest to God and my hand gives the that's Zucker. My heart feels awe of God and that awe effects what I choose not to do. That inner feeling and the outer action are they're they're very merged. They're one lived experience. But what happens when the love and the awe aren't revealed emotions when they are like many of us experience their ideas in our mind. What happens then is right. I understand God, I understand everything. I recognize that this is what my soul wants, and that action genuinely, genuinely leads me to learn and to do, but I don't actually feel it in my heart. So essentially that kind of love and awe. They're too abstract to naturally clothe themselves in a physical action. They're too abstract to become the wings. The emotions are embodied. The action is embodied until the emotions naturally become the wings. But when my emotion is that just an idea in my mind, it remains something abstract and it doesn't connect to the action. They live in my mind. They live in the recesses, recesses of my heart. They're real, but they're not yet embodied. And because of that, they haven't descended into a felt emotional experience. They don't connect with the mitzvah, with the physical mitzvah in the same way that a real a real and revealed emotion does. So here's where the author of it brings a famous statement from Khazal Mashava taiva hakodesh baraku mitzarfullah meisa. I actually remember really loving this idea when I I learned it a few years ago. This idea that God joins a good thought to action mashava taiva, a good thought hakodesh baraku mitzvah maisa. God joins it to that action. Now usually, typically, what do we understand this to me, it me we thought this meant I wanted to do a mitzvah, but I couldn't. And so God gave me credit as though I've done that right, my thought, God connects to my action, But the author of it reads the words much more literally. He says, why does the Talmud say that God joins the good thought to that action? What actually, what exactly needs to be joined? And this is the answer, the thought, the idea of our mind, the cognitive love and awe has to be joined with the action. It's the person who doesn't yet feel a burning love for God in his heart, but he has thought deeply enough to know that this is what's true. This is what my soul wants. This is how I want to live, and this is how I actually live. And then then I go about and I performances and I learned her and I make these choices. But there's still the gap. The understanding is here in my mind. The action is in my body, and the emotion that would normally bridge those two isn't revealed. So this is what God does. God bridges this gap. God takes the Mashiva Taiba. God takes the good thought, the deep understanding, the concealed love and awe, and he joins it to the action. So the author was telling us that God is not dismissing this kind of work, even if our heart isn't fully awake. If you, you know it's not, you know you don't feel it. So your midst was missing its wings. No, God recognizes we did our part, We contemplated. We came to this real understanding. We chose to show up the way we're showing up. Even if our own inner structure can't fully connect the thought to the deed. God is the one that comes and does that. He takes what's concealed. He attaches it to what we've actually done. Hold on a second. I just want to skip around here a bit in, in other words, I mean just simply to summarize this idea that the Bananese mitzvah isn't spiritually stranded because he couldn't manufacture a feeling. God takes our deepest truth that we were able to achieve in our mind, and he joins it to the action. And that is what allows the mitzvah to rise. And I think this, this really brings us back to the central point of this entire chapter. It's something that I feel we can all relate to. The outer up is not asking us to fake our feelings. And he's not asking us to call an intellectual understanding an emotion because it isn't one. He's actually asking us to just be extremely honest. If I feel love, then I feel love. If I don't, then I don't. But if I have contemplated deeply enough to know that this is true and that truth now changes what I do, and this is super, super powerful. Because there is a huge difference between simply knowing an idea and allowing that idea become to become the reason why I live differently. The moment my understanding guides my choices, it is already an integrated part of me. Maybe my heart hasn't yet caught up. Maybe I don't have that visceral love and that visceral yearning and that all that we described in the beginning. But I'm no longer merrily thinking about God. I'm literally living from what I know about God. And then God takes care of the rest. God joins the mind to the deed. God joins A concealed love to the mitzvah. He gives the wings to all of our efforts and allows it to fly. Living Your Truth: How the Heart Catches Up to Your Knowing Now I'm just actually I want to just make note of the Haggah. You know, the little footnote that the ultra frequently brings in from like the Zohar, something interesting that he, he brings near the end of the chapter. He says, you know, this is the repeated terms that we kept using for these cognitive emotional processes and versus the heartfelt emotions. The words he used were thunas maifre. Thunas maifre are just translated to the discernment of the mind. My mind has discerned that this is what I value. And Tal luminous Levi, these are the hidden places of my heart. So even though it's not a concealed expressed feeling, it's it's still there in the hidden recesses of my heart. Now, just a little interesting footnote here. Tuuna, you heard the word Tuuna tuvvv tuvv vuv nun. He it has the word bean and boss, son and daughter tuna. So the Hebrew word for tuna, discernment has a word beninbas, which is the, the emotions in other places. We we refer to the, the children, right? We refer to the children as the emotions. Bina's the mother who then gives birth to birth to these emotions. So tuna, the discernment of our mind typically gives birth to the emotions. Now the Zara's just noting that sometimes this is the typical order, right? You have discernment, you have a knowing, an idea, it arouses emotions. But sometimes it happens that the discernment bypasses the energy of emotion and it descends directly into the energy of action, as we've been elaborating on here. And the reason that this happens is our makes note is that our understanding, why does this happen, that our understanding typically it generates A palpable emotion. And the reason that it happens so that sometimes it bypasses is because that also happens in the spiritual realms as well. Sometimes in the spiritual realms, the Hama Bina Das bypasses the emotional world of the Eran Pin, which is the, the, the, all this Sheva Midas and it skips directly to the world of Malchus known as Nukva. And I just found this fascinating again, I know I, I point out, I pull out these little things here because when these are ideas in the zone, you know, in Kabbalah that we learn and suddenly I, I'm seeing this, this is how it relates literally inside of our body. This is a Kabbalistic concept that the sometimes Hama bin Andas bypasses our Ampin and skips the Nuqba. This is what's happening inside of us. Our understanding of God bypasses our deep felt sense of emotion and moves straight into the world of action because our life is a microcosm of this bigger picture. Now I I want to just summarize everything we just learned here with give me a second skipping around in my notes. Oh, I want to tie it all up with a conversation that I had been having with a group of friends recently. We were talking a lot about this idea of trust. And you can, you can attribute this to any, any of the emotions. I'm just picking the emotional felt sense of trust. Trust, just like Ava and Yura, just like love and awe, it's ultimately a feeling. You either experience a sense of trust or you don't. Just as we've been saying throughout this chapter, when you can, you can't simply decide to feel trust any more than you can simply decide to feel love. And, and we already know this about the beanie. The beanie doesn't necessarily have access to changing the feelings in our heart. We can master control over our thoughts, we can master control over our behavior, but not necessarily could we change our heart impulse. We can't simply command ourselves to suddenly trust. Even if I could command myself to think differently, speak differently, do differently. So even though we can't feel that felt sense of trust, we absolutely can ask ourselves, if I truly trusted God right now, how would I respond? If I was in a Strait of trust within this relationship, whether it's a relationship with your spouse, with a friend, with, with an engagement that you're having with your child. If I was in a state of trust, how would I respond? Would I speak differently? Would I make a different decision? Would I stop obsessing over every possible outcome? Would I loosen my grip a little? Now, none of that necessarily means that that feeling of trust arrived. The fear might still be be there, the anxiety might still be there, the doubts might still be speaking up. But the Benini says I'm not going to let those feelings determine my behaviour. I'm not going to allow them to form the narrative that I have around this. Rather, I'm going to let what I know to be true again back into the the tunas maikai to know what's true, to determine my behavior. Even if I can't experience that felt sense, if it's bypassing my emotional experience, moving straight into the world of action. And I think this is exactly what the altar was describing. The hidden love and awe may have not become fully revealed emotions, but they have become real enough for to shape our life. They're real enough to determine what I'm going to say. They're real enough to determine what I'm going to do, and they're real enough to determine what direction I'm going to choose. And and then I think this could comes the most comforting promise in this chapter that the author of it says that when a person has done that, when they've contemplated deeply enough to know it's true and they've allowed that truth to guide their actions. Mashava, Taiba, Hakadeshwarakum, and Sarfilom, I said God joins those thoughts to the deed. In other word, God says you've done your part. You've acted from the deepest truth that you have present to you right now, the deepest truth that you can access. Now I'm going to take that concealed love, that hidden trust, that souls yearning, and I'm going to attach it to your action. I think there's something very hopeful in that because over time, as we continue to live from those truths, we continue to align every action and every narrative. Instead, from our automatic fear, we're going to align it with our deep truth. And that's those pathways are going to become stronger. Those behaviors will become more natural, and the heart begins to catch up. The truth that we've been truly choosing is gradually going to become the truth that we begin to experience. This is exactly what we've been talking about throughout our chapters in the time that the author of it isn't asking the being any to fake his feelings. He's asking him live faithfully according to the deepest truth that you know. And little by little, little by little, the heart is going to catch up. Not Faking It: Living Authentically from Your Soul's Knowing And, and with that, I end my thoughts. My eye is so heavy that I'm can you see it? Can you see the it's drooping here? I made a deal. I woke up this morning. I literally couldn't open my eye. And I was like, God, I want to give the class so I'm bargaining with you. And I posted I'm like class on, you know, and then and then I sat with a hot compress over it. So here I am with a half open eye. Any questions, ladies? You can again, just a reminder, you can put it in the text. Hi, mom, thanks for the thumbs up. Thank you, Thank you. Thanks, Debbie. Thank you. Any questions? If not, I could I could close the recording. Speaker 2 I obviously missed. Speaker 1 Go ahead, Messiah, I can hear you a little louder. Speaker 2 Can you hear me? I missed the whole beginning of the class, but so it's a little bit of fake it till you make it kind of, but you're not really ever going to make it. Speaker 1 So I wouldn't call it fake it to make it, I would say like the way I concluded it live aligned with the deepest truth. It's not a fake. It's a truth that I know. That's like all of us sitting here know this truth. That's why we're here. We want to grow, we want to feel. We're like deeply yearning to feel, to wake up feeling our godly soul's perspective versus our animal soul's perspective. So we know that's the truth. But even if we're not feeling it as a visceral emotion in our in our body, the author ABBA says it's OK Align with your deepest truth and God's going to connect it. God's going to bridge the gap. So is it a felt? Are you faking a felt emotion? The altar says, no, you don't have to fake it. The mere fact that this is a deep knowing in your mind is it is where your work begins. And, and I really do believe, I really do believe that this I'm not. I believe I'm speaking from a lived experience. The more we were moved down these pathways, the more we live aligned with conscious intention because a lot of us were born living aligned and we continue to live aligned. But I think a lot of that may have been even an animal soul choice of like this is what everyone's doing. This is what my parents said I have to do when I'm talking about today as adults and as grown-ups, living aligned is a very, there's a very different intention. I'm not doing this because everyone's doing it and I'm not doing it because I'm afraid of punishment. I'm doing it because my deeper knowing knows that this is what my soul longs for. Even if I can't feel that longing viscerally, I know it to be true. And in this grown up version of living aligned with our deepest truth, it starts forming a new pathway that our heart catches up to. And I will bring that the, the psychological element that I spoke about, like therapeutically, when you learn to feel emotions, whether it's difficult emotions, felt sense, you know, every single one of my, my therapy sessions begins by saying, where are you feeling that in your body? Where are you feeling that in your body? Because we could talk about I'm so afraid and it and it, and we could talk about I'm, I'm so angry and I've talked about so much resentfulness. But to start practicing experiencing them as felt sensations. A that helps process them and to move through. But it's also, it's really great practice here to know what it feels like to feel loved, to know that you love somebody versus actually feeling that expansive sensation in your heart. It's like it's a gorgeous different experience. And similarly with our relationship with God, like we can be, we're training ourselves to feel so that we can feel in relation with God. Does that answer your question? Speaker 2 Enough. Speaker 1 Say again. Speaker 2 Enough. Enough. Speaker 1 Tell me, tell me I I'd love for you to pull on the nuance. Like like give me the part that doesn't, that's not resonating. I. Speaker 2 Think the recording has to go off for that. Speaker 1 OK, OK. Anybody any other questions before we before we close the recording? OK.