The Importance Of Faith In Our Everyday Lives | Rabbi Mordecai Finley

Part of God's love and grace is God's judgment because I'll be judged fairly and I'll be given a chance to admit, repent, do what I need to do. What if I have all this stuff that I did and God says, you don't have to do any work, I just forgive you? I think I would feel. Wait, I need to fix some stuff. I don't need forgiveness. I need you to guide me on how to fix the things that I did. So my image of God is God's love and grace and judgment. For me, they're all, they're all part of God.

You've done so much work in what appears to be bridging the gap between faith and then also self understanding or self awareness or self elevation. How did you find yourself into this field of work?

Well, let's talk about faith just for a moment. I believe you mean religious faith.

Yes.

And when I was a younger person, my family belonged to a synagogue. I went to synagogue. I participated. But my path to the inner life actually began with a high school teacher who was something of a spiritual person, but not religious. And he brought me into a spiritual path that focused on consciousness awareness, self examination and so forth. And I would say that my spiritual path that I began in high school and my religious path as a synagogue going young person really weren't. Weren't very much connected. And they only really became connected when I learned more about religion as opposed to what was simply going on in my synagogue and began to understand the soul dimensions, the spiritual dimensions, dimensions of consciousness and so forth.

Yeah, no, that was one of the things I actually wanted to mention to you. So I've been on this, this awakening journey of my own. So I'm a person of faith mainly in the Christianity side of things. I've got a lot of friends who are friends of mine who are Hasidic rabbis who I love deeply, and we have great conversations. But I've also been on this journey recently of understanding.

In terms of. I've heard of vibration, I've heard of quantum. I've heard of all these different terms. And when I follow some of your work, I kind of see a lot of an overlap between understanding a religious faith, understanding a level of self awareness, as well as understanding a level of self elevation as a whole. Talk to me a little about how that journey kind of manifests itself. Because one of the things I haven't seen a lot in the Christian faith is a big conversation around elevating oneself. It's more about kind of getting Rid of sin more than anything else, but not necessarily elevating oneself. And my Hasidic friends, obviously they use not just the Torah, but the Kabbalah and everything to kind of like orchestrate their worldview. I'm just, I'm curious to know kind of how we, how we, how we kind of bridge the gap between all that. Between all of it.

Yeah, so we have to have a little bit of a map. So I'm going to share with you as briefly as I can, a use I consider to be a useful map of the inner life. Okay, so we'll start with the level at which you and I are speaking. Now we could call this the ego mind, the conscious self. Typically, if there are no disruptions, we're aware of our surroundings, we're attuned, we're accountable, we're adaptive. That's our default state. Okay, now what I call underneath that are ego states, some negative and some positive. So let's you and I ask ourselves what additional ego states are engaged? Well, number one, focus and listening. I'm more focused and tuned in right now than I might be be if I were just passing the time with somebody. Another person might be very nervous, they might be anxious. Now these are involuntary. And one aspect of growth as a human being is to be aware when you have negative ego states, such as anxiety, anger, resentment, confusion, et cetera, that you're consciously able to reduce negative ego states and substitute positive ego states. That's the first level human transformation. It doesn't matter what faith you're in, if you're Jewish, Christian, Muslim, whatever, if you're walking around feeling anxious, depressed, guilty, etc. You want to reduce that as much as possible. So the question is the technology to do that. The technology to manage what I'm going to now call negative ego states is what I call the higher self. Now again, the higher self does not have any religious dimension. So here's what I mean by the higher self. And you'll see this in every tradition, including non religious traditions that take it seriously. So let's start back to. I'm in my, you know, my a state, aware, attuned, adaptive, accountable. And suddenly I feel something wrong. I'm upset, I'm confused, I'm angry, something's not right, so I have to see what it is. So the observer mind is looking down and being able to name it.

Okay?

I don't judge it, I don't try to change it. I just want to be aware of it and disidentify from it. So instead of Saying I am angry, I am depressed, I am despairing. I can say, I see anger, I see depression, I see despair. Now, the objective mind is when I ask myself the question, are my thoughts and feelings in accord with reality? Now, some people doubt that. I dismiss that doubt completely because anybody who says they doubt that, they don't live like that. Everybody knows there's a distinction between I'm afraid and there's something to be afraid of. I'm angry and it's justifiable anger. So we're going to call that. We're moving out into the objective mind. The rational mind is extremely important because it's in the rational mind that we put facts and theories together and we all do this unconsciously. We only need to do it consciously. When we're in a tough spot, either with ourselves or with other people, we have to stop for a moment and say, wait a minute, what are the facts and what's my theory why this is happening? We'll call that the basis of rationality. The next level up is close to the top that we're going to go to, which is the truth mind. What's the real thing going on here? Why is this affecting me like that? So notice when I want to look at what's happening in my, you know, in my field of consciousness, unconscious eco self, I go through observer mind, objective mind, rational mind, truth mind. Now beyond that, there are the more high, higher spiritual states of consciousness. Love, non justice, truth, beauty, the holy God, et cetera. But that's at the further reaches of human consciousness. Okay, so we have. My map right now has the field of consciousness, unconscious ego states, good and bad, these four levels of the higher self, the transcendent levels of the higher self, one more, which is the soul. Okay, now by the soul, I'm not putting any religious dimension in yet. I mean here, along with James Hillman in the Jungian school, which is the place where meaning happens. Our unconscious ego journey. If a person believes in the divine, it's where we encounter the divine.

Okay?

We have, I think, some of our deepest spiritual experiences of love, beauty, grace, goodness. And I can list a dozen more what I'll call events of the soul. So therefore, to talk about faith, is it a kind of an ego mind thinking like, tell me the dogma, what I got to believe, and I'll re. I'll repeat it right back to you. I don't think either you and I would call it faith, even though I might sound good to a Christian or a Jew to a Muslim. Look, you know, there Is no God but Allah all. Is this prophet. All good. But the question is, what's happening in my soul?

Yeah.

So when I talk about faith in the deeper scent, it means something's happening in my soul.

And I am articulating it in, you might say, ego consciousness. There has to be a connection, okay, between what I'll call the meaning in the soul and the words that I use.

Okay, Let me ask you this. If so, I've heard some people say the soul ends up being the place in which consciousness is at and the will ends. Then the will ends up being what they would define as ego. How do you see those as different?

Yeah, you know, we're on a good. We're on a really good question here. Yeah. This is where these terms can be used by anybody in any way. And therefore, we have to say in the beginning what they connote. Because etymologically, really, there's a range here. So for me, the soul. We're not typically conscious of what's happening in the soul. It runs dark and deep. You can get there, but it takes some spiritual work to understand the concerns of the soul, the journey of the soul.

The modes of the soul, et cetera. It's a deep thing. We can get there, but it's not that easy. Okay, now here's what happens. Let's say there are things going on in my soul and my conscious, unconscious, ego, self, et cetera. If they want to grab onto thought, speech, behavior, they have to attach onto the will. Now, that's pretty unconscious. So, for example, let's say I'm sitting here and I feel like I'm not connected. And it just occurs to me, pick up my Bible, pick up a spiritual book. Because my sense of spiritual disconnection translated right into my soul. I knew what I needed to do. I found my Bible, I opened it to Psalms. All good. But let's say I didn't know what to do with that. I might have to sit for a long time and I say, I need to talk to somebody to read something. So my will would have to kick in with a little more definition. The problem is the negative parts of the ego self can also attach to the will to be angry at somebody, to be cynical, et cetera. So whatever's going on in the unconscious ego self, it needs the will to erupt into thought, speech, and behavior now. So therefore, you can see the next thing coming. The higher self has to be in charge of the will. It cannot be an involuntary function of the unconscious. If we want to be conscious, human Beings. Part of what that means is our higher self is in charge of the will.

Okay, so when I say, when I hear people use terms like awaken the higher self or.

Becoming your higher self, or in certain and certain influences, I've heard people even, even relate to the person that I am now, and there's a higher self behind me or waiting to talk to me, like the. Waiting to engage with me, almost like. Almost like a duality of, of the soul.

How do I reconcile all of that? Because I understand the term higher self as being. There's a better version of me that can be discovered.

That's a great question. So remember, you're speaking to someone, has a very particular defined vocabulary with a very specific laid out path. So I have to translate into my system.

Sure.

I believe my soul is on a journey. And the inherent journey of the soul is, you might say, to be that better person, that more refined person.

But if the conscious mind does not help the soul, the soul can get stuck.

Okay?

And you don't do anything. You go on with your work, you're managing relationships, fulfilling your to do list, and you wake up one day and you say, wow, I don't have meaning in my life. I'm not going anywhere. I just feel kind of stuck. And then the next day you just go back to everything else. So I believe the soul is inherently on a journey to truth, to fulfillment, to actualization. But it needs the help of what I'll call the conscious self to activate it and to guide it. So I believe that my vision for myself, for, let's say, the authentic self that's in the soul.

My higher self, in the observer mind, objective mind, rational, my truth mind, and further on. That's what I, as it were, engage to work with the soul to move the soul toward its.

They call.

It's entelechy in Greek thought.

It's natural fulfillment. It's just not inevitable, meaning it does have a fulfillment. It's not inevitable. We can get stuck and we can live unfulfilled lives. And that's why we need, you might say, the full symbiotic relationship of the conscious mind.

Trying to.

Reduce the distractions of the unconscious ego self, activate the higher self in touch with the soul. And all of this has to work in a symbiotic way.

One of my Judaic friends.

He would classify himself as Hasidic. One of the things that he mentioned to me is that in the way in which he sees things or has read or studied that apparently there's almost like A game plan for our life, or when we start out pre incarnated, so to speak, that there's an element of us choosing to come here to essentially exercise and become whatever it is we're supposed to become, which would mean we'd have predefined purpose and meaning and depth even before we enter into the human body. Is, is that something that you found in your studies as well, or is that something. Because I feel like a lot of us are sleepwalking through life not knowing any better. More than anything else, they, you know, we're kind of just going through the motions. And it typically takes a triggering event, sometimes a catastrophic event to awaken people. I know for me, you know, I had to have a specific mentor at a specific moment just to get me to think even the slightest little bit different, to get me where I'm at. And then when I heard him explain kind of like the theology about almost like having a contract of sorts or soul contract of sorts, that there's added pressure. In other words, we almost sign up for the adversity that we're going to face, perfect whatever soul we're going to have inside of us or our consciousness or whatever. Is that something you've shared or seen or studied about?

Well, it's a very familiar concept. I don't believe in it, but I think I understand the power that it has. So now we have to remember.

When we say a phrase such as my soul chose this life. One of the problems of human consciousness is we talk about things easily. So, for example, the mic, the computer, but then we talk about the soul and choose and so forth. Those are not things, those are spiritual concepts. And therefore, when we study a poetic, take it as real, but rather as suggestive of a truth that cannot be fully articulated into language. Okay, now, so I don't believe there's a hallway of souls. And then different lives get presented and a person raised their hand and says, I'll take that one. So that does not seem to me to be real.

However, there is a sense that when I'm in my life, this is the life I belong in. By the way, even the notion that I don't belong in this life is a spiritually conscious thought. And I've had many people after lots of this when they say, rabbi, I don't think I belong in this life. I think I was born with the wrong parents, the wrong family, the wrong setup. And I say, okay, well, let's do something about it. So you might say that their life journey has taken them where they have to take a turn. So I don't really believe in predestination. You know, if I have any belief in it, it's light, it's not dogmatic. There are things that have happened that I don't that seem to be from another place. But I don't try to bring dogmatic faith to any of that. Sure, it's suggestive, metaphoric, it's interesting. I'm very focused on the thing that you and I are talking about, which is the journey of my soul and how my so called religious faith or any religious faith can help in the journey of my soul. The journey of my soul is more important than my religion. My religion is in service to my soul.

Well, I guess on that a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about the Bible itself, the Torah of the Bible.

In that.

It speaks a lot about human condition and the development of human condition. So what have you seen the correspondence between the Bible and the human condition that has been so awakening. Obviously you've dedicated the rest of your life to this deeper search, this deeper meaning, this deeper thought, life, consciousness, if you will, like that. You don't get there overnight.

Yes, well, I would say now remember I'm reading the Bible. Now, not every part of the Bible equally because the Bible is a very uneven document. But let's say the parts, especially some of the deepest narratives, passages from prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the scrolls, et cetera. You know, I've taught and studied the New Testament. So certain aspects of the New Testament, so I would call, they have a soul dimension. So they're speaking to my soul and they're articulating a truth. Perhaps the most important, let's say, think of the most important truth. Genesis chapter one articulates a world that's symmetrical.

Harmonious and everything fits. It's as if we have a memory.

That there's a perfection from which we come and that we're trying to recreate. You look at Genesis chapter two, everything begins to fall apart quickly because not only are we created, so in the Genesis chapter one, we're in the image and likeness of the divine. You get to Genesis chapter two and the Adam, remember his name is not Adam, he's called the Adam, the human being. Adam is connected to the word for Adama Earth. So we call him the earthling. So the earthling is just lying there inert and then a divine breath is breathed into him. So we already see a duality between the corporeal human being and the breath of God called the Neshama. Because the word lin shom means to breathe. So the divine breathes into the human being and animates the human being and then we move on to the Garden of Eden story and everything falls apart. So one thing, if you look at Genesis 1, the harmonious possible perfection, Genesis chapter 3 of completely different philosophic anthropology, which is something of a, of a corporeal versus spiritual dimension. You move through into Genesis chapter three, you begin to see not only human fallibility, but divine fallibility and a tragedy emerging from it. So chapters three, four, five and six, you find the driving home of tragedy, I would say, the apex of which is God looks at creation and says kol yetzer machavotlibo rak rakol ha yom. All the thoughts, the designs of his heart are all bad all day long. Okay, so Genesis chapter 5 is God's as it were, reflecting on God's creation and saying it's gone terribly. Now that's so interesting to us because on one hand we're created in God's image and likeness. Things begin to go awry in the Garden of Eden. That's a fascinating chapter. And then there's this divine reflection. It's all gone terribly. And so that idea that there is something in the human being, this is called yetzer. Yetser means design or shape, machshavotlibo, the thoughts of his heart, rak ra kolayam are all bad. That's the first great statement on the human condition. So what does that mean about you and I, about you and me is that whatever's going on, there's something in the unconscious ego, self that is non compliant, that has a negative shape. No matter what we do, no matter what we believe, no matter what we don't believe, there's something discordant in us that's going to take us in a different direction. That's the human condition. Now on the other hand, we have what's called the soul, some corrective capacity, mind, spirit, that can actually shift all of that. So that's the most profound statement in biblical anthropology for me. And then I can list you for you 20 more. But for me, that's my starting point.

Well, interestingly enough, you know, one of the things that one of my Hasidic friends mentioned is that essentially in one worldview there's, you know, when you look at Satan, for example, right? That translates to the, I guess the adversary or something.

The adversary, correct.

He was saying that from his perspective that the adversary, if you will, was actually doing the will of God. Just because the adversary Itself was actually forcing us to, you know, change, metamorphosize, if you will, by the. By the, you know, you know, by adversity.

It kind of made me. When you were just talking just now, it kind of made me think of the adversary almost as like the. The dark ego self of ourselves, whereas the. The soul, if you will, is. Is more the enlightened or the higher self waiting to be birthed or in the process of being birthed. And the difficulty we find in our mind and our spirit on a regular basis is probably that battle between the two.

Yeah, well, you know, there's no evidence in the Bible that that's what happened in the Garden of Eden story. So here's something that I find, is that people need to read the story as if, oh, it's all God's will. God did this on purpose. But that's not what the story says. So I like to read the Bible as it is. Okay, okay. So when God said in Genesis chapter two, the day you eat from it, you will die, that's not what happened. So people say, oh, what God meant was, on the day you eat from it, you'll become mortal. And I see in response, I think God knew how to speak. And I think in the, you know, God had a creative meaning. If God wanted to say, if you eat from it, you're going to become moral. That's not what God said.

Yeah.

Who apparently overheard the snake. Yeah. So he comes and he tells them what's really going on. So wait a minute. So God didn't tell the truth, but the snake did? Now, you can try to make that better with all kinds of theological gymnastics. I choose not to because I think the Bible at some level functions as a deep literature.

And the Garden of Eden story for me is something like the haunted house. Yeah, there's something going wrong here. We don't know what it is. When people want to read the Garden of Eden story and say, oh, you know, the snake was working for God. That's not what the story says. So it's talking about something else. And you nailed it. There's a darkness in the human inner life, and there's a darkness in the Bible. Many people don't want to see darkness in the Bible, but the Bible actually addresses human darkness. So I don't want to put a nice spin on the Garden of Eden story because I think the deeper you go, the more troubling story it is.

But the main thing here is Genesis, chapter 6, verses 5 and 6, where God reflects and says there's Something wrong here. And the you get from God is God is heartbroken. It's not something God created, it's not something God wanted. God is heartbroken by it. And in some ways, much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible is God trying to fix what has gone awry, what has been broken. And in many ways, God is not able to do it. So the whole question of divine omnipotence, the whole question of divine omniscience is put into question by the divine project to repair the that which has gone wrong that does not seem to be by divine intent. So I read the Bible, you know, I talk about facts and theories. I'm just going to look at the facts of the verses and then create my own theory. And I'm going to ignore theology because I want to read it with fresh eyes. So, like your Hasidic friends, my theology is influenced by the Bible, but my theology is much more directly connected to the Kabbalah and Hasidism. So Kabbalah and Hasidism is a faith system that's derived from the Bible, but is not the same as the Bible. So therefore, the Bible is the beginning of the conversation. It's an excellent resource for me of how the authors of the Bible tried to understand God. It's great literature, great psychology, profound symbolism, but for me, it feeds over into and creates the faith of Kabbalah and Hasidism. That's some reason why I, I differ with mainline Christians and mainline Orthodox Jews, because I have a faith system that is connected to the Bible, but it's not the same thing as the Bible.

Sure. Well, if the purpose of the. And now I'm just kind of spinning a little bit. If the purpose of life is to kind of figure out what the meaning and purpose of your life is like to that, to me, that's part of the journey. Right. Like, I started off, you know, I started off doing one thing and by, you know, 10 years later, I might be doing something slightly different. And 30 years later, later I'm going to be doing something totally different than I was doing, you know, 30 years ago. Like, it's an evolution of some, some aspects. If that tends to be the case, and you awaken yourself to the journey that you're in and you awaken yourself to learning more about yourself on a daily basis and leaning into prayer and meditation on a consistent basis, maybe getting into breath work, maybe getting into deeper meditations and spiritual practices that do seem to elevate the higher self over the ego self, at least, as appears to, at least when I. When I'm. When I'm practicing, it does. I feel. I feel more in tune versus more, Less disconnected. Then what is the. I guess, what is the truth of the meaning behind the life itself other than to experience the life that you're in?

That's a great question. So let's talk about what we call the authentic life of the soul.

Okay.

What is the meaning and purpose?

So from a kabbalistic perspective, and this is. It's a strange mythical idea. And when I say mythical, I mean let's not try to find where and when in history this happened. It's, it's, it's a. It's a mythical concept. There's this very strange kabbalistic idea that in the mythic origins.

Of the universe, the divine undergoes a breakage. You can look it up, it's on Wikipedia. But in this are created as containers. The divine light spills into these containers and the containers crack. They cannot contain the divine mind. And all this creates a world of shattered pieces of light. So it's all metaphoric, it's all symbolic. But here's the idea. The shattered light of God is what constitutes each human being.

Okay?

So you have your configuration of the shattered light of God, I have my configuration.

Okay.

We share enough humanity that if you explain yourself, I'll understand it, although we're not the same. And if you and I, let's say, want to really, really understand each other, we would talk about our experience of our breakage.

Yeah.

So from a kabbalistic perspective, the purpose in life is to repair the breakage.

Okay?

Now, in the Kabbalah, the breakage has these seven archetypal forms. I'll rattle them off very briefly. Loving kindness.

Justice and fairness.

Okay?

Truth, beauty.

Prophecy, meaning the truth exerted into history. Something like.

Elegant symmetry, especially in place in the place of worship, the foundations of our personality and the brokenness. So there are many ways to articulate it. And the point now is not that this is definitive, not that it's exhaustive, but people have done work on what the nature of human brokenness is. So this expands into psychology. And so whatever psychological system I'm reading, whatever spiritual system I'm reading, one of my questions is how are they trying to understand the breakage?

Okay?

So we all have our own configuration. So that for me is our purpose in life. So therefore, when someone says God, I'm really confused, I'm really depressed, I'm really angry. I don't know where I am, what's wrong with me. I say, say everything, but the Last one.

Because what you described to me is your breakage.

Okay?

You haven't discovered what's wrong with you. You've discovered your life's work. Now let's take all those things that might be true and understand them in terms of your breakage. So, you know, as you know, during our little bit of correspondence for today, I mean, what I understood was, what is this life toward authenticity and is it somehow predetermined? Well, I believe we are somewhat born with the configuration of our brokenness.

A person can ignore it, can sidestep it, but at their spiritual peril. So I've had this incredible good fortune in my life that I've had teachers came at the right time, books came at the right time, and so Kabbalah and Hasidism has been essential. So I look at your journey and asking questions like, well, what is faith and what is authenticity and what is soul? And it's your way of asking questions that is going to help you with your breakage. So the serious questions that we ask are, you know, our soul is trying to work on this breakage, and the world up here is trying to ask the right questions. So what about how easily I get distracted? What about the fact that I make up questions that don't mean anything so I won't have to actually face the truth of the moment that we're in right now? Okay. So you can typically tell when people are just making stuff up to not be authentic to the person who says, okay, we got a real thing happening right now. There's a real conversation. There's something at stake. Let's go as deep as we can. So I'm sure I could just tell that you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, there's different kind of conversations for me. I don't care what religion you're in. I don't care if you believe in God. Don't believe in God, like, whatever. But are we gonna. Are we gonna work on repairing the breakage or not? Because I know that's. That's the purpose of my life.

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I know that's core to my belief system is I have some pretty deeply rooted anchors that are really important to me, and I would call them more value systems. Right. There's things that I value above another value or something like that. At the same time, I also don't feel like I have the right necessarily to judge someone else based on whatever value system they currently have and when we can typically have a conversation about it and Help me better understand what benefits may lie in that conversation and vice versa. And I feel like that that opens the door for more secure, more authentic, more open, more honest conversations. And I feel like that's a reason. One of the reasons why you and myself are able to have better conversations with a lot of folks is because there is no prejudgment. There's simply a hunger to understand.

Yes, I would say a little bit differently. And by the way, you're right on it. That our value system, I believe, is rooted in the soul. Now remember, in the ongoing conversation between the higher self and the soul, our value system might get rearranged, the hierarchy might get rearranged, the precision, articulation might get rearranged, but it's essentially something out of the soul. Now I believe my values refer to something real.

Yeah.

Okay. So therefore, when I say there really are better and worse answers to moral questions.

I'm not a relativist. And someone says, no, all morality is just made up by people. Doesn't refer to anything real. I'm judging that to be wrong. Now, I'll still respect the person and I'll say, well, I want to hear you out. You can ask me any question you want. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. Yeah, and I have some good questions for a moral relativist. Someone who's well thought out. Probably answer them, they have questions for me because they typically have caricatures of what it means to be a person of faith. I like to disabuse them of those caricatures and we can come out mutually edified. Right. But to tell you the truth.

I believe in the world of value so deeply.

And part of that is good moral judgment, good rational judgment. And as I've worked something out, I believe it to be true, but open for discussion. So hopefully when I meet someone who disagrees with me, they don't experience me as a judgmental person. I hope they experience me as, wow, this guy's really thought about this. He's really come to some conclusions. And I want to be seen as he's really open minded and he'll take questions, he'll ask questions. And the main thing is, did our conversation help us in our spiritual growth? So I'm really not interested in persuading anybody, nor do I like someone to, you know, try to hector me into agreeing with them. Yeah, I'd much prefer that we walk around, walk away and say, wow, that was. That took us to a deep place. So I do inherently have some judgment. I Hope it doesn't float over into how, you know, how I talk to people.

Yeah, No, I would say that that's. That's really closely aligned with what you feel in the moment. Like, I may feel certain things, but I may not say certain things because I know if I say certain things, the conversation is over.

Yeah.

Right. And that doesn't help either one of us gain understanding or wisdom about the situation. I want to go back a little bit to the higher self a little bit. So if. If there's a higher self that's available to us that we can search out and learn about and become over time, how does that equate into the. A lifetime's worth of.

Experience or meaning, so to speak. Right. So it's kind of like that to me. It's the.

It's. It's the trying to find the legacy that outlives you. Answer is the best way to say it. Like, you know, there's. There's. There's all these different events, there's all these different understandings, there's all these different thoughts, all these different lessons you learn all the way up until you. The. This time ends, and then, God willing, the. The next time or the next level of life begins.

So I would language it a little bit differently because, remember, my emphasis is on depth and soul.

And that's where the search toward authenticity and fulfillment takes place. And I'm using the higher self in a very, very particular way as being in the service of that. So when people say the higher self, I would say the actualized self, the authentic self.

Because, see, when I think of the soul, I think of it as deep running deep waters down in an underground channel in a cavern somewhere.

Yeah.

So I don't like to talk about the lower self because we talk about higher self and lower self.

It leads to discussion that actually for me, and then a cul de sac.

Yeah.

So what I've learned is when people say my higher self, I say, I'll give you an example. People say, well, the person was coming from their ego.

I say, well, there are some people who seek approval, some people who are kind as a strategy. They don't seem like they're coming from ego, but they're not authentic people. So that's why when people say higher self, lower self coming from the ego, I have to be a lot more precise than that. But let's say you and I have a fundamental sense of understanding here.

In.

The realm of my soul. And again, if I'm in conversation with my soul, and so I have to, for me, it's more of a path of words. I study scripture, I study literature, I read ideas. And I, you know, I don't really meditate into the alpha state of nothingness. I really try to.

Merge down into the soul journey.

And see where that's at and in a sense, see what's next. And what can I do? What do I need to know? What do I need to forget? What skills do I need to have to. To move that, move that forward? So for me, the higher self. Right. Part of what my higher self does, it helps me get rid of the distractions of the unconscious ego, self again. Anger, resentment, despair, whatever observer mind, objective mind, rational mind, truth mind, a little bit above that I'm going to call.

Love.

Which is a skill, not just a feeling. Sure, I'll say. The apprehension of beauty. I'm one of those that believe that we have to create beauty in our lives. We have to look at beautiful poems and look at beautiful pictures and look for beautiful vistas. It's a nourishment for the soul. I believe in the experience of the holy. So there are what I call higher level experiences that I have to cultivate. Because you can go all day and forget to read a beautiful poem. Yeah, you can go all day and forget to experience beauty. You can go all day and forget to stop. You know that and look at that photograph or painting in your home that's actually beautiful and you chose it because it's beautiful and you just can't walk by it every day. So, you know, I look at my list, I have to stop and say, okay, let me meditate on love.

Yeah.

Whom I love, who loves me, the ideas that I love. So love, justice, truth, beauty. We can forget about those things. And I think if we forget about those things, we forget who we are.

Yeah.

So for me, the higher self is a, is a way, is a way to manage consciousness so that all of this can be of service to the soul.

Yeah.

I know it's a.

I've, I've been asked so many questions on this that I had to devise a system that could feel every question. So it's a little bit of, it's a little.

I just this, this, this type of thought, it, I like this type of conversation. Oh, good. Yeah, it's just I, I like, I'm always searching for the deeper sometime to my own detriment, but I always like knowing the deeper. And you know, I was just thinking one of the thoughts that was crossing my mind is what role the act thought or Emotion of forgiveness plays in becoming one's more authentic or higher self versus saying stagnant and kind of sleepwalking through life.

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, so let's try to go into the soul experience of it. I believe that.

From my understanding at the. Again, these are all metaphors, but somewhere in the foundation of the soul, there's a fountain of life, a fountain of light, A fountain of life. And as a religious person, I believe it has something to do with God's presence.

Yep.

And as it flows in.

The deepest experiences that come out of that light, that life are love.

Grace, care, compassion, etc. I think. I think those are the grounds of human experience and therefore key to the meaning of our lives now. And then I can list many other terms that get layered upon that. One of them is morality, which, again, I think is part of a value system. Part of that is justice.

The reality of our own integrity of our lives. And then you have the true, real experience that another person has wounded us. That's real. And I don't think we should deny that part of our humanity and say it's all an illusion and no, it's real. I'm a walking image of God.

Yeah.

Another person transgressed that image, and I'm. And it registered in my soul, and I'm really hurt. It really destabilized me, and I can feel it and, you know, like my soul's taking a punch to the soul, to the solar plexus of the soul. It's happened for sure. Okay, now what do I do? Well, I got to metabolize that. I got to be resilient. I got to be strong. And then I realized.

Another person is in debt to me. They have a moral debt, and they need to apologize.

Okay.

I want to reconcile with them. So the beginning of forgiveness is, first of all, observer mind, objective mind, rational mind, truth mind. What exactly happened here? Am I making this up? Am I overreacting? I got to do a lot of clearing out before I say I think I was wronged. I think I was wrong. Then the next thing I have to, according to Jewish tradition, is I got to tell them about it. That's why we have in the book of Leviticus, it says, you shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear their sin. Meaning if I don't present to them what I think happened with all humility and give them the chance to get right with me and get right with God, then I'm bearing their sin. Okay, So I got to be super skillful so you know, this is a very big part of my teaching. I say to people, they say, well, this person owes me an apology. I said, how do you know? Have you me told, talked about it with them? Have you gone through the observer mind, objective mind, rational mind, truth mind, like here's what happened. No, that's not what happened. That doesn't happen at all that conversation ever happened. This is the conversation that happened. You go, wow, is it possible that people that well intentioned, smart people have entirely different recollections of the same talk?

Oh, yes, absolutely right.

What do we do about that? So just on my way to like to making someone accountable, I might walk away and say, well, I made that up. Yeah, all right, so I apologize. Please forgive me. So this is not simple, but let's say there is something called being wounded.

Working it through as much as I can as possible, bringing it someone, I say, to make someone accountable. The biblical word rebuke is a little bit harsh for some people. Hopefully they'll listen to me. They'll listen enough and say, wow, there's enough truth to that that you're right, I was off and I did something unnecessarily wounding to you. And, and I really apologize.

From the perspective of an authentic life, I have no choice but to forgive them. Because remember, we're after love, which has to do with reconciliation, which has to do with being seen by others. So for me, this process of feeling wounded, presenting the thing to someone else, to be accountable in a highly rational and truth oriented way with the goal toward reconciliation, for the other person to be able to process this and for us to be able to have the respectful dialogue that will produce truth, where one of us is going to say, we both might say, hey, we got to let this go. This is way too confusing. No one's in moral debt here. Or one person says, I have a moral debt to you and I want to pay it by asking for your forgiveness. So the apology is the fulfilling of a moral debt. The person says, I forgive you. So what you're getting from me is these are incredibly complex things. They can be, they don't have to be. You know, some things are simple, but they emerge from the concerns of the soul. One of the core concerns of the soul is love and therefore reconciliation. Reconciliation can be complex, can take a lot of hard work. You know, this is Leviticus 19. Don't bear grudges. Rebuke your neighbor, lest you bear your neighbor's sin.

And don't hate your neighbor in your heart, but rather Love your neighbor as yourself. Just those few verses right there.

Yeah.

That's a lifetime of soul work.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I noticed many of the roadblocks that I have faced throughout the course of my life.

Most of them have come from not letting go of a previous transgression in some way, shape or form. You know, difficult upbringing with my parents. Transgressions on both fronts in different ways. Most of the transgressions were unintentional, meaning there wasn't something they intentionally went into saying, hey, I'm going to hurt my son or hurt my other son or whatever. It was more like they were dealing with their life. They were trying to figure their life out and made a bunch of mistakes and other people got hurt along the way. And a friend of mine, number of years ago told me, he said, have you ever thought about picturing your mother, for example, in this way? I'm like, what do you mean? He said, well, close your eyes. He had me close my eyes, and he had me image. He said, okay, I want you to picture your mom. And he said, have you ever seen a picture of your mom at 7 or 8 years old? I said, yeah, a few. Few times. Because I want you to picture that. That little girl, and I want you to picture. She's happy. She's. She's running through life. She's doing things. And she trips and falls and skins her knee, right. She goes, now are you going to scold her because she. Because she tripped and fell and skinned her knee and, you know, she not only hurt herself, but now she's going to be hurting emotionally someone else? Or are you going to give her grace and mercy and look at her in a different, different light? I said, well, no, I'm going to. You know, in fact, I kind of envisioned myself picking her up almost like a father would a child, if you will. And then it dawned on me that many of the things that I've been carrying with me for such a number of years with my father, my mother and others were actually holding me back. They weren't really holding them back per se, at least not to the same degree. Both of my parents wanted reconciliation as they. As I became an adult and as they became, honestly adults in their own right. Right. It opened up something unique and different, which is, I think, one of the reasons why forgiveness is easier for some than it is for others, I guess, is the best way to say it. But it's the process of forgiveness.

Yeah, well, that's very beautiful. There's a lot of compassion, a lot of wisdom there. But let's break it down. So I don't think any parent brings a child into the world with the intention to hurt them. So I think it is mistakes or they, they lose track of themselves. Okay, so we're, you know, we're taught to respect our parents. I don't think if, if we can't resolve things with our parents, we're going to be stunted the rest of our lives. So that's serious work. So contextualizing, seeing them as children, seeing them as young parents, not knowing what they're doing, all that is very wonderful empathetic contextualizing. But I would let, I would only hold one thing. So I would say let's reduce it so much that it has no impact on your life. But who knows? Maybe in this life or the next they will ask for forgiveness. I don't want to say, well, I already gave it to you, you know, so I'm not hard hearted toward people who have hurt me. But I want to say I let go, but I didn't forgive. And here's another reason why I say I didn't forgive. One time at our high holiday services, I gave powerful sermons about. This person walks up and says, rabbi Finley, I want you to know I forgave you. I said, for what? They said, no, you don't need to know. We don't have to talk. I just want to know. I forgave you. I said, I want my day in court. Yeah, you don't get to just forgive me.

Right.

So the person thought, well, I forgave you, so it's all good. I said, I would prefer my day in court because if I'm guilty, I want to do the time. So that's why again, you and I are so fundamentally in disagreement. There's a little tin of party that says, I'll let go.

But I want to forgive you because that means I'm judging you and I might have it all wrong.

Yeah. Yeah.

So there's a little part of me that still thinks in some, you know, some part of the next life, we all get to work everything through with.

Everybody and bro hugs for everybody.

Yeah. What's that again?

I said, and bro hugs for everybody. Yeah, bro hugs.

Exactly right. Yeah, exactly, man. Bro hug to you.

That's right. Yeah.

I have the sense that, you know, what's the next life? You know, we enter a room with God and God rolls up God's sleeves and God has the book of life and everything he ever did, set our thoughts in the book and, you know, you can cop to it. We can talk about through it. You can lie, but, you know, God says, I got forever. So how long do you have? Right. You want to get on the next place. And so there's the book. And God says, okay, let's go back to this date. I'll go. Yeah, that's pretty much what happened, guys. You got an explanation for it? Not enough.

I was in my. Go ahead. Yeah.

And like God said, okay, next page. And so I have this sense of, you know, my meeting with God in the next life is going to end all cleaned up because God's a loving and gracious God, but a God of judgments. God's not going to say, look, I'm not going to let you go with this stuff because you got some work to do here. But I'm going to give you the opportunity to go by page by. This is my myth. We're going to go through page by page of your life. And when you end this meeting, you're going to be right with me, I'm going to be right with you, and you're ready to go on to the next place. So I have this idea that part of God's love and grace is God's judgment.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because I'll be judged fairly and I'll be given a chance to admit, repent, do what I need to do. What if I have all this stuff that I did and God says, you don't have to do any work, I just forgive you? I think I would feel. Wait, I need to fix some stuff. I don't need forgiveness. I need you to guide me on how to fix the things I do.

Yeah.

So my image of God is God's love and grace and judgment for me, they're all part of God.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, I've enjoyed our time together. Where can everybody find out more about you?

Well, my website is Rabbi Finley dot com.

I'll have our conversation up there as soon as you send it to me. I have a few other conversations. I have some outlines that are being reformed. I have classes that are going to be.

Start up again on a variety of things. So the best thing is Rabbi Finley.com is. Is the safest. Awesome. I really appreciate you reaching out to me. I appreciate the conversation. I love talking to you. I think we. We talked about some serious and good things. You have some great questions for me.

Totally agree. I can't wait to talk to you again.

Yeah, let's do it. All right. Take care.

Have a good one. See you. Now, if you like this content that you just got through watching. I know you're going to love this one right here, so check it out. You can call it your spiritual nature, your inner wisdom, your intuition, whatever you want.

We have this. This internal part of us that is incredibly wise. And it's all about survival. It's all about love. It's all about getting you to working.

The best for you.