Can we be broken hearted and happy at the same time?

Hello everyone. So glad to be here, and to have this opportunity to continue learning together. We are learning today a small paragraph from the Tanya, and if you guys remember yesterday, we spoke about the— how lucky we are that we have this opportunity to really, you know, redeem our Godly soul and bring the Creator of the universe to reside within us. And that fact alone should provide us with so much blessings and happiness and joy. And that joy obviously breaks barrier, breaks boundaries, and allow us to really connect to our true potential and accomplish way more and just live more, be more alive, which is the point of the whole thing. We want to just have better life, be happier, you know, accomplish more in life and just feel more alive and not let the animal soul take that away from us by making us believe in the world of illusion, the world of separation. And when we stop believing in the world of separation, when we are more focused on how amazing the Creator of the world is and and the oneness of creation is just unbelievable. And when we truly connect to that understanding and meditate on it every single day and perform good deeds like charity and helping people and learning, learning, which is a big thing here. Because when we learn spirituality, when we learn things that are connected to our Creator, literally our mind becomes one with the Creator. And that's the ultimate connection that we can have with our Creator. So we want to continue here and see exactly what else, what else we can understand here that, that could really provide us with the value that we're trying to, to get over here from this learning. So, so the Alter Rebbe is, is Continuing here, and he's saying something like this. He says that when we really think about how amazing and how lucky we are, and how much learning is connecting us, we are going— when we are really doing it, It says that the Creator literally expands our life, expands our reality. And what does that mean, expands our reality? It means that all of a sudden, we are going to find more time to work on ourselves. We're going to find more time to learn, to learn more things. And and decide to invest more time, you know, in just growing, growing, and connecting to the true potential of what we're here to do, to our true mission, and live a really amazing life that the Alter Rebbe is like literally giving us the map, showing us how to get this done. And he says that also, you know, when we are making a decision, making a decision in our mind to change, which means to learn more, to connect more, to do more, then that good thought, the Creator adds that good thought like, like it's already a good deed and it counts as a credit. It doesn't mean that we just need to think about doing good, we need to do the good. So for example, if I decide to allocate 1 year a day, I mean 1 hour a day, just to learn and to meditate and to contemplate and to think about the greatness of the Creator and the oneness of creation and how me, part of it, once I really fight, you know, the evil inclination. I can find my godly inclination. I can find my godly soul and bring that godly soul to be a dominant part of my life. And that just brings so much joy and happiness. And when I really think about it and meditate on it every single day and learn more, you know, learn more how to connect and how you know, to even reach higher in our connection. And the more we learn, the more connected we are. And sometimes it's just not only just the fact that, for example, we learn something new. Okay, now, now, okay, now we have that information after we finish learning. So now we can go and do something with that information. It's not only that, it's just the idea that from the minute we start learning, We literally engage in godliness. We literally expand our vessel and allowing the light of the Creator to come in and reside. Because remember from last time, we spoke about the whole reason of creation. God wanted to reside in this lower world so he can experience physicality with us. He just wanted to do good to us and he allows us to become that vessel to His infinite light. And when we learn, and when we study, and when we invest time to connect, then even a good thought will be considered like we already did, we already did it. And also, it says that the sages said that a good thought the Creator is adding it to a good deed. It's like we did something good. And He keeps on saying that everything we do, like we go to work, right? We negotiate, we're buying, we're selling. Even that, we should have, you know, Godliness and the oneness of creation in our mind all the time. And when we also Give charity. Because when you give charity from your hard work money, your hard-earned money, it's like you're giving it from the same attributes of the Creator, because the Creator is giving unconditionally. So when we give, we are connecting to this attribute, we become like the Creator. And this is what we need to do. We need to become like the Creator, we need to have the same attribute of the Creator. Think about how much the Creator loves us and gives us things some of us deserve, some of us don't deserve, but really most of us don't deserve everything that the Creator is giving us. He's not even asking, He's not even saying, 'Oh, I'm not going to give.' He doesn't change, He doesn't change. He's unconditional and He's unconditional always. He never stopped, thank God, He never stops giving and He never changes. So, so he stays the same, pure unconditional love towards us. We have to, we change, you know, sometimes we want to give more, sometimes we want to give less. We have to work on ourselves to become more givers and then also to develop those godly attributes that God has. He has mercy and he has many different attributes and, you know, the way we attribute, we interpret those attributes through a godly behavior of being there, out there for each other, providing help, providing charity for the poor, you know, even if it's making meals for, you know, friends who just had a baby and need help and stuff like that. Just completely, completely connecting and being a conduit to Godliness. And then he says that when we do that, we become a vessel, we become almost like the right hand arm of the Creator. And he says that we should give, he talks about giving Chumash, which means giving 20%. 20% of your— which is the maximum you can give. Says the minimum is usually 10%, which is tithing, the whole concept of tithing, which for that we're going to do another class because tithing is an amazing concept. It's about removing the negativity from what we have. But he's also— and he's not, again, not— he's talking about the maximum we can give is 20%. Um, And he says that we should also give part of our day, part of our day to learning, to use those, to use the fifth, which means 20% of the time that we have during the day. So we have 24 hours, so let's just say 10% is So yeah, so invest at least, you know, 20% of your time, of your working hours, of your— during the day, you know. So maybe an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, you know, but whatever you can do. But at least put in an hour. And again, he really talks about how we should, you know, provide we should help with charity. Because even when we learn and we, you know, volunteer, and there is many different beautiful organizations that we can volunteer to and help, you know, whether it is making meals for the poor. Here in LA, we have My Big Kitchen LA, which is a beautiful organization that you can volunteer. To help make meals for the poor, you know, just put in an hour. Just, I did it with my daughters, just such a beautiful experience that I really recommend, you know, it really fills you up. And he continues here to really be, be the right man, the right-hand man, the right hand of the the Creator. So when you do that, you literally, you know, this is what happiness and vibrancy is all about. Because when you're truly connected, you look vibrant. There is something about the energy of a human being that is connected to godliness, who is connected to his purpose and mission, that you can see that he's vibrating. His aura is just so shining. And he's full of life and happiness and joy by just helping others, you know, doing all those things. Because he says also that there is the concept of, you know, of giving a sacrifice. So sacrifice in Hebrew, it's the word korban, and the word getting close is karov, so which is the same root word. And to get closer, and we want to get as closer as possible, so to get closer to the Creator of the universe, we have to give something, we have to sacrifice something. And this is what he's talking about. When we give from our time, when we give from our money, this is our sacrifice, and this is what gets us closer. This is what brings us closer to korban, getting us closer, getting us karov. Which is, you know, a little bit of Hebrew, you know, gematria and a little bit the Kabbalah of what does that mean, what the sacrifice really means. And this is what it is. So he's saying even when you give tzedakah, what happened? You elevate all those sparks, you know, that, you know, that that everything that you did, you know, from eating and drinking and all, you know, and enjoying life. And then all those times that you were devoted to, you know, earn money and working. And, you know, every time you pray, every time you meditate, every time you focus on the greatness of the oneness of creation, you are doing it. You are literally doing it. And he says it here that when we reach a point of bitterness and a broken heart by looking, by analyzing our spiritual state, where are we spiritually, we, we have to really try hard to reach true happiness. And what is this happiness all about? This happiness is about our Godly soul who is gaining freed from the bondage of the animal soul and the body, and now it's able to make us more alive, more vibrant, happier human beings. And we could be there, out there, you know, being a conduit, being a vessel for the Creator of the universe, which is unbelievable. You know, a lot of people, you know, are doing it as— some people are doing it as default, as a result of reincarnations and stuff like that. They're just born built into doing godly things. And good things and provide good to the world. Some people need more, you know, conscious work and more working on themselves to reach that point of like a broken heart and the contemplation and focusing about our spiritual state. And again, just that idea just brings so much happiness that we can like free our Godly soul from the bondage, from the body and the animal soul and to elevate everything into a godly place. And that happiness that God is coming and he's residing and he's becoming one with us. And this is such a great happiness because we— this happiness, we literally broke the shell, we broke the barrier, the blockage that was preventing the light of the Creator come into us. And now the happiness is unbelievable because look, we We broke it, now we have it, and how great that is. So again, we have to, we have to understand that this whole concept of the bitterness and a broken heart, this is all tools for us to eventually break the, the, the grasp that the animal soul had on us. You know, it's terrible. And it's really tools, it's really tools to reach happiness, to reach happiness, but to really see the world and see reality as it is. You know, there is no way that people will just ignore the idea that there is a Creator to the, to the universe. You can't ignore that. You know, how can you, how can you ignore such a thing? The Creator is not really something that it's outside of us. It's inside of us, and this is our work that we need to reveal. And I think that most of the problem with religion and with people going against religion, with atheists and with people that really don't understand the concept of the Creator, is that they think it's something outside of themselves, separated from them. And when you think that there is a Creator separated from you, You don't feel connected. But if you understand that the Creator is, and it's part of who you are, then you can really, really start to feel it and live life more, you know, more joyfully and happily. You know, also not to let the animal soul— is a force of nature. Everybody's dealing with it. Everybody. I don't care who you are. I don't care what religion you're from. Everybody is real dealing with this evil inclination that is pulling them down. It's a force of nature that was created for everybody to fight in order to reach a point that you're really redeeming your G-dly part, part, and you're able to enter the flawless universe, enter a world of blessings and joy and happiness. And that's why we have it to begin with. So we can overcome it, and this is also the purpose of creation. And it's really true happiness, it's really true happiness. And also he says that even during the happiness, you should be humble. Should not be, 'Oh yeah, I'm so happy I won the war against my animal.' So that there is no ego here, there is no ego here. You have to even while you're happy still be humble and have that broken heart because because that broken heart is breaking the shell, is breaking the separation. And even at the time that we are in happiness, while we are happy, we should also keep that, that bitterness in the, in the broken heart, because we don't want to lose that, because that's what brought us the happiness to begin with. Right? So we don't want now to, okay, okay, now I'm happy, I'm going to forget about what brought me into the happiness, and then once the happiness stops, I'm like, where is, you know, I can't find it anymore. We should have to always keep it in our mind, in our consciousness, and look at the Godly soul and like, and be like, enough is enough with the animal soul. Enough is enough with the ego. Enough is enough. It's time to give it a fight. It's time to win this thing. And it's not so hard. The advantage of light over darkness. A little bit of light removes so much darkness. And, and then he keeps on talking that he says that that the bitterness and the happiness does not contradict each other, and they not disturb each other, because each one came from a different reason. And he explains why we should keep that. He says that from one side, and I want to repeat that because this is an important point, is he says that we should keep the bitterness and the broken heart while we are happy, and it does not contradict, and and it does not bother one another. One doesn't turn each other. It's not like water and fire, that one shuts each other off. In this case, they're not. They're actually synchronized, and each one are coming from a different reason. And then he says that from one hand, we have the you know, bitterness and the sadness in the heart. And on the other hand, we have the passion, you know, the passion to get out of this on the other side. And then he gives a, you know, a secret from the Zohar here with Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. It says about the destruction of the Temple, he says that, that while the Temple was going through the destruction, he had a very sad heart from seeing, from seeing how, you know, the Temple, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This was the house of God for all humans, for all created beings. And to see that, he was sad, but on— he was also, on the other hand, happy. Why was he happy? Because he really understood secrets that there is two different reasons. And those two, you say reasons, or you can say movement in the soul. There is one movement towards happiness and one movement towards a broken heart, and they can live together at the same time. And that was a huge revelation. It was a huge revelation because you can— you think you can only be— either you be sad and brokenhearted and happy and, and never live together. But that was the revelation because if you remember, we spoke about sadness and we said that there is two different types of sadness. There is good sadness and there is bad sadness, and they both come from the shell. From the barrier that separates us from the light of the Creator. And the good— I mean, the bad sadness, if we don't address it on time, could lead to depression and mental illness, God forbid. But the good sadness, described as bitterness and a broken heart, that could bring us to do the work that we need to do to redeem our godly soul. And after that sadness comes tremendous happiness. So that's kind of like a good sentence. And then he says— and that's the sentence he's talking about, the sentence that brings tremendous happiness— and they could live together, which is a beautiful thing. So I'm going to, uh, finish over here. Please, um, like the video, subscribe, and I'm looking forward to see you at the next one. Have a good night.