It is in your mouth and heart to do it.

Hi everyone, and welcome to today's Tanya class. So today we are going to start chapter 35. And chapter 35, we are— want to just remind you guys that, that the whole book of the Tanya is pretty much based on the idea that connecting to Godliness, redeeming back your Godly Soul, living a Godly life, it's something that it's very close to us, and it's in our mouth, in our heart to do. It's not up there in the heavens, it's not something that it's very difficult to do, it's something that it's easy for us to do, it's in our hearts, it's in our mouths, it's whatever we say, whatever we seal, With the garments of our Soul, which is the thoughts, speech, and actions, we can reach those levels where we are truly connected to Godliness. And what does that mean? It means living a life of gratitude and truly entering the flawless Universe of our life. Things really work out for us on the best possible way. And it talks about really that we should develop, you know, the Alter Rebbe with the Tanya is really emphasizing the power of emotions. Emotions are the conduit that connects us to the Creator. And they're not only the conduits, they are the attributes of the Creator. So, through our thoughts, speech, and actions, we want to reach the highest levels of our emotional connection, which is Love and Awe. Love and Awe are the basis of our emotions. And when we develop this Love and Awe, when we work on ourselves and we reach that feeling of Love to the Creator, and the Awe, to the Creator, then we are getting super close to God. And it's a very— and it's also emphasizing the idea of action, which means that we can't just think about it, we can't just like meditate on it and pray. This has to be actions. Actions, which means giving from yourself, giving from your time, doing things that are not comfortable, getting out of your comfort zone, learning about doing Mitzvot. It depends how much you want to connect. You want to start, you know, eating better, you want to start taking care of your body, you want to be more helpful to your friends, to your family, to your wife, to your spouse, be a better parent. Whatever it is that you need to do, you can do it. You can do it and it's not so hard. And he's saying that it's in your mouth, it's in in your heart to do, and it's very close to you. And when you really contemplate and you start to understand in your mind the greatness of and the oneness of creation, you should know that the mind naturally rules the heart. So, so when the mind rules the heart, you can take control over your life. You know, people that are ruled by their emotions, they are, have zero control of what they're doing. They're being ruled by their emotions. It means that every person can distract them. You know, somebody's like, "Oh, he said this to me, he said this to me, he got, you know, I'm hurt, I'm hurt." The Soul doesn't get hurt. The Soul says, "Okay, you know, let me pray for this person who didn't speak nice or wasn't nice to me, and I have to keep on doing my mission, the reason why I was born here." to this world. I can't let every little thing distract me. "Mochalit l'alev." Mind rules the heart. And the heart controls all the other organs. That, which means the heart pumps blood into the whole body, and the body is the vessel, our hands, our feet, you know, our mouth, everything is operated through the heart. And when, and when the mind rules the heart, then we are able to get out there and do things and perform the good deeds that we want to perform, that gets us closer. If you remember in the previous video, I spoke about the idea of breaking the shell and doing all kinds of different deeds that gets us closer. It's a sacrifice. Sacrifice in Hebrew is to get close, it's the same word, root word. To get close to the Creator through action. And the action is giving charity, helping, being out there for one another. And it's not only money, also your time, your effort, your brain, your talents, your gifts. You have to share it. It says that, You should share 20%, no less than 10%, no more than 20%, but you should share as much as you can. And you should really, really awaken that hidden love to the creation, the hidden love to the Creator, that is in the heart of every grateful human being. I mean, every— A person that has, that is thankful, that is grateful for what he has, has tremendous love to the Creator, to the Universe, for providing him with all those good things. And we should have that awe and the fear to not get disconnected, because, you know, when you get disconnected, God forbid, from the Creator, that could lead you to be, you know, in a place where you don't want to be. And this is why we're still doing all this work. You know, we don't want to be in a place where we are wasting our time and there is confusions and there is all kinds of different mental problem that could arise from comparing yourself or from always, you know, doing the calculation, what am I getting from this? And, you know, instead of just like connecting and becoming like the Creator, you know, adopting those attributes of Love, Care, Mercy, and giving back to the Creator. And he says that the key to all of this, and it's really, really important, that's the most important work that we have to do, is to understand that the key to this connection, to this Godly connection, is happiness. And we always, whatever it is that we do, we give charity, we volunteer, we perform a mitzvah, we go to Shabbat, we go, you know, we help a friend, whatever it is that we do, we have to do it with happiness because that's the main thing in connecting to God, to the Creator. It's the main thing. And then he ends with the idea that it's very close to us to do it. That the essence of everything is the actual doing. It's the actual doing. He talks about the mitzvot. You know, the Torah is lining up sets of things that we should do. Things that we should not do. You know, everybody to their level could do those things in their level to connect. You know, to connect to the Creator. But again, I think that— and that's what makes the Tanya such a profound book, such an amazing book, because it really is, talks about how to direct our emotions. Our emotions is the engine that moves us. This is what moves us, this is what makes us get up, do things, be productive, work, give. It's the engine, our emotions are the engine. You know, I heard from my dear friend, Dr. Rachel Harari, that he says, "You're not what you think." You're not what you think, you think that your thoughts are you, no. What you are is what you feel. What you feel, what is your heart right now? Because that will determine exactly what you're gonna do. Since the heart controls all the other organs of your body, then the heart decides if you're gonna stay in bed or get up, or if you're gonna, you know, go volunteer or just watch TV, or if you're gonna do something productive, maybe write a book, or just waste your time You know, doing other things that you shouldn't be doing, like playing video games or whatnot. I'm not saying that all those things are bad, but it has to be balanced. Time that we have is the most important assets that we have, and we have to use that correctly, especially when it comes to wanting more out of life and living more and connecting to Godliness. And it contains you that that we should really, really understand the main character of the Book of the Tanya is called Benoni, which means it's like the middleman, it's like the medium, the average. And he calls it Benoni. Benoni is actually a very high level of being. It's a person that understands everything, He connects to God fully. And when temptation comes to him, or the animal soul is knocking on his door, he's not opening the door. He's not falling to the tricks of the ego or the animal soul. He becomes totally selfless, but he's constantly struggling The struggling and the battle never ends. He always thinks, "Oh, maybe I should open the door to the animal soul. Maybe I should open the door to this temptation." But he worked on himself so much that he is not a complete righteous human being, a completely enlightened human being who doesn't even have the struggle, which is pure light. He reached a point that he just doesn't do wrong things. He doesn't do the wrong things. So every time he You know, somebody does the wrong things, you know, most of humanity is actually considered, you know, people that are, you know, serving themselves alone. You know, serving themselves alone, it's considered, it's a form of wickedness, form of wickedness. It's not complete wickedness, but it's a form of wickedness. When somebody is truly very selfish, we don't want to be there. So we want to be at the level of Binoni. Obviously, if we can't, if we can reach the level of or righteous, we can reach a wish that we can reach the rare, but it's very rare. But when we really start to do the work, then we are between being a Benoni, which is in the middle between complete pure and righteous, or wicked, God forbid. So we are in the middle somewhere. And sometimes we fall, and then if we fall, it goes into that category, of a little bit of wickedness, but if we are able to stop the temptation and manage our thoughts correctly and let the mind control the heart, then we are, we can reach the level of Benoni. And Benoni, that's the main character of the book of the Tanya. And again, he talks that The Pinoni have tons of temptation, but he fights with his evil inclination and he does not allow it to perform his ideas and not even to think about it. So he was able to train himself so well that even if a bad thought comes to him and the bad thought says, hey, why don't you do this, why don't you do that, he already knows how to remove it before it even penetrates and actually does something. And this is what he explains. He explained there is a verse in the Torah that says that this thing is very close to you, in your mouth, in your heart, to do. And he says that the word to do shows a great characteristic in doing, in performing good deeds. And to also understand the essence of creating the middle people, the 'Bene Goyim', which is the people who are able to really give a good fight and not lose. Not lose, you know, in the battle with their animal soul. So, the animal soul is constantly trying to battle, but they are not losing, they are staying strong. And he says that this is what— so he says, what's the essence of building? Why did God create those kind of individuals? And he says, because every person has the choice to elevate themselves from that level of being in the middle, or always stays in that level. And the essence and the reason why their soul came down to this lower world, to not fall into the trap of the animal soul, which is the opposite. The animal soul is the opposite of the actual soul, of the godly soul. It's the evil inclination, it's the ego, it's our desire to be in the center. And he's saying that the idea here is that we cannot get rid of the of the animal soul, but we could fight it and we cannot let it control us. And the war— and when they're fighting, when they're fighting the animal soul, they don't really affect, really affect the animal soul. They don't really affect it. You can't really kill the animal soul. You can You know, all you can do is that you could, you can prevent the animal soul from literally controlling your brain, controlling your mind, and your thoughts, speech, and actions. So the garments of the animal soul, the thoughts, speech, and actions of the animal soul cannot get included in a person who is in that level. I will have to stop right here, and I will continue when I get back from my meeting. I know it's a short one, 16 minutes, but we are going to continue. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you soon.