Transcription
Today what we're going to be discussing is really who you are. I'd like to get in touch with who you are from a Jewish perspective. Like, who are you? Think about that question: who are you? Who are you? If I put you in an MRI, would that give us any indication? What do you guys think? Yes or no? Not really? Yeah, well, that's trouble already. If we all kind of know intuitively, an MRI of us is not going to help a thing. Not gonna help a thing about who you are.
So, because if I asked you guys to point to yourselves, try it. Everyone raise your index finger. Come on, raise your index finger! Cooperate, please, and point to yourselves. Point to yourselves! Everyone—almost everybody here pointed to their heart ultimately. But you know... sorry, you know what's right there? Okay, first you've got clothing. And by the way, I know a lot of people who think they are their clothing. And I mean, they do dress quite stylishly, but they're not their clothes; they're their clothing.
And then there's skin, then there's blood, then there's bone, and then there's this pump that pumps blood. It's quite gross, and it's just pumping blood. Okay, is that you? Are you a pump? You ain't no pump. Okay, great. Let's try again. Raise your index finger, everybody! Come on, cooperate! Come on, and point to yourself.
Okay, so this is what's predictable—everyone goes up here. Well, it's not going to get better; it's almost going to get worse. Okay? It gets better. So skin, blood, bone, and then inside there's a squishy thing called a brain. The brain, but the specific part that you're pointing to is—everyone points here because that's where real thinking takes place—besides the hypothalamus, which is like the reptilian brain. It's more fight or flight and those types of things. Other parts of your brain handle your nervous system.
But the part of you that you called you, which you were pointing to, the right place, it's called the cerebral cortex. In the cerebral cortex are neurons. So we got to go into the cerebral cortex. So let's go in. Going in, and it is neurons. How many neurons? Answer: billions of neurons. What? I have billions of neurons in there? They must be quite small. You got it; they are quite small. In fact, they're microscopic. And they, the neurons, are these microscopic things.
So I'm a big Pewa Hermit fan. The neurons are microscopic, and of course, they are quite small. In fact, they're microscopic, and they're really small. I mean, billions of them. So, they're super, super small, and there's nothing unique about any of your neurons. They're literally, their job—every neuron's job—is to either fire or not fire. Fire or not fire. In other words, one or zero; one or zero.
Now, just like a DVD, which is all ones and zeros; so if you want to watch Harrison Ford, you look at that disc—it's filled with, with probably, I don't know, how many ones in there? Maybe a billion. A billion ones and zeros. And when you put them all together, enough of them together, it starts creating patterns. The ones and zeros make patterns in the form of Harrison Ford on the stage. And the same thing too; you have a digital unit up here of ones and zeros that make patterns, and those patterns are deciphered based on the what? Based on the—not the—but the past. Very good, based on the past of every other time you saw that.
So every time you ever saw that—whatever that was—like, for example, I noticed every one of you walked through this doorway, and I didn't see anyone bang into it. No rim shots, no backboard—just swish! Each one of you did a swish! But many of you never been through this door in your life. There goes another swish! Okay, just straight through the door, no problem. What happened? What happened? You got in front of that door just like Neo. You know, it was just like—and your neurons are just like doorway; you know, I've seen this before. Remember? Because it's matching it with the past. It's like, I've seen this before; I can do this.
And it's straight through the doorway, came in, sat down. You know, which are all things that a little kid couldn't do. A little baby, you know? First of all, they'd probably have to crawl into here; they can't sit up yet. So if you're a little baby right now, you'd already be falling over on the floor off your chair. See, you guys don't even realize you're balancing right now. You're in balance right now. You know, if you see a little baby, first time they sit there, it's like second time, like third time, fourth time—hey, I'm getting it! You know?
And then, after a while, they're like, I'm sitting! You know? And what's going on is the neurons are mapping each thing, including the fall and the pain of the fall. And it doesn't feel good, especially falling backwards on the head. Falling forwards on the face ain't comfortable. So, the neurons—and that's why pain is such an important thing in life. Pain is really, really important. Pain tells you, don't go there, okay? Pain is so important, in fact, they are even those who theorize that that disease called leprosy was not actually losing limbs; that was the symptom. Leprosy was losing feeling, so that you no longer knew where the pain was. So you'd actually start damaging limbs and then wind up losing limbs because of the damage to the limbs. Pain is your best friend.
That's why we limp, because if someone hurts their leg and now they're limping, they’re putting less weight on there, which means it's resting, and the tissues get their rest and they can now heal while not being overly exerted. Pain is your friend! And if you ever had your heart broken, of course, in that pain, never ever broke anyone's heart after that, right? So, I have a very light definition of abuse. I know you can't go to jail for my definition. For the definition of abuse that sends you to jail, you've got to, like, actually really do something grievous.
But in my definition, which is the Kabbalah definition of abuse—and it's also what our sages of Hillel, who's obviously a Kabbalist, but Hillel said it himself—and that is: never do unto others what you wouldn't have wanted done to you. So, all it takes is one heartache—sorry, one heartbreak—to never break another heart, because you know what it feels like. So you'd never do it to another person, because if you'd ever break another person's heart, that means you're doing unto others what you know is hurtful, which is a very light, gentle definition of abuse. That's abuse!
And so our goal here in all of the Torah is to get you away from being an abusive person. So, for example, if you'd ever been hiking and came upon a bottle, or a cup, or a napkin, or anything else out there that should have been packed out with whoever packed it in—has that ever bothered any of you? So, if that bothered you once, you'd know the next time you were thinking of leaving a cup in the wilderness: don't go there, okay? It's abuse!
Okay, anything that's ever bothered you in this world: don't do unto others! And when you get on that level—that means you've got to the point—which is what is called treading lightly. The goal—one of the big goals in life—is to tread lightly on the world.
Well, how am I supposed to know how to tread lightly? And the answer is: if anything's ever bothered me or affected me negatively, I don't pass it forward. I leave it there, and I never go there in my own life, so I'm never hurtful. And that's the goal. Are we always there? Am I never hurtful? I do my best! I do my best.
Okay, back to our story. So our story is that your neurons—remember the neurons? Sorry, I tangentialized a bit—but the neurons are telling you how to walk, telling you this is English. You think I'm speaking English right now? Is this English? This ain't English. This isn't American. This is not language I’m speaking; it's math. Pure math! I'm sending out vibrational patterns.
For example, let's say this is an A, so my vocal cords are moving at 220 vibrations per second—sorry, 220 vibrations per second. They're shooting across the room, shooting across the room at 220 vibrations per second, and as my lips and teeth are breaking up the sounds, it's hitting your eardrum at 220, but breaking 220, breaking based on how I break it up. And it's hitting your eardrum these crazy patterns. Because not only are you getting the 220 and all the other frequencies that I'm saying; it's lots of different mathematical equations.
But also, because I'm breaking it up with the five exits of my mouth, which are the guttural, the palate, the teeth, tongue, and lips, are breaking up that sound that's sending it to your ear. And these super subtle breakups of the 220s, and the 460s, and all the different numbers—in other words, you're a tremendous mathematician! Your ear is collecting. It's a super tight membrane that is collecting; it's a drum. It's like, have you ever unscrewed a microphone and seen a little membrane in there? It's also super tight, okay? It's a super tight membrane; it has tremendous ability to distinguish great equations, like gigantic mathematical numbers, like huge numbers. And it's able to handle it in all its detail in real time.
It doesn't compute anything; it sends it via nerves to the neurons. The neurons now have all this information to deal with. We're only going on sound. The same things happen with sight, by the way. But it's all coming into the ear to the brain. The brain's then turning it into English.
Am I speaking English? No, I'm not speaking English. I'm just sending out vibrational patterns with my mouth. And they're hitting your ears, and you are making it back into English. Now here's the fun part: I asked you to point to yourself. You pointed to your brain. Your brain is made of neurons. If I took one of your neurons—let's take, for example, not Phil. Phil's your son. Phil Schwartz—Phil, do you mind if I borrow one of your neurons, please? You have billions. I got it. Is that alright? Thank you so much! I mean, I know a lot of people are willing to let go of many of these every time they... you know what, okay?
So anyway, we're gonna put Phil's neuron on an overhead projector. Okay? So let me put it on the projector. It's not a regular projector; it's a magnifying one. It's going to magnify it ten thousand times so you can see the thing, okay? It's got a magnifier in it. So we're magnifying Phil's neuron. We put it up on the screen. There is this giant neuron now being projected on the screen at about 80 inches. And my question to you guys is this: is that gonna be a picture of Phil going like, "Hey guys, it's Phil!"? That's not going to be a projection of Phil on the screen.
And if I took it back now, and I said, you know what, I'm going to take this neuron and I'm going to pop it into—what's your name?—I'm going to pop it into the mirror. You might, boom! In the mirror, Mayor goes now to buy an ice cream cone, and he's like, "I'll take strawberry, please!" Did I just say that? I mean, he's not going to suddenly like strawberry ice cream because he got one of Phil's neurons. Neurons have nothing to do with you. Nothing to do with you! Neurons are microscopic things that either fire or don't fire. That's all neurons are. They fire or don't fire. Nothing more, nothing less.
You put a lot of them together, it starts to tell you things, like strawberry ice cream. You put a lot of things together. Now here's the thing: those neurons are highly fluid. It's like they see... it's like the open sea, and there are tables in this room, and there's like the Western Wall outside, and your Rabbi Glazer is doing his thing. And if that's me, and you're... and you're just like—your neurons are so fluid, so fluid! And they'll just go with anything. Your neurons are totally chill! Or are they? Is it possible that there are a couple neurons in your brain that are like little marbles that are not so fluid? Do you have certain things linked that shouldn't be linked?
Maybe something that might have happened from your father when you were a kid, or maybe a dynamic that was inside your house, or maybe it's your birth order that you got kind of locked in the link to things, or you know what I'm saying? Oh yeah, yeah! But linkages that shouldn't be linked. I asked a kid; I asked a kid who grew up in a home that kept Shabbos. They always kept Shabbos—Shabbos was like 24 hours of Shabbos—except he had a dad that pushed it on them and he had brothers that pushed him. He was the youngest kid, and they just slammed him, like, "You keep Shabbos!" Boom! Boom! "You don't keep Shabbos, you are good, or you are bad!" And what did he link? Shabbos to mean that he is bad.
So he has this link, weird link. So I asked this guy, he said, "Listen, how long in Israel?" He says, "Months." "How long you in yeshiva?" "Months." "Keep Shabbos?" He says, "I gotta get out; every shot is, I gotta get out. I gotta go to Tel Aviv; I gotta go to Antonya; I gotta go to the North or go to the South. I can't go near Shabbos!"
Now what do I know in my work? What I know automatically is he's got something—what? There's a link there; there's a link. So I said to him, "You have an issue with God?" "No issue with God." "You have an issue with the commandments?" "No, commandments are cool." "You have an issue with the Ten Commandments?" "No, I'm into top ten lists." Great!
So, you know, one of those commandments is like, "Don't say Shabbos." What's the problem? It's got something linked, cerebral cortex, meaning the neurons are supposed to be very white fluid, but somebody's got himself a little pebble in there, a little marble in there—not so fluid—linking stuff up that has no link. They're not linked; him being evil and Shabbos have nothing to do with each other. You get that? Nothing to do with each other! Meanwhile... well, now we gotta go back to us.
So, here we are, we've got these neurons. Yeah, we discussed a little bit of the solidity. We can get a little solid about certain things—someone harmed me, or someone... this, or someone... that, you know? And we get all you know, like we lose our fluidity, you know? Lose our fluidity.
I'd say the majority of Jews who show up in this classroom who are raised observant have all kinds of crazy things linked up. All kinds of crazy things linked up with their Judaism from bad experiences that might have happened. I mean, a lot happens in 24 hours, you know, when you're growing up as a little kid. There's a lot of 24 hours going by, you know?
So all it takes is just... I mean, it could be anything. You could be a fifth grader; you raise your hand in class; you ask a simple question to the Rabbi, you know, because the kids in the observing world grew up observant with the observing Rabbi. You ask a question, okay? It was a dumb question! You didn't know it was a dumb question, but it was so dumb that the Rabbi just—he couldn't hold back. He just couldn't hold back. And he said, "An amazing question if it were third grade." This is fifth grade!
Link: I am an absolute... what? Idiot! I'm an idiot! And how many people have I met over and over who are capable adults who have considered themselves an idiot ever since? And it's forget the class—a room. I set up any classroom, any moment where, like, you were scared to death to get called on to read just because you were scared to death to get caught. Unreal! I was scared to get called on to read. Who wasn't?
But of course, inevitably the teacher's like, "Okay, yeah, what's your name?" Mayor? Okay, Mayor, read! You know? And anyway, I got called on to read, and I totally blew it! Totally blew it! I'm stuttering. I'm like, you know, just because I got psyched out that it was my turn to read. Now I didn't make up a big story about that, or maybe I did. I don't know; maybe I have to see a psychologist or something. I don't know.
But you see how that could be a pebble in the fluidity of my reading or my intellect or whatever? Enough about that. Now your cerebral cortex is a friend and an enemy. On one end, it's a friend. It got you through that door, helping you sit. You understand my English. You know, you maybe know how to do the rings; you know, like an Olympic athlete is certainly happy about his neurons because he's over enough time, enough time, enough time, enough time—he's now got this amazing Olympic-level ring ability.
It's only because of the repetitions in the neurons. Clear? But it's also your enemy. You know why? Because it's matching every moment with the past, which means someone who's not on the cutting edge of spirituality is living where? In the past! Now living in the past. Now meaning everything's matching with the past.
So you know what this looks like? Now what does this look like? Jesse James? Yeah! What we're doing is we're going—we walk into a party; we feel a little uncomfortable socially. Comes the marbles that I'm not really acceptable or whatever those little marbles are—when we're kids, shoot the place or go get a drink or just like shoot everyone down until you find someone you know.
Don't we all search the party for someone we know? Yeah, just to get a little safer, okay? We tend to familiarity like crazy. We're always going for the familiar. How are we ever going to grow in life if we're always looking for stuff that somehow already matches the past? So what do I do? I just knock out everything that's new. Anything that's new, anything that might shape me.
Because I was born a piece of clay, and all those teachers shaped me, and my parents shaped me, and I had no choice in the matter. I don't think one person in this room was walking into nursery school with their mommy, you know, and they're just like, you know, first-year nurse is going.
They're walking with their mommy, and they're like, "Mommy, yes, dear? Can I just speak to the teacher before we walk in that door?" You know? "I guess so, okay. And stay right here, you know. And bring the teacher out, and the teacher comes at you, yes little boy, and you—" and you’re like, "Her little girl," and you're like, "I just want to know, uh, I just want to know what it is you'll be teaching us, and how do you know it's true?"
Not one of us did that! Not one of us! We just went into the whatever crazy thing that they came to teach us, which—had you been born, like literally, 500 miles away, they would have taught you something else! You know, they would have taught you something else. Every school system is going for different stuff.
And you know, once you leave your continent, you got a whole different textbook of other things going on, you know? And yet we all walked into life that way, which means we were all born as clay. And without any request from us, people just started pushing and making indentations and forming different things out of it.
And the crazy thing about us is that ever since that happened and we became like young adults, we never let anyone mess with it again. "Don't mess with it! Don't mess with my random shape!" And we all know how totally random it is because if you take that random shape, then maybe it doesn't look so random in the neighborhood you grew up in. But take that random shape and airdrop it into New Guinea or something; it is the most random shape!
They got totally different things happening in New Guinea these days. Take the top kid in New Guinea and drop him in Norway; he's going to be out of his depth! It's random! But we're all so scared that we got the Jesse James thing with the cereal, with the neurons of killing the moments, killing anything that doesn't look familiar to me. Knocking it out, because it doesn't match the past.
And then just once again, like, someone give me something familiar! It's only so long I can stay away from home; because I don't—this doesn't fit in my neurological pathways that I was raised with.
So you hear how neurons are great? Like they can help you win the Olympics, but they can help you lose your life! Because life is about growth. Life is about being a full clay—like just being like so impressionable, so that you can grow, so you can change! You know what the elderly are like in Jerusalem? You would think if anyone was stuck in their ways, it's the elderly of Jerusalem. These old Yiddish guys! I mean, they eat, they do the same thing every single day. It's almost like every bean in their cholent on Shabbat day, like almost like comes right into place and goes like this—in the exact same place the last week in the last 80-90 years.
I remember one of those guys—95 years old—walks up with this book in his hand. It's one of the personal growth books in Judaism; it's called "The Path of the Just." He walks up, his name was Solomon of Zalman from Brazil—one of the most famous Jews of Jerusalem in this generation. He passed away like 10 years ago. And he comes up to the table I was sitting at. He says, "It's going to be a new Zalman! It's going to be a new Zalman!" Because he was Plato! He was Plato! And he was so beautiful. He was so alive!
That's the goal: fluid! The neurons are supposed to be fluid! New! It's going to be a new Yom Tov! I am—I’m going to be shaped by this day's events! I'm going to be shaped by tomorrow's events! I'm constantly being shaped!
The guys who miss me, by the way, when I freaked out and went like Turbo Jew when I was 23—I’d been surfing internationally for 12 years, six to eight hours a day, that's all I did was surf! Okay? And, well, at night I did other things. We're not going to go into that. But during the day, I surfed. And when what happened was when I visited after six months of learning here, I went back and a couple of my buddies were out of town, so they didn't get to see me.
So they asked my buddies, "What was he like? What was he like?" You know, like because they're not Jewish? I mean, one or two was Jewish, but the rest weren't Jewish. And they're like, "What was it? What was it?" And so my best friend said to them—he said to them, "That's Darren Doss, an amazing guy! Long blonde hair, like Scandanavian-looking guy from Malibu. I grew up in Melbourne."
So he says, "Oh, he was exactly the same!" All the other guys looked at him like, "What?" You know? I got these hand-washing rituals going on, like, out, you know, on the side of the car after surfing, you know? We'd go to McDonald's and like totally overeat! So, but I'm not gonna eat at McDonald's because now I keep kosher for my six months in Jerusalem; I'm keeping kosher for sure.
So I had them pull the car up next to Zuma Beach. There's washrooms right off the highway. I and I had my own little cup; I had made my sandwiches! I washed my hands—two on the right, two on the left—made my blessing! You know? The Pacific Ocean in the background is gorgeous!
And I sit down in the car, make my Hamotzi—I'm just chewing away on like this—like these are like Scooby Snacks, you know? Like giant sandwiches, like my daughter’s trained well! My 18-year-old daughter made me a Scooby Snack for today—triple decker, amazing! So, anyway, and all my friends are in this, you know, SUV. You know? Three guys in the back, me and the driver in the front. They're all just looking at me like, "What?" You know?
And they showed up at sunrise; we surf at sunrise. And they showed up at sunrise, and they were peeking through my blinds in my room, like, pounding on them. And they see me in there with black boxes on! And they're just like, "What the hell?" And it was silent driving to the surf spot because all they wanted to do was ask, and they didn't want to—like, ask! So, like, it was silent!
So I finally halfway there, I'm like, "You're probably wondering what the black boxes were." And because I saw them all like, first it was one guy peeking; he was just like... and the next thing I saw was all four of them were at the blinds just staring at me, and I was just like practicing—I saw it at the wall, you know, something like that.
So anyway, the guy said for the guy who missed me when I was there, he said, "So what's he like? What was it about?" He says, "Oh, he hasn't changed at all!" And the other guys are like, "What?" You know? He changed everything. He says, "No, no, think about Yomtov." Johnny, English name—think about Johnny. Ever since we knew him, he's been evolving!
When anarchy was in, he was the craziest anarchist there was! When it was like hippie peace love time, there was no one more peace love than him! When he buckled down in school and, like, actually concentrated for one year, he got straight A's and was like doing graduate-level studies in that one year! He studied his entire career since 11 years old.
So, yeah, that was in university. I like freaked out and decided, "I gotta at least see if there's any truth in university." So I did graduate-level philosophy classes, you know? So I kept going and going like that. And anyway, they're like, "Ever since we've known him, he's constantly evolving. So he's the same exact guy, only now he's embraced his Judaism because he never knew anything about it."
But since he went to Jerusalem and found out what it was, so that's where he's at now. But if you check me out three years later, then I was like doing like different things in Judaism—very different things! And now I'm also doing different things than I was doing then! I'm always... but it's—and that’s the point: your neurons are supposed to be so fluid; they're so fluid! But we're all so solid!
We're all such rocks, you know? And you and we all like to think that old guys are rocks, old ladies are rocks, you know? But I'm a young, strapping man with, you know, here to like grow in life! But in fact, we're just rocks! We have things linked; you know, we got all kinds of stuff going on where we just don't grow very well. Which means we're not 100% alive, and that's the scary thing!
But here's the clincher: you ready for the clincher? Here's the cleanser! Guess what? This isn't what our classes are about! Our class is about who are you? There's one more thing that your neurons have been saying to you besides how to get in the door. And what's English, and that your dad dropped kicked you and therefore this, that, and the other.
The, uh, there's another thing that your neurons are saying to you that they should not be saying to you. It's almost as if you've been hijacked by your neurons. There's another thing your neurons are saying, and they should not be saying it. Why? Because it's just not there. It's not there, right? They have no right to be saying it. There's one more thing your neurons are telling you. Are you ready for this?
Your neurons are telling you who you are! Everyone think about that for a moment: who are you? That was my original question: who are you? I was really into John Entwistle on the Basis—the, uh, who are you? It starts to get a little weird, doesn't it? Not my heart, not my neurons! Yet, who's been telling me who I am when I walk through life? Who? The neurons!
But if you're not one of them, you're not all of them! If you're not one of them, you can't be all of them. Collectively you're not your neurons. You have neurons, but you are not your neurons. So who are you? If you're not your neurons, then who are you? Where are you gonna point now? It's a wild thought! And I'm trying to get you guys to where Jews come from to get the worldview.
So then, who are you? A work in progress! Beautiful! Let's get some more! You make yourself to be amazing! Beautiful! Let's hear: who are you? Any other takers? That's exactly... you're not! That's what we just got through saying! Ah, your song! Very good!
Well, listen to this, guys. Who you are is obviously not your neurons. And they've already mapped the brain. Brain science—they map the whole brain; you're not there! Okay? They know where thought is; they know, uh, sight, taste, hearing; they know where love is, and or fear; they know where all that stuff is. They've mapped all that. The one thing they can't find is who's experiencing it. They can't find the point of reference that you call you! That they cannot find!
So you're not there. And so the answer is: who you are is the neshama, which is called the soul! You are the soul! What's the soul? I have no idea! We don't know what it is! But I'll tell you one thing: that when your soul was in this pure soul realm before it got put inside this little Toyota of yours—your avatar—you've been calling you—mistakenly calling you!
And the Greeks have been wanting you to call this you. Calvin Klein commercials definitely are trying to tell you that this is you! And that's why we don't tattoo! If you're already tattooed, enjoy it; it's too late now! But the reason we don't tattoo is that it's not yours; it's your avatar. And when the soul was told that it had to come down and have an avatar in this world, it said, "No way! No way!"
And God starts giving all these promises. It's like... but like on the seventh day, your avatar just will stop! It won't do anything for like... It won't burn things, won't light things, won't get in cars, not gonna use phones, won't do business. I promise, like at least one-seventh of your jail sins in your avatar—at least one-seventh of it will be without pain!
And it's like, "Okay, that's good! One-seventh, you know!" And not just that, but like the stuff that'll like poison you—it will not eat! It will not eat! It will be commanded not to eat the stuff that like will just, like, it's like cyanide to the soul! And like it won't eat that stuff: shellfish, pig—all these things—it won't eat it! So you promise... well I can't exactly promise because it's gonna have free will.
So we could always go buy the pork chops, you know? It could go eat the double-bacon cheese; it can do all that stuff. But if it honors you, if the avatar honors you, it won't. If it doesn't honor you, it will! It says, "Well, I'm not going down then, forget it! I'm not going because you can't promise me it's going to honor me."
In conclusion, everybody! In conclusion, your body is not you! Your body's an avatar that has had a soul like with a dropper just kind of went and it dropped the soul into it on the 40th day after conception into the fetus. And the soul wants certain things! The avatar, on the other hand, is stuck with the neurons, and the neurons is just a real estate business.
The next thing I'm just going to share with you about worldview is a Jew sees his brain as real estate; tracks of land! Who are you willing to give them up to? What are you willing to watch? What are you willing to click on? Where? What are you going to educate yourself with? What are you going to fill your brain with? What are you gonna fill your mind with? Because your mind is real estate!
There's no television in my house. If there's anything I can do to help the real estate of my kids' minds be kept special and holy, that's not one of them! They're not going to have someone else's programming. Can they watch a video? Sure! But I'll put on a video for them, having first screened it myself because your mind, think about it, everybody: your mind is the real estate of your avatar!
And your soul is either going to be in bondage behind the bars of the neurons of your avatar, of the soul! You've got to take care of yourself. You've got to love yourself while you're here! Give tomorrow night's Shabbat! Give your neurons a break! Sorry, give your soul a break tomorrow night and just have Shabbat!
And let your soul say, "Amazing!" By the way, your soul when you came to Jerusalem was like, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" Because it just knew Shabbat! It would get a Shabbat! You know? Except for the guy we talked about who had it linked and wound up in Netanya. Yeah, his soul was like, "Yes! We're coming to Jerusalem! We're gonna get Shabbat!"
Except he had it linked with his dad and his brothers and evil. So he pulled his soul to Netanya and didn't keep Shabbat. So in the end, all we're really doing is being realists. We're being realists! You're not your body! Your neurons are part of your body! You're not your neurons; your neurons are just what you use for the soul, which is your avatar!
Your neurons are just your avatar; your soul is the brain of the avatar! And so the idea, though, in the end is honor your soul! Just honor it! It's stuck here with you! Honor it and watch the magic happen! By the way, I'm concluding with a story that there was a person who was the least spiritual person I've ever met in my life. He was raised purely by television!
Raised by television! He drove a—he drove a BMW that matched his cell phone and his suits! On Sunday, he would just be, you know, in Venice Beach, Muscle Beach; there's a—and he'd just be like in a tank top. And you'd just be like, "I'm so buff! I'm so tan! Hey, I'm buffing down!" Yeah! And people used to always say to me, as I was in Israel, I was in yeshiva, and people always say to me, "Hey, what about you? Like, send him a book or something."
They knew I was close to him; he was Jewish. "Send him a book! Send him anything! Send him one of those books about how the athlete became observant!" Some famous athlete, you know. Speak his language, you know? Instead of a biography of a businessman who became observant, I would always say to them, "Leave him alone! Like this man in spirituality has nothing in common! Like he does not have a Jewish bone in his body! Leave him alone—that's what I always said! That's what I say!
But, uh, you should know he is today. He's like a Rebbe to me! He's one of the most spiritual people I know! An amazing, amazing person! And how it out he came? He flew in for my wedding and, uh, his business was running—he's a wealthy guy; his business was running itself! And so he stayed for another month, and he danced in Tel Aviv every night. Dance in Tel Aviv! You know what goes on when you dance in Tel Aviv? So he woke up at noon the next day every day—woke up the next day, he came to Jerusalem to my place—except I wasn't home!
Who was home? My wife! I was studying in yeshiva! So she and he would—they'd fight over—he'd be like, "How can you live this lifestyle?" And she would nail him because she's no slouch; she knows her stuff! My wife's strong, so she gave it! She gave it to him. She was smashing with her spatula, you know? Every night back in Tel Aviv, with this girl! Every day back in Tel Aviv, arguing with my Rabbis, and my wife—the Rebbitzen's like the female Rabbi—night, day, night, day, night, day. Finally, I dropped him at the airport, and my wife's like, "Thank God!" You know? Like, what kind of first three weeks of first month of my married life was that? You know? Like hours of arguing with this guy!
And every single day! So anyway, so what happens? Three weeks later, I get a phone call from his parents in America. "Hi! How are you? Muscle tough on your wedding! Everything?" "Can I speak to, you know?" They said, "Can I speak to Andy?" And I'm like, "I'm like, I dropped him at the airport three weeks ago!" So, I mean, call him yourself! You know? It's your son! Like, "No, no, he never came home!" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" He never came home.
"Hey, we’ve called, and we've been to his place! He's a sports fanatic, so he's missed all the games! You know, his dad has a big screen TV, and you know it's every sport, everything's Tivo'd! And like, I think now he has multiple screens, you know? And so he—he didn't come back!" And I'm like, "Come on!" You know?
And they're like, "We've been to his place!" And I said, "Go to his place at two in the morning! Just set your alarm clock and go to his place! At two in the morning, surprise attack!" So anyway, they go to his place at two in the morning. They're banging on the door, banging on the door, and I guess in a stupor, he comes to the door, opens up the door, and they look at him—and he's got one of these on his head!
And he was too embarrassed to go home because he said when he got on that flight after a month of arguing with my wife, and after seeing my marriage, and seeing the wedding, and seeing the way people are around here, the way people are at Shabbat tables, and the way people treat each other in the world we have here. And the wisdom—he said, he said, "I don't know where I'm going with this, but I've never taken this thing off!" He didn't know where he was going with it; he's never taken this thing off!
The rest was history, and he became one of some amazing girls who wouldn't leave him alone because his life was a lot of girls! So the girls are always attacking him and stuff, but he doesn't want to touch girls anymore because we're not involved with girls! But anywhere he would go, he'd like sit down at a party, and some girl jumped on his lap! So he decided to grow a beard! He called it a nectar deflector! He grows a beard; he's got his nectar deflector; he's got his little yarmulke on, and everything was going great!
Anyway, in the end, he becomes a Breslov Chasid Rabbi, and just an amazing thing! But he became one of the most spiritual people I've ever met! Why? How? How could it be that guy from Muscle Beach? He became like a Rebbe to me in meditation, in Torah, and everything! How? How could he become my mentor? And the answer is: because he started honoring the neshama! The miracles started happening! You watch it yourselves! You see you honor your soul; you honor the soul that was stuck in your avatar!
And you start treating it with some respect! You start really honoring it and asking Rabbi and learning books! Find out what do I have to do to keep my nose to keep my soul happy inside this body? And then you start watching miracles happen—of how powerful you are! He's a powerhouse, this guy! And you should know, he’s a major banker; he's a vice president of Chase in Los Angeles! It's not a slouch, you know? This is the giant Chavez stable! Okay? It's no slouch!
Shalom, everyone! You.