Okay, first of all, thank everybody for coming. I want to thank you, Shari Tvila, for sponsoring this course. If you'll notice, the flyer said it's a three-part interconnected series, because it is interconnected, and we're dealing with different parts, but we'll all come together at the very end. Okay, so you're going to have to sort of watch, and it'll come together as a whole. Tonight, we're dealing with, what was the dumb title that I made up, right, Shabbos, the ultimate politically incorrect holiday. Shabbos is a sign. We're going to see the wording in the Davening, right? And one of the most famous laws of Shabbat, or Shabbos, or whatever your ethnic orientation is, I will deal with that in a second, is that a non-Jew is not allowed to keep Shabbos. It's not allowed to heroically observe Shabbos. It's the only myths that they can do. They want to go around waving, they love him, that's great.  They're more than welcome to do that, right? But they cannot keep a 100% fully observant Shabbos, right? And our question is going to be, of all myths, vote, why? The introduction that I give to just about every class I ever give, Musakor, it says a Musakor like this, but we just had in the recent part shows. Moshe made a comment to the Jewish people, the verse says, Vaidabra Moshe came from Israel. Moshe speaks what God told him to say. He said it to the Jewish people. What did he tell them? There's going to be redemption. We're going to get out of Egypt. Everything's going to be Andy Dandy. And what's the Jewish people's response below? Samuel Moshe. They didn't listen to Moshe. Why not? They were busy working, and they couldn't listen to him. They were busy building and working away. They didn't pay attention to him. Yes, the Musakor, if you look at the words carefully, it's a little repetitious. It says, Vaidabra Moshe came from Israel. Moshe said what God had told him to the Jewish people. Volosh Shemuel Moshe, and they didn't listen to Moshe. Why didn't he repeat the word Moshe? Could have said Volosh Shemuel a lot. They didn't listen to him. It's one verse right after the other. Moshe told the Jewish people what he was supposed to say, and they did not listen to him. Why did he say they did not listen to Moshe? It says the Musakor, you know why they didn't listen to him? Because he was Moshe. Meaning, Moshe was the tribe of Levi. They weren't working. They were not building the pyramids. They were not working day and night. They were not getting plastered into walls. Moshe of Benu walks in and out of the palace. His life is just fine. He blows in and he tells the Jewish slaves, guys, it's all gonna be amazing. We're gonna get this all gonna be great. Yeah, thank you very much, bud.  We're stuck here working our guts out. You don't know what our life is like and they couldn't listen to him because they did not believe that he understood at all what they were really going through. I don't know you. Some of you I know sort of. I certainly don't know all the people out there who'll be watching this video. I don't know your knowledge base. I don't know your Shabbos experience. Both are crucial. Knowledge base is crucial because I don't wanna be saying things.  I don't wanna be using terms that say, hello, I don't know what you're talking about but there's not much I can do so I'll do the best I can. And I don't know your Shabbos experience. I don't know if Shabbos is beautiful and wonderful and just wanna add a little more depth.  That's why you don't do it anymore, right? I don't know if right now your Shabbos experience is terrible. I have no idea, right? I doubt if like my father in America in the 1920s, I don't think anybody is struggling because you can't find a job if you keep Shabbos. It doesn't really exist anymore but you probably think that you can't become a bazillionaire possibly. You might think that if you don't really believe in divine promise, right? And so I don't know your Shabbos experience which color is what you're gonna think because if Shabbos is great and fun, you're into it. If Shabbos is great, you're coming in with a chip on your shoulder so I have no ideas. I'll just do the best I can. That's my opening. Second opening is I don't know which were, there are people in this world that the word Shabbat makes them uncomfortable. It's Shabbos. And there are people that the word Shabbos makes them uncomfortable. It's Shabbat. Okay, so you just gotta let that go, folks, okay? And I'm just gonna say Shabbos because that's how I grew up and to me it's Shabbos. I couldn't say Shabbos if I had to and if I really thought that would make a difference if you would believe anything I say, I would say the word Shabbos is a scam to make you like me more. But I grew up with Shabbos and we're just gonna call it Shabbos, okay? Good, I'll think. Okay, here we go. So question number one on this whole topic of it. Again, the issue is what do you mean it's a sign? Non-Jews can't keep Shabbos. You have to understand why it's such an enigma. Why is such a big question? Watch the following, some background. There's a book called The Safer Accusery. Now, you know Lavin wrote The Safer Accusery. He lived in the 1100s issue, something, mid-1100s. And he wrote a book called The Safer Accusery. It purports to be the debate between the king of the Khazar kingdom and various religions because he was looking to find the true religion. As a total and complete aside, if you look around you will discover there actually was a Khazar kingdom, 760, 780, 790, something like that in that area in the approximate Kiev-Ukraine area of the world. They did convert to Judaism. Certainly the leaders converted to Judaism. Secularists will say they converted because that's for financial reasons. Legend has it that he was searching for the truth, the king of the Khazars. And he had a debate in his royal court. And Judaism won. They did convert to Judaism. We do have letters. There are letters that exist from the Jewish king of the Khazars to Khazda'im and Shaprut, who was a minister in Spain. And it's in Oxford. These letters are around. They've been researched by scholars. And there were Jewish kings and Jewish generals with names like Hanukkah and Pesach. And they write about the conversion. And Jewish scholars came there. There definitely was a Jewish kingdom called Khazaria with Jewish kings who clearly were religious. And eventually got wiped out. We're not gonna go into history of it. It just got all the story along. Got killed out and wiped out. Eventually, I don't know, about 300 or 900 or something like that. Okay. So Ramira Levy wrote a book. He writes it as if this is the debate that took place in the court of the king. Whether he really had a record of that debate or he just used it as a literary style, the purpose of the book is to prove that Judaism is the true religion and to answer all questions that people have about religion. It's one of the basic books when people want to understand the validity of Judaism and why we believe that Christianity is simply not true and Islam is not true and all the famous questions people have about Judaism. It's studied when I was a principal at the first place. Yaakov used to be the principal of a girl's high school here. I retired because I wanted to be one of those principals who walked out the door while everybody liked him rather than get wheels out the door when you don't know what you're talking about anymore. And so we taught it. It was a two-year course in grades 10 and 11 called the Safer Hakuzeri. So it doesn't matter whether it's the real debate or whether he just created it. But let me tell you how his presentation is the most classic basic elements in all the courses of when we try and understand the difference between Christianity and Islam on one side and Judaism on the other. So in the book, the way it's set up, see he calls in first the Christian. Interestingly enough, by the way, he says why am I not even gonna bother to call in the Jews because the Jews are obviously not God's chosen people.  Why does God have them being treated like garbage? Think 700s, by the way, don't think now. And so they're clearly not doing what God wants because they're a mess. Christianity, Islam, they seem to have success. They must be doing the right thing. So he calls in the Christian. He says, Christian, tell me what your belief system is. And the Christian starts with, we believe we got created the world and everybody dates back from Adam, right? And everything that's in the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, all the way through, da, da, da, then come among Jesus and he changed everything. And the king just, it's not the point. The king just says, well, that's very nice about how do we know Jesus changed it. I never met the guy and that's his word against everybody else. Thank you. He calls in the mazal. The mazal says, we believe in creation and everybody, God created the world in six days and seventh day and Adam and the flood, da, da, da, everything in the Jewish Bible, da, da, da, da, da, right? And then came along Muhammad and God spoke to Muhammad and then Muhammad changed it all and you gotta do what Muhammad says. And he said, well, how do I know God spoke to Muhammad?  Everybody says everything is yet. God created the world. There was an Adam, there was an E, right? There was a Noah, there was a flood, there was an Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, da, da, da, da, da, da, right, and then Jesus came along and changed the whole show. They came along, Muhammad and he changed the whole show. And he calls in the Jew. And the Jew says, so what do you believe in? The Jew says, well, I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and we believe that the Jews were slaves in Egypt and God did 10 plagues and he did miracles and he split the sea and he took him out to the desert and three million people all heard God speak and three million people saw the plagues and three million people saw the sea split and God spoke to three million people and gave him the Torah and we gotta do what it says. And the king flips out at him and it's like a rant.  It's not exactly how he says it but I'm teaching 10th grade girls that's how I phrase it.  He said, what happened to creation?  All religions are based on creation. What do you think we do what God says because God created the world and God created you and every you better get with a program. You left out creation. You guys don't believe that God created the world? Don't you believe God created the world? Yeah, we believe God created the world but that has nothing to do with our religion and that's not what we base ourselves on. We base ourselves on the fact that three million Jews saw 10 plagues in Egypt and God split the sea and he spoke to us about Sinai and Shazam. That's what you gotta do. He says, so if you're not descended from the people that happened to, then you don't do your religion? He said, no, not at all. The Jewish religion's based on God spoke to three million people at Mount Sinai, took them out of Egypt and them and all the descendants gotta do what God says. You're right, we're not based on creation. He even says, you know why we're not based on creation? Cause we weren't there at creation and he says, then look at the 10 commandments. When God introduced himself to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, what did he say? Hello everybody. I know he hashevalo kecha. I'm the Lord your God. I share who, hope seh secha, took you out of Egypt. I know he hashevalo kecha, that's he's the commandant, so I'm the God who took you out of Egypt. God didn't say, yo, hello everybody. I'm the God that created heaven and earth. He didn't even say that about himself. He didn't say that because they would have said, you're the God created heaven and earth says who? But when God said, did you guys get out of Egypt? Oh man, should say, it was only the frogs and the blood. Right, it was God, it was a locus with a sea split. It was unbelievable. He said, you know who did it? I did it. And they said, really? Thanks God, what can we do for you? And he said, 613 commandments. And they said, wow, we sorry, we yes. Okay, that's not what they said, right? But that's the conversation. Continues the Jew explaining to the king, when Moses went to Pharaoh with that, let my people go, yo, Charlton Heston there, you know, with a watch on his hand because they messed it up, right? Yo, Charlton Heston, let my people go, 10 commandments. Right, he goes into Pharaoh and he says, yo, Pharaoh, you know who I am? He said, well, he won. He said, I'm Moses. Yeah, and who do you represent? I represent Elokei, Ivrim. I represent the God of the Ivrim. I'm from Ivrim. Why did he say I represent the God who created heaven and earth? Because Pharaoh would have said, you represent the God who created heaven and earth?  No, I wasn't there. You weren't there. Nobody was there. Who the heck does the great heaven and earth? He said, oh, the God of the Ivrim, that's Abraham. Everybody knew Abraham. Abraham won the world war quite a couple of years earlier. Abraham, Jacob, they knew Jacob. Jacob came to Egypt, Joseph. You know, they certainly knew the Ivrim. As the Pharaoh said, fine, so what is your God? Why didn't he say he wants to let the Jewish people go? He said, well, you know what? You got your God, I got my God. I bet my God's better than your God, so drop dead. And Moses said, okay, we'll see. But Moses did not say, hi, the God who created heaven and earth sent me. Because we don't base ourselves on creation. As a matter of fact, the king even says, so wait a minute. So that means that we don't have to do this religion. And they said, absolutely, of course not. Jesus came to save the whole world. And he didn't accomplish that. Maybe he accomplished a lot, but he didn't accomplish that. Well, he's gonna come back. When he comes back, we'll discuss it. Muhammad came to change the whole world. Didn't accomplish that. Moses never came to change the whole world. We don't change the whole world. It's for us. It's our religion. You want to join? You can join. It's a little expensive, 630 commandments. But you don't have to, keep the seven, go to heaven. Seven no hide laws, and you're good, and we're all happy. Everyone's fine, everyone's built. We don't believe in getting converts. You want to join, it's your choice. Because we're not crazy, based on creation. We don't do the 630 commandments because God created the world. If we did the 630 commandments because God created the world, then everybody should do them because God created everybody. We do the 630 commandments because God took us out of Egypt.  And if you're born into it, you just gotta get with the program. If you're not born into it, want to join? You can join. This is a process to join, but you actually don't have to. And everything you find in Dandy, and we love you. That's the whole introduction. The whole first, I don't know, 60, 80 pages of the safer Hakuza is all based on, that's his whole introduction, that what makes Judaism unique, we're not based on creation, we're not a worldwide religion. We're based specifically on the Zecheli Zecheli Zecheli Zecheli Zecheli Zecheli Zecheli our unique relationship with God is because he took us out of Egypt, and he didn't do that for anybody else. And because of that, we're a unique, special nation. We're the Amnivchar, we're the chosen people. When non-Jews say, you know, you Jews, you guys have a chosen people mentality, that's not true. We don't have a chosen people mentality, we are the chosen people. It's not a mentality, it's a reality. And it's not racist, because anybody coming from part of the chosen people, you can join. Anybody in the world you want to join, you can join. So if you want to be part of the chosen people, you join, just stop crabbing about it, right? Don't argue about it. There's the chosen people, and there's not the chosen people. And we're the chosen people. And God chose us, and we're the Amnivchar, and we're the Amsigula. We have a Segula, which non-Jews don't have. Now this makes some people uncomfortable, but you know what? The fact that you're uncomfortable makes me uncomfortable. So I decided that I'd rather have you be uncomfortable than me be uncomfortable. So I don't care if you're uncomfortable, because you shouldn't be uncomfortable when you hear truth, and if you disagree with the truth, don't be uncomfortable, just disagree. Well, like being a disagree, there's no concept of being uncomfortable. It's the concept that was just created in today's times, because no one wants to talk truth, so they just go by emotions. Side, pardon me, little rant from a seven-year-old guy who really still believes in values and truth, and not, I'm okay, you're okay, one in one is whatever makes you comfortable is one in one, all right? Okay, we apologize. Actually, I don't apologize. We are the Amsigula. What does it mean to be the Amsigula? What does it mean by the Amsigula? We're God's special treasure. So the truth is, there's a beautiful letter from Ruff Cook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine, right, when it was still Palestine. It's in the context of a whole bunch of other things, right? But it's in the book, Selected Letters of Avram Yusuf of Cohen Cook. And he writes like this. He writes a very beautiful idea. He says, you should know there are two main things that together build the holiness of Israel and the divine connection to them. There's two things that connect us to the divine. The first is the Skula, that we're God's special treasure. And what does this mean? It's the nature of holiness that is in the soul of the Jewish people. As a legacy, we inherited it from the patriarchs, from the matriarchs. As it says, you shall be my Skula, me call her Amid. This Skula is an inner holy power, which God's will was to inlay in the nature of the soul. And it, like the nature of everything existing, cannot be changed if you're Jewish, you're born with it, and you got it. You can activate it, you cannot activate it, you can disregard it, but you got it. Because it exists. And whatever God created, it exists forever. Who am I? You're some of the Ammo, everything exists forever. Of course, then the other connection we have to the good Lord is using our free will. We do Mitzvot, we study Torah, the more holy things we do, the closer we connect to God. Truth is, he says, that Skula, that inner sanctity and holiness really creates a more powerful bond. But it has to be activated. You can disregard it. You may not even know necessarily you have it, right? But it exists.  Ruff Cook goes on, by the way, to explain. He said, in the footsteps of the coming of Mashiach, Iqvis of the Mashiachah, right? As we are getting closer and closer, we all know that the Kabbalists tell us that the world rolling says for 6,000 years, and we're in 5,780, there's only 220 to go. Clearly, you see world history is accelerating at a dramatic pace, right? Chavez-Kheim's famous concept is, you see we're getting closer to the end of times, right? If you look at world history, it usually developed quite slowly. If you would take a human being who lived in 1450 and parachuted him into 1550, he wouldn't find life much different. And if he went from 1550 to 1650, he still wouldn't have found life too much different. 1650 to 1750 a little more. 1750 to 1850 Industrial Revolution. 1850 to 1950, wow, airplanes, television. 1950, you don't have to jump 100 years. 1950 to 1990, 1990 to 2000, 2000. Go back five, 10 years, and what's the world different? Who's in charge? Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys in the world? Technology, things have dramatically changed you in your pockets, you have more computing power than they had in the 1950s, all right? I remember when I got my first computer, I had a 20 gigabyte hard drive, it was like that big, right? You know what I mean? And I'm not 100 years old, okay? World accelerates at a dramatic pace where at the end of times, since I've cooked at the end of times, the power of Segula will become greatly strengthened in order to bring the Jewish people closer so they'll be attuned to the arrival of the Mashiach. And that's why you can find Jews who do bad deeds, right? Meaning they, free will-wise, they claim they don't believe in God and they don't believe in the Torah, yet they're unbelievably connected to the Jewish people. We never had that. People converted out and left. People left the shtetl and never came back. People converted to Christianity because financially it was more viable. The concept of people who were not Torah observant but felt very Jewish is a new phenomenon, historically that never existed, right? Never existed. Either you're in or you're out, right? The concept of, you know, are there any Jews on the plane, right? Where does that come from? That's the school, as we get closer to the time of Mashiach. There's that inner school, right? Why does he, Theodore Herzl, his original, Theodore Herzl's original plan, we remember, was how is he gonna solve the Jewish problem, right? His plan was what? Was to have everybody convert to Christianity, right? Which was smart and made it actually a heck of a lot of sense, right? And that it wouldn't fly. And he was so disciplined, he was bitterly disappointed that no one would buy into that because it made so much sense. And all his friends, none of us, you don't believe in Judaism, you don't believe in Bible, you don't believe in anything, convert to Christianity, and then you'd go to university and no one'll bother you. And he couldn't understand why it wouldn't fly. It wouldn't fly because of Segulla. There's that inner Jewish sense. People just feel there's that sense. And we all, and today's day and age, we see it more and more and more. Jews have that non-Jews don't. And therefore non-Jews don't. And therefore Judaism is for Jews who have the Segulla. By the way, when you convert, if it's something you're born with, as a safer Cousy explains, it started with Adam, Adam had it. It went down one person to one person. Eventually Abraham got it. Abraham passed it to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob. Jacob passed it to all his 12 sons. And then at the covenant at Sinai, when we became the Jewish people, when God spoke to 3 million people simultaneously, bam! Everybody got it, for better, for worse. And then switched and got handed down by mothers, not fathers, which is a different topic, as I said. And now everybody's born with it for better, for worse. How to converts get it? They're born again. You know the concept of born-again Christians? They stole it from us. Of course, that's exactly where it comes from.  A convert who converts to like a newborn baby. So much so a newborn baby that in absolute theory, if a brother and sister convert, they're really not brother and sister because they're newborn and they're not really related and theoretically, they could marry each other. Okay, they don't, but an abstract concept. So here we go. So the Jewish people are based on the fact that they have this inner school law which came on to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. We base our religion not on creation. We base our religion on Sinai. That's why only those who are at Sinai and their descendants have to do the religion in the first place. Yet what's Shabbat? That's the most famous prayer of Shabbat. The Shamrubinah is the al-Sashabahs. Right? You know, you say that when you hold that little plastic cup of grape juice. That's this, this Kabbalistic reasons. Plastic, the numerical value of the word plastic relates to God, 70 times God is plastic. I just made that up. Okay, that's not true. You do not have to hold a little plastic cup of grape juice. You don't even have to drink any grape juice to fulfill your obligation of kidnish. You just have to hear someone make kidnish and the person, somebody has to drink some grape juice.  That should be your biggest problem when you get in 120 years. You need all that little plastic cup of grape juice. But I see people like freaking, I already have my plastic cup of grape juice. Shamrubinah is the al-Sashabahs. Jewish people keep the Shabbahs, right? Friday night, we say it in our Davening and Karabakh binyanimates become famous. Karabakh tuned to it. Okay. Shamrubinah is the al-Sashabahs. Jewish people keep the Shabbahs. La'asot et al-Sashabah, l'dorosam perisolam. We keep the Shabbahs forever as an everlasting covenant. Bani uvein bani Israel. This is a sign, a covenant between me, says God, and the Jewish people. Cause non-Jews don't have Shabbahs. Oh, see, Leolim, it's an everlasting sign that what? Keshesh, yesyami, masash, shem, esachamim, esa aris. God created the world in six days, and on the seventh day, he rested. What? It's a sign between me and the Jewish people that God created the world. But Judaism is not based on creation. But we also have creation. The whole point of the safer kuzni was when the Christian said, what do we believe? He started with creation. When the Muslim said, what do we believe? He started with creation. And when the Jew said, what do you believe? He didn't even say creation. And yet, what's Shabbat? Creation, and non-Jews can't do it. That is the problem. You hear it? Come on. Next problem, as you may or may not know, either you're like, I knew that, or like, hey, that's so cool, I didn't know that. One of the two is that, during the week, we pray three times a day, Shacharism and Chammar, morning, afternoon, and evening, the prayer service, the amidah. The amidah is really what prayer is. Everything else is introductory or finishing up. When we talk about prayer, I'll begin with your prayer. We pray three times a day. We talk about the amidah with the Shimonah Esrae, called Shimonah Esrae because Shimonah Esrae is 18 and there's 19 blessings in it. But why is it called 18 when there's 19 blessings? Jews are usually pretty good at math. It's also not part of this discussion because there was originally 18, then they added in the 19th. So it's called Shimonah Esrae, or amidah, because we say it's standing up. The amidah for Chacharism and Chammar is basically exactly the same. Certainly the middle brachot are the same. One little brachatien, sim shalom, shalom rub, if you dab it, nisachashkanaz, right, is different. But otherwise it's the same. Three times a day the same. Three times a day the same, right? If you dab it on holidays, three times a day the same. Shabbat, they're not the same. Did you know that? The Friday night amidah, the Shabbos morning amidah, and the Shabbos afternoon amidah ain't the same. Watch. The Friday night amidah. Well the opening three brachot and the ending three brachot are always the same. That's the structure of Shimonah Esrae. Opening three brachot, which we discuss God's power because no point in talking to God if you don't think you control stuff. And the ending is in which we thank God because you don't ask and say, like, how about thank you for what you already do have? Oh, yeah, and thanks for what I do have, right? But the middle is the middle. Friday night the middle is, Vaychulah shemaim v'ar shaval cholz v'am, the section from Genesis from Brachus, which talks about, God finished the heaven and the earth. Vaychalah okim bayom ashvim b'lachtoah sherasah and he finished all the work that he did. Vaishpotin got rested on the seventh day and he blessed the seventh day. Kivo Shavatnikomlap Tokoz on the seventh day got rested from all the work that he did. Discusses creation. Vaiter, back to creation. What's this creation? I mean, it doesn't represent, right? Seventh day he rested, right? That talks about creation. Shabbos morning. Shabbos morning. What do we say? Yismat, we don't say Vaychulah. We don't read that chapter, that section from Genesis from Brachus, which discusses that Shabbat is the seventh day, the day that got rested. We don't mention that. We talk about Yismach, Moshe, B'matnel, Chelco, Kievan, Neman, Kugasolo. Moshe should be happy with that great gift that he received. He received the Luchos and Mount Sinai. He got the tablets. He got the Torah. Evanem and Kulilte first, bro. Shonasat, B'matnel, Fanechel, Harsinai. Moshe stood up on Mount Sinai. Hushne luchot avanim ha'id b'yadoh. And he brought down the two Luchos, which caused him to wear Shabbos, which in the Ten Commandments on those two tablets, it happens to mention Shabbos. But we're talking about Mount Sinai. So Friday night, we're talking about Shabbos Brachus as a commentary say. The Shabbos of Brachus, the Shabbos of the creation. Shabbos morning, we're talking about Shabbos and Maten Torah. Tradition tells us that the Torah was given on Shabbos. In that amida, we then say, volonisato ashem alokainu lo goyeho arutsos. God did not give Shabbos to the nations of the world. Lo hinchalto, he didn't give it as an inheritance. Lo ovdei psilim to those who worship idols. L'gambim minuchato lo yishkinua reilim. Nanjus may not rest on the Shabbat. Ki Israel amcha nesatobiyahavah. You gave it to your nation, Israel. Ze'riyako vashher bam bacharta. You gave it to the descendants of Yakovet, you chose. Shabbos morning, we mentioned Nanjus are not allowed to keep it. Shabbos morning is when we talk about the Shabbat in which the Torah was given. Menchant Shabbos. What do we talk about? Atah echad, atah echad, the Shemchah echad amig. Ya Mkhaisel, some synagogue sing it, if the tune rings about. Atah echad, you are one, Shemchah echad, your name is one, Mekamkhaisel, goyechabars, and your nation Israel is single, Tifer is good, we love our terraces shuah. Yo minuchah kudushil amchad, asatavahavah, goyeel, yishkoyakov, minuchah semes, minuchah sholom, hashgate, betach, minuchah shleimah, total rest, peace, calm, comfort. What total peace? What calm, what comfort? We're not in total peace, we don't have calm, we don't have comfort. Say the commentaries, you know what Shabbat is talking about? Messiah coming. The days of Mashiach are called yomshekuloshabbat. When the Messiah comes, every day will be Shabbat, because there'll be calm and peace, and no war, and no troubles, and no pain, and no sickness, and we'll all be calm and restful. Friday night, we talk about Shabbat's gracious, Shabbat's a creation. Shabbat's morning we talk about, the Shabbat, the day that God gave the 10 commandments, and there's what we mentioned non-Jews can't do Shabbat. Shabbat minchah we talk about, the Shabbat, the days of the Messiah, which will all be like Shabbat. What's going on here? So what is Shabbat? So Shabbat is creation? Shabbat is a prelude to the Messiah? Shabbat represents giving the Torah a Sinai? What's Shabbat a symbol of? What are we thinking about on Shabbat? Well, let's look at Kiddish, folks. What do we say at Kiddish? So at Kiddish, we mix and match. The Friday night Kiddish, which is the main Kiddish, right? Obligation to be Makaddish, the Shabbat's on wine, when Shabbat starts. The Y wine we'll talk about next class, wine, women, and song. That's the next class. What do we do on Kiddish Friday night? First, we start with, Vaychula Shemaivar as the pulse of the arm. God finished creation. They spoke Mayomashvih, he rested on the seventh day, so we start with creation. The second half we say, Ashe Kinshahda we mitzvotav, God sanctified us with his commandments. Right? Ruratsavanu, he wanted us. Shabbat kachobi avar gharatson hinchilanu. God gave us the Shabbat, Zikaron. What are the next words? A remembrance, ma seboratishis. A remembrance of creation. Yom tchilolimikrayi kodish, it's the first holiday we ever got. Zecheli it's the Esmitsrayi, where we remember the exodus. Are we remembering creation? Or are we remembering the exodus? What's going on here? That's the enigma of Shabbat. Well, time's up and we'll leave for next week. Just kidding. Okay, to solve it all. So I apologize to those who have heard me speak many times in Charit-Tvila on Rosh Hashanah during the explanatory services. You must have heard this before, but it just so happens that this is just the best concept to deal with it. The entire idea here is based on the following concept. I once got a brochure in the mail and it was a big glossy advertising brochure, right?  And I said, whoa, that's true. Clothes are just clothes. Turn it open. Big fancy house. You are not the house you live in. I said that's true. You're not the house you live in, that's a house. Big fancy car. It says, you're not the car you drive. I said, oh, that's for sure. You're not the car you drive. Car. Pshh. Off it says, you're not the job that you have. I said, you're right, jobs, it's a job, right? Less age. It says, you are your watch. And it had advertising, so like $10,000 watches. I said, good Lord, what kind of Miss Sugner in their head would spend 10,000 bucks on the first stunk in a watch? I said, and how's anybody supposed to know cost you 10,000 bucks to knock us you by Times Square for 10 bucks? Looks the same thing. But do you walk around with a price tag so people can see it?  You're in a $10,000 watch. You don't even look at it until the time you look at your phone anyways, for God's sakes. I said, what kind of lunatic would spend money like that, all right? You are your watch. I used to know what I taught in first place, so in grade nine, and ninth grade for those that were listening in the United States of America, all right? In ninth grade, I did a project. I would tell the girls like this, so can everybody take out a piece of paper? Right? Don't put your name on it. And I want you to write a paragraph, just who are you? Just who are you? Without using your name, obviously. No name. Just who are you? Right, who are you? What are you, who are you? Just describe yourself. Who are you? And then we collect them when we read them. And I would point out, look what different kids wrote. Some kids wrote, I'm the third child in the family of six kids, and right? Some kids, I'm five foot, four feet tall with brown hair. Some people describe it based on their family, right?  Some kids describe it as something they look like. I'm five foot this, and just color eyes, just color hair. Some says I'm very athletic. And some kids describe, you know, I'm very sensitive, I'm very intuitive, right? How do you describe yourself? Some, my purpose was, who and what do you assume you are? If you're understanding who and what you are is that you're five foot two, and you have, you know, blonde hair, and you have a nice complexion.   And of course, who are you? See, there's what you do, and there's who you are. What you do should reflect who you are.  We're gonna do that again. There's what you do, and there's who you are. What you do should be a reflection of who you are. You do not use what you do to create who you are. Shemlech, what's your name? Name's Ruvane Schwartz. Oh, hi, Shemlech, Ruvane Schwartz. What do you do? I'm a lawyer. What did he say? I am a lawyer. No, you're not Ruvane Schwartz. You are not a lawyer. You do lawyering. That's what you do, but who are you? I'm kind, I'm selfish. I believe in saving the whales. I struggle with A, B, and C. That's who you are. For nine, 10, 11, 12 hours a day, you do lawyering. You do architecture, you do doctoring. That's what you do, but we've been so ingrained in Western culture that I am a doctor, I am a lawyer, I am an architect. It's what you do, it's not who you are. Let's take it deeper, very difficult concept. Bear with me. Capitalists tell us like this, should we doze talks, yes, should we doze talks about this at length, right? We say, oh, Lano, I don't know what you're doing. Everybody says, ah, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Everybody says, oh, Lano, right? We'll get to the end of the, what did we say, right? F is Malkano, F is Sula So. F is Malkano, there's nothing else but God. Ain't Ode. There's nothing else. There is nothing else in the world but God. Kihua, kihashem hu alokim, bashamay mi mal. God is in total, he's up in the heavens, al-a'ariz mitachas, God's down here on earth, Ain't Ode.  It says Ain't Ode, there is nothing else. Before that, we say, shuna, tashamay, yin, yin, yin, yin, yin, al-a'ariz, bashamay mi koak, bashamay mi mal, shin, nasa, zah, ba, go, ver, min, hu alokim, hu Ain't Ode. Hu alokim, hu, he's our God. There's nothing else. MS Malkenu, SS Zula, so our king is true. There is nothing else besides God. Two things cannot exist in the same space. God is everywhere.  There's Uncle Moishi, don't argue with Uncle Moishi, okay? All right? God's everywhere. So how did God create a world? It's a table. If this is a table, so God's gots not here. There's a table here. But there's nothing else in the world but God's! How could it be a table if there's nothing else but God's? That's not true, there's God in tables. And there's God in watches. So what do you mean there's nothing else but God? There's a watch, there's not a watch? There's God, it's not God's, watch. So what do you mean there's nothing else but God? This looks like a, looks like a watched me. Truth is, there is no watch here, there's not a watch. There's no table. There's nothing else but God. In order for humans to be able to fulfill the Torah and do what God wants to exist on this earth and choose good within the choices of good and evil. And that's what we're here for. Why he needed this to be done is a different series, all right, but that's what he said. So we can't choose good and evil if there'd be no tables and no watches. We need stuff, we need stuff. I need a table so I can put food on it and do a midst of giving somebody else to eat. I need a table so I can pick it up and throw it across the room in anger and break it and do a sit or steal it, right? Or help somebody else carry it out to their car because they need to borrow it or steal it out of their house and sell it on the black market. There gotta be stuff in the world so that we can use it to serve God. So in our limited capacity as humans, because unfortunately we only have five senses which really limits our ability to see everything that's going on and see reality as it is. Because now today we even know that this table is not exactly what it appears to be. It's really moving molecules and energies. We know that, right? We know a lot more about this table than we ever did before, right? So really God allowed in our human terms to perceive the world as if there is stuff here for the purpose of being able to serve God. But that's the only reason all this stuff exists. So if you use the stuff in the world, not for the purpose of serving God, then then you believe there's things other than God in this world. There's God, but sometimes you can just put God in your pocket and now there's just me and my stomach and my, I just, me for what purpose? For me. I'm worried about God this morning. This evening, this is Figenbaum time. There's no Figenbaum. Figenbaum is here to serve God. In order for Figenbaum to serve God, he needs to be well-fed because he can't serve God very well if he's hungry. In order for Figenbaum to serve God, he needs clothes. And in order for Figenbaum to serve God, he needs to get a good night's sleep. In order for Figenbaum to serve God, he needs sometimes to take a vacation. Otherwise, Figenbaum's gonna be really cranky and he won't be able to do the midst of it being nice to your wife and being kind and patient with people because the God created humans that they need vacations. In order for Figenbaum to take a vacation, Figenbaum needs money. In order for Figenbaum to get the money in order to be able to buy the food which will keep him well-fed so that he can do midst most and teach Torah and hold doors open for little old ladies and give people rides in his car. I can't have a car in which to drive to synagogue too and give rides to people too or else I have money to buy that car in order to buy the car. I have to go to work and do whatever I gotta do, right? But I wake up in the morning on a breakfast for what purpose? So that I could go to work. I'm going to work so I could make money. I'm going to make money so I could buy stuff I need. I need stuff in order to what? In order to retire and set you out on the beach until I die. Oh, then why are you on this earth? To serve yourself. Then you're an idol worshiper. Oh yeah, you pull God out of your pocket when you need him. Everybody needs God every once in a while but then when he gets to the way just put him back in your pocket and say, okay, now don't bug me, now it's my time. There's nothing else but God in the world. I get up and eat breakfast so that I can be healthy, so that I can get to work, so that I can make money, so that with the money I can buy stuff and do things which will give me the ability to accomplish my purpose on this earth. Which for me is to teach Torah and hold doors open for little old ladies and to answer emails of people that have questions and for you might be to give charity and to help orphans and to volunteer for organizations and to raise money to fix up this social hall, right? And they still collecting for that around here, right? And whatever it is, and to support worthy causes and to teach Torah and to be nice to people. The 613 myths vote, you got plenty of choices of what you can do.  Because not well-rested Feigenbaum will do sins and bad stuff. Well-rested Feigenbaum's will hopefully do the right thing. But that's what the material world is here for because it doesn't really exist. It's a figment of our imagination that God allowed to exist in order that we can serve God because all that exists on this world is accomplishing beautiful things, make the world a better place and fulfilling the values that God gave us. That's why the 613 commandments and that's why the laws of Judaism apply to armies and to economy and to old age people and to the environment and to how you run your postal service and in every aspect of life can be infused with sanctity and kadoosha. How do we accomplish this? How do we make sure that we're focused on this? Number seven. Somebody once asked me a question. You know, I don't understand. I thought Jewish people are really good at math. Okay, well, let's say they are. That's the racist comment, but I'll accept it as it is. Jews are good at math, so what bothers you? You know what bothers me? You know what I discovered? I just got my calendar from, you know, my Jewish calendar from whatever store gave them out. And you know what's funny? I said, what's funny? He says, you know, Rosh Hashanah, the new year. I said, yeah, the new year. He said, you know, that ate the first month at a calendar. I said, you're right, bud, right? He said, the first month of the Jewish calendar is Nisan. He said, I said, Rosh Hashanah comes out in month seven. So why are we wishing people happy new year in month seven? Like, I can't choose, like, figure that out. Like, happy new year is month one. He said, no, no, happy new year is month seven. Why is new year month seven? What's month one? I just had it in the Torah reading. The first metzvah, the Jews, God, as a nation, Abraham had circumcision, as a nation in the land of Egypt. What was the first commandment? Ha'chodashazel, lachem, rochchadashim, yishon, hulachem, lachachashanah. This month, the month of Nisan, the month of the exodus, that will be the first month of the year. That was the first thing. Moses, God says, more than an errand. Yeah, we're Korean Jewish people. Yeah? Yeah, we're all pumped up, man.  It's gonna be great. It's gonna be, you're gonna have a lot of commandments. Here's the first one. You ready? Number one, number one, God. What's it? Let's go. What's the very first thing we gotta know? You know, the first thing you gotta know is what, that, the month of Nisan? Yeah? That's month number one. Yeah? Yeah, and, and that's it. Thank you very much.   And you have to clean the refrigerators with a toothbrush and a lot of other stuff. But the first one is Nisan, that's the first commandment to the Jewish people. Yes! Cause we start our year by the fact that we became a nation and we have a value system, we have a purpose on this earth. Do we care about the material world? Absolutely, we celebrate the creation of the material world. But we celebrate it in month number seven. Why seven? You've heard this before from me. Number six represents the material world with no value, the six days of the work week. Amalek, the great nemesis of the Jewish people, the nation that represents evil for the sake of evil. The numerical value of Amalek is 240. Two plus four is six.  The little Sephardic fellow came in and said, you know what the gematria of Amalek is? I said, yeah, sure. The miracle value of Amalek is 240. He goes, aha, do you know what else is 240? I said, no, I give up, what else? He goes, mas hach nasa, income tax is also 240. And dalit vav lamin resh, dollar is also 240. Amalek, evil. Number six, six is a material world with six days of the week. Six thousand years before Messiah comes. Six represents material world without sanctity. Seven represents the material world infused with sanctity. Eight is above. The most of Messiah, when Messiah comes in the world to stay the same, most opinions. It just will be clarity, it'll be truth, and it'll be values because people will get it. Shabbat is seven. We've been to this before, we know Shabbat, the number seven, one of them done a thousand times. That's the case, people haven't heard it. How do you start Shabbat? You like candles? What's the Hebrew word for a candle? Nair, nun resh. Nun is 50, resh is 200, 250, two plus five is seven. What do you do after you like candles? You make kiddish on wine. Hebrew word for wine, yayin, yud, yud, nun. Yud is 10, 10, 20, and another 50 is 70. That's seven. After the wine, what do you do? You make a mochi atchala, ches lamin hay. Ches is eight, lamin is 30, that's 38. Hay is another five, 38 and five, 43, four plus three, seven. After the chala, what do you have? You have fish, dog, dalit gimmel, three plus four, seven. After the fish, you have soup. Men, moresh, kuf, marak. Men is 40, resh is 240, plus kuf is 100. Is three, 43, plus four, seven. After the marak, you have meat. Pasar v'dagim, b'chol matamin, pasar. Bayes, shin, resh. That's shin and resh, it's a 500. Bayes is two, 502. Two plus five is seven. Shabbat is seven. Chol doesn't work, okay? But kugel does, I think if you spell it kiggle, one of my students wants to figure that out. Better say kugel or kiggle. Shabbat is seven. How do we greet people on Shabbat? Shabbat samayach? No. What do we say? Shabbat shalom. Shalom is 376. Three plus seven is 10. 10 plus six is 68. One plus six is seven. Shalom is shlemut, peace. Wholeness, the word shalom means peace. Shalem means completion. Wholeness. Cause it's a material world and the spiritual world. All fuse together for one purpose, to serve God. So we celebrate Shabbat by eating and drinking and you're obligated to have special Shabbat clothes and special Shabbat foods. And if you have little kids, they have their Shabbat pajamas and all my grandchildren have their Shabbat cereals. That's where they can have their sugared cereals. They have their Shabbat's pajamas and their Shabbat cereals. And we have our Shabbat's clothing and our Shabbat's hats and our Shabbat's suits and our Shabbat's table cloths. Cause we infuse a material world with sanctity. Don't run away from the spiritual material world. We don't go onto the mountaintop or we're not celibates. And we drink wine and we marry women, wine, women and song this next week. But we infuse it with sanctity. Cause what's the greatest peace? We're chas kohanim, the blessing that the priests give out. Yiverecha shem vishmerecha, God should guard you. Yisah shem panah velecha vichunnecha. Last one, ayyar shem panah velecha vichunnecha. The last one, Yisah shem panah velecha. Yisah shem lecha shalom, that's how it ends. Yisah shem lecha shalom, God should give you peace. Lecha is singular, isn't peace between people? Shouldn't it be Yisah shem lechem, God should give you plural peace? You should all get along in peace. Can't get it to be in peace with everybody else if you're not at peace with yourself. Yisah shem lecha shalom, God should give you peace. Shabbat is peace. Cause Shabbat takes the material world and tells you it's a tool, it's not an end. Don't, you wanna be spiritual? Don't run away from the material world. Conquer it, take advantage of it, use it to accomplish something. Use it to reflect who you are. Don't use it to create a persona. Use it to reflect who you are. You need to do misload, you need a car. To go do misloads, you need a car.  So when you're buying your car, you're buying it as a tool to serve God. Not as a way to make yourself into a somebody, look at the car I got. You're not building a house. You're building a physical structure for your home. Cause you can't have a co-home in the middle of the park. A home needs some beds and some walls and heating and air conditioning. What's the numerical value of Shabbat? Shabbat is 702, Shin is 300, Bayes is 2, 302, tough as far as 702. 702 is nine. Isn't that a problem where I find my mom? No, you know what nine is? Told you a thousand times. Nine is MS, truth. Oliph is one, Mem is 40, 41 plus 200 plus tough is four and 441. Four plus four plus one is nine. Truth is nine, why is truth nine? Cause nine is a universal number. Nine times two is 18, one plus eight is nine. Nine times two is 27, two plus seven is nine. Nine times four is 36. Three plus six is nine. Nine times nine is 81. One plus eight is nine. Nine times seven is nine. Nine times anything is nine. Cause truth is truth is truth is truth. No matter what you do with truth, it'll all boil down to truth. And if you're keeping Shabbat and you're celebrating Shabbat and you understand the relationship of you and the material world, you'll always have truth. But the material world is dangerous, my friends. Chodashah is very nice. If you make it, you write it has to be the first, but it's very dangerous. You can get messed up if you're involved in the material world. It could take you over. Wouldn't it be safer to just stay away for the material world? Go up in that mountain top just never get married. Take a vow of silence. Would you be safer that way? It is dangerous. And it got misused. Adam was created and he had Shabbat. Seven day creation, he had Shabbat. One of the famous proofs that there must have been a, the creation account must be correct. How does the whole world have a seven day week? Famous proof of the safer accusary. The fact that everybody uses a base stand number, all the monkeys that grew into people had 10 fingers and toes. The fact that the whole world follows the moon of the sun, they looked up. All the monkeys that grew into people followed the moon of the sun. But all the monkeys that grew into people, why they decided to divide up that month, that lunar cyclinthus by seven. It doesn't divide by seven.  There's nothing in nature that seven.  Month is approximately 30 days. Make five weeks of six. Make six weeks of five. Make three of 10.   The only reason seven makes sense is because Adam had seven. He passed on everybody had seven. Adam had seven. But what happened to the material world? It was a flood because they misused the material world. They didn't appreciate they couldn't control the material world. And after the flood, things change. The meddler says that before the flood, there was no such thing as seasons. I forget who it is, a Clioca, the Svondra, remember who says the whole idea, seasons comes because the world is out of tilt, out of an axis. That tilt happened after the flood. God said too much materialism. You can't have a world where there's no season. It's always sun, it's always night, and it's always easy. It's always beautiful. It got misused. And therefore after the flood, what does the verse say? God says kai fachor fachor fachor, cold, sun, heat, winter, summer, spring, fall, lowly, smokey, they will never stop. Because there never was such a thing. But now there's going to be and the lowest from now on, the lowest will be seasons. Because you need to have changing seasons. You need to realize the material world is not so simple. And that's where their inmates get the idea, lo yishmosu, you're not allowed to rest. You've got to keep working. Because you've got to pay attention to the material world. And we lost Shabbat. Because they misused the material world. They didn't know how to use it correctly. And then God chose the Jewish people and he gave them a special unique soul of a connection to God. And he said, you will be the mission to the world to show how you can use the material world properly. And you will have Shabbat. So K. Mount Sinai, after Akhode Shazel Lachem, after God told the Jewish people, you got to know that your first month is number one, is Nisan. That's your value system. No, you're not going to get rid of the material world. But we're just going to make it number seven. And you're going to show the world what it means to use the material world to reflect who you are, not use it to create who you are. So the Jews were given Shabbat. Because we have that Segullah. For the same reason that non-Jews are allowed to bring sacrifices, but only one kind of sacrifice called the Korban Olah. The sacrifice that gets consumed totally up on the altar. The Korban Shlamim, which part of it is eaten by the person who brings it, part of it is eaten by the priest and part gets consumed on the altar, which is why it's called a Shlamim from the word Shalom, peace, because everybody gets to have something of it. Only a Jew can bring that. Only a Jew is a concept of using the material world for spirituality.  The non-Jews are not given the Segullah. They don't have that spiritual inequality to be able to conquer the material world. And therefore they may not keep Shabbat, because Shabbat represents number seven. Shabbat represents taking the material world and fusing it with sanctity. They can be sanctified. They wanna be sanctified, let them live on a mountain top, let them take a vow of silence, let them be a celibate, that to a certain extent easier. The challenge of taking the material world and using it properly, you gotta have the Segullah to do that. They can get the Segullah if they want, they wanna join, but it means 613 commandments, because if you wanna be able to use the material world properly and keep Shabbat, that comes with a lot of stuff. You can't just keep Shabbat in nothing else because you need to have your whole focus. How you run your business has to be based on the laws of the Torah. The kind of food you eat during the week has to be based on the laws of the Torah.  There's a lot of things you gotta do to keep that spiritual sensitivity and it culminates in the concept of Shabbat. And therefore, at night when we pray and night represents darkness and lack of clarity, we mention Shabbat brashis. The original Shabbat of creation, because material world in and of itself creation is hard always to see how to use it. But that's where we start. You gotta start with the material world, but the material world all by itself is dark and dangerous. Shabbat day, day light, we then add in Mount Sinai, Ten Commandments, Divine Revelation, that gives light to the material world. And that's, on Shabbat day, we add in that component and in that phila we say, and therefore Shabbat was not given. When Shabbat was given to the world at Mount Sinai, to shed light on that very dark material world, only the people who had that school law, only the people who went through the Exodus, only the Jewish people were given that gift. And on Shabbat day, it says, Bologna Satoh God did not give it to the non-Jews, only those who experienced Revelation and have that special extra soul, they can shed light on that material world, day light. But when we end Shabbat, we say, you know, what's our goal though? Is our goal to keep this to ourselves? No! Our goal is Yamosa Mashiach. Someday the whole world will come to this recognition. What's gonna happen when the Messiah comes and the whole world will be full of the knowledge of God? When the whole world will see the light of God and the whole world will see the truth? Then yes, well all the whole world will be able to use the material world properly and it'll be Yom Shekulosh Shabbat, it'll all be Shabbat. We wanna keep it for ourselves, we wanna be a light into the nations of how to run the world properly and how to run your communities properly and how to have a marriage which is proper. That's our goal. Let me just end with one quick vort and we'll get you out of here. I know I'm a little over, but it's a pelleting of vort. It's not minus Yosemach Mashiach. It says Yosemach Mashiach like this. In the creation, if you remember when it comes to creating an atom, by the way, when we celebrate the creation of the world, actually we're celebrating the creation of atom, not the first five days, I assume you know that, but that's another topic. Okay, at the creation of an atom, the famous line, Nasa and let us make man. Romney Torsky has a great book called Let Us Make Man. And all the companies, God's talking to them, us make man, God's not us. Who's us? So some commentaries say he was taking advice from the ministering angels because he was teaching you derelict habits when you're doing something, talk to the people that you're working with, don't run the show all by yourself. Even God, it's sort of like ask their opinion to sort of bring him in. Says Yosemach Mashiach, you know who us is? God could not make Adam, not Adam as in Adaminy, but Adam, humans. God could not make Adam all by himself. All God can do is give raw material. God can create a walking, talking, two-legged mammal. And Adam is a combination of God's raw material and the Adam's free will choices that turns that raw material into something. That's called an Adam. Without your choices, you're walking, talking mammal. You're not Adam.  I'll put in the raw material. The humans will put in their free will choices and together that will create Adam for better or for worse, depending on your free will choices. You have free will.  We have total free will on those decisions. We take the material world as raw material and our job on this earth is to use our free will choices. Don't let the material world create who you are. Your choices decide what you do with that material world and it reflects your values. And what's the numerical value of Adam? Aleph is one, Dolla is four, one in four is five, Mendez 40, 45, four plus five is nine and that's truth. You use your free will choices properly. That's what the ultimate truth is. You create Adam, you create sanctity in the material world and Shabbos represents it. What does the kiddish on wine? What's the singing asius high all? What's all the Shabbos food about? Just as a hint for next week, everybody knows why do we have two hello Friday night? Why do we have two hello Friday night? Because the manna that came down in the desert, they got one portion every day but it didn't come down on Shabbat, double came down on Friday. Double manna came down on Friday. So we remember the manna. The Hebrew word for manna was mud. We represent the mud, mem nun. Mem is 40, nun is 50, 40 plus 50 is 90. Manna, the basic substance of food is also nine, is also truth, but we'll pick that up. Next week in Mirza Shem, thank you very much.


Really warm welcome to each of you. Thank you so much for joining us today for this, the first deep adaptation Q&A and today we are joined by Stephen Wright. Stephen, thank you for being here. So I have the deep honor of serving with Stephen on the members of the deep adaptation forum holding group. So Stephen is an interface minister and spiritual director and trustee for the Sacred Space Foundation, which is a retreat and guidance center in the Northwest of England. Stephen offers spiritual guidance as well as support in development of the practice of healing, spiritual care, conflict resolution and leadership. He's also an author. I've got one of these books here, which I hope we'll hear a little bit more about later. Stephen, it's really, really great that you've joined us. Thank you. I'm curious whether there is anything else about you that you would like people to know. Oh, I have an any type three personality so keep going. No, but we can explore that a little more about how many of those things that you've said, while they mean they're not me. And that'll be, I think, part of our subject matter for everyone today. Thanks. So I'll jump straight in because there are a lot of things that I would really love to hear you speaking about. But the first thing that I want to ask you to speak about is maybe really, really simply the connection between spirituality and well being and particularly in the context of facing the enormity, the existential terror of looking into unfolding collapse of society. Let's play for a minute with the notion of spirituality and well being, I would say spirituality is well being. If we look at the evidence, what keeps us healthy in the world is a sense of connection to the world to each other to ourselves. And for most people, a sense of the something other. What kinds of names. Some call it God, I tend to avoid that word because it's so gender driven. But if we look at the evidence for what keeps us healthy makes us gives us a sense of well being. What subverts it primarily is stuff that is fear driven whatever that fear source is. And we can add into the mix at the moment. A sense that I have that there's never been a time in my lifetime when there's been so much fear about when I was a teenager. There was so much fear because we all thought we were going to die because the bomb was going to drop, but that was about it. There was the one thing. Now we have a deep sense of fear in the world because of more of us are aware of cultural collapse climate collapse political collapse so on and so on and so on and a pandemic on top of it. And the signals everywhere I'll be afraid be afraid now we know that fear compromises not least your immune system it's a physiological level. It's a long term period over a long term period. Therefore, anything that takes the brakes off that immune system by releasing by relieving the fear is more inclined to make us healthy. We know there are four, four things I call the four F's that help us towards one of them is faith. The other is fellowship. The other is pre giving being involved in something where we give and not necessarily expect something right. And the third, the fourth is fulfilling work. Now if I go to the first one of faith, what we know is that people who have some sense of connection to each other, the world and possibly there's something other. If you're more likely to feel less fearful in the world. QED if you're less fearful, you're more likely to feel a sense of wellness and happiness and health in the world at a physiological psychological spiritual level. I'm reminded of that deep philosopher Peggy Lee, when she sang that Lieber and Stoller song. That's all there is if that's all there is break out the booze and let's keep dancing just break out the booze and let's keep dancing. And that is one of the responses to the a spiritual world. When you feel there is no meaning to life to yourself to purpose of being here, then one response is just get drunk and keep dancing. There are others, but that's one for now. Thank you. I'm noticing that those four f's that you shared. Three of them stand. Even for people for whom the word spiritual doesn't necessarily mean anything doesn't have a personal residence. And the first one faith. Yeah, it can be it can be replaced by what you just what you just last described is just a sense of meaning purpose. Well, if we look at the evidence on that faith one, there was no evidence that it is necessarily faith in a God, it could be faith in your football team. It could be faith in life, it could be faith in your family, but you believe in something something that gives you a sense of meaning and purpose for being alive and being here. The deep adaptation movement is a faith based movement in the sense it is giving huge an exile and things like it is giving huge numbers of people a sense of a reason to be here. If it's only to save the planet or save ourselves.  And that feeling that we need to connect with something and for most people it's from the mystical point of view that something other is real. It's not something esoteric or it actually is a tangible quality of the nature of the reality of the cosmos. So, yeah. Are we all involved in DDA in the deep faith movement. Who knows. Yeah, thank you. There are people here that if they would, if you would like to submit a question to ask to do it you can do so by sending that in a direct message to Stuart, and he's going to field those questions. Thank you. Spirituality is is well being. So I'm curious to hear to hear you speak to the phenomenon of spiritual bypass. If spiritual if faith is a story if practices are there to help us feel better. Yeah, what about spiritual bypass in this context. First of all, I would say, if I stretch the word spiritual, everybody is spiritual there are people so well I'm not spiritual. But everybody seeks meaning and purpose and direction and love and connection in life. Everybody does. And whether you find that meaning purpose and connection for example, in atheism or nihilism or the deep adaptation movement or God or whatever, you are finding a meaning and purpose so it's to be to say I'm not spiritual is the kind of oxymoron because to say I'm not spiritual is your spirituality. You find meaning and purpose in the world. But of course it's because spiritual is associated with some sense of divinity or a divine quality or something like that. Some people are put off by it but it may well be that people are finding their spiritual expression expressing their spirituality through activism to protect the planet, for example. If you look at spiritual bypassing. There's some strengthening me says well if whatever you're doing like you're doing mindfulness meditation it makes you feel better fine go ahead and do it, you know in a world that's full of terror. If it makes you feel better now enables you to function better let's not distinction. Let's not be too precious about what spiritual practices might be really for. Let's look down the long history of civilization, whatever that is. We find that people across all nations in all cultures have at some point turned towards the something other of a recognition that I am part of all that is. I am part of others that I meet and part of everything it's part of me. Some would say that as a response to the fear of death we want to try and find something that makes us feel immortal or permanent whatever it might be. But you know from the mystics perspective it is, it is the real is the absolute is the real. I pass that we with our spiritual practices often spiritual practices are engaged in in order to bypass the deep exploration because it's difficult in order just to keep us comfortable. So much of spirituality both old age and new age, when you look at it is me centered. It's about keeping me happy making me feel better in the world. There is some merit in that. But if the deep purpose of spirituality is a profound connection with all that is. Then just using spiritual practices like meditation, for example, to make you feel more relaxed is to limit something that has otherwise profound potential. Yeah, thank you that it resonates with me as well the fact that for me part of spirituality if I use that word it also includes community and it also includes connection and includes presence and ways of practicing self and co regulation. And, and I think the thing which is usually referred to as spiritual bypass is when it is an unconscious movement towards feeling better, rather than consciously saying yeah we, we can do this for and with each other. The effort to suggest that spiritual that bypassing like that, the expression of you is there ain't no the expression I've used in that wonderful book that you displayed earlier. The expert is that there's no shortcuts. We can think you know if I can get into the spiritual life and I can become relaxed and connect with the designer whatever it is, but not deal with the pain I'm carrying from childhood or the conflict I have with my partner, or the terrible ways of thinking, unless we deal with those things and attempts to buy, they will simply return and bite us on the bump.   However, in the authentic spiritual life you cannot bypass the emotional stuff and you cannot use ultimately the spiritual practices of the spiritual life, just to keep us content in the world. Well, I'm saying you cannot maybe you can. But if the spiritual life has a purpose at all, if there is, is to provide us with that deep connection with all that is however we experience that just using it to keep me happy to have an experience to make me feel like I've done or whatever is somewhat suspect. But now by saying that I know I'm sounding very judgmental which shows you where my spiritual practice needs to go. Yeah, as I was hearing you talk about the purpose of practice purpose for spiritual practice views is cultivating a profound understanding of connection with all that is everything is sacred. That includes my terror is part of all that is it includes my stories about who's fault this might be is part of all that is. If we look at the, there's a kind of view about spiritual exploration mysticism by mysticism in connection with the real quality of unity with that all that is however we define that. God if you want goddess if you want the light with the light. And as it draws us into through deep practice is the experience of that connectedness of anything what that deep source is life, like life might be a God light might be a God. But in that you recognize that you're part of that you're not separate from it. And that brings you then to why you feel the normal egoic human fear of death. And you recognize also that you do not die that the very essence of which you are made, just as we say in physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Well consciousness is a form of energy light is energy. It just simply changes its form. And if you've ever like I have been with countless numbers of people who died and you've witnessed that dying, you just know something else is going on it's not a full stop. There's a transition taking place and often when I've been with people are dying, the quality of being with them in that dying room is not that different from the quality of being when somebody is being born. There is the same quality of the energy that of something going on. And so if you lift it beyond the human dimension of what it is to be human a physical reality. There's nothing else going on there. But at the same time in that, I believe profoundly in the mystical life. It's not as is often seen as something that takes you out of this world to cope with the vicissitudes of it and just to be able to get on with life as it is, because it's not something other or hope for eternal life at some point. No, the, the spirituality that will be relevant to deep adaptation and other movements in relation to saving our planet if it's savable is deeply engaged. It's deeply practical. It's almost like just just to be spiritual without being connected in community.  That's okay, but ground that okayness in finding that part of the world of your point of participation or points of whatever it might be. There's a different quality to it if, if you are drawing on that deep source within yourself of okayness of connection. You will have a different experience in the world. If you are acting from that source that center, then if you try and act from the center that is your ego, your functional personality, the latter will exhaust and burn out. The form that draws on some source through which your participation in the world may leave you tired, but fulfilled. If you're drawing only on your ego resources, you're going to be exhausted and incomplete. You burn out. It's not a question of people who are activists. It's not a question of either being spiritual or an activist.  Yeah. Sounds a bit dogmatic that I didn't mean to. We were talking about that particularly the, the pitfall of burning out of working so hard from the place of what you call the ego needs. That one becomes depleted. And yeah, I was thinking about what I've read of your writing talking about the, let me read this and make sure I get it right. Spiritual life is the fierce de addiction program. Yeah, and I had this sense of that, that, that grasping working so hard that we end up burning out as being one of the many, many addictions that are holding me as a human together right here. I wonder if you could talk about that. That's interesting. Thanks Katie. I'm just playing with the thought of more burnout. And I've written an excellent book about this, but what's come to me is how see how we can see burnout. It's like the cold turkey of the ego. It's what happens when it's just run out of steam that can't function any longer, and once more but can't get it. I'll talk about that later. But if the, when you introduced me you very kindly said I'm a this and I'm a that one level, but a functional personality level those are truth. You know, and with my ego I can have a field day giving you lots, lots more I am so gathering lots of letters after my name and before giving me fun love it. I'm also a lie. None of those are who I am. And that can be a fierce challenge to encounter. We, if we have no sense of the center, the connection to death. However we experience that we will place the center elsewhere. We will create it somewhere else. We'll break out the booze and keep dancing. We will seek jobs, we will job hop, we will sex hop, we will TV hop, we will shop hop, we will do anything to invest that energy to find meaning and purpose, either outside ourselves, or in some various entities. Those become a kind of addiction, a way of functioning in the world and to a degree they work, we have to operate at this particular plane of consciousness that's what they're there for. We identify them with the most absolutes. At some deep level, if not a superficial, we know they're impermanent. We know they're going to die.  And beneath that then is that deep unconscious fear which permanates every aspect of humanity. It's there whether we acknowledge or not, is that fear that I will die, that I will be terminal. And then to break through that addiction. For some people, it can happen like that, they will have a road to Damascus experience, or they may face bereavement or they get a cancer diagnosis or they're going through divorce or facing prison or the kind of people we deal here with here on region retreat here who are experiencing those things. And that shock fractures the perception of who they are. The ego will then go into overdrive to try and hold desperately onto it for some people. Others, it will be, no, what's it all about. This is not what I think life is. I'm not who I think I am.  And then to examine the truth or otherwise of who I think I am. That's when for some people that's often. That can be a really difficult point, because you plunge into the abyss. If I'm not this if I'm not a wife, a mother, a husband, a friend, a doctor, a child, a nurse, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, if these things are not who I am. And some people arguably the majority of my experience, they hit the abyss. Ah, this is too terrifying. I'm not this because I then I must be nothing. And if a spiritual practices down the ages have shown us. They provide the tools to wear with all to work through that and you come out of the abyss of, Oh my God, I'm nothing. This is terrible. I can't bear this. I'm going back to the pub. I'm not a husband or whatever it might be. You come out of the abyss in which the fear response is very great. And you move through it and you realize. Wow. I'm not nothing. I'm no thing. I am. In touching into I am this. Then we have the boundless possibility of expression in the world we have all these roles and identities we can dance with. But we own them they don't own us. We don't, we're not hooked to them we're breaking through the addiction and you need like any 12 step program, you still need the sessions, they're getting together the community the practices that keep you away from your addiction because you're slipped back to it ever so easily. Yeah. So there's a process there that can be worked through. Yeah. I am aware as you're speaking that we've had another guest we've had a previous guest. Or the year before last maybe who talked about addiction as being a really, really important part of the work that is required for for deep adaptation and it's Vanessa Andreotti. I'm minded. I am mindful of curious about the fact that the way you speak about an experience and I hear about this, this process of I don't think you use the word awakening but maybe I would use that. Yeah, that word is quite culturally specific. I have a sense that the pain involved of the, maybe really reluctant realisation of I'm not this thing that I thought I was is deeper in a culture where hyper individualism is so intense. Our culture deeply embedded in. It's influenced by Cartesian thinking. I think therefore I am. You could add to that I do therefore I am. Yeah. To the contemplative, the mystic which is the same thing. The person who is engaged with deep spirituality. They reverse that we reverse that it's I am therefore I think I am therefore I do. Which is the polarity of your awareness of who you are and why you're here. And there's a further point there, which is these addictions these attachments. There are many spiritual practices which encourages to work our socks off to get free of and it becomes really hard work you've got to do a lot of mindful work you've got to really discipline yourself you've got to think constant peace and kindness and everything. And it's, you know, one level it's coming hard work. And so I think what the mystical approach offices, which is less about working to get free of your attachments and or but working towards discovering this cover take the cover off. The original source to recover your original attachment to your source, which is not an addiction. It's a loving relationship it's a quality, which then supports you in getting free of your addictions, whatever they are in ordinary reality. The problem and from that perspective, from the contemplative practice, the problem is not attachments to things or to persons or to identities that we can spend a lot of work trying to get rid of. The problem is detachment from our source. And that's what the spiritual the mystical contemplative life encourages us towards what is your source what is your, what is it you need to reattach to that you've got this problem. You need to awaken to that truth that isn't somewhere else it's right here right now, if you. Yeah. So I'm hearing is that that narrative about working hard is a is a characteristic of modern culture anyway so it's less about putting more working hard into your experiential space and rather focusing on shifting awareness into just a different kind of awareness. Ultimately, it's really simple. You can reduce all the spiritual life to two things prayer and fasting prayer is opening up to your connection to whatever methods you use to the absolute to your source fasting. And then you decide things that distract you from not just food, things that distract you from.  What I'm supposed to be doing is right here now and it was that lovely buddy say if you want to know where you're supposed to be look at your feet. It's right here. You don't have to go off and go on a 40 degree 40 day retreat on the side of a Himalayan mountain. When you really want to know when you're really ready for it. It's there waiting for you. Yeah. But we have the work I think if we have worked is putting ourselves in that condition that permits that. I don't experience the absolute as a spiritual boy doesn't come in knocking and slapping you around the face, but is forever there waiting that when you're ready when the moment is ready whether you feel pushed into it or you're ready for it. It is there ready and waiting for you just knock on the door open to you. Yeah. So I'm wondering and I'm very aware that the 30 plus people here aren't here just to hear you and I having a conversation and we have yeah quite a few questions lined up to to to ask you and I'm also wondering if now might be a good time to to lead a short meditation. Does that feel does that feel okay for you right now. It might help the discussion. So it's, yeah, we're past halfway. And I want to honor people showing up with their questions and also recognize that this this process my may answer some questions that are there that haven't been asked. It's just a quiet moment together then just a couple of minutes or just see what comes up. And I ask everyone here now just to drop down with me into what in some languages known as the heart space place where you go where you feel deeply where you seek understanding of why I'm and why I'm here. How I make right decisions. I'm going to ask her. The question of that space. Few it may be here you experience the divine in all its forms. It may be has a name for you. It may be Jesus or Allah or goddess or Buddha, or the light within or nature or the universe. Each of us has a center. Your highest self best self deepest self be receptive to that center now. Yates in his poem said things fall apart when the center cannot hold. What is your center. What is it in you helps you stay centered in the world when things are falling apart. Does it have a name. If so I invite you to approach it now. Be receptive to it.  Maybe only recently recognized it.  See it here it touch it. Whether it's in your imagination or feelings. In fact you first of all just to explore gently. What is my center. Where are you. What are you, and I invite you now as to ask a question about center whatever it is to you. Right now this point of my life. With this gathering of this people across the wires. I feel my way towards you experience you with a near or shallow right now. This moment. What do you want me to receive this moment of inquiry with this group of people. What do you want me to receive without editing it or trying to make something work off. Answer the question if you feel there's nothing there just simply ask the question. What do you want me to receive and then take a deep breath. Put that question and any response to one side. Ask another question.  What is it you want me to know. Right now, what do you want me to know. Again, don't edit it don't try and make something happen if nothing's happening. Sometimes nothing is something just ask the question and see what response arises as an image or a feeling or something like that. Then put that to one side at the back of your mind take a deep breath and ask the third question. What do you want me to let go of what am I to let go of the game without fixing it. Trying to make it work or make something happen just accept what happens something or nothing. What do you want me to let go of and let any response to that go to the back of your mind as well to have a look at later for due discernment. Take a deep breath and bring in the fourth question with where I am right now. What's going on myself in the world. What do you want me to do. What am I to do. What do you want me to do. So just sit with those questions today or tomorrow or whenever. What's going on in that center. Which is yourself. What am I to receive. What am I to know. What am I to let go of. What am I to do. In this moment. And beyond. You know what ever has happened receptive or not you felt. But every motion she felt in response to those questions. So just let yourself sit with them. Bring them into discernment later on. Perhaps take them to a trusted guide if there is confusion. And just take a deep breath and return with me. Back into the space where you are. Beautiful Steven thank you. Yeah, I noticed a profound shift in the way I'm experiencing the space that is holding us. I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure what to do. Yeah. An opening up. One thing I love about the beloved the transperson. Is it's also personal. I am now going to. Open up for questions and I would like Alex. Alex. Pat first of all. Would you unmute yourself Alex. I would like to ask you a question for Steven. So, Alex, if you're not there, I'm going to go. I have. It was a technical issue. I couldn't do that. Wouldn't like to miss the opportunity to be asked the first person to ask a question. Thank you, Steven. Thank you, Katie. Start with. Yes. That was a long time ago. I asked my question. I suppose I'll take my inspiration from nature. And so I'm always trying to. So I guess the question for me is everything has. Has a purpose. Nothing's wasted. And so it started talking about fear. And that just peaked my curiosity. What is, what is the role of the value of fear? It's interesting question. Thank you. What is the role? What is the value? It's part of what it is to be human. It teases us to inquire. It helps us look after our bodies. Warns us when things are dangerous and might be harmful to us. Can keep us in the world.  I learned to be afraid of not putting my hand in the fire in the future. I learned to get out of a building when it's on fire. So fear provokes in us a flight or a fight response. It's an absolutely normal human response to danger. I've experienced fear in the presence of some so-called spiritual people because I became aware that they were dangerous in what they were teaching. They wanted to control or abuse me. So fear has a role. It is a part of our nature. That helps us to survive. To discern the true from the false. The safe from the unsafe. The healthy from the unhealthy. I'm struck by a guy whose name I can't remember. Who, because of some psychological effect, has no sense of fear about anything. And I watched a video that had me trembling in my knees of him climbing a rock face. I think in Yellowstone. It could be Yosemite. A thousand feet high, sheer rock face. Without any climbing equipment whatsoever. And he has no sense of fear or danger. Is that a gift? Or is it a curse? I think I'll just to finish the point. I think. From the spiritual perspective. Fear shows us. Where we do not yet trust the all that is. It shows us some part of us. If I do express it in religious terms. Well, excuse me. Our faith in the absolute has crevices. Where it is not quite as complete as we thought it was. And if I revert to my own Christian contemplative tradition here is. Remember Jesus. At the point before he's about to be executed. He knows what's coming in the garden at this time. He's so afraid. He sweats blood. In my nursing lifetime. I've only ever seen that happen twice. When person sweat went pink. The red corpuscles were coming through. It's extremely rare. And the person has to be extremely terrified for that to happen. So you have this profoundly. Enlightened being. For whom people saw no difference between God and man. Even he gets spared spitless at the end. And what does he do. At that point. He tries bargaining. He says, can somebody else have this? Not me. And then he says. I will not mind you. And that is that. That's the profound thing where you hand over in faith. To whatever is happening. Somehow you trust the process of the universe. The beloved goddess, the divine whatever. So fear has a purpose. Although it's painful in spiritual terms. In showing us where we need. Can go deeper in our relationship to the absolute. I hope that goes somewhere towards answering your question. We can have a whole day on that one alone. Yeah, I really enjoyed that Alex. Thank you for the question. And I'm. Two things came up for me as well. One of them is. Sometimes with a particular experience of fear. If I follow it all the way down. I find my love of life. I find joy there. And. The fact that I'm not alone. Yeah. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. But I think this is a. And the fact that it is possible to experience these. As it's just a feeling. This is life moving through me. It hasn't killed me. Yet this is just a feeling. Thank you. Will you choose one of them, please? I'll give an answer that's going to sound banal. You love them unconditionally. That's the first thing. That's your first spiritual practice, the practice of unconditional love for your child. And as a person who has had the role of father and grandfather, believe me, they will throw every spiritual tension at you that they possibly can. Your daughter is your spiritual teacher. As you are hers, it's not one way. There's a mutuality in that. And from my beliefs perspective, some aspect of her beingness, her consciousness, when it moved from eternity into reality, incarnated, whatever you want, she chose you. And you chose her. That means there is meaning and purpose in that. It's important. It's a mutuality. It's not just me bringing this child into the world. That was my first point. The second is that struck me was for you to live it. She will learn from you by the way you live it. You live your I amness. You can encourage love, be with her, but primarily she will learn it from you. You are her most important role model. And the more you live your truth of your nature, the more she will be receptive to that. That's for me too. And then you can send her off to one of our heart from the schools in Cumbria and we'll teach her. But you can encourage, you can help her with discernment of things like when she reaches a point where she's opening to different forms of education or learning, it can be things like, yeah, try this. Have a look at this. Read this. My experience of children being children is they will pay absolute no attention to you whatsoever. And then maybe a decade later, well, one may be thought of that. So part of that is also unhooking our natural attachment to wanting our children to be safe and happy and have everything.  That's what parenting is all about. That's your spiritual practice.  So that's about us as parents letting go of our attachment wanting it to be natural. We want our children to be safe and happy. But the trouble is, if we are not careful, if we don't watch that, it doesn't help and support, it interferes. It gets in the way. It stops the very thing happening that we want to happen. And that lovely line I think in Khalil Gibran's work, The Prophet, where he says, your children are not your children. What you are is they are arrows to your bow, you fill the bow with love and then ultimately you have to find them and trust that they will go, you know, you pour all that love and strength into them. Oh yeah, yeah. God bless you to me and your parenting. Do you know from a time with my own daughter when a healing moment was needed and I was with a good friend and guide who was there with me, Jeannie, who's basically said to me, get out in the way, Stephen. And what was going on was my fear for her that I want my daughter to be happy. I want her to be well. I want that. Look at all that. Look at it. It's all my fear. What I realized as a parent I had to do was recognize my fear at working me. I couldn't get rid of it, but what I could do was hold it and I could stop it getting in the way of recognizing it was blocking me for being fully present and loving with her because I was also buying into my fear for her. Now I couldn't get rid of that. It's natural part of my psyche. I love her. She's my daughter. So it was part of learning about fear to hold that and not let it get in the way, not let it govern my responses with her. Yeah, thank you, Stephen. I think you haven't experienced the practice in the deep adaptation forum called Deep Relating, where one of the principles of relating is own your experience and you just described that really beautifully. I am going to invite Stuart now. Stuart, Jeffrey, if you're already unmuted, beautiful. Thank you. What's your question, Stuart? There we go. Hello. Thank you, Stephen. My question is about balance and the gritty pain. Is there a need to balance the bliss of all that is with this gritty pain of reality? And do we need the sort of dynamic balance of the wonder with the terror in order to grow, I suppose? So it's kind of that, do we need more? And does it expand in two different directions equally? That's a feast. That's a tasty one. The word that's coming to my mind is equanimity. That if we try and push away the horror and seek only the beauty will come unstuck. Because in pushing away the horror, it intensifies it both for us and for others. And in seeking only the beauty, we push it away because the energy of that grasping or pushing gets in the way. And so there's a lovely Sufi story here.  And he says, what's the matter with you? And they say, master, master, we spent all our lives trying to avoid suffering.   And he says, why are you like this? He said, master, master, we spent our lives only trying to be happy. He blesses them and walks off, avoid suffering. And he walks on, meets another group who have pain etched on their faces, but also joy. There's a balance there of both of them. And he says, why are you like this? He said, master, we gave up trying to avoid suffering and experience only joy and we found peace. And he says, truly, you have found the kingdom of heaven, blesses them and walks on. Then when I kind of, that's a lovely Sufi story that suggests what you're like, we learn to hold both. Don't get into battle with pushing one away or grasping at the other. So we learn to live in the world of suffering with equanimity. My teacher Ram Das used the expression, learning to keep your heart open in hell. That no matter what is going on to use Krishna's words, you put no one from your heart. And that's the deep spiritual practice of learning to live with that, being in the world, but not of the world. Again, we could have a whole day on this one. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that one, Stuart. We have got time for one more. And Kevin, I would love it if you could unmute yourself and say a question with Steven, please. I can see you, Kevin, but I can't hear you. There you go. Kevin, can you, can you hear me? Can you, are you able to ask your question? Okay. So we've got problem with sound. So I'm going to ask a question instead. And this, I'm guessing this might be an opportunity, Steven, for you to talk to us a little bit about your most recent book called Heartfulness. And Kevin's question is, are you certain that there is a self? What was that? Sorry. I didn't quite catch that. Are you certain that there is a self? I don't know. And I'm absolutely certain that I don't know. And I'm very comfortable with not knowing. And yet I know. Am I certain that's a nice one? Yes. As to anything beyond that, in any attempt to divine it or conceptualize it, even the word self is suspect. It's a concept. Beautiful. Thank you for that question. The unknowable known, the known unknowable. But there is something, what even an underhill called the real. I'm certain. Feels it. The Heartfulness program, the Heartfulness course here in St. Kentigan School. It's all about that. That would be the absolute kind of question we'll be asking in deep exploration to help us break free of those addictions that get in the way of coming to know that self and coming to not know that self. And to be very comfortable with not knowing it and yet and yet we have in the program in the book there are 12 methods, 12 letters, 12 approaches that we go through to explore, peel back the layers of addiction, touch deeply into that which is beyond the self, the small self, discernment, authenticity, wisdom, joy and so forth. But they all come to a conclusion of that which binds them all together, says okay, you get all this stuff, now what? What is your path of service? What is your pressure point? We can be overwhelmed in these DA times with the volume of suffering in the world and it really isn't high volume. What do we do? Do we break out the booze and just keep dancing? Or do we try and fix everything and exhaust ourselves as a result? No. Through discernment we find our pressure point, the bit that is open to us. We can't fix it all. Where's my peace? Where's my little bit? The expression is from Deschardin, you know the whole universe is on flame. That's the nature of the energy, the lightning that binds everything together, love if you like, fire. If there's a vast fire, the universe is aflame. I'll leave you with this question everyone. What's your flame? Where's the bit where you burn brightly? Is it simply being, simply that's a judgmental word, drop that. Is it being a good mum in your own home? Is it being kinder to a neighbour? Is it working in the food bank? Is it breaking the bonds of food and justice? Is it being out there gluing yourself to the streets outside an Amazon store? We all have our pressure point and we don't have to make that decision for ourselves when we open to the centre. Recognise the power that comes from that centre, that source of life itself. We find our point of service in the world, wherever it may be. Thank you Stephen. Thank you to each of you who showed up. Thank you to each of you who submitted a question. I'm sorry that we didn't get a chance to hear from everybody. Part of my takeaway from this time together is opening to the possibility that what the divine might be telling me is my pressure point, my service, is the possibility that the breaking open the booze and keeping on dancing can be done with reverence, with humility, with prayer. Yeah, so that's my takeaway. I want to say a huge thank you to you Stephen. It feels like we could be circling around these topics and each other for a very long time. So thank you very much for joining us. The next deproduction Q&A will be with Scott Williams from the UN which Jen will be hosting that conversation on the 31st of January and I will share details with each of you in a couple of days time and I'll also share the link to this conversation on YouTube and information about Stephen's book and there was one other thing that came in and I'll also, yeah, I'll share that. So huge thanks. Thank you Stephen. Thank you for your support. Stuart and I look forward to seeing you all next time. Bye bye. Thanks Katie. Thank you. God bless. Bye for now.