Episode 654 - 21 Elul (Regular Year) - Where Do Emotions Come From?

0:00Hi, this is Cereet Sweatser and welcome to the It Is Tought Podcast. A podcast devoted to the teachings of Rabbi Schneir-Zalman of Liyadi as recorded in his most famous work, The Tanya. My hope for this show is to make these teachings accessible and relatable to the average person, regardless of prior Jewish education or affiliation. The episodes follow the prescribed daily study portions on our meant to serve as practical lessons in how to live your life as your true self and develop an authentic and powerful relationship with your creator. I have personally experienced the effects the study of this work has had on me and I'm excited to share what I can of this knowledge with you. So please join me on this journey of learning, self-growth and connection with your source. Hi, and welcome to The It Is Tought Podcast. This is episode 654 for the 21st of L.O. in a regular year.

1:02So the title of today's podcast episode is Where Do Emotions Come From? And if you've been a good student of this podcast and you've been listening along daily, then you might say to yourself, hey, I know, I know, because we actually spoke about this a couple of episodes ago where we were describing the different emotions that we feel as humans related to the animal soul basically. So what we're talking about there is that really the origin of our emotions, the reason why we feel the way that we feel actually originates in our minds. So that certain people who have different types of intellects, you know, somebody with a more sophisticated, we could say quote unquote intellect is going to be drawn to more sophisticated, quote unquote, pleasures, we could say, you know, look at the difference between a child and an adult and what do children like to do, what do children not like to do? Versus what you adults like to do what you adults not like to do. When we say children and adults, this doesn't necessarily have to mean an age, it can be in mindset as well. So we often see that, you know, what would children rather do? They'd rather candy all day, stay up really late, just play, play, play and all that kind of stuff.

2:13And that is really because of the smallness of the mind is the way that the ultra-abba described it versus somebody who's a little bit more sophisticated in their mindset who has a little bit of a more broader mindset understands that eating candy all day might not be the best idea for them. And we'll appreciate the value of flossing, of brushing your teeth, of going to sleep early. These are the types of things that might actually bring them joy is, you know, sticking to a routine, a schedule, a healthy regimen and all that kind of stuff so that these things that the person actually enjoys doing is really based on their intellect. It's really based on their mind. When we really love somebody, why do we love somebody? Why do we feel this love toward somebody? It's because we know them, it's because we have this understanding, this appreciation of them. And often people that we're really close to that we really love a lot, the more we get to know them, the more we come to understand them, the more our love for them grows. So this is true in the human realm. And what we started speaking about yesterday is we started translating this into the godly realm as well that just like we have all of these emotions in our animal soul and, you know, sometimes called the human soul.

3:25We also have these emotions parallel in the godly soul. And in fact, the godly soul is kind of like the source, the archetype for all of the emotions in the world. So so when we feel love towards certain people towards certain foods towards certain activities or hatred towards different things, all of this is really stemming from the facts that really at the core, we all embody a godly soul. And this godly soul expresses all of these emotions, but really in relation to God. So our relationship with God can really be thought of as like the archetype for our relationship with everything else in the world with every other person and every other thing in the world. We can always trace it back and look at the the archetype of our relationship with God and and see a parallel there. So yesterday we walked through this. We went through the different emotions of our godly soul and we saw how this how this this parallels in the godly soul.

4:25So we talked about the the the emotion of chasad, which is our first emotive attribute and how this chasad, this loving kindness, this this expansive kind of energy when it comes to God, the way that this gets expressed is through giving because this is the way that we express this godly energy is in a giving way. When we do things, God likes when we give when we give to stucco, when we give to other people and all that kind of stuff. Then there's the emotion of emotional attribute of grig, whereas the idea of restraint. That's when we hold back when we develop a sense of self control and we hold ourselves back from doing anything that might be against God's well. So we went through all of the different emotions and today we're going to really talk about how all of these emotions, just like in the in the animal sort, the human soul, they stem from the minds from the three intellectual faculties. So too, when it comes to the godly emotions, these two stem from and can actually be nourished by our three godly intellectual attributes, namely as you most probably know by now, these three attributes of chachma, bina and dhaz.

5:36And as we'll see that last one, the one of dhaz is really the most important one. We spoke about the importance of dhaz, a couple of episodes as well, where dhaz is really the glue that really connects the intellect to the emotions because without dhaz, then they would really remain very separate. There wouldn't be that flow from the intellect to the emotions. So dhaz is what creates that flow. And so similarly here too, as we'll learn, when it comes to the godly emotions, there's a similar kind of flow that happens when we incorporate dhaz, dhaz is what allows the emotions to come to be birthed from chachma and bina, which are considered to be like the parents of the emotions, the mother and father of the emotions. And as we'll see today, we're going to actually bring up a new concept, which is the idea that dhaz actually has two levels to it, at least when we talk about dhaz in connection to god. There's lower dhaz, which is this aspect of the drawing down of chachma and bina into the emotions and connecting the chachma and bina into the emotions.

6:43But then we'll see that there's actually something called higher dhaz, as well, dhaz alien. And that's what actually causes chachma to connect with bina. Because without this connection point, this connector of dhaz to chachma to bina, then chachma would just stay totally up there in its own realm. And it would be like several episodes ago, if you remember that episode where we spoke about the intellectual who can't speak or can't communicate effectively, because they're really stuck in their head, they're really stuck in the realm of ideas. So without dhaz connecting chachma to bina, then chachma would have no way, it would have no impetus to really become more fleshed out, so that it can then become translated into emotions. So dhaz, translations are always very tricky, as I've mentioned many times. So dhaz is often translated to me knowledge, but really I think a more appropriate translation for dhaz really has to do with connection, with attachment, which is why we see in the Torah, that dhaz actually synonymous with a marital union with intimacy.

7:57Because it really is about this joining of two things together, that's what dhaz really is. I mean dhaz is a whole topic in itself, there's a lot more to say, but that's the basic idea about it that you need to know for today's episode. And so for that, with that being said, let's get into the text and see how the ultra-abba explains all of this. For context, we're in the middle of a pistol 15 of Igarisakadesh, and we're going to be concluding a pistol 15 today. And so here we go. So the ultra-abba begins, and he says that. So just like when we spoke about the human, the human emotions, we talked about how their source was in the intellect within the intellectual faculties. So here too, there's a similar thing that the godly attributes are, they're rooted in the intellectual attributes. So how is this? How is it that the intellectual attributes are the root of these emotive attributes? Okay, so for example, so we have Hachma. Right, so Hachma is the first intellectual attribute. Again, translated as Blisdom, really better understood as kind of intuition.

8:57It's that space that precedes the intellectual understanding, the more like lucidated understanding. So in terms of God, because again, the divine soul is all about God. So it's the source of the part of the intellect that comes to understand God and understands God's wisdom and God's greatness and God's attributes, God's holy attributes that conduct and animate all of the worlds, the higher worlds and the lower worlds. So basically, so the Hachma is this part of the divine soul that is like this like intuitive space that comes right before a person actually sits down and meditates and thinks about God in a more logical, rational and conscious kind of way. And then the Bina, that's the part that is, that's where there's the actual meditation and contemplation upon God on all kinds of different dimensions. So in Chasera's, they talk about this in terms of length, in terms of width, and in terms of depth.

9:57So this is a whole, there's a lot to explore there, but the basic idea is that that when a person in the in their minds, they think about God in all of these different ways in a, in a long way, like in terms of how what that briefly means is, is how, how to apply this knowledge in many different ways. The wide way is just like all the different aspects of the knowledge and then in a deep way, meaning like really what is this knowledge essentially all about. So to be able to understand one thing for another, like to really be able to grasp things in a way that it's not like just you know the knowledge superficially, but you really know it and you can like make deductions out of it. So that's, that's the idea of Bina and that not only that, but this true Bina that when a person has this level of being on a true level when the person truly understands something, what's the sign of true understanding that this can lead to emotion, it's not going to just say in the intellect. If a person understands something like sometimes when you see who's spoken about these intellectuals who are just like very, very high up there in their minds and they have, they seem to have a very deep grasp and understanding of things intellectually, but they're very cut off from their emotions and it doesn't translate into their emotions.

11:09Like let's say if you have somebody who is like an expert in nutrition and in health and things like that, you see this a lot of times with doctors who are often very obese and they're sitting and they're lecturing their patients on good health and diabetes and cholesterol and stuff like that and they themselves obviously it didn't translate into their own self. So what the ultra-abba is teaching us here is that that means it's there's something lacking in their understanding true and your good understanding the fullest fullest utmost understanding will translate into feelings. It's going, it's not going to just stay in the mind. It's going to translate into feelings specifically the feelings of love and fear and all of the other emotions that here we're talking about the emotions specifically of the godly soul. Because in this case we're talking about the divine soul, the godly soul coming to try to understand and think about and contemplate the greatness of God and and God's greatness is unfathomable. As the ultra-abba says this is a citation from Tahelim chapter 145 verse 3 and now the ultra-abba kind of like walks us through how it is exactly that this meditation can lead to emotions of love and fear like why does that happen?

12:17So the ultra-abba says that there's in and aspects of let's say a person is taking the time to meditate and learn about God. So the aspects of learning about the greatness of God, the more the godly soul the divine soul meditates upon this, then a great fear and dread is going to come upon them. So it's kind of like the more you spend the time actually thinking and studying different things, it's going to translate, it's most likely going to translate into having some kind of emotional effect on you. So I mean that it would be hard to imagine that doctor, that obese doctor sitting there, I mean it would be one thing for him to be lecturing his clients about the art of eating well and all those things and him kind of not following the same message. But like most likely it would be harder to imagine him sitting there eating a donut while he's actually sitting and thinking about and learning nutritional facts. Right, I mean it could happen but it's not necessarily as likely. So here too it's like a way that these emotions of fear and dread of going against God's will can be birds is through taking the time to actually sit and think about God and the greatness of God.

13:30And this is what's known as being the lower aspect of fear. So fear has a lower aspect and then fear has a higher aspect to it as well. And so this lower aspect of fear is the aspects of malchus. This also falls into the category of malchus of sovereignty. This is like you're scared of the king. You don't want to go against the will of the king. And then there is another part of the learning about the greatness of God that brings about this higher type of fear, which is what's the higher fear. It's not fear of punishment necessarily and just like being scared like you know in that kind of simple way, but it's actually a bashfulness. It's like embarrassment. So it's a little bit more refined than that. And then there's another way of contemplating and meditating upon the greatness of God that can also bring about a great love for God known as Avaraba. Very great, great love of God. And then there's another way a person can meditate upon great God's greatness that can bring about a smaller love of God, the avasuta it's called.

14:32And so too, so this is all about how like this meditation can bring about these different internal feelings of love and fear, which remember we talked about those are like the internal feelings. Then we have the external feelings, the external attributes, which is chasad, gvara, tfarad, all those, right. And these also come about through the intellects, their source in the intellect. And with all of these says the ultra bad, there needs to be vested within them, the aspects of DOS. So DOS is a very, very interesting thing. It's like that can be a lecture or many lectures in its own right. What DOS is all about. We've spoken about DOS previously quite a bit. It's the idea often it's it's the third intellectual attribute. There's Chalchma, Bina and DOS dot in Hebrew and like is really type of or sfarty Hebrew. It's literally translated to me knowledge or opinion, but it actually is a lot canoes a lot more than that. It's the idea of connection. It's the idea of attachment. It's when things become personal. When you would have that doctor in the room who's giving you

15:37knowledge and advice about nutrition and he is keeping his own advice because he really feels it and he's not just saying the words on an intellectual place. They're not just saying in his brain, but it actually does translate translate into his self. It is very personal. And so here the ultra bad says this is the idea of where there's that connection of the soul that is to this to the understanding. So it's not just like a kind of cold understanding that a person understands something about the greatness of God, but it's actually going to connect to the soul. And from this, this is what's going to birth all these different emotions so that there's going to be an emotional component to it as well in the divine soul. Because if a person even momentarily switches their minds like shifts their attention to something else from this understanding that they're thinking about, then this emotion that they feel will also go away from being revealed.

16:39And it's going to become concealed once again. And it's going to be there in potential, but not in actuality. So like we've often had this experience in our lives, right, that like when you focus, you're focusing on your attention on one thing and you're feeling very assertive way about that one thing, but then like something happens and something distracts you and your emotions follow that distraction as well. Right. So it's so attention is a very, very powerful tool. We had a whole episode a while back where we talked about this experiment that was actually done on me at McGill University where they showed us a film of these people throwing a basketball back and forth to each other. And there was a gorilla that walked right through. And most of us, most of the 800 students in the class, including me, did not notice the gorilla or rather was a man in a gorilla suit walking through. And that's because our attention was not placed on the gorilla. We were focusing on the ball going back and forth. So attention really does drive us. It drives where we are not just just intellectually, but emotionally as well. Those who saw the man in the gorilla suit, they were laughing.

17:48They were, they were feeling a sense of humor that we were not feeling. We weren't feeling that emotion because we didn't see that, you know. So, DOS is this very essential thing that's all about connections. Now the ultra bad goes on and he explains that this is why the act of intimacy of sexual intimacy is actually called DOS. So the most famous example of this is when we look in the Bible in the story of Rayshe's with Adam and Hava, Adam and Eve where it says Adam Yadat Hava, Adam New Eve. This is this is euphemism for explaining their physical intimacy that they had with one another. And so why is it? Why is knowledge DOS associated with this act of physical intimacy because it's this idea of connection, this merging idea. And so now interestingly, there are different levels of DOS. So there's something known as a lower DOS, DOS, talked on it's called. And this is DOS that becomes manifest like extends into the emotive attributes and becomes vested in the body.

18:48And so this is the DOS that basically it's to explain this on a kind of capitalistic level. This is the DOS that comes to you of like, that's a DOS and then that DOS afterwards that connects to the emotions below the chasad, a variety of ferret, not so chodus, so did mochas. But then we have a higher DOS. There's a supernal DOS. What's that supernal DOS? This is the idea of the connection within the intellect itself to be able to understand the depth of the intellect. And this is likened to a bolt of lightning that comes and like shines within a person's mind so that it will come down below so that so that this part of this depth of the understanding will come into comprehension with in a wide way and to be able to explain it with great length and great width, which is the aspect of Bina, which is called the chuvotana.

19:50This is called the the expanses of the river as we'll be explaining this place. So just explain that I kind of rushed through that a little bit. So the lower DOS is the DOS that connects the intellect with emotions below it. And the higher DOS is actually what connects Hlachma with Bina. So that's where we have this intuitive sense of something that we can't quite grasp, but we know that it's true. We know that it's there and we can't really put it into words. And then somehow we're able to translate it into words. We're able to come to this place of understanding. So it's actually connects the chachma with the Bina itself. There's actually an even higher form of DOS alien, but we're not going to get into that today where it actually connects the chachma with the chachma scale, which is like even above that. The power to be able to of the intellect in that way, but the suffice to say the main point of all of this is just to really emphasize how important this DOS trait is this this power of connection of attachment in terms of burthing all of these emotions that come about through intellect and even to get the intellectual juices flowing to get that stuff to happen by connecting the chachma with the Bina.

21:02So that's the end of the section today. So now we have a really thorough map, hopefully of all of our emotions, all of our intellectual faculties, both on a human level in terms of our rational or animal soul, and also on a more divine higher level, which is really ultimately the true emotions. So the next time, so maybe to translate this into practicality, the next time you have a feeling, you feel something, whatever that feeling is, take a moment and see if you can try to recognize what the feeling is, see if you can try to map it onto that topography of emotions that we talked about, and then see if you can think about how it might be serving as a metaphor for your service of God in some way. So the next time you walk into a room and you see a bunch of strangers, you've never seen them before, let's say it's a party that you've been invited to and you don't really know anybody there, and you feel a sense of embarrassment or shame or fear in front of all these people. So first of all, recognize it, recognize the fact that this is fear, this is the emotion of Yura, and secondly to recognize that this is just really here to teach you a lesson.

22:07The sense of fear is you shouldn't be having fear of other people of shame in front of other people, but it's really there to teach you that your deepest self has the sense of fear and shame before God. So that's what it's really truly all about, right? Maybe another thing that comes to mind is let's say you have a craving for a certain type of food, and you've had a long day at work, and you just want to treat yourself, you just want to give yourself a present, feed yourself in some ways you eat a cookie. So that's coming from a place of chaset within you, you want to do good for yourself, which is not necessarily a bad thing, we want to treat ourselves sometimes. So maybe you could say a higher level of that would be treating somebody else well, acting nice to somebody else, maybe, maybe not, sometimes it's good to treat ourselves as well, good, if we need to nourish ourselves to be healthy. But you can also think about it in the sense that wow, why do I have this desire to do good to myself or to others and all of that is because ultimately my godly soul wants to do good, my godly soul wants to emulate God who is all about doing goodness and kindness and chaset.

23:13So it can give you kind of like a little window into appreciating this deeper and more divine part of yourself. So that's it for today, and stay tuned tomorrow when we begin a new epistol, epistol 16, and I will speak to you then. Thanks for listening to the Inistat podcast hosted by Sri Tspatar. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory of my maternal grandfather, Avraham Yatok, Ben Biniamina Cohen of Blessed Memory, music by Shoshana. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the show, please share it with others and subscribe on YouTube, Apple iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to leave us a five star review. To find out more about the Inistat project including more information on my students to be published book, please visit our website, ItisTot.com. To catch the latest for me, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Looking forward to speaking with you tomorrow and until then, have a great day.

24:38You