Within All Things - A Belief To Upgrade Our Existence

Shalom and welcome to Within All Things.

My name is Azriela Jankovic.

Today's installment is an introduction to this upcoming podcast in which we are going to be exploring the practical side of spirituality.

A little bit about me.

I'm a spiritual seeker.

My own journey led me from my hometown in Southern California into library nooks,

Meditation gardens,

And ultimately across the world to central Israel where I reside now with my husband and our four children not far from the city of Jerusalem.

I am a practicing Jew inspired to share the universal wisdom and beauty of Torah that I have found.

My background professionally is in education and over the years of pursuing different degrees,

I couldn't help but notice striking connections in the academic literature reminding me so much of ancient wisdom that I was simultaneously exposed to.

Recently I wrote a book called Beyond All Things Insights to Awaken Joy,

Purpose,

And Spiritual Connection.

I wrote from a place of practice not from a place of mastery.

What I realized along my two year journey of writing the book is that in studying spiritual ideas and conversing about them,

My own level of inspiration,

Joy,

Purpose,

And connection really increased.

I think that these things are the work of life and it's my hope that in producing this new podcast that I can stay centered on my journey and share with each one of you in the process.

I'm really looking forward to connecting with a host of interesting people that are already set and lined up for our show.

I'm also looking forward to connecting with you.

From a business woman and a mother of seven who lead spiritual retreats in remote locations to musicians who are inspired to bring joy to the world,

Healers,

Academics,

And all types of human beings with true stories to tell,

We'll be learning about the ideas and practices that inspire my guests most and how we can tap into the spiritual energy and connectivity in our daily lives.

Every single show is going to be designed so that you can learn something interesting and also have an opportunity to apply a new practice to your life if you wish.

The goal of my show is to also keep us,

All of us,

Inspired.

Spirituality in my opinion is a practice and it's really important to establish consistent sources of inspiration in our lives so that we can all continue doing the work that we are doing with inspiration and really feeling connected,

Motivated,

Joyful,

Purposeful.

Life is a journey and I think it's easy to get distracted.

It's easy to get off course and we see more malaise in our society than any time in history before in spite of the fact that we have more material abundance than ever.

So that's a part of what motivates me and I'm really excited that you're here to join me.

My own exploration of spirituality began at a really young age and it continued on and I'm going to get it into my own journey as the episodes progress but I want to talk for a moment about Jerusalem because it is the spiritual center for three main world religions.

About 17 years ago my husband and I came for a sabbatical of sorts.

We were newly exposed to the deeper teachings of our own Jewish tradition and that's where the book Beyond All Things begins.

What's fascinating to me both about Jerusalem and about the ancient Jewish tradition is that from institution to institution there are incredible variations in terms of what's being taught from the text as well as what's being taught in terms of a philosophy of life.

There is a beautiful ancient teaching in a book called The Ethics of Our Fathers that says the following thing,

Turn it and turn it for everything is within it.

And the truth is that this is about Torah and Torah is related to the word Hora'ah which means guidance and although initially the original document of Torah was the five books of Moses also known as the Old Testament,

The oral tradition and the philosophical tradition and the mystical text and all of the commentaries,

If you were to put them together in a collection of books they would fill bookstore after bookstore.

This liturgy is so profound that one could spend a lifetime immersed in it and never finish.

So that's part of the reason why there's so much variation in terms of what's being taught.

The more that I delve into the Torah the more I understand how beautiful it is to live with spirituality,

To stay present with the practice of spirituality and how the whole world can be experienced anew,

Every moment anew from day to day.

The part of ourselves within us that is connected to that which is beyond all things is what fascinates me and I think that is a universal theme from tradition to tradition within the Jewish faith and within so many other world religions and that's the universal point that connects us all.

So today we're going to delve into one idea and it's really a fundamental idea within spirituality on the universal point and it's also present in the sciences.

So the one concept that we're going to begin to get into a little bit today is the idea of belief.

How does our belief impact our lives?

How does our belief impact this world?

And what can we do to upgrade our belief systems to access those three core principles,

Joy,

Purpose and connectivity?

Belief is something that fascinates me and it always has but when I was a doctoral student I got into the science of belief and it really blew my mind as it continues to today.

So I was studying education at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the year was 2011.

My professor,

His name was Dr.

Alan Green and he worked in the social work department and he himself was a black man.

He had lived in three different continents.

He had lived in South America,

In Europe as well as in America and he had a really inspiring vision for education.

When I began to learn about the power of teacher beliefs I was blown away.

Now this was something that was first studied in the States in 1964 in a famous study where various teachers were told that certain students in their class were gifted and talented.

Now what's interesting about the students is that they were chosen at random.

So they had not actually tested gifted and talented but they were identified completely randomly and teachers were informed that they had this special status of gifted,

Talented and highly intelligent and capable.

So what transpired was that over the course of time as the participants of the study were followed the students that had been identified as gifted and talented actually ended up performing better at the end of the study than all of the other students in the classroom.

So the researchers realized that this demonstrates the power of what teachers believe about students to impact how they act toward the students,

How they behave and therefore how the students perform in the long run.

So it's really fascinating.

Studies like this have been repeated over the years and actually now in the last decade the same researchers have looked at the power of teacher behaviors to impact student outcomes.

So can the behaviors of teachers impact their beliefs long term?

And the answer is yes.

So there is an interrelationship between our practices and our beliefs as demonstrated in these teacher studies.

I want to talk to you for a moment about what I studied and how it's relevant to daily life for all of us.

What I studied was a pretty complicated problem which is bridging the cultural gap between students and teachers.

And what the literature explains is that when there's a cultural gap between a teacher and a student it becomes more challenging to educate that student.

And I looked at a subset of culture.

I looked at white teachers with predominantly black or Hispanic students of low socioeconomic status.

So minority students who struggle financially and teachers from a dominant culture.

And without getting too far into that the reason we chose it was because it presents a unique set of complications and what the research has shown in this particular arena is that a lot of students will behave in ways in which the teachers don't understand and will thereby be punished for their quote unquote misbehavior when the way that they're behaving is actually normative for their cultures.

So rather than studying the problem we went in and we began looking for assets or what we like to call bright spots.

Now what's a bright spot?

When I walked into southeast Los Angeles into these school districts and looked at the schools rather than looking for the problems I had researched the problems in advance to understand what they were and try to find bright spots or particular pockets within the school where things were working in spite of all the challenges and difficulties.

So what I found was a select number of teachers who they themselves were white and working with black and Hispanic children that were economically disadvantaged,

Socioeconomically disadvantaged and what they were doing that was working.

So they were identified by their principals as teachers whose students were not being punished,

They were not getting suspended,

Excluded from school,

They were getting grades better than average and overall had a higher level of satisfaction in the classes and it was really awesome.

I met some phenomenal teachers and went to some school that I'd never visited before,

Neighborhoods that I'd never visited before and what I found was really eye opening.

So essentially what we discovered was that these teachers in spite of the fact that they were working in really difficult contexts had a common belief and their common belief was that their students were capable of change,

Of growth and of success.

We believe in spite of whatever circumstances we are in,

What we believe has a tremendous amount of power and over the years since I finished that work,

I've delved into the power of belief as it presents itself in different fields.

So for example,

There are a fascinating number of placebo studies in medicine where patients have miraculous healings.

There are a host of different types of healers and health professionals who really demonstrate the power of their patients' beliefs and I'm excited because we're going to be interviewing some of them in the upcoming shows.

The power of belief presents itself in the field of psychology.

If you've ever heard of something called cognitive behavioral therapy,

It is a type of therapy in which a patient examines his or her own beliefs,

Explores possible alternative beliefs and in doing so really restructures his or her schema for thinking.

There are a few well-known individuals in this field.

One of them is named Byron Katie.

If you've heard of her work,

People refer to her as Katie and she is really well-known for something called the work and what she does in the process of the work is she helps individuals examine their beliefs and really disrupt them.

So we're going to be getting into a little bit more of that as well,

But I think her work and the work of those in her field and in the field of cognitive psychology really demonstrate the power of belief as well.

So one thing I talked about in Beyond All Things is the difference between a child in terms of presence and an adult in terms of presence.

I told a little story about my son who one day toddled into the kitchen and began exuberantly screaming and really raving and pointing at the stove.

Upon first glance,

I just had no idea what he was marveling at.

He was pointing at the stove.

I was busy.

I had lots going on.

There were dishes in the sink and other kids in and out of the house and phone notifications going on and off and I was trying to cook,

But I decided to pause and follow his gaze for a moment and what I discovered was so gorgeous.

I discovered that the steam was billowing up from the pot and the way that the sunlight was coming in through the window was creating these gorgeous swirly images within the steam and reflections on the wall and it was really a sight to behold.

In that moment,

I felt so closely connected and aware of the power of presence and for me it really ties into a core spiritual belief that I think if we adopt this one belief that our whole lives can transform in any moment.

There's a beautiful quote attributed to a spiritual master named Rebbe Nachman who lived in 18th century Eastern Europe.

He taught that there's an obligation to be joyful and that when we acknowledge the wonders of creation,

We awaken the joy that is within us.

He is quoted for seeing something really beautiful as follows.

Just as the hand held before the eye can hide the tallest mountain,

So too can the routine of everyday life conceal the great wonders of this universe.

Now we might walk around our daily lives as adults busy.

We're being pulled in several different directions.

Arguably with technology being what it is in today's day and age,

We're being pulled in more directions than ever before.

However if we remind ourselves that there is wonder hiding behind everyday life,

There is a veil,

This veil of reality,

Of routine,

Of viewing life as normal as what we're used to and it's a veil.

And if we can merely remind ourselves that this is a veil and that there is depth within this,

Beyond this,

Inside of this,

We can pause in any moment and seek out beauty and seek out presence.

So that's a little bit about one practice that I believe has the power to transform our lives.

We're going to get a lot more into it together.

We're going to learn more about the book Beyond All Things.

You can find it now on Amazon,

Barnes and Noble,

And all other major booksellers.

You can go ahead and check out the free sample.

Let me know what you think.

You can download it.

We can talk more about it.

You can send me your questions.

On the show I'm going to be sharing other excerpts from the book with you.

But in any case,

The power of belief is so profound and if there's one thing you walk away from this episode understanding is that when we believe that there is wonder hiding in everyday life,

We are bound to find it.

So I bless you with so much wonder and so much joy,

Purpose,

And connectivity in all moments.

It's not always easy my friends,

But I believe it's worth it and we need each other.

We need to inspire each other and we need to stay connected.

So I really appreciate you being here,

You're joining me,

And go ahead and subscribe to stay tuned for all the amazing guests that we have in the queue.

Have a blessed day.