Wait For It: The Power Of Pause - Weekly Energy Boost

Good morning everyone,

Good evening,

Good afternoon,

Wherever you are and welcome to this week's Weekly Energy Boost.

I am gloriously enthralled to be here this morning with David and we are geared up to share with you the secrets behind pausing.

What is it called?

Today's episode is called Wait For It.

Wait For It,

The power of pause.

And every week on the Weekly Energy Boost we provide our listeners with the most powerful and practical tools to navigate the coming seven days through exploring the wisdom of Kabbalah and its tools and its tips.

And of course we end up sharing things that are valuable for more than just the coming week.

This particular week has three different contributing factors to how we got to be able to share this with you guys today.

One is that it's last night,

We're recording now on Monday morning,

So last night,

Sunday night we began the cosmic window called Chanukah.

We are also at the end of the week going to enter the month of Capricorn,

So we'll have the new moon as well.

And also of course this week's energy according to the Zohar,

According to the biblical portion in the Torah,

Is guiding our topic as well.

And in order to set the stage for today's episode I want to walk you through a couple of scenarios that hopefully you'll find one or two or all of them resonate with you to highlight not only the power of pause but also the lack of pause that we in 2022 are experiencing.

You wake up in the morning,

Your alarm goes off,

And what's your first instinct?

To turn it off,

Right?

To snooze,

As they say.

You're brewing your first cup of coffee in the morning and you take the pot out before the pot is finished brewing,

Right?

And there's coffee spewing everywhere but it's worth it.

You're on the way to work or wherever it is you need to be and the person in front of you is not driving fast enough so you,

What's the word,

You hug his bumper.

You drive up right up close to his car,

You cut around him,

And perhaps the worst part of that scenario is that all of the muscles in your body are clenched,

Your heart is racing,

It is as though you are in the Indy 500 and you're simply trying to get to work.

You're in a meeting and you can't wait for it to end,

You're no longer listening,

You're thinking of what are you going to eat for lunch and the email that you forgot to answer last night and the argument that you had with somebody last night or what were they thinking,

You're present but you're actually not in your body at that moment.

And the same thing goes the other way,

Right?

You're going home and you're thinking,

Already anticipating what am I going to say,

What am I going to do,

What am I going to eat,

How am I going to respond.

You know,

For those of you that go home to your family every night,

You may be dreading interacting with one person or another and already experiencing playing the movie in your mind,

Feeding this monster inside you that's sort of fixated on dread and horror and detesting people and things.

And then of course,

The moment you can,

You check out,

You escape to whatever TV or social media or I think one of the healthiest escapes is a good book.

That if we're honest with ourselves,

When we're really tired at the end of the day and we need sleep,

We're escaping when we're reading instead of actually taking care of our body.

So I share all of that with you and some of you may not be able to relate it all to it.

Even now with the holidays upon us,

There seems to be more pressure,

More reactivity,

More impulsiveness,

More irritability.

I think irritability is one of those things that causes us to act without pausing.

And so this week we want to look at the real power,

What actually happens when we pause,

Why it has the impact to change our destiny,

Why it has the ability to change our destiny the way that it does and what tools we can bring into our practice so that we're more aware and pausing more frequently.

This is a really powerful week and what's available for us is this whole concept that I like to use in class.

I've used this example many times before and want to use it for all of us now.

Don't be a.

.

.

It's going to sound bad when I say it,

But there's a story behind it.

Don't be a premature cake eater.

Don't be a premature cake eater.

So the story is,

Which people relate to and it's a very powerful story that relates actually to Kabbalistic technology,

Which is it's your birthday and your friends have thrown you a surprise birthday party and you get there and not expecting that you're having this party,

You're very hungry,

You hadn't eaten yet,

But you got 40,

50 of your friends all around everyone celebrating.

And after the surprise,

You just beeline for the kitchen and you open your friend's fridge because it's his house and you see your cake there and you just start sticking your hands on the cake and you're eating it because it's your birthday,

It's your cake and you're hungry and they caught you by surprise also.

So you have every right to kind of eat your own cake.

And then all your friends kind of walk in and they see you have this cake with blue frosting all over your face.

How do your friends feel?

So this analogy is related to life when all of us are quote hungry,

Which means that we feel a desire or a need for something.

And so we go and take it as opposed to waiting for the host at the right time to bring it to us.

And then everyone's happy and then you eat the cake for what's called receiving for the sake of giving pleasure to the host as opposed to receiving for myself alone,

Which is the essence of what Kabbalah is all about.

We learn in Kabbalah 1,

We learned it in the 10 Luminous Emanations,

Which is the original deeper study of Kabbalah from Rav Avashlok,

This idea that the things that are most meaningful for you in your life that will give you blessings and stay with you for the rest of your life,

Are those things that come to you from the Creator,

Not from when you take them.

The taking energy is premature,

Premature cake eating.

That's where the phrase comes from.

You just remind,

Remind,

You heard it here first.

I will coin that phrase.

It's funny because cake eating comes from a 1900s term referring to someone who's very indulgent,

Indulgent human beings.

So it does relate to what we're talking about spiritually today.

And it just means that when you have the greatest craving for something,

You should not be matching it with trying to fulfill that craving.

And the pause creates what's called the filament,

As Rav Berg,

Our teacher,

Would say,

Creates the filament that creates the circuit,

Which allows the pleasure and fulfillment to come through a different channel at a different time.

But it's not usually the time that you're expecting it,

And you have to allow that process to unfold.

And so whenever you take,

And I was talking with two guys last night.

We went to dinner and we're talking about finding a relationship for them.

And this whole idea of trying to find a relationship and trying to make it work,

Going out there,

Testing.

I mean,

There's so much work that goes into finding a relationship when in reality,

And I've seen this happen so many times with our personal students that we've brought this wisdom to.

If they work on themselves and they work on their consciousness and they cleanse their fears and one by one,

As they learn Kabbalah,

They're applying it to their lives and they have trust and certainty.

The Creator brings the relationship in such a clear way.

It should not have to be so confusing.

And it's confusing when we're trying to take it before it's ripe.

I think for a lot of people who are listening,

There's,

Maybe we should outline,

There's different degrees or different levels of needing to pause.

I think that the first base,

First base of pausing in the game of pausing is recognizing that 99% of the time we are on autopilot,

Right?

If you listen to the first five minutes of this podcast and said,

No,

That's not me,

Chances are you're either ridiculously spiritually evolved or so much of the way that we're raised,

The way that society teaches us to be,

Right?

That we are the product of our achievements,

Not our essence.

We're so go,

Go,

Go that we don't realize that we have the opportunity to choose,

Right?

The traffic example is to me,

When I teach these concepts to a class,

I tell them,

You know,

Traffic driving is the perfect place to practice these principles because you're in a way insulated,

Right?

There's a buffer,

There's a cushion between you and other actual people,

Which is your automobile,

Which is the car that you're in,

Even if it's not your automobile.

But at the same time,

You have the opportunity and this opportunities while you're driving to practice being a spiritual person,

Even if just in consciousness and not in action.

The mindlessness by which we go about our day,

Even those of us who are deeply and historically spiritual,

It's really a shocker,

It's a game changer to wake up and realize,

Wait a second,

I can choose just because I've been conditioned to behave this way,

To feel this way,

To respond this way,

I can interrupt those patterns,

I can break those cycles of reactiveness,

To my spouse,

Reactiveness to my kids,

To the industry that I work for,

To the stock market and all those other things,

We can choose.

That I think is the first base.

And then maybe the third base,

Which is where David was at,

Is the realization that once I manage to pause,

What I'm actually doing is activating my higher self,

Right?

The lower self is the one that's in charge when there are no choices,

No pausing.

I read a really interesting book about brain development.

And what the,

I can't remember the name of the author,

I remember his first name,

It's not going to be very helpful,

But the name of the book is The Whole Brain Child.

And what they explain in the book itself is that until we're about 25,

Which I love that we have younger listeners and they're going to be like,

What do you mean?

Until you're about 25,

You have essentially two brains,

What they call in this book,

The upstairs brain and the downstairs brain.

And the upstairs brain is exactly what you think it is,

Right?

The part of us that does,

Can regulate and pause and executive function and long-term goals and things like that.

And the downstairs brain is the animalistic,

The reptilian brain,

The survival,

The fight and flight and all those other basic functions.

So we're not,

It's like we're only 25 when those two fuse and begin to,

When the staircases are fully built in that house where you can go up and down easily.

So what ends up happening when we're younger is that we disconnect from the upstairs and the downstairs is the only part of us that's in charge.

And we make decisions based on survival instincts rather than on long-term fulfillment.

And when we are in that state,

And this is really where the aha moment for me comes in,

When we're in that state of,

I'm threatened right now,

I've got to do what I can to survive.

And we're having a conversation with our spouse,

Right?

Are we really,

Is our survival really at risk?

Are we really in danger?

No,

But our downstairs brain perceives a threat and therefore gets defensive and right,

Our claws come out and our back arches like our evolutionary predecessors and we're ready to kill because somebody said that,

You know,

The dinner was salty or you sound like your mother,

Which is a great way to start an argument if you're looking for one.

So part of it is the realization that I,

There is an upstairs brain constantly within my reach.

And all I have to do is pause in order to access it and that part of my brain or what we call in Kabbalah,

My soul consciousness,

My higher consciousness,

It's always going to have what David mentioned before,

The desire to receive for the sake of sharing in mind.

It's always going to be thinking of win-win for everybody,

Not just for me.

The downstairs brain is concerned with how can I get more?

How can I have enough?

What if I don't have enough?

What if I miss out?

What if I don't get the recognition?

What if they don't love me?

All of the other very basic conditioning that we experience when we're younger that Kabbalah explains we're really here to evolve out of.

And that's one of the bigger points I wanted to make today is that if we're not pausing,

We can't choose to evolve out of those limited and animalistic survival instincts.

What Alicia mentioned so beautifully about the threat.

This is the week where we have the strength and the energy for the whole year to not respond to the threat,

Not respond to the fear that makes us feel like there's no one there to protect me.

I'm not going to get what I want.

I'm not going to solve this problem.

I'm not going to realize my dreams and my ambitions.

And in reality,

All of the challenges that we go through in life… I'm taking energy.

No,

There's me again.

All the challenges that we face in life are to get us to this place where we're dependent,

And that's the key word,

Dependent on the light of the Creator.

Where we feel like this universal force of goodness that exists and is always available,

But I can only access it when I desire it and I feel that I need it.

Because if you don't feel you need the Creator,

You cannot access the Creator.

Even though something exists,

We know this about ourselves,

Even though we exist,

Until we feel someone desires us or craves us or wants to reveal us,

We don't feel connected to them.

We don't feel the inclination to be around them even.

We want to be where we are most appreciated,

Where we are received and we are realized and manifested.

I know that what makes a teacher or a coach or any kind of caregiver feel great is when their student,

Their patient,

The receiver receives what the teacher has to give,

Uses it,

Has goodness from it,

And then this is what brings the greatest pleasure to any kind of teacher,

To even a parent.

That's probably the greatest thing that a parent can hear from their child,

Maybe a grown-up child,

Is that the child says,

You know,

My life is great because of what you gave me.

And this is a realization of all this energy,

It's manifested.

And so the Creator feels the same way.

It's not about being needy,

It's about realizing that I desperately need the light of the Creator and when I feel this way,

Then everything else takes a backseat.

Your desire to be successful,

Your desire to be in love,

Your desire to be healthy,

Which are all very important desires and you have to have them,

Don't suppress them,

But they need to take a backseat to my feeling of being dependent on the universal force called the Creator,

Which encompasses all those pleasures anyways.

And that is the proper way of living a spiritual life,

When you put the energies in order.

The Creator and then all the other pleasures.

So you bring up a really good distinction that I think we didn't make that maybe we could make and then I have some questions for you.

We're not talking about,

Maybe my traffic illusion made it seem like we're talking about being patient.

And being patient might come in to the story on down the line,

But what we're really talking about is instant gratification,

Right?

Like the cake metaphor.

I'm starving,

I'm hangry,

It's really nice that everybody threw me a party,

But I don't really care right now,

I need food,

Right?

That desire force,

That gratification throws everything else off the table.

That's the kind of pausing we're talking about today,

Right?

The part of us that when we're in an argument,

We say nasty underhanded things because in that moment we so want relief from the threat that we feel,

That we want to wound the other person so that we can nurse our own wounds or whatever it is.

That we're so short sighted that all we want is to be free of the pain we feel or the lack we feel in that moment.

And the conditioning is that we're so used to feeling a lack and fulfilling it,

Right?

Placating it immediately.

I have a toothache,

Where's the Advil?

I'm tired,

Where's the coffee or the sugar?

I'm bored,

Where's my phone?

For whatever evolutionary reason,

We have such a short tolerance or the opposite.

We have very low frustration tolerance,

Very low tolerance for discomfort.

And what we don't realize is that that discomfort or inability to pause and sit with the lack or the pain is actually preventing us from having that long term success,

What David was talking about before.

So when I work with people,

And this is my question for you now,

When I work with people,

Some people have incredible discomfort tolerance in some areas of life.

And in other areas of life,

They're like two years old and all they want is their bottle and their pacifier and their blankie and leave me alone.

Or there's certain people that they can tolerate incredible criticism and lack of appreciation from one area of their life.

They can tolerate lack of fulfillment in one area of their lives,

But if they don't feel recognition and approval in another area of life,

They go ballistic.

Why is it that we have some and not the other?

You can look at somebody else and be like,

What's the big deal?

Why are you so upset?

Why can't you just chill?

Why can't you just pause?

And other things,

You look at a person's ability to pause and you're like,

Oh my God,

I could never do that.

Why do we all have different weaknesses or different,

Why are some people better at it than others in different areas of life?

That's my question.

It's not because I'm more spiritual.

This whole pain threshold thing and the pain threshold,

It's also interesting because I know people who can tolerate the pain.

And I ask myself,

Is this a good thing?

I think you should allow pain to immediately break you,

But break you into what the pain is trying to help you achieve,

Which is to let go of a stupid thing you're holding onto or the limited thing you're holding onto.

People who have a high pain threshold actually are the ones who are most stuck in life many times because they can take it.

Sometimes you just need to confess.

I think of like being tortured.

Or ask for help.

Or ask for help.

But as long as the asking for help is me finally realizing I need help from the higher power,

Not from people.

Every time you think you need help from people,

It's a short circuit.

It's actually a negative thing.

But when you realize you need help from the Creator and that the Creator will send people and the help will come through people,

This is the proper way of looking at assistance and help.

This is the proper way of looking at it.

And this is the way that you protect yourself.

There's always protection.

As I was talking about in dinner yesterday,

Any time you enter a situation thinking about the Creator,

Knowing that the Creator is in charge,

Knowing that the Creator is the one manifesting things through you and through other people,

You are protected.

You will come out of that situation clean and safe and successful.

Whenever you think you're going in there to do something,

To achieve something,

To make something happen,

This is where you are groping in the dark and you'll have setbacks because the intention of life is to get to this place where we are one with the Creator.

But being one with the Creator means you're thinking about the Creator all day long in the mundane world,

In the business world,

In your relationships,

In the chaos.

Can you think about the Creator?

I know for me it would be easy if nobody was around.

I just had my holy books around me.

I could probably think about the Creator most then,

But that's not the purpose.

The purpose is in the midst of the darkness,

Are you still thinking about the Creator and realizing that everything comes from this source of energy and then you're protected.

So you beautifully set up one point that I wanted to make,

Which was that one of the gifts of this week is,

And it's a secret that we learned from the Zohar and it comes out this week,

But it comes out in other weeks as well,

But this week I think is where the greatest download of this energy is available,

Is that the Kabbalists teach that the reason that we have that low pain threshold or that we have that low frustration tolerance is because there is this function of living in the physical reality that causes us to believe that we don't have everything we need,

That we're missing something,

That we're broken or damaged or faulty or lacking in some way.

And according to Kabbalah,

Each person has a spark of the Creator,

Of the light force of the Creator within them that is undamageable,

Untarnishable,

Completely perfect.

And the challenge that we experience in this physical reality is that it's shrouded and can be even more clouded as we increase in our reactive,

Selfish behaviors,

That lack of affinity with the light creates a kind of clouding or shell around us that seems to diminish our light.

Nothing can diminish that light,

But it's like putting a towel over a lamp in your bedroom,

Right?

The lamp is still on,

But because you put a towel and then another towel and another towel over it,

Our ability to perceive that light is hampered.

So this week there is this download available to us to bring us back in touch with that perfect spark within us that has everything it needs,

All of the wisdom,

All of the strength,

The guidance,

The intuition,

The creativity,

All of the gifts it needs.

We are simply here to remove those towels.

That's really the essence of every challenge that comes to us.

And part of the opportunity that comes to us every time that we can pause is the question that we can ask ourselves,

And I'm going to challenge everybody to think about it this way this week and onward,

Is when you have the ability to pause,

What you're really asking yourself is,

Do I want to add a towel over the lamp or do I want to remove a towel?

Very practical,

Very visual.

Hopefully it's going to help everybody distinguish between the better thing to do and the lower thing to do every time you pause this week.

But the idea is that if you can maintain contact with that spark within you all the time,

You'll always be guided.

The reason that we forget to pause,

The reason that we forget or that when we do pause we opt for the lower response is because we've lost touch even for a moment,

An instant,

With that spark within each one of us.

So this week we want in our meditations,

If you're participating in lighting the Hanukkah candles every night,

Something that you can think about as you look at those lights,

And it's not a coincidence,

The flame,

We're lighting those candles in a way on a physical level to strengthen the flame within each one of us,

Is to deeply connect ourselves in this week to that un-extinguishable light inside of every single one of us,

That the more in touch we are,

The more connected we are,

The more in tune we are with that flame,

The more guided,

The more elevated choices we'll make,

The more we'll feel in the right place at the right time,

Not because we aren't already,

But because when we're more in touch with that source,

We can see it more clearly.

And that's really the paradox that this week offers us,

Is that if everything is from the Creator,

If everything is perfect and exactly how it should be,

Even those dark moments have light in them.

And so part of our prayer this week is to be able to see the light in those dark moments,

To be able to see the light when I have a choice,

To know,

To be guided towards the more elevated option.

And when I'm in that moment,

That heated argument,

And I can say something nasty,

That I will be enough in touch with that flame inside of me that I will choose to diffuse the tension.

I will say,

You know,

This is ridiculous,

Why are we fighting like this?

Even just to be able to say,

You know what,

I am really triggered right now,

Can we talk about this another time?

Or can I have a break?

That's better than engaging and hashing it out in that moment,

Because we're already so,

The spark is already so covered that it's almost impossible in that moment to dial it back and bring it back to a place of light.

So this week,

If we can all focus on using those moments of pause to connect back to that pure spark of light within each one of us,

I think we'll see in the long term,

Right,

If we can take 100 moments a day to pause and connect with that spark,

The long term benefit is going to be huge.

That's beautiful,

That's beautiful.

I gave,

And just to wrap up with this,

I gave a seminar this week where I talked about the lighting of the candles and Hanukkah.

And one of the things that we have to always double down on is how this is technology,

Not religion.

And,

You know,

Because I have a room filled with every kind of denomination,

From agnostic atheists all the way to,

I mean,

Every religion.

And what we're always focusing on is this idea that from Abraham,

These are very high level consciousness people,

Before even religions existed and the separation existed,

These souls came to this world and gave us technology.

They wish how to reveal light and darkness.

And the tools,

Quote unquote,

That we use,

Such as lighting the candles,

Are tools in this physical world that awaken a supernal light.

And we actually have to do actions.

We can't just think about them.

In this world,

Because of the law of earning,

Which we call the law of bread of shame,

We have to do things physically in order to awaken things spiritually.

And that's why the simple tool of lighting the candle is given to us,

It's actually,

There are more complex physical tools that we use in Kabbalah that stimulate and awaken supernal light.

This is probably the simplest,

And there's secrets even in its simplicity.

I just want to make sure that our audience,

Because we have a broad audience from virtually every background,

You know that when we talk about these Kabbalistic tools,

We're talking about universal technology for all of us,

Not just for one religion.

Absolutely.

And to that point,

I want to point out that this Saturday and Sunday,

The 24th and 25th,

Are also the new moon of Capricorn.

And we share in every episode that every week that forecasts this shift in energy,

We encourage our listeners to be as spiritually strong and aware as possible in those.

I always say,

Be on your best behavior,

Fake it till you make it.

So this is one of those new moons where it probably won't be that difficult.

It's the weekend,

It's also a holiday weekend.

So many people are celebrating and doing things that are meaningful and rejoicing in whatever that means for you.

Hopefully you have the opportunity to do that and inject that consciousness as well of,

I want this warmth and this love and this happiness to be infused into the seed of the month of Capricorn.

We'll talk a little bit more about the month in the coming episodes,

But it tends to be one of the more heavy months of the year.

Kabbalistically,

It's one of the three more challenging months of the year together with the month of Capricorn.

Sorry,

It is the month of Capricorn,

The month of Cancer and Leo.

So we learn that simply as the Kabbalistic calendar is a way that we predict the knowledge.

It's the spiritual weather forecasting tool.

So we know that if it's going to be a little bit heavy,

We want to lighten our load as we move towards it.

So being a little bit more lighter,

Easy going,

More flexible.

The key is you look at the characteristic of the month and you do the opposite of that.

So if the Capricorns tend to be very serious,

Very heavy,

Very almost stubborn,

Difficult,

We want to be the opposite.

The flexible,

The lighthearted,

The easygoing,

The no big deal,

Shake it off.

And we'll see you next week on the Weekly Energy Boost.