Are You Living In Denial?

0:40Left Egypt where prophets. So it's written in the Torah. There were six hundred and three thousand five hundred men between the ages of 20 and 60. So, the Gemara says, there were at least double that, 1.2 million prophets throughout history. So the next natural question is, okay, great, we had 1.2 million prophets, fantastic. Prophecies, words from God, are not like logical prophecies. God's answers are the only things mentioned in the Torah that are permanent. Their prophecies for the 1.2 million were relevant to their own time and location.

1:55relevant to their own time. Whatever they said was relevant to their own generation, their own place that they were living in, their own town. Whatever it was, it was relevant to them and the people around them and their students. It wasn't relevant forever. Meaning that anything that's mentioned in the Torah is permanent, it's relevant to you. So when anyone asks, "Wait a minute, didn't God know that we're going to be a weak generation? It's gonna be hard for us to keep Shabbat?" Because everyone else is driving, even to shul on Shabbat, it's hard to keep Shabbat. Didn't God know that it's hard to be a modest woman because every other woman is walking around in a tank top, shorts, or sometimes even less? If you ask your grandparents—most everybody here is very young—yes, your grandparents, Abba, Ima, Grandpa, Grandfather, Saba, Savta, yes, come... First, I said Abba and Ima, meaning father and mother. So, I said, live with no edits. So you ask Saba and Savta, can you show me pictures from when you were a kid, if you have any? I mean, pictures where you see them, whether they're Jewish or not Jewish, whether they're around Jews or not Jews, everyone’s clothing is like this, covering the body. The only thing you can see is the face and...

3:24Modest dress doesn't reveal what anybody looks like; everyone appears similar, everyone looks modest, regardless of their body type, focusing on the essence rather than the physical appearance. What may catch the eye is the face, but the attire is large and modest. You might say, "Yeah, but Ima, what do you think of little Samantha over there with her tight jeans and tank top?" If people from past generations could speak freely, without the constraints of modern political correctness, you know what they would tell you? You know what they would say to you? Yes, that's underwear, what she's wearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We used to wear that too. It's called underwear. The tank top is called underwear. The tight pants are called underwear. It's not supposed to be outerwear; it's underwear. It's what you wear under your clothes. So in reality, what you have today are women that are walking around in underwear. But they don't know. Why don't they know? Because everyone else is doing it. So all of a sudden, you have a little tzaddeket trying to wear modest clothes. They're looser, and they're more appropriate. No one knows what she looks like under her clothes. People might say, "What happened? Did someone die?" No, I just don't want to show the world my body. Why not? It's like there's something wrong with her. They don't realize it's something wrong with them. So the first problem in today's world is that we don't know that we're sick and...

4:55We don't know that we're sick. We have no idea where we stand. The Or Yisrael by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, he writes, he says, In his days, this is almost 200 years ago, a little less than 200 years ago. Back then, Hashem's medicine had advanced rapidly. He's not even talking about today. If he were here today, he would think, "Wow, medicine has advanced so much that we have over here." Medicine has advanced to such an extent today that we have just as many doctors as we do diseases. We have a disease, and we have at least one doctor for it—except if it's a spiritual disease. If it's a physical disease, we have at least as many doctors as we do diseases. But if it's a spiritual disease, we have a growing amount of spiritual disasters—spiritual plagues, he calls it. But we barely have any doctors at all.

6:16This was a problem almost 200 years ago. And he says the reason why is that the only medicine for spiritual disease is Mussar and Yirat Shamayim. The only medicine. Everything else follows: loving Hashem, learning about Chassidut, learning about all these different fabulous things. First, you need a basic level connection. Know that you're not perfect. Know that you have to fix something. Now, in case anyone has the audacity, the gall, to say that maybe Rabbi Yisroel Misalant was wrong, this person had Ruach HaKodesh. But let's say you think you don't know who he is, never heard of him, first time you heard of Rabbi Yisroel. Who is Rabbi Yisroel? I don't see him in the Chabad house. Who is he? You don't see his picture? Which, by the way, you can't find this picture. He didn't let anybody take his picture. There's one picture they say is him, but they said this is what he would look like. But it's not really him. So maybe you don't know him. You don't know him, never heard of him. So we go back to the source. What's his source? Remember we said, if it's his opinion, maybe yes, maybe no.

7:38He has a source that has direct lineage to God, then we have something. So, rebbe, I'm on the way to the shiur. I was thinking about this, and I was listening to the shiur given by the Rav. I'll be listening again and also discussing with someone else at the same time. I know a lot of thoughts were going through my mind, all of them valid, and these three verses came up. First and foremost... Shlomo HaMelech (King Solomon) in Mishlei (Proverbs) 15:10 says, someone who hates to be rebuked, meaning to be corrected appropriately—not to be insulted as in, "you stupid." No, not like that. Rebuked means, "You're sick; your anger is a sickness, your stinginess is a sickness, your immodesty is a sickness."

8:39These are sicknesses. These are not just, "Oh no, he's just like that." Like a lot of people say, "No, no, you know, he just gets angry. He's just like that. That's just part of him." No, no, no, my friend. Hashem didn't make you angry. You made yourself angry. He made you a baby. You ruined it as you grew up. When you're a baby, do you ever see an angry baby? They're all cute. What are they angry about? They want milk. Did you ever see a baby lose its hair because it stressed out about a mortgage? see a baby say, "I can't believe my team lost." Have you ever seen a baby do that? No, I have two babies in the house. None of them is worried about any teams or any mortgages, and they're not losing. So I can tell you from experience, a baby doesn't care about that; a baby is content. Their biggest stress is just to bring the food on time. So Hashem made you and... We took certain paths in our life that were improvised, even though there are also some natural inclinations that Hashem gave you due to your previous life gilgulim, which we're not going to talk about now. But nonetheless, your job in this world is to fix it. So Shlomo HaMelech says that anyone who doesn't like to hear that they're sick...

10:04Doesn't like to hear how to fix it. Doesn't like to hear Mussar. So what is Mussar? Mussar is rebuke. Anyone who doesn't is considered dead, like a dead person. Why? Okay, doesn't like Mussar. Maybe he likes something else, like baseball. He's alive, it's alive. He's playing on a team, makes 15 million dollars a year, seems very much alive to me, and... Why is Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest man of all time, saying you don't like to hear rebuke? You're dead. A dead person, same thing. You and that person in the grave, same thing. Why? He says because if you don't want to hear Mussar, it's the same thing that Rabbi Yisrael Salanter said 3,000 years later. There's no way you can do teshuva. Meaning you might as well die already because you're just ruining it every day you're alive. you're alive, you're ruining it. You're making it worse—more anger, more stinginess, more of this, more bad traits. You know, you don't want to hear Mussar; you want to fix yourself, but you're just ruining it even more every day. The main thing that a person needs to truly understand is that...

11:32Hashem Himself didn't just leave it up to us. He said, "You don't have to rely solely on the wisdom of Shlomo HaMelech. Despite his wisdom, you can rely on Me, Shmo Yitbarach." Another verse in Mishlei, it says, "Whoever Hashem loves, that’s the one He’s gonna rebuke. If He loves you, He’s rebuking you. If He loves you, He gives you tests. If He loves you, He gives you difficulties. Why? Because He wants to fix you. You don’t fix anything unless it’s broken." Until you realize it's broken, you're not going to want to fix it. So Hashem says, "Ah, Masechet Shabbat page 104 says, 'Someone that comes to become pure, comes to sanctify themselves, to get closer to Hashem. Hashem paves their way.'" Hashem paves their way.

12:47Opens doors for them. Why? Oh, he realizes he's sick. He's spiritually sick. There's nothing wrong with it. We're all spiritually sick. There's nothing wrong with being spiritually sick. There's something wrong with denying it. That's something wrong. Being sick is not a problem; people get sick every day. Take medicine, you fix it. You pray, you fix it. What's the problem? The problem is someone that has cancer bemoaning someone who has a major disease bemoaning. I tell them I have the cure here. I have a cure. They made it in Israel, the Melekh HaMoshiach. They made a cure for cancer in Israel. Here, take it. No, no, I don't want it. Why not? Yeah, it's okay. I don't want it. I don't like Jews. You're sicker than cancer. The cancer is the least of your problems. You don't take the medicine I give you. You don't want to take it because you don't like juice. You don't want to take it because you don't want to admit that you're sick. You don't want to take it because you think you'll beat this. How are you going to beat it? Here's the medicine to beat it. No, I don't want to take it. That's sicker than cancer. So being spiritually sick is not the problem; it's natural, it makes you human. Denying that you're sick, that's the problem.