Episode 177 - Transform Suffering Through Spiritual Awareness

Most people only change after life smacks the cup out of their hand.

The real question is - do you get bitter, get defensive, or do the deeper work and ask, what is this trying to teach me?

If this hit you, save it for later and comment “4th son” if you’re trying to live more intentionally.

This message stayed with me because it flips the way we look at pain:

Some people blame and walk away.
Some people admit fault and try again.
A few people stop before the mistake and self-check first.
That last one changes everything.
It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being awake.

About pausing before you react, speak, or move too fast.
Maybe the biggest growth is learning to evaluate yourself before life has to do it for you.

#JessyRevivo  #roshchodesh #shabbatshalom #JewishWisdom #selfgrowth #thetrustfactorpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A father can't punish a child like that because he knows that he's constantly working on himself. He knows that he's very careful with his actions, with his behaviors, with his words, with his thought processes, because he sees his son coming to him and telling him about all the challenges that he goes through in life and all the things that he's trying to do to become a bigger, better person. So when the son fails, the father's gonna come over and berate him. Obviously not, because he knows that he's constantly trying to improve. He's not on cruise control, that he's not floating around doing things by road or doing what everybody else is doing. He's trying to develop his character. He's always striving to fulfill my wishes. So even if he does make a mistake, I'll just give him a gentle hint. Give him a quick nudge. Hey, take a look. Maybe you didn't see. With his sensitivity, he'll surely understand. The trust factor is a ticket to a bad life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the night. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode. It's still Rosh Kodish. It's still the beginning of the new month, yesterday and today, as we go into Shabbat. So remember what we talked about yesterday. Everything goes according to the beginning because that's all we're in control of. The only thing that we can choose is to start. The finishing and how it ends, it's completely out of our hands. How the year pans out for us based on our prayers, we simply don't know. We know that we're going to be judged this coming Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur is a whole environment of judgment and atonement and forgiveness and setting up the entire year ahead. But we don't know what that year is going to look like. If people are passing away now near the end of this year, that means that in Rosh Hashanah of last year, it was determined that they weren't going to make it through this year. And if people became massively wealthy this year, it's because that was determined on Rosh Hashanah of last year. This coming Rosh Hashanah is going to determine for all of us everything with regards to wealth and health and honor and family relations and marriage and children and all of the things that we need in our lives. They're all determined this coming month. So it all goes after the beginning. Make an extra effort now. We're going into Shabbat. Start that process by the Sfardis. We start to do Slikot, which is that additional prayer in the morning. Those additional prayers are there to work in our merit, to help us. But God willing, by the time we get to Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur, we're on fire and we're ready to be able to receive all the goodness that's going to come this year, God willing. Let's get into it. It's story time, my friends. Rabbi Zachariah Wallerstein, Zatsal, a very impactful person in my life, especially early on in my observance. If you haven't heard of him, he passed away not long ago. You should go online. TorahanyTime.com and look him up, Rabbi Zachariah Wallerstein, and listen to his lectures. A very, very powerful, smart individual. The world lost a giant way too soon. I learned a lot from him. Never met him, but learnt a lot. One of the stories that he gave over, which I've given over many times, we're going to talk about in this book, but I'll give you over the story first and then we'll see how the book addresses it. The stories of a young elementary school boy who is new in school and is always bragging to his friends about who his father is. His father is the best thing since sliced bread. His father is the one who wakes up early in the morning and lets the sun out. He thinks the world of him. And he's always bragging about just how great of an individual his father is. One day after school, he brings a friend home and they're playing basketball on the driveway in a warm, sunny afternoon. After the game, they go inside, goes to the fridge, grabs a couple of bottles of water, they head up to the room. The father's not home yet. And the guy can't wait for his father to come home so that he can show his friend just how amazing his father is. And then suddenly, as they get upstairs, they hear footsteps coming into the house and running up the stairs fast. And he knows something's wrong. Doesn't know what, but something is wrong. It's his father. His father came home. His father runs up the stairs, throws the door open, and sees his son and his friend standing there with these cups in their hands, and he smacks the cups out of their hands. And the cups go flying across the room, and both of these kids are in shock. And the one friend who's there visiting bolts out of the room and says, Great father you have. That's ridiculous. Your father's terrible. I'm gonna tell everybody at school who your father really is, and storms out of the house. And this kid is now upset, very upset, at the situation, but more so at his father. Why? Because he came to impress upon his friend just how great his father is, and look at what his father did. There are four ways that this scenario could be viewed by the son. Number one, that child could say, My father is clearly not all that he's cracked up to be or that I made him out to be. Obviously, I didn't see my father's flaws. I don't know what blinded me up until now, but clearly my father is not the righteous person that I thought he was, and makes a commitment there and then to say, I'm never going to speak to my father again. While you might think that is the lowest level of Amuna, this is a parable, this is an analogy, that that level is the lowest, that he doesn't believe in God, so to speak. He doesn't want anything to do with his father. It's not true. So as Zachary Wallerstein, that in fact there is a level of Amuna. The very fact that the kid identifies, I have a father, my father punished me, I don't want to speak to him, it still acknowledges the fact that the father exists. So it's a low level, but it's a level nonetheless. Level number two is that this son thinks about what just happened and says to his father, why did you do this? Why would you do that? I can't believe you would embarrass me in front of my friend and pounce for the rest of the week. It's another level of Amuna, understands his father did it, doesn't know why, holds his father in contempt, but it is what it is. The third level is that the son acknowledges that his father is still the best thing that could happen to him. And so if his father did something to upset him, like smacking a cup of water out of his hand, there must be a good reason for it. And so he says to his father, I don't know what I did, but tell me what I did so that I can fix it the next time. And that's when he understands that his father put bleach in those cups, in those bottles. And the kids weren't aware of it. They hadn't opened the bottles yet. But the father was so terrified that these kids would have drank from those bottles and God forbid, would have killed them or hurt them severely that he couldn't wait to get those bottles out of their hand. It was out of love. And when the kid realizes that, he now recognizes that indeed his father is exactly who he made him out to be. And then there's a fourth level. And that fourth level we're going to read from the book and the example. So let's do a little bit of reading because this example over here of why suffering happens in this world is captured beautifully by this parable, by this example. It says this chapter will teach us how to dramatically reduce, if not neutralize, altogether the suffering that a person has in this world. That's a pretty big commitment. You're about to figure out how to reduce all of your suffering. Yeah, if you're not listening closely, then you haven't been listening up until now. Let us begin with a parable about a father who punishes his four sons. He calls him the stupid son, the first one. The stupid son, after a father punishes him, since he's stupid, he bears malice in his heart towards his father and he hates his father. That's the first son. Remember, my father is not all that I made him out to be. I want nothing to do with him. And he bolts out of the house right after his friend and says, You're right, I was wrong, I'm done with my father. A rational son comes along. What happens with him? He understands that he was punished for a reason. He's rational after all. He knows he's still his father. Even though he doesn't like the punishment, this is most of us, by the way, we fit into this category. When he realizes what he did wrong, he admits his wrongdoing. He expresses his remorse, he apologizes and promises to improve his ways. I wish more people were like that, but most people are. That they recognize they did something wrong, they understand that they're at fault, they apologize, they ask for forgiveness, they own what they did, and they move on. Even if he doesn't understand exactly what he did wrong, he asks for his father's forgiveness in a general manner. Okay, I don't get it. I don't know exactly what happened, but please forgive me, right? If you want to tell me, I'm ready to hear. I'm sorry for upsetting you. Help me avoid making the same mistake in the future. That's the rational son. Then there's the spiritually aware son. This is somebody holding on a very high level, almost the highest level. Somebody that we can all aspire to be like. What does a spiritually aware son do in this type of situation? The son realizes that his father loves him and that the punishment was for his ultimate benefit. He therefore willfully accepts the punishment and he turns to his father and he says, Dad, I know that your intent was to wake me up and to bring me closer to you. Thank you so much for paying close attention to me. That really means a lot to me. Please explain to me what I did wrong and help me improve. And once the father shows his son the mistake that he made, the son expresses remorse, admits the mistake, asks his father for forgiveness, and makes a firm resolution to do better in the future. Clearly, this guy's holding on a high level. It's very hard to find people who are well put together like that. Usually there's an apology, there's an acknowledgement, but it comes begrudgingly because now I have to admit fault. Now I have to admit that I did something wrong, that I behaved improperly. And nobody wants to be guilty of that. But the reality is we're human. We err. We make mistakes, get used to it. That's life. Even the most righteous among us make mistakes. The difference is how you handle the situation. Do you walk around delusional thinking that you're not making mistakes, thinking that you're perfect, thinking that it's everybody else all the time, it's never you? If that's the case, then you have a real problem. You're not spiritually aware. The high-level son over here, the spiritually aware one, does not wait, acknowledges right away, my father did something. He smacked that cup out of my hand for a reason. And a good reason. I don't even have to ask. I don't even have to inquire with him as to why he did that. It was clearly something that I did. And it was his response was clearly in order to benefit me. It's an automatic, that's where I go to. There's no alternate motive over here. There's no alternative. It's just that he loves me so much. He stopped me from hurting myself, from doing something stupid that I was about to do. That's it. That encapsulates our entire lives. But there's a fourth son. Let's read. What's he called? The self-evaluative son. This I never thought about, and I wasn't given over a long time ago, but it's a beautiful idea. Listen, because this is somebody who is self-sufficient. This is somebody that when you find them, you know they are a complete individual. And this is somebody that you should learn from. Not a lot of people, very, very few people on planet Earth that exhibit these types of character traits. But listen, then again there's a fourth son who surpasses all of his three brothers. He doesn't wait to be punished in order to improve his ways. Every day he does a thorough process of self-evaluation where he weighs everything that he did that day and asks himself if his deeds are really upright in the light of his father's requests and standards. In other words, that kid would have been more careful to immediately, before taking anything out of that fridge, open that bottle and make sure that it is exactly what he thinks it is before he drinks it or before he takes it out of that bottle. Now, maybe that example is a little bit extreme, but the idea is that we're constantly going to evaluate ourselves. What are we doing? Does it make sense what I'm about to do? Double check and triple check so that you don't get into trouble in the first place. Avoid the pitfalls. We're not going to do that all the time. Sometimes we can. And the more that we can, the better off we will be as a result of that. He then speaks to his father every single day and says, Dad, by virtue of the wonderful education that you gave me, I was fortunate in doing such and such good deeds. In other words, the standard to which my behavior connects is that of my father's. Shiviti Hashem Lenegdita me. I always weigh what I'm doing according to my father's standards. If I'm doing that, if I'm walking around constantly thinking, what would God want of me? What's the right way to do this? Then you will behave properly every single time. I do it often. I often find myself biting my tongue. I want to respond. I want to react. I want to say something. I want to do something. But I stop myself and I and I think to myself, just wait, just wait. Be bigger than that. Don't respond. Don't react. Let this play out and things will be fine. And almost every time I do that, everything works out perfectly. On the other hand, I don't think that my speech or my behavior, what I did today in this certain situation, was the way that you would have wanted. I'm really sorry, and I'll try my best to strengthen my weakness. That's it. I recognize I have weaknesses. I recognize you would have wanted me to behave differently. I didn't even wait for you to know what I did. I'm just coming to you to tell you I recognize what I did, and I recognize that it goes against your teaching. That's it. I know you know better than I do. I know you're here to teach me. I'm going to do everything I can to follow those standards, but I'm going to fail sometimes. And when I fail, I'm not going to wait for you to come and point it out. I'm going to figure it out before you do, because that's how I will continue to grow. The father of such a son glows with satisfaction and gratification. What a beautiful human being. What a sensitive, considerate, and humble son. He doesn't wait for me to punish him. He's always trying to improve, even if he were to do something seriously wrong. How could I punish him? This he a father can't punish a child like that because he knows that he's constantly working on himself. He knows that he's very careful with his actions, with his behaviors, with his words, with his thought processes. The father knows this because he sees his son coming to him oftentimes and telling him about all the challenges that he goes through in life and all the things that he's trying to do to become a bigger, better person. So when the son fails, the father's going to come over and berate him. Obviously not. A father can't punish a son like that because he knows that he's constantly trying to improve. He knows that he's not on cruise control, that he's not just floating around doing things by rote or doing what everybody else is doing. He's using his brain. He's trying to develop his character. He constantly is evaluating himself. He's always striving to fulfill my wishes. So even if he does make a mistake, I'll just give him a gentle hint. I'll just kind of give him a quick nudge. Hey, you know, take a look. Maybe you didn't see, right? With his sensitivity, he'll surely understand. The father will want nothing more than to fulfill his son's, his wonderful son's wishes. Those are the choices that are before us. Either we operate by route, either we operate like we're on cruise control. We don't think before we act, we don't think before we speak. And then what happens? We find ourselves in hot water. We find ourselves in troubles. Our relationships are failing. Our businesses are failing. Our jobs are on the line. We're dealing with all of these challenges on a day-to-day basis. Why? Because we're behaving like the first son, or maybe even the second son. The more you grow to become like the fourth son, the happier you're going to be, the less difficulty you're going to face. Why? Because the difficulty that we deal with is the punishment that we get from the heavens. And it's not necessarily punishment, it's God pointing you in the right direction. Sometimes by him doing that, it's painful. And we interpret that as punishment, but it's not, because it's the same father. The father loves his child. And so the father's going to do something that that child's not going to like, not to hurt the child, on the contrary, to benefit that child. If you become more like the fourth son, if you become like that individual who's constantly doing that evaluation, you have three times a day that you pray. In those prayers, you have time to evaluate your actions, your choices, and your thoughts. If you're doing that, you're already on the road to becoming the fourth son. It's not that far out of reach. It sounds lofty, but it really isn't, because we pray three times a day. And if you're doing that prayer, then you have every opportunity to be genuine in your evaluation, your self-evaluation. So get there. If you're not there, that's fine. Even if you're still like the fourth son, if you're above ground, if God has given you another day, if your eyes open this morning, then you have the potential to be just like that fourth son. Have an amazing Shabbat, my friends. Have an amazing Roskhodij. This month should be filled with blessings. It should be filled with all of the good things that we all want. It should be so powerful that it will change the course of human history. God willing, it can happen every single day, but it can also happen every single year, specifically in this upcoming month. Have an amazing Shabbat and amazing month. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts, drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.