There was a time when I was angry at the whole world.
I felt I’d been wronged, used, taken advantage of.
I screamed at God that there was no justice in His world
and that He had abandoned me.
It was true. He really had abandoned me.
But I abandoned Him first.
“Justice, justice shall you pursue…” and anger are bound up with each other.
Because most of the time, when we’re angry,
it’s fed by the feeling that we’ve been wronged,
that we have a right to demand justice.
All true. But we don’t understand a thing here.
Justice is one of the gateways on the path toward closeness with God.
But it isn’t the highest one.
If you want to be truly free,
your anger and your sense of justice begin to lose their appeal.
Because when you’re angry at someone, you’re pushing against something,
and when you push against something, it separates you!
From yourself. From the Creator. From oneness.
I realized that the place I long to reach,
a place of faith (emunah) in the Creator, in the universe, in Creation,
a place where you feel that everything is one,
can’t exist as long as I’m holding on to anger.
Even if I’m right!
I discovered that being right hurts too much,
that it costs more than it’s worth.
The price was too high.
My anger left me right,
but with a closed heart, clenched and cut off.
Until I decided I wanted to be free.
“What’s done cannot be undone…” and my heart goes out to anyone who has been wronged.
But beautiful souls, we are not the Creator.
And there is justice in His world.
We just can’t grasp it.
Let it go. For your own sake.
Because even if some people do things that aren’t right,
that’s their problem!
Our job is to keep our hearts open.
Because when my heart is open, I don’t judge and I don’t criticize,
and I don’t have to play the Creator with the people around me.
And then my world feels lighter and happier,
because unity is worth far more than all the justice in the world.
A practical tip:
One of my ways of getting closer to the Creator is to have Him dedicate songs to me.
Every morning I get up and play myself a love song from the Creator. That way we have a loving, intimate relationship. He dedicates songs to me, and I’m loving life. Try it. I promise it works.
Episode summary
In episode 49 of The Truth Hurts (HaEmet Ko’evet), Gili and Tal open with a conversation about getting through hard times in life and focusing on joy and on repairing ourselves. They mention the approaching holiday of Purim and talk about the spiritual, hidden meaning of the Book of Esther.
Next, Gili describes a conversation with a listener who reached out to her full of anger over a wrong that was done to her. Gili talks about the link between anger and the sense of justice, and how anger can run our lives and leave our hearts closed and clenched. She describes how hard it is to let anger go and shares her own experiences, including the illnesses she went through as a result of anger.
Gili stresses how important it is to release anger in order to reach real freedom and to be part of the unity of the universe. She shares how she came to understand that anger, even justified anger, does not foster spiritual growth or support good mental health. She suggests that the listener free herself from the anger, so she can keep her heart open and allow people to change.
Toward the end of the episode, Gili mentions a workshop she’s planning on releasing anger and resentment, and talks about the need to move on and let the anger go, even if we were wronged in the past. She closes with a song she loves to listen to in the mornings, to connect to positive energy and start the day feeling good.
Episode transcript
The episode is in Hebrew. This is a translation of its transcript.
The Truth Hurts, episode 49. Good morning, Gili.
Good morning, Tal Tal.
How are you, love?
Good.
Great. Just a small note following on from the last episode. Remember, you said about Adar (the month of Purim) that at the end of all the crap we’re going through, we need to focus on joy and on what we want to repair, because it’s a hard time, in the end, but we have to rise above it, and then…
Sweetie, it’s very simple. We said that Adar highlights what’s missing for us, and we need to focus precisely on being happy about what we have.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is: it works.
Oh, sweetheart. That’s lovely. Look how perfect the universe is: you’ve given me the perfect opening.
First of all, you’re right. It’s a matter of attention, and sometimes it slips away.
And if I stay focused on it, it really does work. And while we’re at it, let me tell you about Purim. It’s one of the most powerful holidays of the year, in our whole tradition.
I usually hold a special evening for Purim (in Hebrew). Dates for the next one are announced on my WhatsApp.
What does the Megillah, the Scroll of Esther, reveal?
What is Esther hiding?
All of us are really hiding.
It’s a sweet, fascinating evening where I discuss Purim through the lens of Jewish mysticism, and also give tools for all of us to lift up, lift up, lift up, lift up.
Well, as usual, you’ve convinced me.
I’ll be there.
So what’s going on, Taltala?
What are we talking about today?
Today I gathered things from all the questions this week. Actually, I chose to talk about… there was a listener who reached out and asked to talk.
Yes, so anyway, I called her back, and during the conversation I felt that, in the end, she wanted her voice to be heard. Okay. But she told me about a great wrong that was done to her.
Of course I won’t share it here, because it’s very personal. But I could feel the anger bubbling up in her throat. She’s a loyal listener, and she just can’t get past the anger and rise above it.
Okay?
It’s really, really hard for her. The way she experiences it, it’s terribly hard for her, yes.
So I wanted to share it, because I’m sure there are many more like her.
That’s one thing. The second is that I really want to hear what you have to say about it.
Honestly, I think this subject touches all of us in the end, because I don’t think there’s a person who hasn’t been wronged in one way or another.
And really, it’s a kind of question about anger.
Okay, right, it’s not…
Right?
Exactly.
So look, anger, for every one of us, is usually intimately tied to justice, to being in the right. I mean, have you noticed that whenever you’re angry at someone, it’s because you feel you’ve been wronged?
Okay. I mean, I’ve been wronged, and then I have this feeling that I need to, you know, get even, or that something here isn’t right. Someone hurt me?
Someone took advantage of me.
Someone did something terrible to me. And let’s be honest, we live in a reality where the stories of injustice truly never end.
Let’s take that as a given.
The spiritual literature also talks about anger as something you have to overcome.
Okay. And it also talks to us about justice.
Okay, so let’s actually start with justice, because anger is connected to justice.
Now let’s talk about it for a moment. Even the Torah says, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” We’re a society that holds justice sacred.
We’re built on values of justice and equality, and let’s not go into that.
But people always say that unity is always above justice.
Right, but the thing is, that’s a pretty sweeping statement, and it’s hard to understand.
So I do want to go deeper into it and try to help her.
So let’s try to help her.
Look, when we reach the level of justice, that’s true.
It’s one of the highest levels a person is asked to reach, I mean, in order to get to a higher spiritual level.
One of the gates really is being at the level of acting justly.
The thing is, a lot of the time we get stuck on that justice.
I get stuck at the point where I know I’m right and I’ve been wronged. But then I remain right, and right, and stuck in the same place.
And if you really want to be free, because in the end, when you’re trapped in a negative state and in terrible thoughts about what was done to me, and how awful it is, and how despicable those acts are… and let me say it a second time, there really are
people here who have been through absolutely horrific experiences. But you have to understand that your sense of justice and your anger start to matter much less
the moment we want to reach real freedom. And I’m not just talking.
These aren’t empty words.
I can take something that happened to me in the past, where I really, really felt it was done to me.
And on the face of it, I really was wronged, and everyone close to me said so too. They saw it, like, wow.
Wow.
And I’ll share that at the time I had a therapist who helped me a lot. And I know this is a mental-health podcast, and I’m not trying to convince you to come to me.
I’m urging you to find someone who can support you through a process like this. And I’m speaking to you too, dear listener. I understand you went through a severe trauma, that there’s a wrong there, that there are hard feelings there.
I’ll tell you what I went through, so that maybe you can find yourself in it.
I remember sitting across from my therapist, angry, feeling that I had suffered a grave wrong, that you just don’t do things like that.
And where’s the justice, and how can there be justice?
And with her, I took that question all the way to:
Where is God?
How, how could something like this be done? And she’d sit across from me and say, “Gili, let go, let go, let go. Let it go.”
I remember there was even a stage, and this went on for months, no, honestly, for years, when she’d tell me, “It’s stuck in your throat.
It’s like you’re not digesting it. Digest it. Swallow it.
You’ve already eaten it, you took the hit. Now digest it, and come on, let’s move on.
You keep wanting to throw it up.”
Throw it up. And every time you fight something, you get even more stuck on it, because…
Look, at the first stage, yes.
I was angry at those people, very angry at those people.
The second stage is when you separate the people from it, and you’re not angry at the people.
You’re angry at the acts, at the deed. You kind of detach it from the people, and then you… But I realized it makes no difference whether I’m angry at the people or at what they did.
Anger itself is divisive.
When you’re angry, you’re actually pushing against something.
And when you push against something, it separates you.
It separates you from yourself?
It’s like defining what I’m not.
Look, I’m not like that.
I’m not like that.
I’m not like that.
I’m not like that.
Okay, but what came of it?
It isn’t unity. It’s far from unity. It’s separation.
I mean, I kept putting all my effort into what isn’t me: I’m not like that, I don’t behave like that, you don’t do things like that.
But you know, she kept coming back to the point: “But Gili, where do you want to get to? Where do you want to get to?”
And every time, I’d sit on the couch and tell her, “I want to be free.
I want to be free.” And I understood that this place I want to go to,
this place I long to reach, which, you know, embraces the universe, the Creator, the Holy One, blessed be He, whatever you want to call it,
the place I want to reach is a place where I experience the oneness of everything.
And every time I held on to anger, even if I was right, in the end I cut myself off. And that’s how I lived.
Years upon years with a heart that was basically closed, a heart that was clenched, a heart that was cut off. And I could feel very clearly how it affected my body.
It affects everyone differently.
Yours truly had bacterial pneumonia seven times.
The fifth time I came into Ichilov Hospital, the head of the department looked at me and said, “Listen, in my whole life
I’ve never seen a person alive after five bouts of bacterial pneumonia.” I had bacterial pneumonia seven times. I felt I had no air.
No air.
Now the thing is, it doesn’t only affect the body.
It affects everything in your life, because once your anger has estranged you from life, even if your anger is justified,
you’re actually wronging yourself. And in the end we want to take care of ourselves. Because honestly, my justice, and the fact that I judged and criticized, and my anger too, all came from my own sense of helplessness. How did I end up in this situation? How could anyone even do something like that to me?
How did I let something like that be done?
Which means that in the end, after that whole loop,
you’re angry at yourself, sweetheart. And that’s okay too.
Okay, but now,
there’s this problem.
You know that thing where you’re angry at someone else, and then you realize that, like,
it’s you. It’s you.
Of course, I know that one.
I think everyone knows it.
Right? Right?
And then it turns into beating yourself up.
Right. And what I discovered then was that…
Mind you, I was born on the 9th too.
Never mind, we won’t get into numerology. Born on the 9th, in the 9th month.
Anyone who has a 9…
We have a very, very strong sense of justice.
I mean, we’re sort of justice warriors. But the thing is, at a certain point in my life I suddenly understood
that being right is too much.
It hurts too much. It cost me more than it was worth to me, and in the end I wanted to be part of the flow of the universe.
I wanted to be part of the Creator.
I wanted to be part of this thing called the universe, in oneness.
I really relate, because my mother used to say I was a justice warrior
from birth. That at the playground…
She always says, she cracks up laughing when she tells me, “It’s unbelievable.
Two kids would be fighting,
and you’d come over, step in and say who was right.”
But you know what that is?
Why?
Because you were born
in the 9th month. Okay, I mean, I don’t want to hold us up, but 9 is truth.
If you take the word emet, truth, in numerology, it comes out to 9.
You know what the reverse of 9 is? 6, sheker, a lie. Okay. And then it comes out 6-9. Now think about 6-9… I’m also 9-6. But we won’t bore you.
Okay, now understand: what I finally managed to understand was that even though, look, I know the truth, and I’ve been a justice warrior since childhood,
and I… injustices. They did me harm, they really did me harm. And I’m sure I did harm to others too.
A wrong was done. But I understood that anger wouldn’t bring me to the Creator, to where I want to come close to Him.
It won’t get me there. Like, every door I knocked on, every argument or justification I brought to the Creator, telling Him, “But this isn’t fair,”
and look, He shut the door on me.
He shut the door on me.
You can’t come in with anger. And slowly I looked at it and thought, okay.
The anger would rise, and instead of reacting the way I used to, nurturing the anger,
watering it, feeding it, I just started saying, like,
to hell with it. This isn’t taking me where I really want to go. It’s just another stop along the way, but it won’t take me anywhere, even though I’m right.
I’m giving it up.
I’m giving it up. And I saw
that you can oppose people without anger. Okay? And that anger
isn’t necessarily the right tool to use.
And I just have to let it be and let it go.
And it was…
It was hard, because pride was involved.
There was an element of pride here.
I mean, how dare they do something like that to me?
How could they?
I mean, there was pride here, because I’m right, because I’m right. And my therapist would tell me, let’s put it this way: she didn’t tell me, “Work on it.”
She didn’t say, “Meet with that person and talk it over,” and then, say,
you’ll say, “Maybe I was wrong,”
and they’ll say, “Maybe we were wrong.”
No, no, that’s not what she said.
She said, “Gili, give it up. Give it up. Don’t work on it, don’t improve it.” She told me, “Give it up, love.
You took the hit. Swallow it.
Stop fighting, even if you think you’re right.
Let go.”
Now, that was very, very, very hard, and my heart is with you. But I want to tell you it’s possible, because I decided
that I want to be free.
I decided that I want to be free, and I’m simply giving it up. And I’ll say it again: it’s hard.
A lot of the time it’s hard, because honestly, I was also right.
I mean, I really was right.
Really, I was right. But sister, if you want to be free, and being free means feeling good physically and emotionally, feeling free of sickness, free of the poison of anger
and victimhood,
the best advice is simply to let it go.
Let it go. And if people do things that are wrong, that are inappropriate, that are disrespectful, that’s their problem. Your job and mine is to know how to keep our hearts open, because when our hearts are open, those people can change very quickly too. And I don’t have to judge and criticize, and I don’t have to play at being
God to the people around me. Let everyone do what they want; I just won’t absorb it.
Now, I have a workshop.
It will probably take place in March or April. It’s not connected to Purim.
It’s about releasing anger and resentment.
I didn’t create this workshop out of nowhere.
It grew out of years of working this same ground, where I felt anger was running me, where I understood that this anger also slides into aggression and resentment, and how much I was hurting myself, even when I was very, very right.
It doesn’t do you any good, my darlings.
It doesn’t do you any good. Because justice is a high level
on the path of personal growth. But as wise Tal said at the start of this broadcast, unity will always be above justice. So each of us has to look within,
step outside our own point of view a little, and understand.
Something much bigger is happening right now, and if we keep dwelling on who’s right,
we’ll be headed for ruin, and we’re already on the way there.
The idea is to bring the redemption, and the redemption
can’t come when one person is right and another is wrong.
Redemption will come when we’re in unity. And being in unity
means that even if someone hurt me, even if someone did something bad, first of all, let me tell you, darlings: it’s already done.
It’s already done.
You can’t change the past. You can’t go back.
By the way,
I deliberately didn’t ask you what was done there.
Maybe there was rape?
Maybe there was betrayal.
Maybe someone harmed you.
I deliberately didn’t want to know. Not because I don’t think your story is hard. But can I tell you something, sweetheart?
We all play all the roles. All of us play all the roles.
I’ll always be the victim, and I’ll also be the one who victimizes.
There are cycles here that come round again and again and again,
in this life and in other lives too. There’s a story… I love Hasidic stories. One of the Hasidic stories tells of a disciple who came to the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, and said to him, “Tell me:
what is the secret of reincarnation?
I can’t understand the secret of reincarnation.” And he tells him, “Listen, go to that clearing in the forest.” The Baal Shem Tov pointed him to a certain spot and said, “Go sit there. Sit until six o’clock, and come back at six
and tell me what you saw.” So he sits there and watches.
And he sees a distinguished, wealthy man arrive on a horse loaded with gear and things. He unloads the gear, sits down to eat, goes into the river, washes his body, comes out,
gets dressed, gets himself together, mounts the horse and rides off.
Only he forgot his wallet there.
Then a second man arrives, minding his own business. He takes off his clothes, goes into the river to bathe, washes himself,
sits and dries himself, sees the wallet, says “Oh,” and takes the wallet, just like that, and goes on his way. Then a third man comes along, and you can see he has no home.
He’s apparently looking for somewhere to wash and somewhere to rest, somewhere to lay his head before evening, and he’s about to go into the river. And at that very moment the first man, the rich one, comes back, goes at him and says, “Where’s my wallet?
Look, my wallet! You took my wallet!” And the man says, “But I didn’t take any wallet of yours.
I just
got here.” And the rich man beats him mercilessly on the spot and leaves him sprawled on the ground.
And he leaves. Six o’clock comes, and the man goes back to the Baal Shem Tov and says, “Listen, this is what I saw. What, what are you trying to tell me? What did I see here?”
And he said to him, “Listen. The first man and the second man had dealings in a previous life.
The first man stole a sum of money from the second man, and they went to a judge to rule between them.
What’s happening is that the sum in the rich man’s wallet today is exactly the money he had to give back to the second man from the previous life.” Then he asked him, “Yes, but why did the third man get beaten?”
“Because he was the judge back then.
He was the judge in the story,” he said.
“He was the judge, and he ruled wrongly.” You see? Justice, “justice shall you pursue”:
we can’t fully understand even that. Life is like walking into a movie in the middle, for five minutes, and walking out
and drawing conclusions.
We didn’t understand a thing.
Which means that even if something was done to you in the past, even if you don’t understand why, and you’re not always supposed to understand why, I can at least do some inner work and ask what state of mind I was in,
and how I drew this event into my life. But if it’s already happened, sister, it’s already happened. Digest it.
Don’t try to throw it up. Digest it. Swallow it.
You took the hit, you took the hit. Let’s move on.
Sister.
So you took the hit.
So you took a hit.
The thing is, you’re wallowing in your anger, and I understand you so well.
I went round in that loop for years, sister. Let me reach out my hand and tell you: what’s done
can’t be undone.
It’s already done. Come, if all of us want to connect to the Creator, or connect to a place of unity, or at least to a place of feeling better,
let go. You have no idea what you did to that person in a previous life. You have no idea how you’ve cleansed your karma. And I recommend that all of you try letting go of anger.
Look, I’m not saying… if you know that someone is going to wrong you or screw you over, souls, that’s a different story.
Wake up and take responsibility for your lives, because if I let someone else take advantage of me, I’m actually
committing a double wrong here. Because I’m letting him exploit me, and I’m a creature of Creation.
So who lets a creature of Creation be exploited?
And I’m also letting him commit a sin against me. So I let him commit a sin, which makes it wrong twice over. So I didn’t mean what happens in the future. Don’t let people screw you over or take advantage of you. Wake up, get focused. But what’s done is done, and if it was done, it had to be done.
Why?
Because it was done.
If it was done, it’s the will of the Creator. Now,
let’s move on.
Stop looking back. You know what happened to Lot’s wife?
She looked back, right, and turned into a pillar of salt. Stop looking back.
Look only forward, with hope and with trust.
Look, one of the ways that helped me… we’re always talking about vibration, about raising the energy, raising the energy, raising the energy.
I’ll share with you.
I have a kind of method. To come closer to the Creator, or connect with Him, I take pretty much every song there is,
and I imagine that the Creator has just dedicated it to me, that He’s singing it to me. And if, you know, the lyrics make it sound too much like a woman is singing,
and I don’t feel like turning God into a goddess,
and all that… yes, masculine, not feminine,
then I went with,
like, it’s my soul singing.
And if it’s Him singing to me, then it’s the Creator. And the moment I imagine, in my mindset, that the Creator is singing songs to me,
we have a loving relationship.
We have an intimate relationship, a close relationship. He dedicates
songs to me, sings to me.
I connect to Him, and honestly, what do I care
about anyone else? And today I’ll bring you the song.
I was just about to ask. So what are you going to play
us? So I’ll tell you one song. I have a playlist of the Creator and Gili, but one of the songs I love most… listen, listen to how it starts, how it starts, because it’s amazing, and it…
Let this song carry you, because every morning I get up and hear God singing to me…