Want to hear a secret?
Want to hear a secret?
A secret isn’t something you’re not allowed to tell.
In Hebrew, sod, a secret, is an acronym for seder vada’at: order and knowledge.
So what are the secrets, and where are they?
Let’s start from the end: they’re in simplicity.
Put aside keeping the commandments and living by Jewish law for a moment. That matters too, but it’s not the point.
Let’s start simple. The starting point is that there is none besides Him.
Knowing that everything comes from one Source: the Creator.
And His true name is love.
(In Hebrew, ahava: aleph, one; hava, together. Oneness.)
That same Source replicated itself (that’s us! Respect!) and created a world, olam, linked here to he’elem, concealment, because He is hidden within it, so that we could play in it.
We forgot that, and instead of playing we fight, we survive. We hurt.
“Everything is known in advance…” That means the events of life are known in advance and we have no control over them.
You can argue with that, but honestly, we don’t really have control even over our thoughts!
(Anyone who keeps arguing, tell me what you’re going to think 2 minutes from now.)
Until you understand the rules of the game, and they’re very simple: did you identify with what happened, or not? That’s it.
Something happened to you that made you feel bad? What a bummer. But it already happened.
Now the main thing is how you’ll relate to it. Simple. Simple. Simple.
The great secret is asking questions. Anyone can connect to the Creator and ask for answers.
You don’t have to call Him the Creator. He answers even if you call Him Charles. What matters is that you understand who you’re dealing with, and where your free will lies (what the rules of the game are…).
“A searching question is the entry ticket to the world of knowledge.” (Monsieur Chouchani)
Episode summary
In episode 56 of The Truth Hurts (HaEmet Ko’evet), a podcast in Hebrew, Gili and Tal talk about the hard period between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day, and how these experiences affect our national and personal consciousness. They talk about how the current period brings back the pain and the sadness, and about the effect that the memory of the Holocaust and of the wars has on the present generation. They also focus on the secrets of reality and the meaning of life. Gili stresses how important it is to understand the journey of consciousness, and how we can use asking questions to discover ourselves and the reality around us.
The conversation goes deeper into the idea of the Garden of Eden as a place in consciousness rather than a physical place, and into how the secrets of Creation exist in our consciousness and are open to us if we’re open enough to learn them. They talk about the importance of simplicity in life, and about how we have no control over our thoughts, but we do have the option of choosing how to respond to them and what meaning to give them. They stress the importance of directing our attention toward the positive in order to create a better reality for ourselves.
The episode ends with words of encouragement for a simple life, full of love and connection to higher consciousness, and a call to identify with positive things that move us forward. At the end of the episode, Gili shares the song “Hurricane” by Eden Golan and talks about how important it is to connect to our inner strength and to identify with the good and joyful things in life.
Episode transcript
Episode 56. Good morning, Gili.
Tal, what’s up?
Listen, these are such tough days, between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day, and I have to say that this year you really feel it, because we went into it with, like, a heavier kind of consciousness.
Yes. On the one hand, I really understand what you’re saying.
It’s true, isn’t it?
On the other hand, I look at it and think how strangely it brings the past and present together.
In the past, at a Memorial Day or Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, it all felt like something from long ago.
And you’d picture the Holocaust as a particular kind of film, and you’d picture the soldiers back in the War of Independence, or Independence Day.
Dear soul, you look, you wake up.
You say no, no, no, no, it’s now.
It’s now.
It’s now.
So it’s true that you can look at the aspect of sadness and pain?
And we really have talked about it loads.
But then you look at it and think: how surreal is this?
I mean, is there anything more tangible than this?
Is there anything more tangible than a 91-year-old grandmother from Kibbutz Nir Oz, who went through the Holocaust herself and is going through another Holocaust?
It’s insane.
It’s insane. So there are insane things here, but wait, let’s move on and talk about the secrets of reality.
We’re always talking about reality.
Yes, we talked loads last time about creating reality, creating reality.
We’re meeting here a week later, and in your wisdom you tell me: listen, we’re between one gate of sadness and another gate of sadness, and come on, we’ve already been in this situation for almost a year.
Let’s understand what, what’s the secret, what’s going on here?
So what’s the secret?
So look, sod, a secret, is an acronym for seder vada’at.
Okay, that’s not, that’s order.
And knowledge. And actually, we’re talking about a person’s journey of consciousness.
I always thought it stood for “the neighbors can hear.”
“Can hear,” yes, that works.
But the thing is that we’re talking here about a journey of consciousness. When we use the term Garden of Eden, it’s not a physical place; it’s a place in consciousness.
Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden, comes from hagana al ha’adinut: protecting tenderness.
Okay?
Now let’s go even further into this place.
We’re talking about how there are secrets of Creation here.
And why aren’t they revealed to us?
And in my opinion, we?
We’re in a period when the secrets are already coming to light, and we can learn them, and we wait years for someone to reveal to us where they are.
And the answer is very simple: it’s in simplicity.
But it’s not simple to be simple.
Let me add one thought to what you just said: if it’s not simple, it simply won’t happen.
I mean, you remember that we’re always talking about how we’re in a universe of questions.
Wonderful. I mean, part of the healing practice is actually: come, ask questions so that the Creator will answer you.
Right?
And He answers?
And He answers. So we say…
I’m actually telling you that the biggest secret is asking questions, and if the answer is complicated, dear souls, that’s not the answer. Okay, things are supposed to be very, very simple. By the way, someone in the military once said that to me.
I used to work at a government ministry with many people from the military, and one saying they often repeated to me was one I really loved: “Gili, if it’s not simple, it simply won’t happen,” and I said, wow, that’s it, that’s like a genius sentence, right? And for our purposes…
Let’s talk about it.
I’m talking about conversations with the Creator, conversations with the Creator.
Which is one of the big secrets, and this conversation is supposed to be simple, first of all, as always. Say, for someone who’s sensitive about the subject, you can say “the universe is talking to me,” that’s fine.
You know the people who say “the universe is talking to me”?
Is it okay to say “the universe”?
Talking.
Nice, but beautiful souls,
understand that the universe is the garment of the Creator.
I have no problem with that, but ultimately it all comes from the Creator.
the Creator.
Okay, fine, call it whatever you want.
You have to understand that everything that takes form, including the universe, is a product of the Creator. Now,
the universe is the people, it’s the events, it’s the phone.
It’s the radio.
I mean, everything here is in the service of the Creator, and we just need to learn how to pick up the details.
Now, it’s like tuning an old radio: you turn the dial until you find the frequency.
After all, you’re looking to be on the right frequency, to pick up the right frequency of the radio, and say you’ve found the station. Great.
So now you hear this station, but we both know there are a few more stations playing at the same time that you don’t hear, because you’re on this station.
And that’s life.
Okay, a second.
I know.
It’s a very exaggerated example, but I’ll bring it down to earth.
Hmm?
So let me explain the metaphor. Maimonides writes in The Guide for the Perplexed that some gates through which human beings apprehend reality are closed to us. I mean, first of all he says there are several realities, but he also adds that some of them are simply blocked to a person.
That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
They’re just blocked.
Now let’s move forward in time a little and get to 1905. Einstein comes along with the special theory of relativity.
What does he say there?
He says that, at speed,
all times and all realities exist simultaneously.
Now,
how does that connect to Maimonides?
He actually supports what Maimonides said. He says:
all the realities exist at the same time.
So what am I experiencing?
I’m experiencing the radio station I connected to.
Okay, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others at the same time. Fine. I mean, that’s how reality is: you connect to a certain reality. In the terms of quantum physics they call it collapse. You collapse into a certain reality, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only reality.
Right. It comes down to which reality you choose to collapse into.
Wonderful. Now, what do we want?
We want to feel good.
Right?
That’s our goal: to feel good, to be joyful.
Let’s collapse. So what’s the way?
You’re asking what the way is to collapse into the good?
First of all, it’s discovering what we are. Once we know who we are, we can live more harmoniously.
Harmony.
Right, logical. It’s not that complicated: if you know who you are and who everyone else is, it’s easier for you to cope.
Simply knowing who you are makes life easier to face. Now,
I’ll just ask one question: is there anyone here who still thinks he’s only matter?
Is there anyone here who still thinks that he is only his body?
Is there anyone here who hasn’t understood that there’s such a thing as reincarnation of souls?
We now have billions of accounts from people who, thanks to modern life-support technology, experienced death and returned.
I mean, by the way, look it up on YouTube.
It’s amazing to look up, like, material on near-death experiences.
It’s incredible, because it makes so much sense. Small asterisk: I’ll also give a small recommendation for two books that I think
are really eye-opening.
If you want to know and understand who you really are, then one is Dying to Be Me.
I think that’s one of the most powerful books
there is, right?
A book that helps all of us understand who we are and what we’re doing here.
The second is Shorashim VeShiurim BaZman (“Roots and Lessons in Time”). Two relatively short, focused books that will help organize your thinking about who we really are. Now,
I’ll give you the short version.
Matter isn’t ultimately real; today, science proves that.
Okay, but that’s really hard to grasp, because look, you’re talking into a microphone right now, you see it, it exists.
We bought it with our hard-earned money.
It can’t be that it isn’t really matter, right?
But if you look closely at the research, and we really love science and research, so if you look closely at the scientific research, they show you that everything is built from atoms, and then they break the atoms apart, and inside the atoms it’s 99.99
empty space and only 0.0000 matter. I mean, it’s crazy to me that they don’t teach this in schools. Crazy
to me that they still teach classical physics and don’t teach children to look at reality.
Right.
But really, scientifically, scientifically, not spiritually, not empty talk, they’re explaining to us here that everything is energy. Now,
what is energy?
It’s energy that is consciousness.
Okay?
Energy is consciousness.
Now let’s return to our starting point.
We understand that we have no control over life, right?
Right, right, we don’t. But we do have the right to choose how we’ll identify with the thing.
How will we respond?
I mean, also, what’s the meaning, even before I respond: what meaning do I give the thing at all?
Is it a meaning that will make me happy, or a meaning that will make me sad, if we came here to embody the Divine?
Okay, and the starting point is that we came to reveal the Divine.
We have a platform here, an actual playground, where we’re told: come, discover God within you.
Come discover. So the events of life
are supposed to make me go through experiences
that shape me and bring me back to my source. And what’s my source?
My source is the Creator, and the Creator is love. That’s all of it, however much hair-splitting we do, going right, left, backward, forward, up, down.
In the end, the Creator is love. Now,
to remove any doubt: the human being isn’t the Creator, but the Creator is the human being.
I mean, the Creator contracts Himself, His consciousness, in order to take form within me.
The best example I can give you: you’re playing right now with
a girl of 4 or 5.
You have to contract your consciousness to be with her.
Right?
Okay, same thing.
the Creator also contracts His consciousness in relation to us.
And then we take form here like a little god. The beautiful part of the story is that we have the option of choosing to connect to the Source, to the consciousness of the Creator.
There are no real barriers.
Our barriers are only physical.
Now, this isn’t about self-awareness; it’s higher than that.
It isn’t enough merely to identify as a created being or to know that I was created.
I have to understand that I’m also the Creator.
I’m the Creator myself.
So if I can connect to the consciousness of God, where’s the problem with my thoughts?
First of all, fine.
I mean, if I know that you can connect to Divine consciousness, but I don’t manage to connect to it…
So the first stage is, first of all, to acknowledge the fact that I have shitty thoughts, which give birth to garbage emotions, and from there, getting to sadness, to anger or even to depression
is easy, and the numbers
are insane.
I mean, we see the figures for mental illness and the percentage of people suffering from depression.
Why?
Because there’s no connection, no inner dialogue, no understanding of reality. People fall into the sad, painful movie of reality without understanding it at all.
But what makes this even more complicated?
I’m complicating the issue now.
The thing is that I also have no control over my thoughts.
Because you remember we talked about thoughts.
Right. There are roughly 60 to 80 thousand thoughts a day that we… but in the end it’s about where our focus is, because we deal with four or five thousand thoughts that repeat.
You took this discussion onto thoughts; I’m pausing.
I’m going back to the discussion we were having, so we don’t get confused.
The thing about my thoughts is:
there’s no control, before anything, before we even get into the numbers.
That’s exactly what they say, because, Gili, think: 80,000 thoughts a day, how could that be under control?
Let’s be precise: it’s between 60,000 and 70,000
thoughts a day.
But you have to know that all these thoughts come from the same Source.
That’s the critical thing.
That I understand, the moment
you understand that they come from the same Source, you already treat them differently.
And also if you understand that the thoughts that come to you aren’t under control.
People think “I thought,” as if it’s me, but it’s not under control, and we’ve already talked about this.
There’s a fascinating experiment by Dr. Benjamin Libet that proves through research that there’s brain activity
even before a person becomes consciously aware of the thought.
I mean, whoever is sending the thoughts is some higher power.
In my worldview it’s the Creator. The Creator sends me piles of thoughts, like you say, 60,000 thoughts. Now, what am I going to do with all this shit?
This is where my free will comes in.
My free will is in whether I identify with these thoughts or not.
I mean, the technique is through asking questions: is this thought aligned with the spiritual nature I want to embody? Does the emotion it brings up fit who I want to be?
If I understand…
I’m a spiritual being with God within me, I’m a daughter of the King.
Does it suit me to get annoyed or angry?
If I’m truly connected to the Source. And here’s where the questions come in.
I mean, if you run into someone who annoys you, say, okay, and say you’re stubborn, and he annoys you again and again and again and again and again, dear soul, in the end you
understand that there’s no choice and it’s better to undertake an inner inquiry. Because if I’m a soul, and if I understand that and identify with it,
then I understand that this situation too is a manifestation of the Creator, and then I rise above
the situation, disconnect from the situation, and ask myself: does it suit me to be sad? Does it suit me to be insecure? Here we begin the work of inner inquiry, which is asking questions, and that’s the entrance to the Garden of Eden.
Whoever wants to be in the consciousness of the Garden of Eden has to ask questions, because the goal is not to identify with the event and with what comes up in me because of it.
Our role, on the level of the soul, is to watch the event, not to become part of it, not to get into a storm of emotions.
Because simply put, if you don’t react to something, you
don’t identify with it.
If you don’t identify with it, you’re done with this lesson, and identification is where our freedom of choice lies.
And questions support that choice, of course. That’s the thing. Now,
what’s the starting point?
It has to be, the starting point has to be that everything is from Him.
Like that sentence, “there is none besides Him,” there is none besides Him, because there is none besides Him.
And the understanding that everything will be only for our good, because otherwise He would not have sent it.
I mean, there is none besides Him.
It means everything here is one.
By the way, you can examine this too, on the level of research and information.
Everything here is built from the same stuff, everything, everything.
Your hair, the shoes, the trees, the zebras in Africa and the stardust are made of atoms.
I mean, everything is made of the same stuff, but each created being is an embodiment of the Creator. And if we know that the Creator’s true name is love,
then what’s actually happening here? The Creator
seeks reunion with Himself through everything that comes from the same Source. Everything is love.
By the way, the word ahava, love, is also aleph, one, and ava, like one father.
I will be one; that’s the idea.
The idea of oneness is the highest love. I mean, our experience of this takes place in our relationships with one another.
We model a kind of love between one person and another, but it’s only an attempt to emulate the Creator’s love. Because consciousness is a person’s strongest tool, and there are several levels of consciousness, and consciousness is set according to the purity of a person’s heart.
I mean, how pure and clean his heart is. An action that comes from an egocentric place
does not come from the Divine part of me.
I mean, even if I come across as super nice and, between us, a real artist at it, only I know whether the action is from my egoistic place, or whether I really see the whole and understand that it’s all one and from the same Source. Now look, we’ve talked quite a bit about the concept of creating reality, fine.
We’ve talked the subject of creating reality to death, but to remove any doubt…
And that’s the basis of everything. If you don’t create a good reality, we’ll remain stuck in the same mess, okay?
But to remove any doubt, because people don’t understand this correctly,
I want to be precise.
We don’t create anything here, okay?
I say “creating reality,” but we don’t create
anything here. The Creator already created everything.
He created all the states, all the situations, and everything is also known in advance.
Our choice is in the meaning we give the thing, and then the result can change too, because we don’t determine the result either, but my thoughts have meaning.
Are my thoughts positive?
Are they grounded in the belief, like you said about Tal, the mom, that things are for the good, or do you experience the events of life in sadness, in suffering? I mean, the creation of my reality is through my attention. And here too I can give the simplest example there could be, for example.
About a year and a half ago I had crazy hair loss, and people told me, dear soul, you’re past 40 already, it’s…
Did you get your hair straightened?
I did. Accept it. It’s natural and no big deal.
The hair gets thinner?
So I said, what a thing, but they told me it’s, like,
some kind of loss of strength?
And I decided to give it my attention.
All in all, attention, attention: paying attention to how I wash it, how I comb it, making myself all kinds of things I think will nourish the hair better. And dear soul, I walk around with a lion’s mane.
Why?
Because I gave it attention.
I mean, anything you give positive attention to.
Of course, because I could just as easily have put myself down and told myself, look how you look, and your hair is thin and has no strength, and it keeps falling out.
And end up with extensions.
Exactly. But when you give something your attention, that attention carries love, and love is the highest rung.
Love is a force that can bring a thing back to its original form.
That’s love.
These are very, very high levels, so we won’t split hairs about it.
I gave a very easy example with hair.
Maybe one day we’ll do an episode on the visual side, on everything to do with hair, body shaping and face shaping according to consciousness.
We’ll definitely do it. But let’s go back to the fact that thoughts, thoughts are sent to me.
I mean, I have no control over my thoughts, which means that even the thought of traveling to Thailand is from Him.
Right. I mean, we think we’re choosing. My choice is where I put my attention, and from there it already develops into actions.
The great secret, as we said, is asking questions.
Anyone can connect to the Creator and ask for answers.
Now, you don’t have to call Him the Creator, right?
Fine, just understand that it’s something bigger than us in terms of consciousness, and more developed, too.
My best friend
calls Him Charles. Fine.
She calls Him Charles, it works for her like crazy, there’s intimacy there, a whole relationship.
And the thing about it is that we’re told: you can ask whatever you want
and receive an answer.
Imagine that. So look, we came here to learn love, and it’s not necessarily the love we know.
The love we know is more egocentric. I mean, even the altruistic love we model for our children
is often dependent on something.
Here we’re talking about a different love, a love that’s a force of oneness, where you love everyone.
Why?
Because you know that everything is the Creator, that everything here is one and everything is from the same Source, so you love Him, because everything comes from the same Source. The whole game is whether you identify with something or not.
That’s all.
Now, if I haven’t managed to convince you so far, think about the following.
Our identification goes all the way down to the level of the cell.
We have consciousness in each and every cell in the body.
Science tells us that, according to research, our body changes completely within a year, according to research. And you say, wait, so why is there illness? If the body keeps renewing itself, why is there illness?
Why?
Because there’s cellular memory. Because the moment you identify with something,
you give it existence, and it copies itself, and the renewed body keeps replicating
according to the old program, and that is why you do not free yourself from illness either. I mean, the more you identified with the thing, with the illness, and became the thing itself, it copies itself all the way down to the level of the cell.
So this is what we wanted you to understand today.
By the way, our existence as the State of Israel has meaning too, and religions have meaning. Say, in short, the theory I connect to most is that everything exists, I mean.
I mean, there’s Judaism, there’s Christianity, there’s Islam, there’s Buddhism.
There are other traditions too.
Each person connects with a different spiritual path according to their level of consciousness.
That doesn’t mean Jesus is bad.
But those who believe in Jesus can rise as far as the level of consciousness Jesus reached, and those who believe in Muhammad can rise as far as the level Muhammad reached.
And you know what we’re called? We’re called Israel.
You know why? From yashar,
El: straight to God.
We’re connected directly to the Creator.
We have the ability to reach the highest level of consciousness. So our recommendation for this week, and in general, is that you identify with good things that move you forward, joyful things, things that connect you to the level of your soul, to kindness,
to a love that doesn’t depend on anything. And the way, the entrance to the Garden of Eden, is through asking questions.
And speaking of Eden, let’s play this week’s closing song: Eden Golan’s Eurovision entry,
“Hurricane.” I have to say,
I listened to it on a loop on my way here, and tears came to my eyes.
I think it’s a powerful song.
It’s a song,
very moving.
Moving.
Very moving.
A relevant song, however much they tried to cut it down and adapt it so no one would say we’re being political.
Come on.
Crap.
This whole competition has been politics for 2,000 years.
Yes, but let’s let go of that issue and focus on Eden, who’s gorgeous, who’s gorgeous.
And let’s say this song hits hard. Put it on at full volume.
Listen to it all the way through.
We’ll play it all the way through too, and connect to this power that exists in all of you, and choose to identify with good, life-giving things. Ask questions, ask questions.
Get answers.
I have an answer: only love will win.
[The episode ends with Eden Golan’s song “Hurricane.”]