They say the most important thing in this life is this life. They’re right. Just try to understand it. A topsy-turvy, crazy world that keeps breaking records. The paradox of Creation at its finest.
How can it be that they attacked us, raped us, murdered us (and still are!), and the world turns against us? Jewish students and lecturers aren’t allowed onto campuses in the US. Extreme antisemitic acts in Europe. They boo us at Eurovision. Groups that were oppressed in the past (the LGBTQ community or the African American community, for example) turn against us. Against us!
A person’s inner paradox is even more complicated. Someone can say they feel they have no support, that they’re alone in the world. Not nice, but it happens. What’s the problem here? That this is their belief. And belief is always self-fulfilling. The job of Creation / the universe / the Creator is to validate whatever you believe in. One state of being mirrors another. It has nothing to do with fair or unfair. The water in the sea is clear. It’s the sky reflected in it.
“The Lord is your shade at your right hand…” We’re told it outright: it’s your shadow! Whatever you do, the shadow does. Everything here is made of energy, and our job is to know how to operate it, to manipulate it. What does that mean? To create! We have to learn how we create. In one word: focus. In two words: hocus focus.
If I believe I’m alone in the world with no support, that’s how it will be! There’s a paradox here, because we all have to understand that we’re always under Divine Providence. We wouldn’t exist without Providence. If you exist, Providence is watching over you. The question is what you believe. That’s free will. If you believe you’re lucky and everything works out for you, that’s the support you’ll get.
A few basic beliefs to help you create: the Creator isn’t Haredi (ultra-Orthodox). He doesn’t walk around in a suit and hat. The Creator loves you, simply because you exist. Everything comes from the same Source, the Creator; there is none other than Him. What you give is what you’ll get. Call it manifesting, like attracts like, karma. Karma isn’t punishment. It’s a wheel, it’s action and consequence, it’s reflections, it’s a mirror! Whatever we project through our thoughts, our feelings (above all!), our words and our actions will come back to us, because the universe / the Creator has no choice! He reflects us back to ourselves.
“This too is for the good” (gam zu letovah) means that even the bad is good, because in the end there is always salvation. A person who acts with a pure heart, who practices inner discernment from the thought that everything is for the good, will be able to live with this reality, because it contains all these truths at once. That comes from embracing the paradox. It doesn’t matter which God you’ve chosen. Be wholehearted with your God.
Episode summary
The episode deals with the paradoxes in reality and in Creation, and offers different ways of looking at how to cope with a life full of contradictions. Here’s a summary of the main points:
- Living in paradox: Life is full of paradoxes, and sometimes they’re hard to understand with the human mind. For example, the world supports the Palestinians despite the terror we’ve suffered from them.
- The illusions of time and motion: Everything depends on time and motion, but time is an illusion. The past has already been and the future will be, so we need to live in the here and now.
- Everything comes from one Source: Everything in the world comes from the same Source. The Creator takes form through everything that exists: plants, people, opinions, ideas.
- What you give is what you get: Whatever we project, whether in thoughts, words or actions, comes back to us. It goes by different names, like karma or like attracts like, but the idea is the same.
- Everything moves and everything changes: Everything is energy, and everything is in motion. Even inanimate things that look static are moving, on the scientific level. What changes is our point of view and our attitude toward things.
- Thoughts and energy: Keep your thoughts pure, because every thought can affect our feelings and actions. It’s important to guard your thoughts fiercely and redirect them toward the positive.
- Echoing what we want: To draw good things into our lives, we need to echo what we want instead of the lack. If we want love, we need to be love and become the energy that’s looking for it.
- Faith (emunah) and trust: Everything comes from faith and trust that things will work out for our good. It’s important to talk to the Creator and keep our thoughts positive in order to create a better reality.
The episode ends with a personal example from Gili, who tells how the song “Shir HaMaalot” (A Song of Ascents) has been with her at critical moments in her life, and invites listeners to connect to faith and hope.
Episode transcript
Episode 57. What’s up, Gili?
What’s up with you, all good?
All good. Finally, good?
How great, right. We started this week… how does it go? Everything here changes and moves fast, and every time you come back to the saying that tells you the most precious thing in this life is this life.
And then
you say, but what?
What’s going on here?
Think about it: we started the week with, like, heavy energy, sadness, but the heavens chose to be with us.
Really.
And then you get to the end of the week and there’s a different energy, a different sun.
And then you also say, what, what’s going on here?
There’s some kind of…
That brought up the thought about paradox.
Paradoxes.
This whole Creation is full of paradox. I mean, we live in a reality full of paradoxes.
We try to find logic.
We try to find some kind of rationale, something that will fit into our human brain, but honestly, it’s hard.
This is a question of consciousness: you can’t fit all the pieces of the puzzle together using only the human mind.
Just think about this one thing: how can it be that they attacked us, killed us,
raped us, and the world is angry at us?
How can it be?
We went through what we went through, we’re going through a Holocaust now, and not only is the world silent,
it’s also taking that side.
How can it be that in the reality of 2024, Jewish students and professors aren’t allowed onto campuses, into universities?
In the United States. Columbia University is supposed to be the height of enlightenment, academia at its best, a stronghold of wisdom and intellect. It’s the place the world’s next leaders come out of. It’s the place that produces
elected officials, presidents, the CEOs of the world’s leading companies. It’s their breeding ground, yet it’s wrapped in ignorance and lies. These are intelligent people, and some of them are shouting,
“We are Hamas.”
You know, there are chants there saying, “It’s October 7th, we will…”
There’s blind support here. There’s support from gay people, from transgender people, who, if they were there,
in Gaza, they wouldn’t survive, and not because of us.
Exactly. I mean, there are,
there are people here who side with Hamas.
And by the way, if you ask them how it can be, they tell you, “You’re Nazis.”
I mean, we’re the Nazis. As far as they’re concerned, we’re the oppressors.
And what’s coming out here in the world is insane, because every population that has ever been oppressed, whether because of its sexual orientation, whether the LGBTQ community or the African American community, gets immediate, absolute support without anyone even knowing the facts.
Sheer ignorance.
I mean, there’s endless paradox here.
We need to look at them in our universe, and I can take much simpler examples.
I mean, there’s the paradox, as they say… just, smoking cigarettes, cigarettes are harmful to health.
Right. I mean, take a country like Japan: the highest rate of smokers, and they don’t have lung cancer.
Take a country like France. The whole Western world is told: eat healthy, no fat, no cheese, no alcohol.
They sit there.
The French knock back alcohol and fat, and they don’t have heart problems. How can that be?
There’s some kind of paradox here, and we have to understand:
even axioms and facts have exceptions.
You won’t manage to grasp the rules as long as you’re in the human brain, and the paradoxes are even bigger.
These paradoxes also play out inside a person.
I’ll give an example. I mean, a person can say he feels alone, that he feels he has no support in this life, that he feels alone in the world. Now, what’s the problem here?
That’s what you believe, that’s what you believe. Now, the job of Creation, of the universe, of the Creator, is to validate whatever you believe in.
I mean, you’re in a loop, and here’s the paradox.
Now I’ll say it again, we’ve talked about this loads of times. The biggest hint we’ve been given, for example in Judaism, about who the Creator is: Moses goes down
with the Tablets of the Covenant and says to God, “Okay, fine, I’ll bring them this, but what will I tell them?
Who gave me this?
Who brought it to me?”
And He tells him, “Go tell them: Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (‘I Am That I Am’) has sent me.”
One state of being mirrors another.
Another big hint comes from King David: “The Lord is your shade at your right hand.”
He’s telling you, it’s your shadow. I mean, if my shadow is in front of me,
every movement I make with my hand, my shadow makes too. My whole being echoes forward.
I mean, whatever you project, whatever you believe in, is what will be.
If I believe I’m alone in the world, that I have no support, that’s how it will be.
Sure, you’ll attract it right away, because wherever our focus is…
Right. That’s what we need to focus on, she said wisely.
Focus is critical here.
There’s a paradox here, okay. Little by little, all of us here have to understand that we’re
under Divine Providence. I mean, believe me, the logic is very simple: if there were no Providence, none of us would exist.
I mean, if you exist, know for certain that Providence is watching over you.
The question is what you believe.
Because that’s free will.
Your free will is in what you believe.
If you believe you’re lucky and everything works out for you,
that’s the belief, and the universe will support you in it.
It echoes back to you whatever you believe in.
Now, that’s tricky.
It’s tricky big time.
It’s not that simple, but we never said it was a simple game.
Earth is a tough place. It’s a playing field for strong souls.
Don’t get confused: the souls that come here are the strong souls, the tough souls.
Why?
Because this is a world with loads of limits, loads of restrictions. You’re limited by your physical body.
You’re limited by time, motion and place. You’re limited by your 5 senses.
I mean, a soul that manages, here on this field, on planet Earth, to rise above its limitations…
I’m telling you, communities on other planets come to learn how we overcome this.
Don’t underestimate your power.
Consciousness is the greatest force, the greatest amplifier.
Consciousness is built from your set of beliefs, from the simplest belief all the way to your belief about existence itself, about your own being.
I mean, there are laws working in the universe.
That’s what all of humanity is trying to understand.
But they’re not the laws we think we know. Now, what can help us here to overcome the difficulty?
So let’s try to put it into 5 laws, or axioms, as close to axioms as we can get.
If it exists, it exists. Fine.
What exists, exists.
You have nothing to argue with it about. If it exists, then it exists.
Okay.
Acknowledge the thing.
Acknowledge the thing.
Like the hummus stain on the mirror.
Exactly. I mean, it’s more than that. Don’t fight anything. If it exists, it exists. When you resist something’s existence,
you give it more validity, you strengthen it.
I mean, we need
a certain degree of detachment, and the fact remains that if the thing exists, it exists.
I have nothing to argue with it about.
The second thing is that we have to understand that everything here depends on time and motion, and in the same breath, time and motion are a complete illusion.
There’s no such thing as time, really.
There’s no such thing as time. The past has already happened; you can’t go back to it.
The future is still to come.
I mean, what do you have?
It’s present, and another present, and another present, and another present. I mean, what you always have is only the here and now, only the here and now.
The third thing, which we’ve gone over lots of times and will go over again: everything comes from the same Source, meaning,
there is none other than Him.
Everything here is made of the same stuff, everything is from the same Source.
It’s the same Source, the same One, taking form in different shapes.
Okay, it’s the same Creator taking form through plants, through people’s faces, through opinions, through ideas.
So, as for the first point, everything exists.
What are you arguing about?
The second point: don’t fall into the illusion.
All you have is right now, and right now the only thing you have here is the Creator taking form in all His many faces. Oh, sorry, that was already 3 points, but I rolled them into one.
And the fourth point, which is critical: what you give is what you’ll get. Call it manifesting, call it like attracts like, call it karma.
Okay, I want to say something about karma. Karma?
Karma isn’t punishment.
It’s a wheel, karma.
It’s motion and action.
It’s not punishment; it’s action and consequence.
It’s a reflection, it’s a mirror. So whatever you project, whatever you put out, whether in your thoughts, in your words or in your actions,
comes back to us.
The Creator, Creation, has no choice.
He reflects back what you project. Remember: karma is not punishment.
Even when you say about someone that you see he’s weak because of how he behaved before, watch out for that, because you’re drawing it to yourselves.
Yes, it’s just to look at it and understand.
It’s like a hamster running in a wheel. Okay, it makes the same movements, it runs; you’re inside your karma, it’s an action inside a wheel.
That’s it: here it starts, here it ends.
You want to get out of it?
Detach from your thoughts, your worldviews, your opinions and everything you take to be fixed reality. And go back and listen to what points 1, 2, 3 and 4 were. Fine, let’s move on to point 5. Point 5 says everything here is in motion and everything changes.
Remember we talked about how everything here is energy, everything here is vibrating?
Everything here moves, everything here is in motion.
Even the inanimate things you think are static aren’t static.
On the scientific level they’re not static. And so the events of life too, let’s remember, aren’t in our control, and most of the time we won’t understand them either.
But what changes is the point of view, exactly.
It’s my point of view, my attitude toward the event, toward the thing.
My opinions can change; here I can make a difference. So those are more or less the 5 laws.
Let’s take them in a nutshell, because we have to understand
that everything here, as we said, is energy, and humanity’s great lesson is learning how to work with this energy.
I mean, how to actually manipulate it.
What does that mean? To create.
That’s all of it: to create.
We have to learn how we create, because the moment you’ve cracked that, you’ve cracked everything. There are no real limits in the universe.
It’s the limits you’ve set for yourself, based on your set of beliefs, which most likely aren’t serving you.
They’re from your childhood.
In short, so we’ve boiled all this inner work down to 5 sentences, but I’ll give an example.
I’ll give an example of this inner frequency, this inner vibration,
of how you actually manifest things, because I’ll take the most common example.
Okay, I mean, how?
How do I find the love of my life?
Where’s my soulmate, “the one my soul loves”?
Where do I find her?
So that’s it: you don’t search. You don’t search; you let the thing come to you, because in the universe, anything you chase will always
run away from you, okay?
Always. Think like the egg: don’t chase.
Exactly, that’s exactly it, because that’s not the right movement.
What you can do is allow her to come to you, into your reality. How? By loving yourself, by becoming the energy she is looking for.
And instead of searching and doing the act of searching… What is searching? If I’m searching for something, what does that tell you for certain? That I don’t have it.
Nice. So what am I echoing? The lack, the lack of what I don’t have.
I mean, I’m saying: I don’t have you, I don’t have you, I don’t have you.
How will anyone find me?
If I’m echoing lack, okay. I mean, when you want something,
don’t radiate the fact that you lack it, because when you want something…
So you go, like with everything, to the extreme: if we want great love, then we echo love.
Nice. I mean, if you know you have everything you need, and more than that, that you’re supported,
that everything you need will come to you, and at exactly the right time, then you’re headed in the right direction.
Only, what do you need to be? Calm.
You need to be cool, and we live in a reality that’s anything but calm and cool.
Okay, and then again we come back to the paradox, to this paradox: if I understand that I need to vibrate the thing I want, or that I’m asking for, I mean, I can’t come with complaints, because if I come with complaints,
if I say how shitty it is here, and hard,
then the energy, the Creator, the Holy One, blessed be He, will tell me: this is shit, this is bad.
Let’s give it more, so you experience the experience all the way.
As the saying goes: do you want to suffer a little or a lot?
More than that, that’s not the point. The point is, what are you echoing?
That’s encouragement.
No, but the example you brought, just so we don’t get confused here, is talking about something else.
It’s talking about a place where I avoid a small suffering and don’t surrender to the truth.
And then I put it off, put it off, put it off.
And then I reach a big suffering.
I’m talking about something else.
I’m talking about echoing the thing itself.
If I want love, I need to be love and radiate love itself. When I vibrate with fear, I radiate
fear. It becomes a force multiplier.
It’s a mirror. I mean, one state of being mirrors another.
The water is a mirror.
The color you see in the pool is the sky reflected in it. The water itself has no color, and that’s our reality. So I want to tell you two things.
This Creator I’m talking about, or in more religious language, let’s call Him the Holy One, blessed be He, dear souls:
He isn’t Haredi, He isn’t Haredi. He doesn’t walk around in a suit and hat.
Enough with that, okay?
We want to connect to a place that is love, that is sweet.
That’s our Holy One, blessed be He. Don’t fall for outward signs. The second thing: that same Creator, the one who doesn’t walk around in a suit and a kippah and a hat, loves you. He loves you. The Creator loves each and every one of you. Speak to Him personally, even if you’re in the middle of a party.
I talk with the Creator. Even when I’m sitting having drinks, I sit and talk with the Creator.
Now, how do you start with this?
You start at the beginning. Where’s
the beginning?
It always begins with your thoughts. That’s simply where you have to start.
The beginning is always in your thoughts, and think how little we guard this thing called purity of thought.
After all, why does a person close the door of the house? So that people he doesn’t want won’t come in, say burglars, for example. Okay, why does a person close windows or put up screens?
He doesn’t want all kinds of flying things, insects, mosquitoes, to get in. Fine. So why do you leave your head
wide open,
exposed to everything that goes by outside?
Because that’s easiest. That’s exactly how we’ve been programmed.
Why does your mind suddenly wander to something from 5 years ago that makes you angry or sad?
So guard your minds, guard your minds. Protect them as fiercely as you protect your home, your property and your surroundings.
Be zealous, too, about what gets into your thoughts, into your head.
Close your head to unnecessary thoughts,
to fearful ones. Because the moment a thought starts, and a few moments go by and the thought stays in your head,
it starts to take over, to take over the person.
A bad thought comes to you, throw it out.
Don’t leave it there.
You know, there used to be a fire burning on the altar.
The altar is a metaphor for the thoughts we have in our heads. They say, “A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar; it shall not go out.”
What does that mean? From one bad thought, if you don’t stop it,
it will spread like fire and take you over like fire, and it brings its friends too, more thoughts like it.
Like a fire in a field of thorns.
And then what happens to a person? He’s sunk, basically,
in gloom.
We have to understand that first and foremost we must take care of our thoughts, be zealous about our thoughts, because any thought that stays there long enough will seep into our feelings and eventually shape how we act.
So isn’t it better that it be a good one? Because, because, because, look, we’re always talking.
We say this too is for the good, this too is for the good, this too is for the good. Now,
the meaning of that is that even the bitter is good, even the bad is good. If someone did something to you, or some problem happens to you,
even if you don’t see it as good right now and you see it as bad, you have to understand that everything is for the good in the end, because in the end there’s salvation.
There’s a very beautiful verse that says, “Be wholehearted with your God.” And by now it matters less to me which God you choose. You’ve chosen a God? Be wholehearted with your God. A person who acts wholeheartedly, a person who practices inner discernment…
That’s our job here, to do.
Discernment. Discern, but discern from a good thought, because this too is for the good.
Let’s go back to the crazy paradox that’s happening in the world right now, the one we’re living through here.
Extreme antisemitism, the most extreme, really.
Shall we not talk about what happened at Eurovision?
Shall we not talk about what’s happening at the universities, not talk about what’s happening at… So we have to understand that this too is for the good. And I’ll give just one tiny thought. I said, okay, what does “for the good” mean?
And the verse that came up for me was “Torah shall go forth from Zion.”
Why “Torah shall go forth from Zion”? Dear souls, how could that not be for the good?
They’re closing all the universities to you?
All the faculties? Then come here. The State of Israel needs to be wise enough to understand and know that it should take all the money it has, all the capital it has, and set up an international center, a faculty here.
A university that will beat all the universities in the world, and bring here, here, here, all the brilliant Jewish minds.
It’s not for nothing that they’re closing the gates to us.
The gates are closed to us so that we’ll come here.
So in the end this too will be for the good, right? Because look, anything, if you look at it
from above, from above, from above, from a place of faith, it will be good for you, and you can see that pattern running through your whole life.
I always use this expression, saying I feel like Hansel and Gretel.
All day I’m looking for the crumbs; I’m trying to get home.
I know I’ve left crumbs here, I’ll get home. Be in that mindset.
This isn’t new for me.
I’ve always been this way. I can give
an example. Let’s give an example. You know what, here, the closing song has already come up for me. Through the example. Fine, you know “Shir HaMaalot”? Fine, “Shir HaMaalot.”
Twenty-something years ago, I was studying education for my bachelor’s degree.
I’ve told this story: I didn’t have money for tuition.
And then a religious minister of education was appointed and said, whoever goes
to become…
Of course: whoever becomes a teacher of Bible and Judaism gets a scholarship, 90%. Yours truly wanted to be a teacher of Bible and Judaism. I didn’t understand then why; today I understand it much better. One of my lecturers…
I think I was already on the home stretch of this thing, of the degree and everything, and then there was an assignment that seemed silly.
The band Sheva’s “Shir HaMaalot” hadn’t come out yet.
It became well known later.
She taught us “Shir HaMaalot,” okay, from Psalms. She opened the assignment with it, and even then it seemed idiotic to me: for the exam, you have to know “Shir HaMaalot” by heart. And I was very cheeky, too.
I’m cheeky today, and I was very cheeky then too.
I asked her, “What’s your deal?
Like, what’s the point?
Now I have to learn this text by heart?” And she said to me quietly, “You’ll learn it by heart.”
And I’m a good student, so of course I learned it by heart. And on the day she came to test me, she said to me, “You know, you asked me that question,
and I had loads of answers to give you, but I didn’t answer you.
But this morning I got the answer.” And I said to her, “What?” And she said to me, “You won’t believe it. This morning, on my way here to the university, someone called out to me, shouted ‘Hey!’ and I turned around,” and she saw him in uniform, and it was a former student of hers.
Because before she taught at the university, she was a Bible teacher in high school, and she told me that in high school, too, she insisted that the students know “Shir HaMaalot” by heart. And she saw this young man in uniform, and she sees he’s a combat soldier, and he says to her, “You have to hear this: you saved my life.” And she says to him…
He said, “Listen, I was in a life-and-death situation for twelve hours in the middle of the fighting, and I want to tell you that the only thing that held me together was that I knew how to say ‘Shir HaMaalot’ by heart. And I said it, and I said it, and I led all our soldiers there in it, and no one came out hurt.” And I stood in front of her and recited “Shir HaMaalot” by heart. She thanked me, and we said goodbye there.
I flew to the East, to India, and I remember sitting in some place in India; the name doesn’t matter.
It was a very spiritual kind of place, really strong.
And I said, okay, where do I go from here?
Like, what, what, what do I feel like doing?
What’s the meaning of this trip for you?
What did you want? You wanted so badly to get to India, and now where are you?
And suddenly, in the room next to me, I hear “Shir HaMaalot,” but with a melody. And then I go to the next room, and I see a group of Israelis there, and I say to them, “What’s that?” They tell me, “It’s the band Sheva singing ‘Shir HaMaalot.’”
Look, it’s a song. I hear it and I say wow, and they ask me, “How do you know the words by heart? It only just came out.” So I tell them…
They didn’t know it was…
They didn’t know then, so I explained it to them.
And then I met a sweet friend, and we’re still friends to this day, and he and I did India on his Enfield, some 4,000
km. We rode all over India, up to Nepal, and the whole way, to keep him alert and to keep things interesting,
I sing to him, I sing, and between songs
I hammer “Shir HaMaalot” into him. And he says to me, “Okay, why do you keep singing me this song so much?” And I tell him, “You have to know it by heart.” And he says to me, “Why do I have to know it by heart?”
Let me pause there.
The trip ends.
Yours truly comes back to Israel, and 3 months later my father passed away.
My father’s funeral really shook me, because I had been out the night before.
I’m not ashamed to say I partied until about 4 in the morning.
I stood at my father’s grave, completely wrecked and out of it, trying to stay on my feet.
And I hear the rabbi praying and saying “Shir HaMaalot,” and I say, okay, wow, here too. A month after that, I get a phone call that my good friend, the one I took the trouble to teach all the words in India,
was arrested in Japan. He sat in prison in Japan for 7 years.
The letters we wrote to each other explained to me very nicely why it was important that he know “Shir HaMaalot” by heart.
The next milestone, by the way, was my wedding, about a year later. I chose to walk in to the band Sheva’s “Shir HaMaalot.”
For me it’s become a song that has accompanied me through the lowest and highest points of my life.
And I think the period we’re in now demands that all of us hold on to some kind of faith. And I’m not obliging or forcing anyone to believe what I believe.
But listen to this song. We’ll play the whole song so you can hear how it begins
in quiet, connection and sadness, then rises higher and higher in energy, and it works miracles inside your body.
Out of faith. There’s also King David’s verse in it, “The Lord is your shade at your right hand.”
And for me it’s the song.
If anyone asks me what my song is, this is my song.
It has accompanied me through critical turning points in my life, and it will continue to do so. So in this week of sadness and joy, of uncertainty and clarity,
I invite you to connect to this song, and amen, may we all hear good news.
[The song, Psalm 121:]
I lift up my eyes to the mountains.
From where will my help come?
My help is from the Lord,
Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip.
Behold, He does not slumber,
and He does not sleep, the Guardian of Israel.
The Lord is your guardian,
the Lord is your shade
at your right hand.
By day
the sun will not strike you, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will guard you
from all evil;
He will guard your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in
from now on.