17. Yithro 5777 -Because My Insides Don’t Feel The Way Your Outsides Look -Reconciling Ourselves

Link to Trailer: https://www.facebook.com/TheJewishMind/videos/1684241958259263/ Link to Written Notes (available until March 15, 2017, after which you can request them at [email protected]): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4614078/17.%20Yithro%205777%20-Because%20My%20Insides%20Don%E2%80%99t%20Feel%20the%20Way%20Your%20Outsides%20Look%20-Reconciling%20Ourselves.pdf THE JEWISH MIND’s pursuit to have modern life issues meet with the timeless wisdom of Judaism demands that we embrace that modern life issues are experienced differently by people. Thus, while the entire human race holistically is touched by each of its member’s issues, however, some issues will resonate with some stronger than others. The primary purpose of these lectures is therefore for each of us to learn to identify with the underlying core issue, rather than, identifying with how we each experience differently the same issue. The core issue that we are dealing with here is precisely of how we resonate with other peoples’ projections of their experiences. Let us understand this core issue of modern life. To internally resonate with how other people project themselves and their experiences is to subject ourselves to the confusion of, “Why don’t my insides feel like the way your outsides look.” It is amazing how people who don’t fundamentally trust other people, and yet they fall prey to the naiveté of believing that other people truly believe in themselves just the way they project themselves to. It is amazing to see how many people believe what other people say or show about themselves and their lives. Let’s take the classic example of how we view our marriages in comparison to the way the other couple project the beauty, the bliss and the love of their marriage. We then fall into this deep depression, resentment, and jealousy of why the inside truth of our own marriage doesn’t look as good as the outer projection of their marriage. The mere fact that what differs between their marriage and our marriages is only that they are better actors than we are, and that they don’t carry the truth of their marriage on their sleeves as we may, doesn’t even enter our suddenly naive minds, which otherwise never trusts anybody… In most scenarios, their marriage is on the whole neither better nor worse than ours. Both marriages have their ups and downs, their insides and their outsides. However, our sudden naiveté creates very deep sensitivities of believing that there is something terribly wrong and missing with us and with our relationships. This lecture is going to take us to the core of why our Insides and our Outsides create different experiences of self and of life. In the process, this lecture is going to redirect us to viewing our insides in comparison to our own Outsides, rather than to other peoples’ Outsides, and then it will teach us how to reconcile our own Insides with our own Outsides.