174. G-d is in the Pause

Transcript:

Welcome to the Connected For Real podcast. I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business. And my mission is to bring God’s presence into your life, into your marriage and into your business. Let’s get started.

 And we are live. Welcome everyone to the Connected for Real podcast. I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman and today with me is Ronda Attar. Revitin, Ronda, but she doesn’t like to be called Revitin. Ronda, introduce yourself and tell everyone why you are so awesome and then we can get into our topic of time and God.

Wow. First of all, you know, it hit me when you said we’re alive. I was like, yeah, we’re alive. That in itself is an amazing thing to think, like, you know, we’re alive. We’re really alive. It’s incredible. I can’t do with this stuff of like why you’re so awesome. That’s not gonna work. For me. Also when I was filling out your form, I was like, what are you, an expert?

And I wanted to say absolutely nothing. So I don’t know what to tell you. I do want a bit of my background. I’m happy to talk about a bit of my background. I know my background is unusual. I’m actually one of the founders of the Israeli commercial television channels, and I had quite a career in television with expertise in producing and directing and branding , all negotiations with Hollywood studios.

I went on to be general manager, vice chairman of the board, I launched 10 cable satellite channels in Israel, another 4 abroad to like 120 countries, and I’m also operating our playout center, international playout center, this broadcast center, of course we also had a commercial, an award winning commercial.

Company as well. And so I did really a very large career in that. It’s actually one that I had studied in the States and came here and did. And yet at the same time, I was always with one foot in the kedusha side, my husband being a rabbi, and I’m here in Kochav Yaakov. It was very important for us.

We built, you know, we wanted to have the Sea of Torah. I always said, had I stayed in the United States, I think I would have had you know, you know, the luxury in life would have probably been to have like, you know, something in Hollywood, like, you know, a swimming pool or something like that. I said, but now here I have, you know, the sea of Torah, Baruch Hashem, in my life that we were able to have here.

So we built a Beit Knesset and a Beit Midrash, and it has a rabbinical seminary, a kol hachatzot, we have mikveot We also get to have the skut of having Bat Khen’s husband and sometimes her kids as part of our minyanim. In fact, her husband every once in a while gives shiurim, which is always a treat, sometimes at the shiurim as well, at the beknesset.

And I’m also dabbled in other things, writing because I was also part of my previous career Koren published a trilogy I wrote for young adults called the Elisha Davidson trilogy, which is kind of like The best way to say it, although I don’t like calling it, is like Jewish Harry Potter. But what’s amazing about it is, I think for our kids, is that it shows them like, you know, everything is greener on our side.

Like all of this incredible, amazing, the magical, the real thing, we’ve got it. And it basically kind of like opens up the treasure chest. of all of our beautiful Midrashim and and things to get kids imaginations excited. Instead of reading, you know, like I say, especially Hanukkah time, it always bothers me that they’re going with Percy Jackson, which is like Greek mythology, come on.

We do have to do better by our kids, right? So so I wrote that. And I still do a lot of Consulting in the fields in the various fields. And starting 15 years ago, I started a woman’s bate midrash in our complex and towards Corona, I started taking it online to zoom and actually continued with that because it affords more people that aren’t necessarily just here in the yeshiva to hear the shiurim.

And I also have a very big schut that happened to be Bachan Grossman’s neighbor. Oh, yes. It’s such a big deal that you’re my neighbor. We also have, we also very much share, we have the aesthetic mindset, as you probably, they all know, right, that you’re an amazing, like, graphic artist, so they call them media engineers today and so that’s also one of the loves of my life, so I, I feel like Bat-Chen and I can sometimes, you know, can really relate on that aesthetic plane as well, something that I spend a lot of time doing, and I still do actually with the branding.

So, just trying to give a bit of a background, and actually the two have always been synonymous in my life, and I’ve always, like, straddled both these worlds, put them together. I think that actually in the Elisha Davidson books, you can understand actually how that comes together. Yes. So I think I want to tell the listeners why I picked to have you on my podcast, especially to talk about time and God, but also just in general, because I think you’re an amazing.

Example of what it looks like to be a successful woman and also very, very connected, very aligned, extremely in flow without having it. conflict in any way. You know, your values and also the fact that you are going after your dreams and doing the thing. So I think for people to see that is really important.

You know but that’s an interesting thing that you brought up now, because one of the things I really say, my career is proof, proof that careers are what HaShem gives you okay because anyone who knows the israeli television industry has to know extremely left they’re getting kind of a lot better over the years you know you have channel 14 but in those days We’re talking about extremely left, extremely left, no tolerance for right wing, extremely anti religious on top of it.

Also I’m sorry to say, but at those times too, when I was doing this misogynistic, or like at least not for women, it was a very man’s world, they were chauvinistic, and on top of everything else. You know, not a lot of tolerance for what I’d say an ulecha v’shah, somebody coming from the United States.

But I came, you know, with all these degrees and all this information and stuff like that. And I just saw, how Hashem, like, kept putting me in these places, like, being the first woman, you know, manager. And nobody, understood what was going on. And and yet, and these people. You know, which are from a very different walk of life.

And you personally, I have to say that they are so close to me. We are, we are like bonded in such a strong way. And maybe just for that, I needed to be out there so that we could have that. But it’s very interesting. And it just, it’s so obvious to me, you know, I always said. Before I met Aliyah, because actually I had gotten a job at Aaron’s Spelling Production, which a company nobody knows anymore, but the older people will.

And I was supposed to do productions out there. And then the night that I was supposed to go out there and, take this job, I said to myself, Okay, what will be the future? Well, what will happen to me? Where, where will I go from here? You know, what’s waiting for me? If I go into this very secular world and very American and, and you know, this television, how do I know that I’ll have an neshama left at the end of the day?

How, I would sing all the time. How am I gonna marry somebody even, you know, Jewish? Forget about religious. Where’s gonna, my kids are gonna be. Like, so what? We get like, what do you get? An Oscar? You get like a Hollywood, you know, a mansion, a swimming pool? What’s going to be and I was just like, forget that, but I made a deal with myself and I made a very important deal with myself and I said, If you come into Israel, okay, and you do that and you give that up, okay, my number one luxury in life has to be Israel.

Living in Israel has to be my number one luxury in life. And I mean to be a Jewish person living with Israeli holidays, you know, with the kosher food, with other Jews, you know, in Eretz Israel, the dream of thousands of years to be able to have such a huge schut, that is going to be my luxury in life. And Baruch HaShem, Baruch HaShem a million times, a million times, I always say that I was able to get a luxury.

At the beginning when I was living here, you know, as a single person, I have to say I was probably starving. But afterwards, no, that’s what’s incredible about it. I saw how HaShem just kept doing, doing, doing. You know, my career, like, giving me bigger positions, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, and, and all the luxuries too, in the end of the day, you know, in the end, it’s like Hashem said, you said that, you know, I felt like it was always like, you said, this is going to be your luxury in life.

Don’t worry. You’re not going to miss out on the other luxuries. So you know, Baruch Hashem, but I do feel like now what’s combinations. It’s really that you see Yad Hashem. My career makes absolutely no sense to anybody who looks at it. Let’s just, Aranda, I want to pause you for just a second.

Some people don’t speak Hebrew, so I want you to just translate to English. So I speak Hebrew and English, those are my two languages. Yeah, so Yad Hashem is the hand of God, so keep going now. What, what other ones did I say? I said, I really, this one is the main one. I think if you didn’t get that, then you’re missing something and you’re trying to figure it out and you can’t put it together.

So the combination is being able to see the hand of God in everything you do, therefore making it no conflict. In fact, whenever we see something that’s totally illogical, that’s supposed to be a big, like, you know, highway sign, like, what do you mean? It’s totally And I would say the times we’re living in now, like we see everything against Israel, you know, and the anti semitism, you’re saying like, you know, wow, they’re saying we’re genocide when they’re genocide.

Whenever you see things completely illogical, don’t sit there and say, how can it be Hashem? It’s, this is because it’s Hashem. If it was logical, you know, then it wouldn’t, you would say, okay, this is logical. So I said that to it’s very apparent in my career. That it was, you know, Hashem’s hand, totally illogical, totally illogical, you know, it’s illogical, but then it also is inspirational because a lot of us are walking around looking for someone to look up to that has done it and is able to show it is possible.

And it’s, it’s very hard to find. So as illogical as it is, we also want to believe that it’s doable and practical. Yeah, it’s funny because I think the reason why maybe I also don’t like the name, in the television world, they used to call me Rebitson. They’d come into my office and say, Rebitson, what should we put in this primetime slide?

Well, they were using it as a derogatory term. So no, no, no, it wasn’t really ultimately derogatory. Like I said, No, I know. They’re like in a mockery type of thing, you know? Yeah. That’s, that’s funny. That’s funny. You know, I didn’t want to be Rebbetzin, you know, every Reviton I know is very old. And I didn’t think I was old, so I didn’t think it fit.

And also every Rebbetzin I knew always said, Oh, don’t call me Rebbetzin just call me whatever. And I thought, who am I to go and say, I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman when I’m so young and so not on their level, you know? And so it was a real process for me to own up to being Reviton. Interesting, but no, but you wear it well.

I wear it well. Thank you. It’s appropriate for you. Yeah. Thank God. Okay. So our podcast is all about the four pillars. Everybody here wants to make their marriage and their business or success work together. And in order to do that, we need. Four things, not just marriage and business. We need God at the core, marriage and business, and then you as the container.

And so because we have four pillars, we’re focusing on the same topic from four different angles. And today’s topic is time and the pillar of God. So how does God use time? How do we use time for God? Why did God create time? All of that good stuff. Let’s get into that. Okay. So Bat-Chen, we had said that this is actually a good discussion from Messilat Yesharim which we studied together, right, and we studied the Bilvavi commentary in Messilat Yesharim which is Rav Itamar Schwartz because there’s a lot of discussion about this time, and I think that we have to understand fundamentally or from the very basic, it’s not to try to figure out, like, about time and Hashem. Hashem is time, right? That’s, like, Hashem’s name, right, if we look at the Yud Key Vav Key name, which I’m not going to say, but your viewers Or they, they understand that?

Okay, so it, it means, Ha Yah Ho Veh Veh Yeh Yeh Ha Shem was, is, and will be. What does that mean, Ha Shem? Like, Ha Shem’s the past, the present, and the future. That’s like, Ha Shem is like time. And this was also revealed to Moshe, Moses, when he was at the burning bush. So we have to understand that Time is fundamentally Hashem to a certain degree, because, you know, if we had no time, then we wouldn’t be alive and stuff like that.

So we’re all existing within this time, which is Hashem. But the crazy thing about that is, is that we don’t recognize it, we don’t see it, and we don’t live it. Yes. Yeah, no, that’s one of the, the very strange things about it is that, you know, Hashem basically is this time, and so that means if we want to connect, the way we’re gonna ultimately be able to connect to Hashem is using, right, This doorway or this vehicle of time and and so in like what way and, and that is, is that, you know, the pauses in time.

It’s like, it’s only when you make a significant effort to be able to say. You know, I am going to, like, you know, connect to Hashem, or have space or time in your life, to connect to Hashem. Otherwise, we’re running around in a treadmill of time, rushing from one thing to another, all doing physical activities, and we have a lot of very important things to do.

Even davening all the time, even doing a whole bunch of mitzvot, all this stuff, we’re like in a treadmill, running, running, running, and we don’t really have any of the real time as a nishamah, as a soul, to really connect. to Hashem. And so that’s one of the really big problems. And one of the things that the Ramchal discusses, which he’s the author of Messilah Yishurim, is that you cannot go anywhere in your spiritual life without first getting in touch with your nishama, okay?

And that is like me making time, like setting some time in the present, like now. And what, because one of the other important things we, you know, we say about Hashem is that, you know, Hashem is the present. It’s the present now. Meaning, how do we make time, you know, this thing with Hashem is like we need to stop what we’re doing now.

You have to remember too, even with all these physical activities, one of the things that happens to a lot of us is that we’re always in the past, either reliving conversations over and over again, what we did. And that’s a bad thing to do too, because not only once it’s like, you know, after it’s happened already, there’s no point just , regurgitating it over and over again.

It’s not going to help you for anything. The future is just your imagination with all due respect. I mean, what is that? It’s really just your imagination. The only thing we really do have also is The present. So are we going to just be in a denial with that the whole time? So you imagine if we’re either thinking about the past or we’re talking about the future or we’re involved in other things.

So we have no present and therefore no connection with Hashem, like we said, in this time zone of our neshamah. Now that might just seem actually very simple or like, you know, but I can tell you that most people actually will go through their whole lives without making that place, that time, that break.

To actually connect to Hashem in the present of being very present and saying, okay I’m a I’m a shaman a soul and I want to like, you know connect with Hashem As great as it is because we think it’s in our davening and all it’s it’s not necessarily Yeah Wow, when you said that, you know We live in the past and future and you made that space.

That’s the present suddenly I saw that as almost like a hallway that can either expand or contract, right? Like we’re either walking on this really, really thin line between past and future, or we’re taking the time to really expand that and be in it. And so we really have a very powerful way of connecting or using time or expanding time.

You know how people say time is limited. And when you said God is time, I was like, wait, so time cannot be limited. It is abundant. And also Hashem is even above that time, right? But Hashem reveals Himself as is, was, will be. Right. So, I’m thinking, like, my mind is blown in all sorts of directions. I’m just going, whoo, whoa.

Because, You know, people are telling you time is limited, we have a scarcity of time, I never have enough time, I’m running after the next thing, I’m doing, doing, doing, running, running, running, and you know, almost grasping at the little time I have, and instead you’re saying the secret is Not to do more, to do less, to pause and expand the time you are in right now.

That’s so counterintuitive and so awesome. By the way, it’s actually exactly what you said. And something even, I think, deeper that the Ramchal brings up. Because what he says, if you remember we studied this, it was like When we think about what is our Yetzir Hara, okay? So the Ramchal and the Rav Shavuots explain what is our Yetzir Hara.

Basically, our Yetzir Hara is that feeling that we don’t have time. Come on, I can’t say We think, oh, the Yetzir Hara is like, you know, this little devil sits on your shoulder, or like, you know, somebody tell you, do that, don’t do that. And it’s saying, actually, the real Yetzir Hara that we all have is that I don’t have time for anything.

Meaning, so I don’t have time to create these pauses to be in touch with my Neshama and live the present. And the reason where this starts from, it’s very interesting. It’s old as our history itself as our nation, because they say Paro, okay, Pharaoh, when he had the Jewish people, what was the reason why he kept us as slave laborers?

It was so that we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t have time, we wouldn’t have time to reflect. He knew there would be a Redeemer, and it says like this, this was the wicked Paro, okay, he said, to intensify the men’s labor, I’m reading from Exodus 5, 9. His purpose, this is Romchel, was not only to prevent them from having any leisure time to plot against him, but keeping them constantly busy with work, so they would have no time to reflect, they’d have no time to call out Hashem.

Okay, and this is like a really crazy thing, and I said this, this is why he did it. So the root we say of our Gullah, our exile is not having time. Like we’re exiled from our spiritual world because we don’t have time. That’s a crazy kind of idea too, because, you know, we think we have all this time, but no, we don’t have time.

You know, our lives are so hectic and so stressful that we have no time for cheshbon nefesh, no time to think about who I am, what I’m doing, what my neshama wants. I don’t have time. And this is the biggest problem. Let me tell you the biggest thing I hear from women who are in business and also running a home and also trying to do it all is I just don’t have time.

And instead of pausing and really, really connecting, we’re trying to do more. And I’m saying we, cause it’s very normal. We’re all in this boat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I didn’t, that I raised family with, you know, all of this. Okay. And also being, you know, the primary, you know, person with it working. It was, you know, I, I know all about that.

I, I, we’re on a treadmill, we’re running, we’re grasping at the little tiny bits of nothing. How do we. Align and create a flow within life right now, not that we have to wait for the kids to grow up or that we have to wait for our husband to, you know, retire or that we have to wait for some magical thing to happen for us to create time.

But how do we do that right now? In all of the chaos? So when the first things is really recognizing this very deep fundamental secret, like understanding that whenever we feel that we don’t have time that’s actually the Yetzirah. It’s not the complication of our lives, right?

Because the first thing is like you said, but we’re mothers and we’re busy and we have this and you have this many children. And, and so it, so it’s all of these things. Of course, I’m busy. I don’t have time for anything. That is what we’re saying is we first have to recognize it’s Yetzirah. Because what Paro did was he tried to get people so they didn’t have time to breathe.

Okay, does that sound familiar that you didn’t have time to breathe? It’s a really beautiful thing, too, because it says when Moshe Rabbeinu, okay, went to the people, he tried to speak to them and tell them, and they couldn’t listen to Moshe Rabbeinu because they had kotzer ruach. They were short of breath, they couldn’t breathe. Imagine, Moshe Rabbeinu, the greatest prophet that ever lived, was telling them, Guess what? We are going to the end. The gula is here. Okay, you’re going to be safe. And they said, we don’t have time to listen to you because we’re so busy. I got to take care of my kids and I got my job and I’m going to do when I wake up in the morning that I can’t hear you.

But that’s exactly that’s the passuk. It says the people couldn’t do it. They couldn’t hear him because they just like, you know, they had a shortness of breath. They were so busy. And the thing that we have to understand is, is What happened then does that sound familiar? Because that’s now.

Yeah, that’s now. We have to understand like when we were becoming a nation’s like that things were so good that we didn’t have time to breathe. We didn’t have time to think. We didn’t have time to breathe. And I always say too, we have to understand what we’re looking at our lives today. And there’s nothing more crazy like that.

And you say it’s also modern times. I don’t care. You could say all the things that you have to do. But look, the whole culture. is to make you not have time to breathe. Okay. Everything has to be instant and quickly. If you don’t click on something right away, it’s like next to the next thing. Okay, right. We talked about like, you know, whatever it is, like you’re shopping, you know, Amazon Prime, you want to get next day.

I mean, everything is an instant on demand, on demand, on demand. And not only that, we always. also are like supposed to have no downtime. There’s no space. We always have to be available and everybody be in touch with us. And their people are just like sucking in all this time too. And we have all these devices and everything that’s going around.

So, but, and that like, you know, it’s so it’s like, it looks like it’s also part of sucking up all of our time, but that’s because we’re not seeing it for what it really is. Okay, all of these things, and when we think, when we feel like we don’t have time, is this Yigit Sahara. By the way, also, when people are like waiting in line, the first thing they do now is like, wow, they can go to your phone and you can take care of all things, so they don’t want to waste any time, you know, thinking that you’re not going to get all this stuff accomplished.

But really, if you were able to take a pause, use that as a pause in time, it would be something very different. Okay, so, you know, one of the problems is like, we always have something at our fingertips that’s going to, get us to. Like use our time more efficiently, but it’s really not. It’s just sucking up all of this time.

And if you said to, like, if you have a corridor, right, what’s going on. So I think one of the most important things is kind of like a shift that we have to understand internally. Like when we feel short of time, we don’t have time. We don’t have time to have time. That yetzer Hara, actually. It’s going to make us go through our whole lives not taking the tikkunim that we have to do, not saying the things we have to do, not even doing the pedantic actions that we’re doing because we’re too caught up in the treadmill.

Right. Basically, it’s an illusion. Yes, it’s an illusion, but we also, the world is very, very, very noisy and you know, all this noise that’s going around now, especially with all the devices and stuff. And plus our noises seem so noisy because you have a woman out in the work field. So it’s like, what, on top of having to have, you know, all of whatever the responsibilities of being a mother and a wife and et cetera, et cetera, and I’m working now and you know, So you see life is very noisy.

Plus you have all these devices to drive you up the wall. But so what we say is, is that you, you know, and don’t forget the disease, dis ease, right? We always remember that dis ease, diseases is like this disease thing we have to think. So one of the things Rob Schwartz says too is, is That it’s so bad that that stress and that lack of ease to bring you the disease, it’s really bad.

Of course, people can grind themselves to get sick and overworked and burnt out and, you know, and depressed and all this stuff thinking they have to do all that stuff. But you see, again, we have to recognize for what it is. It’s the yetzer hara one. Somebody feels overwhelmed and they don’t have time for anything.

That’s when they have to catch it. And say, hey, wait, you know, what’s going on? Because Rushfarts, and he says too, in these noisy worlds, we need to start making some space. We need to create some quiet. We have to start blocking out some of this noise. And we’re not talking about a tremendous amount of time to block out the noise.

Okay, but just blocking out the noise when one of the things that he talks about a lot is we talked about a pause, creating pauses in our lives, little pauses. I’m not talking about long pauses. I’m talking about like one minute pauses, even pauses between activities to just like Realign with myself.

Okay. And if you remember, we were doing exercises like, you know, what’s this pause is to take a woman and not think about anything. Okay. Oh, my to do list. And I have to do this. And I got to go tomorrow to the supermarket. It’s like, no, my shopping list. No, it’s not the minute to be reading tehillim for somebody’s refua sheleima

I’m not, it’s not a minute to like, you know, I don’t know, check your phone things that a minute of doing nothing is doing absolutely nothing. Okay. So it’s not even thinking of anything, just thinking, you know, Hey, okay. I’m actually a Neshamah. I’m actually a God given soul on this planet. Hold on, you know, just don’t want to think of anything, but just remember in the present, in the very present, this pause.

Me, who I am, to block out some of this noise because they say if in our neshama we can’t find this time place, we can be asleep at the wheel our whole lives and never get anywhere. Just even, they said even taking sometimes a break between activities, we go from one to another. We go from, I barely got that one, I gotta check that one off the list.

That is the worst thing that, so we can do. Little breaks, even like the 30 seconds to take like, okay, my mind, I was, even I was davening now, but now, before I even read the telem, I said I was going to do today, I’m taking a break. And remembering. Just to, to relax for a minute and do it. And I always tell everybody that one of the most amazing things that Bachchan taught us when we were in this Mitzilat Yishurim class, do you have the picture of the pause?

I wish I had it so I could show you, because we talk about all the time is that Hashem is in the pause. When we pause our life, when that’s where Hashem is, and they said this time, and the amazing thing is, right, that if you look at what is the icon or the the sign of a pause sign, it’s two lines right next to each other, right?

You hit the pause. And when you hit the pause. What’s beautiful about it As Chen, you know, again, she has this aesthetic, you know, outlook. She said, wow, that’s YY, which is also like a name of Hashem, right? So it’s like it, it was just incredible because it was almost so obvious, like Hashem y Hashem’s in the pause.

Really, Hashem is in the pause. That’s where we find the shem. It’s not where we’re running around and doing the million ones things and trying to, even doing chesed, acts of chesed. We could be doing tons of, I made a meal for this person and then I went to visit this person in the hospital, but, but you didn’t take the pause.

It’s not that these were wonderful, beautiful acts. Don’t get me wrong. Okay, but just even that pause, even before, let’s say you went to visit somebody, just remembering, well, hey, I’m in a shema, I’m going now into this hospital, whatever, and just Getting in touch with yourself for the present so you can actually start learning to appreciate your present and not what I did before and what I’m doing before, you know, next, and just getting stuck.

And again, why did I say that? Why did she say that to me? And then like, you know, tomorrow, I really want to be able to win this award. Forget it. The pause, the pause, the pause.

  Hey! Before we continue the episode, I want to ask you something. Are you ready to get answers from God directly? Feel more in love with your husband and more supported than ever? Run the business of your dreams without having to sacrifice any other part of your life? That is exactly what my one on one private coaching is for and I want to invite you, just you and me, for a free deep dive discovery call.

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Now back to the show.  

It was so beautiful to figure out that God is in the pause. I remember that moment because the class is with a slideshow and you kept showing the pause over and over again.

So beautiful. You know, your slideshows are just absolutely amazing. Magnificent. If you get a chance to come to the class, please do. It’s so great. And I’m looking at the pause and you’re talking about God being in the pause and I’m sitting there going. Wait a minute! It’s, it’s God’s name! It really is!

It’s God’s name! And, and, in my life, since we learned that, and that was probably two years ago, I have been, I’ve been pausing between things, or even just mid sentence. You know, if I’m in the middle of praying and I feel like I’m on a, you know, just a automatic, I’ll pause myself and say, one second, what did I just say?

What am I praying for? Who am I? What’s going on? It allows me to connect and I, I love it. And you know, one of the things that I have is the guide to unravel overwhelm. Oh, okay. That’s good. And, yes, if you want, if you want to get this guide, it’s at connectedforreal. com slash guide and it is so. Exactly what we’re talking about right now.

I mean it gives you the step by steps and it’s really a fantastic guide But it is so based on this the fact that you Get to i’m not saying you must you know, i’m not saying you have to because it’s a choice you get to pause and be Human and be a soul like you said, you know I I feel like even if you just go to the basics of be human like stop running after something that isn’t here and Be in the present, you know, what’s interesting your body can only be in the present Your body can’t be in the past and it can’t be in the future.

It’s your mind that’s playing that game of past future, but your body is only present. So sometimes just getting into your body like taking a deep breath or feeling your toes or whatever it is, like getting into your body will, will force you to be present. It’s very true. And the crazy thing too, because we have so much like, you know, self help out there in the world.

You know, trying to get us to this stuff. But like, one of the things we just understand is like, it’s really all with us. We’ve got all of this, you know, and really, and the king is just like discovering it. Like we said, too, it’s such a shame that people can go their whole lives without getting to, you know, the core like you said, say, Hey, I’m Anishima.

And, you know, I need to, that’s who I am, but I’m not gonna live that part of my whole life. It’s just, you know, Just gone on the treadmill. I didn’t get it. I’m like, only like, may I swim? You figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of us are walking, you know, walking around or running around.

We’re not even walking, we’re running. We have a lot to accomplish around here. So we got to get moving. I know. It’s overwhelming. And these breaks are short ones. You know, what you talked about was actually Rav Yehuda Tzadka. He said that when you’re davening, he said you should even pause every three words because what happens even in our davening, right, we say Baruch Hashem, we’re just like, and we’re thinking about something else and we’re not here, we’re not this, it’s like.

You just have to kind of stop sometimes even just having one pause that you a very good pause like before you start your day We said to like, you know where you’re just like all and you have your your moment is enough to give you the rest of the day And the, the crazy thing is, is that, you know, think about it this way.

We have so much time, like we spend our lifetimes for these physical things are running around, but for our nishama, which is really the whole reason we’re alive, we’re alive, we’re alive, is our nishama. We don’t have any time, no time, no time to develop, to even recognize what I said with this nishama.

How’s that possible? That Hashem really created this world, so we, we sort of, we needed pauses. And by the way, one of the things that’s very obvious that, Hashem, what is Shabbat? That’s the big pause, okay? You know, Hashem made this big pause. It was like this idea, so it’s just like, stop, stop running around.

But we still run around all Shabbat, okay? It was supposed to be that we have the big, big, ultimate pause. We start thinking, I’m in the Shema, you know, Hashem is the creator of the universe, you know, to feel the year of the love, the awe, to really feel Hashem in our lives. But we can’t do that when, you know, I, one of the things that Rabbi Schwartz says also too is like, we have a problem like, you know, when your hard drive is full to capacity, right?

Sometimes our hard drives are just like, they’re so, we don’t, you need to sometimes make room for spiritual stuff too. We think that we’ve studied all our lives. We’ve learned so much, you know, parashah shavua, and shmirat ha lashon, and you know, tarat mishpachah, everything you were supposed to do, and you know, you did, right?

, but what happened is the hard disk is now full and you feel like you can’t get anything else in that hard disk. So you gotta like sometimes empty out a little bit of space from your hard disk, okay? Really some of this stuff, you know, some of this extraneous information, whatever it is, or it’s filling up your life in this hard disk.

And, and we’re not talking about a lot, but at least make a little bit of space. Right? Because two things cannot exist at the same time. Hashem created, you know, time and space and this is one of the things, you know, we said like, you know, two thoughts can’t even exist at the same time. And that’s why, you know, when you’re davening, but you’re really thinking about your shopping list or whatever, that’s where you are, you were the shopping list.

So you know, we really need to, people need space. And what we don’t need, no, we know that we need space. Even if people in love with each other need space, we need space from our kids. God forbid if kids didn’t even sleep, right? It’s like, we need space. Hashem created it that way. But what we’re not realizing, and it’s so important, like I said, otherwise you get the disease and the stress, we need the space.

The nishamah, which is the real, this is what Hashem did. He created us and put that nishamah. Where’s that space in your life to just Pay a little attention, give that nishamasam time and like not a lot but just like to validate it, to be in the present with it. Yeah, I remember, so my assistant is Aviva and her husband, Ovadyah, once ran This exercise one minute for God and he had all of us on a whatsapp group like say if we did it You know, we have to like give a thumbs up if we did a study with my husband the same topic Yeah, yeah, I know.

So he’s awesome. They’re all everybody. I’m so grateful. I’m surrounded by all the most awesome people and He made a one minute video to get everybody on board and he said If you don’t have one minute for God, who created that minute, then what are you doing, you know? It’s like, we say I don’t have time, but God is the one who gave you time.

Right. And what, you’re gonna say, I don’t have time, but give me more? Like, it doesn’t work. I don’t have enough time. I have enough time, right? I don’t have enough time to do all the things I need to do. Right, right. And it’s, it’s very. I don’t have enough time to speak to you Hesham, I don’t have time to dab, I don’t have time for any of that.

It’s, it’s very shocking, it’s very shocking, you know, it’s shocking to like, even just to be listening to this podcast and be pausing and thinking. Wow. You know, I’m walking around complaining that I don’t have enough time and that I’m doing so much and that there’s so much going on and kids and my house and my food and my this and my that.

And it’s so easy to get caught up with all the things. And like you said, it’s all an illusion. It’s all an illusion. And, by the way, when you practice this thing of pause, what’s amazing is, is that you can also what we do the pause and get yourself as an ishma as you’re doing these other tasks.

Okay? And in more of an advanced case, when you’re working on stuff like that, you know, we have this like, I call it the out of box spiritual thinking, so you’re in your pause and so you can be so present then with the other activities that you’re doing because you, you also understand the deeper value of what you’re doing, which was maybe being, you know, educating your own children, right?

Or like, you know, giving them attention make them feel warm and happy that you just didn’t realize you think you’re playing a game with them. But like you start getting into touch with a whole different level of being present. And I used to feel this as a graphic designer. I could work on something for like I don’t know 10 hours does not find the right design And then if I would pause and get in touch with god and say god you are the source of all Cause you are the creator, please help me.

And I could finish something within five minutes, right? Suddenly things would just flow. And now in my business, you know, we just had to submit something for a bundle. It’s like an amazing bundle that’s happening. And I thought there was all these things to do and I felt a little overwhelmed.

So instead of going into it overwhelmed, I just paused. And I asked God to help me with it. I was like, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’m ready to do whatever it needs, I need to do. I’m not here to, you know, drag the time I’m here to show up for you. And as soon as I said that I’m here showing up for you.

So now you be here with me. There was alignment and things just flowed. It was very cool. It was very cool. So that I would say that’s like even a more advanced way of using, but that’s really, really where we need to get to. Also, because, you know, as Jews in the world, what we’re trying to do is we’re raising up that physical to the spiritual.

The problem is we get stuck in the physical, make it devoid of spiritual, but really what our job is, is to bring them together. And when you do that, that’s exactly, you know, you took the pause, took the time, you bring Hashem into it, and that’s really what we’re supposed to be doing. But sometimes we get like so overwhelmed with You know, the amount of the work or the physical or like, you know, like Paro did to the people that, you know, we don’t realize that that’s why we say it’s a Yitzhah Harah.

The Yitzhah Harah is really doing this to us so that we don’t have to time something because it doesn’t want us to get us to this, to be holier human beings, to get us to this more advanced spiritual state. That’s what the doesn’t want us to do. Yeah. It’s trying to keep us in that lower levels of consciousness where we’re just running after the next thing.

Everything is like, you know, I, I’m the one my ego, I did it, I created it. And you know, I can tell you when you’re general manager, especially in the television. It is crazy business. It’s just going to be crazy. And if I had to totally adapt like a thing, like, you know, with, you know, Hashem, this is it. If this is what you want it to be, then this is what it’s going to be.

Anything that’s supposed to be mine is going to be mine. Anything that’s not supposed to be ours is not going to be ours, you know, and breathing a little bit about it. Cause what happens also, when we get so caught up in this physical stuff, we lose perspective.

Okay, the part of being a Neshama is to remember, you know, it’s not, it’s not all me making this happen and we need to let go of that too, because otherwise, you know, we become real control freaks in our own stuff, but it’s Hashem, you know, you can take the world off your shoulders because we’re like Hashem is running it, and again, being in the present and doing, we don’t, we don’t get that and we just think, if I don’t make dinner in time, if I don’t do this, if I don’t do the shopping, it’s Stop, right?

It’s hard though. It’s hard. And I think that’s one of the things that’s so important is to know that you’re not in this alone, right? I remember in the beginning when you started the class for the path of the just, I committed from day one, I committed to show up as if it was a class. I was. You know, paying millions of dollars for like, I am showing up because this is my guide.

This is the thing that’s going to get me to the next level. And, and the book is all about raising your level of consciousness. So it was like a no brainer, you know, people are paying so much money to raise their level of consciousness with, coaching and with programs and with things. And this was something that I committed to.

From day one. And we, you know, that class is, is absolutely phenomenal. If anyone wants to join the class, get in touch with me. You can send me an email advice at connected for real. com or even a right to Rhonda, and we’ll get you on that. Onto that. It is so powerful to have a community, a guide, something to follow a system, a process, and it’s why I base all of my things.

That I use for coaching. these frameworks because it works so well. That’s, you know, I, and I, I also, I have to validate that in even a step further. It’s like, you know, these are things that were really deep wisdom. Okay, that came from Kedushah, from a very holy place. You know, the Ramchal who wrote this, he was in, had Ruach HaKodesh.

Okay, so the question is like, where do we want to get our help, self help kind of guidance from some really bright psychiatrists, or, you know, from the, this wellspring of Torah? And, and, and by the way, one of the biggest complaints of the Ramchal was, and this we understand too, because he said, the reason why he even wrote Misi Lai Yishrim, he said, we have a big problem.

He said, what is it? People aren’t studying these subject matters. We’re not teaching people how to become more spiritually developed. And he understood that. And he was a brilliant person. And by the way, he also, it’s very important to say too, he was like, you know, a renaissance man. He studied all types.

He was in university, et cetera. He was a Kabbalist. He was even like a Shakespeare. He wrote beautiful books and stuff like that. But he understood, he said, look, these really bright people, they’re not studying it, you know? And he explained to Perry, studying, you know, people are doing religion, like from the neck up, you know, without their heart.

And then you have people doing it like with the whole heart. They’re like going off the deep end. It’s sort of been really scary, you know, or the chas v’shalom, you know, people try to avoid the spirituality. And like I said, too, they’re going on to these, you know, other spiritual paths because it looks confusing and stuff like that.

And he was some point said, look, there is a path, path of the just, right? There is a path that we can do to really grow ourselves. Okay. It’s not easy one. A lot of work involved. It’s slow. And but, but yet this is really I would say again, I always feel like I’m very careful to we always have to go in a place where we know that it’s to shot into Iran and we have a good teacher, right?

That, you know, is here. It’s Torah. This is, and not Chatz HaShem, because sometimes in the other stuff, I have to tell you, you know, it looks great, and the mindfulness and all this, and you start picking up different pieces of it. But we need to go to, like, you know, Harneshemot, where a piece of Hashem, and, and to really also make sure that this, I think, the self help things that we do to also have that same source is from that good makor.

So that’s also one reason why I would recommend it. Yeah. And, and again, going back to the fact that you’re not alone, I, I am doing this, I’m a coach for women in business or successful careers, and I want to focus on the marriage and on making sure everything is working because I see so much that

when a person is trying to do it alone, they’re carrying a lot. And when they have a reminder, a person to follow that says, Hey, chill out, pause, take a deep breath, bring God into it. Right. Things start to. Flow things start to unravel. It doesn’t feel as heavy. And, and I, I feel really blessed to be able to do what I do because I see it in action.

I see it in action. It’s really fun. Amazing. It’s amazing, right? I think that intuitively, instinctively, it amazes me, Bethchen, that you have been able to get that. I, you know, this doesn’t come instinctively. I’m learning it from the, you know, Ramchah and Rabbi Schwartz. And like I said, it’s a lot of self work, but I definitely see the results, and I see how it’s completely, like, it’s life altering.

It really, really is. And I’d say even more than that, I’d say especially if you’re a woman in business and your family and stuff like that, You need this, okay? Because otherwise, really, you could not even get a heart attack. I don’t know what, you know, it is too much. There’s too much going on. No, that’s a lot.

You need to. The illusion gets heavy when you hold it. It does. And it really does. And so, you know, okay, so people doing something we’re wonder women and we’re like, you know, we always talk about like, so, well, you know what, we do 10 things at once and stuff like that. So yeah, I was like, wow, I know how to do that.

We multitask multitask. By the way, one of the things that we learn also in the thing that multitasking is really bad because you know, it’s not helping you to multitask and do 20 things at once. Really? You should be pausing and focusing and be present in the one. And it’s, it’s almost opposite because, because we feel like we have so much we have to do in our lives.

We develop, I would say habits that are actually the opposite of what we need. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s really important to, to do these other ones. That’s amazing. Amazing. We’re coming to the end of our amazing time together. And I am grateful that I still get to hang out with you, you know, on a regular basis, weekly on the class.

And also, you know, I have you as a friend, but for the listeners, this is mind blowing. This is the first time that they’re thinking about time in this way. It’s not scarce. It’s not limited. Suddenly time is a completely different thing that they’ve never experienced like this before.

So, what would you want to add before we end? , I really just think it’s, it’s so simple. Just the, the simple exercise is what we said too, is just stop. Just even take one minute and just don’t even think about anything. Nothing, nothing. Try to even think about nothing for a minute. By the way, it’s very interesting that actually in the old schools of the prophets and if you know some Kabbalah, one of the things they used to do to connect Actually, and get what we call Ruach HaKodesh prophecy was to focus on nothing.

Can you imagine? Just nothing. Nothing to clear the mind because when we clear all of this, like, you know, it’s like, you know, this full plate of this wreckage and all the things that tomorrow in a minute, we clear it. But as you said to Hashem’s in this pause, this is a place. This is a place where we can expand and we can grow ourselves in such a huge way.

So just give yourself even that one minute a day just to create the place where you can start to grow. That’s what I said. And by the way, Rabbi Schwartz says that’s where it all starts is is clearing out. Even just making time in your life even that one minute of nothing. Yeah, yeah You know something you said that was so powerful You said this is where it starts and the truth is that we think I want everything, you know I need to fix everything.

Everything’s too overwhelming. Everything’s going on, you know fires everywhere I need to I don’t know where to focus first. And the answer is don’t focus on anything. Just pause for one minute And then somehow everything will start to figure itself out. Things start to fall into place.

It really does, and I used to say I was chief fire chief. I was putting out fires all the time. That’s what I did. That’s what I, my job was really to put out fires, you know, and but, and so really I would say that that advice is just so, so important. So we’re thinking like, you know, and, and it just, what is this is self manifestation.

The more you do it, the more you feel you have to do it. And it’s really, like I said, counterintuitive. Take that pause. Hashem’s in the pause. Hit the pause. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Rebbetzin. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. If anybody wants to follow up with Rhonda or come to the classes, please be in touch.

We will help you and set you up for Yeah, we’d love to have you. The class is free because I, I feel like it’s the equivalent, I feel the more people can get in touch, it’s whatever it shouldn’t, it’s funny that you said, because you said to yourself that even if you’re not paying for it, you’re going to come every week.

It’s funny because sometimes we feel like it only has value if we pay for it, you know, sometimes we feel like it only has value, maybe these you know, modern day self help, and so it’s something that’s right in our hands, we don’t have the value for it, but I really say, it’s free because we, Because I want everyone to be able to get it.

Anyone who can, who wants. It’s, yeah, it’s so powerful. By the way, anybody who works with me gets access to it automatically because I feel like it’s such an integral part of the work that I do is being able to have access to that path of raising your level of consciousness. It just goes hand in hand with all the work that we do.

So right. So you started it now, you have it in that. Right. I have it. Yeah, I have it in the in the vault with all the classes. So you know, I, I think it’s important to go to the class and I go to the class and I, I take notes and I do it and I see that my clients end up

learning the skills to be able to make it practical and, and bring it down to the level of life. You know how to manage time how to deal with things. It’s really really powerful So, thank you very much for coming and before the classes that you give and for everything and thank you to the listeners For being here.

Make sure you come back next week for another episode about time and marriage.

 And that’s it! Thank you for listening to the very end. I would love if you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Those are things that tell the algorithm this is a good podcast and make sure to suggest it to others. Wouldn’t it be amazing if more people became more connected for real? And now take a moment and think of someone who might benefit from this episode.

Can you share it with them? I am Robinson Bat chen Grossman from connectedforreal. com. Thank you so much for listening and don’t forget you can be connected for real.