Understanding Family Dynamics - Weekly Energy Boost

The relationships we are born into can be the most meaningful and also the most challenging. This week, Yehuda Yeshurun joins us to discuss the purpose of familial relationships from a Kabbalistic perspective and share how these connections can lead to life’s most profound lessons. Episode 1 of 4. Original airdate: 10/4/21

Transcript

Good morning,

Everyone.

Good evening,

Good afternoon,

Wherever you are,

And welcome to this week's Weekly Energy Boost.

My name is Ellie Sheva,

And this beautiful Monday morning,

I have the privilege of being joined by one of our,

I'm sure he's going to be one of your favorite guests.

He's definitely one of my favorite people.

I'm joined this morning by Yehuda Yeshurun,

Who is one of the teachers in Los Angeles.

He has a special qualification to be here with me this morning,

And I'll get to that in a minute.

The Weekly Energy Boost is a seven-day spiritual energy forecast in which we share with our listeners the most powerful and practical tools and wisdom to help you navigate the coming week,

Inevitably through those teachings come life lessons that can be used any day of the week,

Any week of the year,

Any year of your life.

And the fun,

Cool thing about this week is that we are shifting from the energy of Libra to the energy of Scorpio.

Over the last year,

Or plus actually,

We've been focusing on monthly themes,

Which inevitably interweave with the weekly energy as well.

And this week,

As we enter the month of Scorpio,

It's actually Wednesday and Thursday,

The astrological month of Scorpio on the Kabbalistic calendar.

I am well aware that doesn't coincide with the conventional calendar.

But we know that when the astrological month moves according to Kabbalah,

We all become a little bit of that sign.

And so as Scorpios are fabulous,

Amazing,

Wonderful human beings,

We're all going to be a little bit more fabulous,

Wonderful and amazing.

But different challenges come up for us as well.

And one of them centers around control.

By the way,

Scorpios,

They may have control issues,

But the truth is they're really good at managing and I don't want to use the word control,

But they have really great skills when it comes to overseeing things,

Managing teams,

Projects,

Etc.

The problem is that without spirituality,

That can become a little bit scary and manipulative sometimes and dark and I don't want to use any other adjectives anymore.

So we're going to focus this month on family.

Now the reason we're focusing on families,

First of all,

Family is very important to the sign of Scorpio.

It is maybe the most important thing to them.

But also because in our own lives,

If we're honest,

Family tends to be a huge opportunity to control or to be controlled or feel controlled or let go of control.

And so every week this month,

We're going to focus on a different aspect,

A different angle of being a participant in a family willingly or otherwise,

Because we also acknowledge that even though some of us are born,

And we're going to talk about this in one of our upcoming episodes,

We may not even feel connected to our family.

And what does that mean?

Regardless in order to be a person on a planet,

One is biologically brought into the world by people who are on a technical level,

At least considered family,

Whether we feel it emotionally,

Spiritually,

Energetically,

Physically or not.

So we want to understand why that is part of the universal construct,

How it can serve us,

How it can hurt us and how we can use it as the spiritual tool it was intended to be.

A little background on that also.

For those of you that have been listening for a period of time,

You know that my biological and spiritual family came to study Kabbalah when I was just 14 years old.

So I have been on this journey willingly or otherwise for a very long time.

I wasn't so willing.

I think once I turned 16,

It took me a couple of years to adjust to it and to embrace it rather than make fun of it.

And as a result,

I came to understand and embrace over a period of time,

I think not only spirituality,

But the role that my family plays in my life and then going on to get married and have my own kids,

Etc.

,

That took on a whole different level as well.

So we want to understand really in the big picture today,

What is family?

What can we use it for?

How have we been misusing it perhaps?

And some of the gems that are lying in those familial relationships.

So our guest today,

And I don't know if he's probably going to be here again.

I have a feeling that he's not going to be a one trick pony with us,

But Yehuda,

One of the unique things he does,

Or he is,

Aside from being a fabulous human being,

An amazing teacher and student and friend and neighbor,

He is also the son and brother to Kabbalah teachers.

He is part of a family of Kabbalah teachers.

And so his parents were Kabbalah teachers when he was born.

I'm not going to tell you how many years ago,

But it was a long time ago.

And as such,

He brings with him,

I think,

Not only the wisdom having learned it,

But also the wisdom having experienced it being raised by people who embody and also lead their lives with this wisdom.

So he,

No disrespect to David or David's family,

Also beautiful,

Wonderful people,

But Yehuda is special.

And we want to acknowledge that and take advantage of it for the next 45 minutes or so.

So Yehuda,

Welcome.

I know I kind of sprung this on you with not a lot of preparation or,

You know,

One of the things we don't do is prepare very much for these episodes because it tends to bring down,

The talking tends to drag if we've already talked about it before.

So I know I have my notes and what I think is important to share,

But I want to start with you and see what you think is important to share.

So take it away.

Thank you,

Elisheva.

Well,

Like you'd mentioned,

I quite literally am a product of being raised in not just a spiritual environment,

But a spiritual home,

Spiritual parents,

Spiritual brother.

Although growing up,

Maybe we weren't as spiritual as we are now.

And there are many lessons to that.

But when it comes to the idea of family,

The idea of a spiritual home or the people around us,

The first thing that comes to mind and I kind of wish there's a book here,

I kind of wish I would have brought a different volume of the Zara with me because there's a really beautiful section that speaks about this exact idea of what the purpose of family spiritually is in our life.

And it's okay if I go into biblical stories,

Right?

We're okay with that?

Go for it.

Fantastic.

Now,

You may or may not know,

But there's a relatively famous story in the beginning of the Bible in the book of Genesis about Abraham,

Who God tells him at the age of 75 years old,

He says,

You should leave your homeland,

Your father's house,

And your country.

So and then just go wherever I will tell you to go.

And one of the things that we learn in Kabbalah and spirituality,

And specifically what the Zara does,

This foundational book of spiritual wisdom from 2000 years ago,

Helping us to decode these messages into what they mean practically in our life today,

Is that this is a message about our life.

And these are three areas in our life where we need to break certain boxes,

Certain,

We can call belief systems or the way we look at life.

One of them is what is written in the Bible is our father's house,

Meaning where we grow up,

Our parents,

Our siblings,

All create a view of our life that may or may not be real based on the way I'm treated,

Based on the way that I'm talked to,

I create a reality in my life where I think this is how things should be.

And that's not always not just true,

But limiting to who I can be,

What my potential is.

So the first idea of family is really an ability for us,

Once we understand what that message is,

To recognize our potential.

That is ultimately our family's purpose,

Is to help us get to our potential.

Sometimes that's very challenging,

We're not always in a spiritual,

I mean many people in the world don't grow up in a spiritual home.

Most people don't.

I'm one of the lucky few,

Although we mentioned astrology and Scorpio and Libra,

When I did an astrology chart not that long ago,

One of the things they mentioned was the reason why I'm in this life,

In the position that I am in,

Is because in all of my previous lives I just didn't get it.

I was just not spiritual enough that they said,

Well if you don't get it now,

There's just no hope for you.

Lovely,

Very uplifting.

So our family is meant in different ways,

When we understand that,

And that dynamic changes and evolves constantly.

I'm not the same with my parents or my brother the way I was five years ago or ten years ago,

Even though I've always grown up in a spiritual home,

Because I'm different,

I change,

My family changes all the time.

But that idea is that we're here to maximize and manifest our potential,

And that's what family is there to help us achieve,

Whether they do it willingly or not,

And that's a different story.

But that's what we need to understand,

Is that our family is there to help us grow.

And that's one of the basic teachings around that,

Is that our soul before coming to the physical world in every lifetime seeks out the best family to install what's needed to achieve one's potential.

So a lot of people say,

Well I went through X,

Y,

And Z,

It was terrible,

Whatever,

When I was a kid,

Why would I choose that?

Or why would I choose to be born to a father who leaves?

Or why would I choose to be born to this couple if anyway my grandparents were going to raise me?

Or you can look at a lot of places in the world where children are treated horribly,

Why would their soul choose that environment?

It's important to remember with that idea,

And it ties into what Yehuda was saying,

Is that the soul isn't looking for comfort and ease and smooth,

Uneventful carnivals of life.

The soul is concerned with us fulfilling our potential,

For us fulfilling our purpose.

So let's say for example if a soul in a particular lifetime decides that this is the lifetime,

In Yehuda's case,

His soul said okay so this is the lifetime,

I must become spiritual,

I need to choose this family to be born into because I won't have a choice technically,

He obviously does have a choice,

But it'll be in the air he breathes,

It'll be in the food that he eats,

It'll be in the detergent and the laundry machine,

There will be so much spirituality around him,

He'll just have to cling to it.

But maybe for others of us we chose to work on patience,

Or in another lifetime we might choose to focus on stubbornness or laziness,

And when I say focus on it it doesn't mean to be stubborn,

It's to be programmed to be stubborn so that we can overcome it.

So we might choose parents that have those issues or experience those challenges so that we end up either emulating them or saying I'm going to be the complete opposite of my parent,

Etc.

But the emphasis of what I'm saying is not don't look at your parents and blame them for everything but rather to understand your soul chose them to install a particular software on a conscious level,

It was always a part of the soul level,

But our childhood,

Which includes not only our parents but their religion,

Their social status,

I don't mean social,

I'll also say social status but I meant financial situation,

Their religion,

The scars that they have from their own upbringing,

The values that they instill,

That's all part of the,

Even where you grew up physically,

What city were you in,

What country were you in,

That's all part of the installation effectively of your buttons.

And that's one of the reasons that our parents are so good at pushing our buttons is because they're the ones who helped install them,

So they know exactly where they are because it's their spiritual responsibility to set us up for doing our soul's work.

Right.

And by the way,

It's not a guarantee that if you grow up in a spiritual home or environment like I did that it's going to be easy and simple,

There were many,

Many challenges growing up,

I went to 13 different schools in the 12 years that you're legally supposed to be in school,

There were many different things that happened that are all about creating a way for us to be the person we're meant to be.

And it's never going to be just easy or simple regardless of who you are or where you are because our soul chooses a specific environment and just that way that we'll be personalized to each and every one of our soul's mission.

Well it's also important to I think mention that even though our soul chooses those parents,

That we also end up incarnating in the same group over and over and over again.

What that really means is that in one lifetime you may be the parent and another lifetime you may be the child or the sibling or the husband or the wife,

Meaning because we accumulate baggage with other people,

So for example let's say it's an extreme example,

Very sort of Hollywood,

In one lifetime you steal your sister's boyfriend and marry him,

So you may need to come back either as sisters again or maybe as the boyfriend that got stolen to be stolen back to the original.

We end up creating these energetic connections with people that sometimes don't get resolved in a single lifetime and therefore they need to be resolved in,

This is ending up being a reincarnation episode,

And that they need to be resolved in a future lifetime.

Also because we create those bonds we may agree to continue to come back with people to continue to support and to love and to participate in life with them.

So there's all different kinds of reasons why we may keep coming back again and again.

One of the things that I think about,

And now that I'm thinking about the timing of this episode it's also good for going into the holidays,

I didn't realize it originally but in November and December a lot of people if they can they're getting together with family.

For my family specifically,

I don't know about yours,

We don't have a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins.

We're like a very sort of our family and my brother and his family and also with my parents it was like they didn't have big families either so we don't have a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles so there's not a lot of family to get together with.

But I know people who have like 80 cousins and they're getting together,

Or maybe pre-pandemic they go we're getting together and holiday events and birthdays and that's also a different opportunity,

Right?

Families that have less siblings and therefore then less aunts and uncles and cousins that are around all the time.

And there's also some families that place a greater emphasis on family and there's a lot of guilt and again manipulation,

Controlling.

And there's other families that it's kind of like we live together for a while and now we don't,

We're good friends and we love each other and we talk on the phone but there's none of that burden I want to call it.

Maybe that's because I was raised it seems like it would be a burden to have the 80 different people to call at every birthday and every holiday and every I don't know.

It's interesting that not only we choose the actual people we may share a home with but we choose the periphery characters as well and what kind of different situation it is when you have a whole cast of characters like that and when your movie just doesn't require that.

I mean there's a lot to learn about looking at those details as well.

Yeah,

We'll probably talk about,

I mean we,

You will probably talk about this in one of the later episodes but in my family there's the four of us,

My parents,

My brother and I and we're the Kabbalah teachers and literally everybody else and it's more or less 80 cousins and aunts and uncles and all,

Like a huge group of people who all live in Israel.

For a long time most of them really were actually not spiritual at all and there's a challenge in navigating that kind of relationship because you're in a different place,

You react to situations in a very different way or you don't react at all,

Right?

You're more proactive and so it becomes challenging and then there are just people who just don't want you to be spiritual at all or you know just,

I love my grandparents but for a very long time my grandma would just always ask me,

Why are you a Kabbalah teacher?

You're so smart,

You could be a doctor,

You could be a lawyer,

You could do literally anything you want,

Why are you doing this?

Now she just asks me when I'm getting married so we've moved on.

She's accepted the fact.

She's accepted the fact that I'm a Kabbalah teacher.

You know so there are ways to sort of navigate that and we're not going to talk about that now because you'll probably… Next week I think we're going to talk about that.

Right so but it's a very interesting thing to look at why and to ask the question,

You may not get an answer right away but why did my soul choose this kind of family not that kind of family?

The question is so important that why?

You only get answers when you ask why.

So that I think is what really demands most of our attention today is what can we learn about ourselves from our family?

And for most people that's a very painful question to ask because I think it's a lot,

You know you can look at your family and say you know we were raised to be generous and kind and giving but we also have these skeletons in the closet or we have these behaviors,

Things that we are not necessarily proud of.

And I think for all of us going into this month and looking at what the opportunities are for us as individuals right one of the things that happens actually when you start to study spirituality is we start to diagnose other people's challenges right?

And I use this,

I share this sometimes,

I'm sure I've shared it on the show,

You know my daughter will sometimes come home from school and she'll say mom you know today Michael was really listening to his opponent right?

So we've heard if unless this is your first episode tuning in you've heard us talk about the force of the opponent it's both a universal force and a force within each individual it's not us and one of the tricks it plays on us is to get us to think it is us.

It is that voice inside us that challenges us to be our lowest self so that we can overcome it and become our highest self.

So when she sees a kid acting out she's able to identify okay they must be listening to their opponent but she's maybe less inclined to focus on when she's listening to her own opponent.

So you know when we embark on a spiritual journey and suddenly we find ourselves back in an old position we go home or we spend time with people that knew us before our spiritual journey began.

Or when we were much younger in our spiritual journey.

There you go.

In my case.

For us as well by the way you know I think I started to really embrace my journey I think I was a junior in high school so I went through a thing with my friends that you know you're not going to hang out with us anymore you don't do these things anymore you know and it wasn't that I suddenly became a nun or a priest or something it was just that I like you who said the things that got me reactive before weren't making me reactive my interest shifted and I was just not the not the same person in a good way which when you're not doing positive things it's not necessarily you're not you stop being the funnest person to be around.

But anyway my point is that there is a part of us that says well I want to make stay away from next week's topic but there's a part of us that looks you know goes back into that environment and says I don't like those things or I'm embarrassed right.

I remember I'm embarrassed actually that I remember my grandparents driving me to school and like me literally like ducking so that you couldn't see me in the window driving with my grandparents in their banana colored Cadillac.

But I'm now I'm mortified that I would do such a thing but the idea that I was embarrassed by them that there was something that they do or the way they live their life or their awesome car I know I think it's awesome back then it wasn't so awesome that that I would be embarrassed or offended or want to hide.

And it's really in those parts of our families that we can grow the most.

And I want to challenge all of us and you know that the my desire in that moment.

Let's go back to 19 whatever it was 90 90 something early 90s.

Let's say 1990.

My grandfather is driving me probably in the 70s banana colored Cadillac to high school to junior high or high school whatever it was.

And I am in complete denial that I come from an immigrant family right that they're so uncool that I'm going to actually in a way betray what I know is the right thing to do because I am so trying to hide that part of my that part of me.

Let's be honest my grandparents my my ancestry is a part of me.

So what about me or what about them can teach me about myself.

Now one of the things I used to be embarrassed about about my parents grandparents is they were they always raise their voice like that when they were talking it sounded like they were fighting and I used to be scared initially.

And then my father told me because I didn't understand the language they were speaking that that's just how they talk right they're very passionate Eastern European.

It's a very musical language and what I realize now about myself is I also raise my voice a lot more than necessary.

And I'm using that as an example maybe it's a funny example you who does laughing it's not that funny.

I am a very vocal parent.

I'm not a grandparent yet.

I'm sure I'll be a vocal grandparent as well.

I tend to raise my voice and a lot and I'm hypersensitive to other people who do it because I do it.

And that's the diamond.

This is this is the gem we're looking for within our families is that the things that bother us most about our families bother us because we have some aspect of it within us.

Now do I fight do I raise my voice at my husband constantly the way my grandmother did with her.

No it shows up for me in a different way.

But the universe brought it has brought it to my viewfinder so that I will take it as a spiritual lesson.

There's actually I think it's in the Talmud there's a great story about a guy who I'm trying to remember that he's he he's famous for calling people have it written down here.

Yes I do.

So he calls people slaves like that's his insult.

You're a slave.

Oh you you're a slave.

So.

There's a.

OK.

Now I see the story there's a traveler who is always calling other people slaves and insulted one of the sages the sage called the traveler a slave citing this phrase that basically the sculpt the sculptor sculpts in his own defective image.

That's the phrase.

But the funny thing is that that even though that traveler argued and said no but I come from a lineage of kings blah blah blah it actually turns out that a few generations before it he was a descendant of slaves meaning he called everybody a slave because he himself was actually the slave.

So the idea is that we can gain the universe doesn't give us a letter when we come to the world that says dear Elisheva please focus on transforming the following five traits and you will accomplish your soul's purpose.

It comes to us through the messengers in our life which is most effectively our family and may come with other people later on down the line but at least for the first 20 years the main messengers for us are our family.

So I'm inviting you guys as an exercise especially in this first week of Scorpio to look at the people who are closest to your family members.

You know I I'm thinking of somebody would be like oh my dad is such an angry person.

You know yes he is angry but chances are you have anger and your anger is justifiable by the way.

That's the way that the universe works.

Your opponent will tell you but I am right to be angry at the system at the government at my neighbors at whoever you're mad at the X right.

It's very easy to get mad at your ex you have all the reasons to be mad but know that the quo those qualities are you're constantly choosing those people to be your mirrors because they are the ones who hold the keys to your transformation as annoying and painful as that is.

One of the one of the things growing up and we'll talk about raising spirit you'll talk about raising spiritual.

I just have to have you in the room so that you're not lying in one of the next few weeks but one of the things growing up that that my dad used to tell my brother and I all the time was that and this is something that he had asked his teacher Ralph Berg.

Why do bad things happen to good people or why don't good people see results in their life if they're good people and and the answer in the lesson is that we're we make two fundamental mistakes in life.

The first one is we're not here to be good people.

We're here to be better people and the second mistake we'll make is that they think we're here to be better than other people but we're not we're here to be better than ourselves and by looking at the reflections of who we are around us specifically in this context as family whenever my brother and I would fight.

How can I be a better person because of this interaction.

What about me can be better.

I'm just throwing up my my I almost hate to call him out because he's he's actually transformed.

He really doesn't do this much anymore much much.

No but he used to do it all the time but he was always late for everything.

Anytime we'd have like a family trip we're already and he's like still 10 minutes away from being able to leave the house like but every single time and this was like a recurring thing just in my life of people in my life were just always late.

I'm always I'm always early and everyone else is late very very late.

I'm so fascinated with this because this is so my issue too.

I am you and everyone else is late.

OK go on.

But one of the things that I learned and it was relatively recent it wasn't growing up with my brother that I learned this it took me a while to really process this idea is that the reason why I always feel like people are wasting my time by being late is because I waste my time.

I'm not using my time properly and as soon as I started doing that either the people in my life stopped being late or it just didn't bother me anymore.

It stopped being this awful awful thing that always happened.

I stopped being a victim.

But that's what we can learn from families not about changing them.

We're not here to change them and we'll talk about the next week but we're here to change ourselves and be a better version of ourselves constantly and when I can look at someone and not judge them for who they are but find that inside of me and say how can I change that.

That's how family helps us grow is one of the ways.

Can you think of something else that your parents taught you that you can share with us.

I mean I have lots of things I can share but I like I like this vibe.

The other thing that they always shared and this your older son will probably also be able to quote because my dad taught in the Cabal Children's Academy many many years ago.

But one of the things that the Kabbalists share is that we are here for only one purpose our soul is here for one purpose and my dad would repeat this over and over and over again to my brother and I growing up.

We are here to learn to love other people and when you can reframe your life with that understanding that I'm here because I'm what that means is I'm a force of love.

It's concealed.

There are many barriers preventing me from not just experiencing love but being able to express that love to the especially to the people who I can't break away from because they're family.

I mean you can but it's so much harder to leave family as opposed to friends or co-workers you know just get another job.

You know you just stop hanging out with people like in high school but it's so much more difficult to escape your family as much as sometimes we want to.

But that's what we're here to be able to express love and that's what our family can help us do and that doesn't mean you know we hug everybody or all the time because sometimes it needs to be tough love right whatever that means for specific situations but we're here to be able to express that innate nature within us.

That's why we're here and every interaction we have especially with family is a way to build and expand the force of love that we have within us.

So you bring up I often try to be the voice of the audience on the Weekly Energy Boost and I can hear over the over the radio waves people are thinking well Yehuda that's very beautiful you have a spiritual set of parents and a spiritual brother but in my family there are people who don't deserve to be loved.

How do you reconcile the fundamental concept that we are here to become beings of sharing and there are people who I perceive right and this is a part of what I want to I'm leaving the witness here my perception is they do not deserve my love.

So what's the question?

What do you do?

You have bad people in your family you have selfish people in your family I mean we've gotten questions over the years about people who are fighting with family over inheritances wills trusts custody over children I mean there's I know I know someone who actually a student of mine brought this to my attention her she has a challenge with her sister and she loves her sister very much but her sister is making really bad choices.

She sister A perceive sister B's choices to be very bad right now what does she do?

So the reason I'm saying it is because yes we are we are here to be beings of love it's really who we are and we're really here to remove the barriers of the blockages that prevent us from feeling it and expressing it but what about that part of us that tells us not to give love or yes I'll love the people who deserve my love but not the people who don't.

My mind is going a lot of different directions right now I'm going to try and I mean because we're talking about hours and hours and hours of discussion because and every individual is so specific.

I don't want you to answer that question but it's like where what what am I supposed to do are we saying yes you love them anyway?

Well what does it mean to love someone?

That's where you go go for it.

All right catch that wave.

So so I was sort of thinking there's a short story that I wrote that you're familiar with the soul and the promise that where the fundamental idea and basic concept is we can only express our innate gifts when we're met with their exact opposite right.

Someone who is patient isn't patient because they're always around people who are nice and friendly and awesome and amazing they're patient and you can see that patience that patience is expressed when people are pushing their buttons and getting on their nerves and they're just not reacting they're very patient.

We can be patient with kids we've been patient with people with friends with family whoever it is that same thing applies to love but to love someone doesn't mean to want to change them right.

We're not here to change other people to love someone means to first of all accept their process.

All right we're we're and you know in the case maybe of perceiving someone else's incorrect perceived incorrect decisions in life whether it's a sister family whoever it is we can just accept that they just need to go through their process but sometimes it's also you know there are people in in in our life who you know just abusive right.

I have a student who his father is terribly terribly abusive to him but he can't leave because his father needs health care and there's no one to take care of his father and the house that he lives in is under his father's name and if he puts him in a home he has nowhere to live so he's stuck right.

Like what are you doing?

You can't really be too spiritual in that situation right but but when when we talk about love love isn't and this is something else that I that I learned growing up whenever I'd throw a tantrum as a very very very small child not not anymore.

One of the things my dad would do is he would take me outside the house and he would tell me I love you very much I love you I love your soul I don't love your actions right now.

So when you're ready to leave your actions outside of the house you can come back inside but know that I love you there's nothing wrong with you but your actions are not very spiritual and now they're not very positive right now they're not filled with love and then he would close the not really close the door right but he would like to me it looked like the door was closed it's two years old three years old and every 10-15 seconds he would check on me and say do you want to leave your actions behind and be like no all right so he would close the door again and we do this until I'd get to a point where I was able to okay physically like mind throwing out my opponent so to speak but that's what it means to love someone is to love them but understand that they are not their actions their soul is not their actions there's an opponent and everyone is in a different process in their life right but we we are we're here to learn to love the soul of somebody else in front of us what we see is me isn't their soul right it's all it's true and I think in those you know when you understand family relationships through this lens that the greater the challenge or the more challenging the relationship the greater the opportunity is for my personal growth not the other person's personal growth right that that's you know I'm making a judgment call by saying they deserve or they don't deserve but what's interesting is in that if you take out the microscope and you look at that scenario what are we really saying that somehow I have the belief that by me withholding my love they'll feel punished and want to change right that there is this somehow I think we have it maybe more with kids than we do or maybe with our partners right that we think I'm going to show you I dislike my your behavior by withholding love from you and you're going to miss my love so much it'll make you stop doing what I don't like and then I'll be able to love you again I'll stop washing the dishes so you learn to start washing the dishes exactly exactly or I'll stop being warm and loving so that you will learn that towels need to be picked up off the floor in I think the overarching theme here is that I'm not here to change anybody but myself and that by changing myself I actually ensure the best odds for the other person to step into their change as well and and I think without its recognition that's the word once we begin to recognize that every person in our movie serves a purpose and we begin to be curious about the purpose nobody is there by accident nobody's an extra nobody is random nobody is there by mistake when we're able to wreck it or be curious about what can I learn how can I grow this person is here for me what can I do with it sometimes it is just as simple as loving them for who they are that this person can help me get to a greater place of compassion of empathy of of warmth and maybe that's it and it can be that simple many times when it's with people who are closest to us it's more complicated than that and there are more layers and there is more karmic debt there but like I mentioned about my daughter who is able to diagnose inflamed opponents in others it's another benefit to raising spiritual children is that they use the weaponry against you is that we want to make sure that we are focusing on ourselves what can I get out of it not what can the other person get out of it and and maybe that changes when you're looking at we'll talk about again we'll talk about kids specifically but one of the things that we as you when you find your other half and you have children you realize how much more directly your growth or lack thereof affects others I think when you look at your when I look at my parents and my brother who again you know my brother is also married to the like there is my brother's wife's family is also in you know her brother is and his wife actually work in the center as well there's it's it's all around us but being spiritual doesn't exempt you from the work it doesn't give you a free pass it doesn't mean that there aren't idiosyncrasies and challenges and quirks and you know that's the person that does this or doesn't do this or this person you know many families there's the person that never they're always invited but they never come right everybody has stick or stuff as as we say but our our goal in this week or I should say this month is to help all of us open our eyes to the degree that we are willing at least to embrace our family as teachers as as mirrors and when I say teachers I mean not that you your mom or your sister is there to teach you a lesson so to speak although they may feel like they are it's really how can I use these scenarios in these situations as a platform to growth and not try and control them I think a lot of us have the family that we are when no one is looking and then the family we have when we're in public with them right that we have a kind of PR version of our family our public forward-facing family and then the family we are in in the attic so to speak and you know we would never talk that way if anybody else was around we wouldn't behave that way if anybody else was around I don't know about you guys but growing up we don't we're not an argumentative group of people my my family the family I was born into we are water and earth signs exclusively so our form of dealing with disagreement or conflict is silence we close doors sometimes we slam them but rarely we just shut down until we've rebooted and when we reboot we pretend like nothing happened then my first serious relationship was with a fire sign the fire sign is the epitome of not being quiet most fire signs are just that fiery they want they'll burn the place down if it's needed to resolve it and water signs are just like let's keep it tranquil let's not rock the boat and it was a huge learning curve for me to not only to handle that energy but also to borrow it that that maybe I could be a little bit more rocking the boat I could say what I was thinking when I was thinking it and not write it down in my diary for my eyes only kind of thing so you know there are always going to be difficult situations and those difficult situations are not punishments they're opportunities and when we start to look at our family as another opportunity where we actually start to enjoy them more I don't want to make it sound like it's going to be school 24 hours a day there is actually joy and pleasure once you stop treating your family as a burden or as a punishment and start to recognize it as an opportunity yeah and it can be difficult specifically with family as opposed to other people in our life who provide us opportunities for growth is because we think we know our family and we know all of their issues and insecurities and all of their opponents so to speak so therefore I don't have to listen to you or why should I listen to the message you're trying to give me you have all of this other stuff that you know but there's a beautiful quote from the Talmud that says I'll quote it in the original Hebrew who is considered wise one who learns from every person that includes family that includes the people we don't you don't want to learn you don't want to learn from exactly exactly the one and and that's sort of the thing because if you really think about it if someone handed you an envelope with a million dollar check inside and the envelope was dirty and gross and looked like it had been you know sifted from mud and garbage and all of that coffee stains coffee like you wouldn't care what the envelope looked like as long as the check went into the bank and they accepted it as long as the money's there you don't care what the envelope looks like we often look at the messenger and say oh the messenger is a bad human being forgetting the fact that it's not always the right the the truth but the the messenger is bad and therefore the message is also bad or the message is not true or not relevant to me and that's where we have to shift our view of family is that we all have issues we're all working on ourselves and have things that we need to change what's the message for me forget the messenger the messenger is not important the message is what's important last thoughts before I wrap up the episode I know you were writing writing while I was talking so I want to hear what you wanted to say well I I wrote a whole bunch of things that might take an entire okay you have four minutes let's say four minutes I will say that although we've been focused exclusively on biological family almost there is there's an entire trope of story writing called found family it's very prevalent obviously in in in YA writing but it's the idea that we can create an environment of our family the people were not biologically related to and that's also important to choose the people were around because biological family although we say yes my soul chooses them once we're like fully conscious human beings we can't really choose to say oh I don't want you as my mom you're my new mom now like that doesn't doesn't work like that biologically you're still related right but yeah we we do choose that environment but it's also so important to actually choose the people who we call family and that's one of the one of the one of my favorite things about working in the Kabbalah center is and being a quality teachers that you're surrounded by a spiritual family even if you're not biologically related because you're always being pushed in a positive way to grow you're always seeing people change and you say I want that I want to be more like that and and it's it's really I mean I'll get super controversial and cut off because we're we've almost got no time that's one of the things that the founder of the Kabbalah center of Ashtag says is the only free will we have is to choose the people and environment we're in everything else will happen on its own but the people we choose to be around everything will be an extension of that will be an extension of that but the only free will we have is choosing the people that are around us it's true and and I think that one one speaking apropos controversial people get really upset when they sit in class and they hear that they chose their family right well I actually even had it out with a fellow Kabbalah teacher once because that was a concept they refused to accept they said why would I choose the parents I chose and not choose Robin Karen Burke to be my teacher but to be my parents and and that goes back to the idea that our perception is that I want comfort my soul wants me to be happy and for life to be easy and fancy free and what my soul really wants is for me to shed the layers of baggage I've accumulated over my lifetime so that my true loving and radiant soul can shine and the this is the environment that my soul chose to take the coal and transform it into a diamond and it might not be comfortable but my soul isn't looking for ease and comfort my soul is looking for the direct the fastest and and fastest path to my transformation and my elevation full stop and so in I think that for all of us again that are trying to control the narrative you know my childhood was terrible but I've risen above it or the odds were against me but somehow I manage or maybe the narrative is the opposite I had a terrible childhood and that's why my life is so miserable now I'm not saying that is I had a pretty awesome childhood but the idea that our the roots that we or the fertilizer that we were raised in that we grew from was actually perfect for what our soul needed to do is a difficult pill to swallow I'm inviting everybody else to do that this week Yehuda thank you for being with me today not letting you be alone in the studio and you can follow Yehuda on all platforms he's a he's a really amazing teacher he's an amazing writer he's an amazing friend and person as well and neighbor and neighbor of course we're neighbors as well I tend to bring my neighbors onto the show right you'll see that as we as as you continue the journey with us and we'll see you next week on the weekly energy boost.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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