this is the first of a hopefully a two-part program I think the program is entitled um in in marital and family life and I want to thank everyby finer and uh a good friend Dr David Steiner for for helping arrange this program so we're going to explore today this evening the the connection between AA lovees and um so I want to begin by uh telling you a story that I've told a number of times over I think it's a very important story tell us frequently at vorts it's a story I heard from Umali Jagger Who
was the rash shos and he tells the story about his his late father-in-law umelt so in in the in the last days of his life there was um when Rao was um when his end was imminent no one was permitted to come into the house or to see him there was one person who insisted that he had to see the rashash Shiva even though he was he knew he was quite ill and he said essentially that I had to see the rashba because his marriage is about to end and uh and he was told there's
no way you can see him but he was so assistent that the rashash Shiva in on his bed in his State heard heard the request and recognized the voice and said send him in so he was told that he can go in but only for a minute minute so he went in and he stayed for a minute and he went out and no one knew what happened a few days later the rashash Shiva Sal was myter and approximately 10 years later ravager met this person somewhere and he said to him the last time I saw
you was 10 years ago and uh and you went to see the rash you one of the last people to see the rash Shiva and you were there for a minute was it helpful he said yeah was very helpful in one minute in one minute say so what could they have told you in one minute that would have been so helpful I went in I told him that my marriage was about to end and he said to me state does not mean your neighbor means your wife you have a you have a mitah Risa to
love your wife at every minute I have nothing more to tell you go home and the mid of and that's he said I heard what the rash said I went home was the Mitzvah and it's 10 years later we still married it's a wonderful story but there's so much that needs to be developed what is Love Is The Love between a fir couple the same as a love between a couple that's not from right um how is love shown what kind of environment is ideal for love to grow in is the love between a husband
and wife different than the love between parent and child other relationships friends these are some of the questions that I want to explore some will explore in terms of thinking and some we're actually going to do a little bit of exercises that may be helpful so the begin with I want to I want to describe to you a mush I want to give you a mush um which is a very important mush which I'll which will return to at the end of the presentation the musall is about a Highwire is about a Highwire art two
Highwire artists when I was a kid we used to go to the Madison Square Garden in the usually on PES to watch the circus in the garden there was always my favorite Act was always the Highwire artists and the Highwire artists there were always two standing at opposite side of the high wire and they would be standing still not moving and then the drums would roll and then they start walking towards each other I never understood how anybody could possibly stand still on the high water and I never understood how people could walk towards each
other and not fool later in life after working with many couples and being married I began to understand what it was all about the first thing is that nobody stands still on the Highwire the Highwire really is a place for somebody to stay balanced and staying balanced means that there are millions of micro movements every moment to stay on the high wire no one stands still if I'm driving a car and straightaway I have my hand in the steering wheel maybe the kid in the back seat the hand looks straight and not moving but we
all know the hand's moving ever so gently so the first thing is that everybody needs to be balanced and balanced is a dynamic is a dynamic uh phenomenon always moving always moving to stay still and the second thing I realize is when the couple begins to move together towards each other it's not so pit that they're moving towards because at any given moment somebody is always always more balanced than the other person so that means that if I'm balanced at any given moment and I see my partner isn't on the high wire I have to
say bend your knees straighten your shoulders I have to somehow convey my balance to his or her balance and I have to share what I I know about that to enable them to regain their balance now what does that mean it means that in marriage the nyal is that in marriage that love may be an emotional experience but one of the necessary conditions is balance people have to feel stable people have to feel safe have to feel secure and that Safety and Security and balance is a necessary precondition for marriage for love for security later
in the program we're going to do an we're going to do a meditation and the meditation I call call centering um and we we're going to describe this balance and we're going to teach you a little bit of how to how to um develop it within yourself another aspect of marriage that we're going to learn about is that is it as two people grow together in a loving relationship they become a part of each other they become integrated into each other's lives which is impossible for anyone to really understand unless they're part of that relationship
one of the stories that I moved me very deeply when I first heard it and I'll share it with you I heard many years ago I heard it in I think 197 7 long time ago I heard it from the rashash Shiva of when I went to a conference in Boston and he was describing what happened when two people grow together so he was describing how um his late wife Tanya was very ill and they were living in Boston and that she was being taken care of by a nurse in on the porch down downstairs
and he described and he described this by the way to a to a group of to an audience of maybe a thousand people I was there for a conference I'll never forget it and most of the people were not from they had never probably never had seen or heard a from person speak before and he spoke very elegantly and elegantly very movingly so he described how in the middle of the night knowing his wife was sick his wife of many years he got up in the middle of the night with a certain fear that he
had that maybe she's maybe things aren't right maybe things are not and he heard he heard her crying in the night and he described how he with great fear and trepidation he got up got out of bed and walked downstairs to the porch where she was with the nurse and describes how how it was very dark and he walks in to the porch and suddenly it's silent and as he manag just to open up a light on the side so it doesn't shine directly he realized that he had forgotten that she had died just a
few days earlier and he used that that very poignant and very um painful moment to share how important it is for people to have each other in life and to care for each other he wasn't describing it as a way of wasn't looking for anyone to feel for him he was trying to convey the meaning of when two people build their lives together how interconnected interwoven their lives are and we see this this interconnectedness this interwoven quality we see it in many people particularly see it in gulum I remember R shinberg who we used to
visit there Isel he and his wife Bessie married I think 80 were married I think 80 years 80 years in he cled they never had a fight you see it in the homes remember my wife and I went to visit you feel these quality of the the gentleness of home life in Jewish life so what is the secret what is the element that that enables people great people and people who are not great people who are like the rest of us what is that element that enables to people to develop a sense of of closeness
and a sense of of uh of love a sense of of of uh emotion Intimacy in which they can build a life together so so there was a safer refer to very frequently safer that I try to learn every chabas it's called last Torah and it's the weekly shim of the from this safe was probably compiled in the 1930s was released maybe about 30 Years Ago by his son and in the safer he describes there's a mimer that he has called of he talks about talk about this evening and the connection between and love and
a and that element which is so Central to Jewish life now what's it's a it's a long discussion but for those of you who chabas um the an gave us eight mid of that we say in and they are they are AA love the DOA giving MS eight different qualities so says without going in great length but he says like this he says they want to person feels a person has the ability to love the Bria to love another person the ability to give comes from without it's impossible to love the Bri to love anybody
a person without is filled with sin with hatred it's quite a quite an alarming statement but what he means I think he means is that Manuka means that a person feels a sense of inner balance person feels a sense of stability and security deep within himself or herself is that Hashem gives me many different qualities many different strengths and these strengths of nephesh my ability to see my ability to speak my ability to think to walk and to talk all of my human capacities are neish when they're not coordinated they all act in a chaotic
way and it can be a very frightening experience it's a very insecure experience and in my insecurity I can't care about anybody else but when I'm able to coordinate all of them when I'm able to bring them all together in the sense of in a cohesive way the way a a an an orchestral leader uses his Paton to to to create a a symphony of of of music of Harmony between 70 80 100 different members of a of an orchestra it creates a a thing of beauty Manish means that I take all of those gifts
that Hashem gives me and I'm able to integrate coordinate harmonize symphonize all of these elements and because and through that I create a sense of in of security Within Myself And from that security Within Myself I'm able to love I'm able to give I'm able to feel sh I'm able to achieve the highest levels of human experience which we which we recite on shabas because Min is that time of shabas where we reach the height the apy the culmination of b shabas b Mana that's what Manuka is so in a sense if you walk into
a house and you see a fish tank and you put your hand in the fish tank and you say boy that water is warm they say well yes because there were tropical fish in that fish tank and they need warm water in a sense man is the warm water in which people thrive is the warm Mana is that environment in which people feel a sense of deep security but what happens in Manuka what is the essence of the experience of what's the what what is it what does it create in us so we have those
of us who men who D in the morning when we come across we put on our fillan we say what does that mean that when we put on our Fillin we remind ourselves that our Fillin are going on on our head on our foreheads and on our forehead kazal tells us resides our Nish that's a very strange thing because we don't think the sh is being any place but it's not true says there Isa and exists in our minds and and so what is this and how was it connected to and how was it connected
to love so the Elder of kelm asked the question he said when a baby smiles he asks why is a baby smiling why is the baby smile if I were to speak to psychologists they would say a baby smiles because a baby is emulating the environment a parent Smiles a baby smiles a baby learns that the smile that's the right response the Alor was not a psychologist at least wasn't certified psychologist but he said a baby smiles because a baby a baby reflects or expresses what it's n is there's no difference between an infant and
the way it expresses itself and then the Sha that that exists within the infant so he's saying that within each of us there's a very deep and loving core which is the Nish because that Nish is given life at every moment from the and and and being given life at every moment from the it is a wear of hashem's loving gift of life and no matter who we are or what we're going through in life there is at the core of who we are that Nish we may not be aware of it we may have
been hurt we may have been we may have gone through difficulties in life we may be going through various pressures we may be going through many things we may not be aware but nevertheless each of us has AA that exists within us at every moment the sh is it exists at every moment it was there before we were born it exists with us throughout our lives and and it has an element of nitus it continues to live on forever it has been given to us in this world it is T it is loving it is
pure and it's on sh so what does is it enables theisha to begin to emerge from good a person who experiences the man of shabas is able to see and feel life differently why because the Nisha is able to emerge it's no longer behind the curtain it's no longer hiding it feels safe so what manukas Anish does in marriage is by creating that safe environment by creating that that experience of Safety and Security and warmth and caring two people can feel that this is a place where my Nisha can emerge and as the nsh emerges
that's where love is experienced and that's perhaps why rabi Rim says he says once again the love of Love Of The World of Life emerges from the giving emerges from because I'm able to give so in every situation where people living close together and they're angry and they're hurt is because there is no man and the sh isn't hiding and and that sensitivity that Hashem has given them that the desire to show love and to receive love and to give love suddenly is cut off and when it's cut off between two people living together it's
a very painful situation it's not like you have people in your office that you're angry at and you leave and go home and you come back there a person you're living with so so far are there any questions any thoughts any questions before I continue okay so one of the things I I find very important is I can talk about Manuka for hours but the question what is it what does it feel like how do I get a deeper sense of of how do I get a deeper sense of of of the experience and not
only that but how do I take the experience and how do I bring it into my life how do I I bring it into my marriage how do I bring it into my relationship with my children how do I create a different environment so that I can create a manic environment um which has a different feel a different texture so I want to talk about centering we centering and we'll talk about hands two hands the people on the two people on the Highwire they're balanced they're centered they've learned they've learned to take all of their
MO all the micro movements and to modify them to a degree that they are able to stay on a high wire if you have a kid who's riding a bicycle the first time his father may be holding the bike from behind and he's going to do this he's going to go to the left he's going to go to the right left and he's going to fall but the more more um accustomed he gets to the movement of the bicycle you're going to see that the movements become less Jagged and maybe after a few hours you're
going to see this kid riding on his Bic up with a big smile he feels balanced he's no longer doing this and doing that he's now his hands are on the handlebars and he has he's sitting on on top of the world there's movements but the movements are very slight and imperceptible that's who he is he is what we call centered what does that got to do with hands so hands our fingers our hands are the most delicate appendages of the body we can play the violin with our hand hands we can swing a tennis
racket with our hands we can write with our hands we can conduct the symphony orchestra with our hands we can't do that with our feet our elbows only with our hands and our fingers why is that important because each of us has an AA inside and we need a way to remind ourselves of how delicate the Nish is I can tell you the Nish is delicate but what does that mean if I say it but if I give you a way of touching in a very gentle way so then you can say oh just like
this is gentle touching so then I realize I have a gentle shmer Within Myself it becomes a the hands become a way of balancing myself so not only do I recognize that I have a Nish and that I need love but I recognize that you have an A as well and that you need love and the more we learn to use our hands in this way the more we see that we can achieve a sense ofes in those situations and with those people who are most important to us so I want to I want to
share with you a a meditation we're going do a meditation here and um um it's a centy meditation and I call it being send Soul centered if you want if you want to give it a name and U what we're going to do is I'm going to ask you in a few moments you're going to close your eyes you're going to put down your pens you're going to and and I'm going to take you through a um a visual Journey while you're using your hands in a certain way and I'll describe how you're going to
use your hands and then we're going to come out of the journey and then we're going to talk about what it was like and then we're going to talk about how one uses this in their everyday life so there are three things I want to ask you to do with your hands and I'll tell you as we do the exercise you'll follow and I'll be clear about what I'm what I'm asking you to do the first thing I'm going to we're going to start we're not going to do it I'm at this moment but I'm
going to ask you to place your hands on your lap and I'm going to ask you to put your 10 fingers together in a this way right just touching your pads of your fingers and then after that I'm going to ask you to cup your hands and you're going to cup your hands one aside the other like you're holding maybe a kidish cup a dollar cup with one hand under the other and then I'm going to ask you to gently stroke your hands and then you're just going to touch your hands gently you're going to
touch on top touch on the bottom you're going to any way you wish that'll kind of be a a free free movement okay any questions before we begin okay so let's begin I'm going to ask you to place your hands on your lap and I want you ask you to make sure my cell phone's off always important good okay thank you so I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and place your hands gently on your lap and permit your fingers to touch each other ever so delicately and the delicate Touch of your fingers
is is is so sensitive that you're not too sure when your fingers are touching and when they're untouch and perhaps if I were to take a tissue and place the tissue between your fingertips that tissue may very well float gently to the ground and as you sense the touching and untouch of your fingertips I want you to be aware that there's a part of you a part of yourself that feels a touching and untouch and yet is also a part of removed from distant from the touching observing almost perhaps from the back of your mind
because as you feel the D gentle touching and untouch you become aware that there's a part of you that is a part of the rest of you a part heart that lives forever that has always been here and will continue to be here and not only is that part of you aware of your touching and untouch of your fingertips but is also aware of the gentle rhythm of your breathing and perhaps we can say that that part of you that is aware is your is your Nisha and your sham is also aware that it receives
life at every moment the loving gift of life from the ronish and it's aware that at this very moment the rabones is observing your the sh that's observing the touching and untouch of your fingertips and the gentle rhythm of you breathing because in this gentle touching and untouch you become aware of the delicate Gift of Life within you and how delicate should this be I'd like you to imagine that as you now cup your hands together I'd like you to imagine that you're holding a child in your arms an infant and as you delicately rock
this infant in your arms and you feel a love for this infant the infant is gently closing its eyes and falling off to sleep because this infant trusts you and trusts the feeling of safety that it experiences in your arms and as you love this child and as the child falls off to sleep that delicate awareness is how the delicate the N sha really is or perhaps it's early morning on a meadow as the sun begins to rise and the Dew begins to settle on verdant grass and one flower opens its petals to receive the
de as it descends with its lifegiving moisture and as the flower Rises to receive the de and the de descends at that moment of their touching that's how delicate the is or perhaps it's noon in the midday sun in a beautifully manicured garden and the garden is filled with wondrous Aromas and colors and the movement of life in the middle of the garden there's a pond and the pond is filled with warm Crystal Pure Waters and sitting on the pond is a pure white lily pad and The Sun Shines its warm loving raay onto the
lily pad as it sits so quietly and gently on the waters and I'd like you to imagine that you can touch the waters with your pinky and you feel how warm the waters are and there are steps going into the pond and you can step into the pond and feel the warmth of the waters and as you feel the warmth of the waters you can feel the warmth of the Sun and you can actually feel yourself floating in the pond and you realize that as you're floating in the warmth and loving rays of the pond
and the sun above you your Nisha floats within you it floats within you and yet it fills your entire being giving life to your whole being and now you can leave the pond you can walk out of the pond and you see a tree perhaps an apple tree and under the tree you can sit and you can smell the Aromas of the blossoms and feel the breeze around you and there are footsteps coming towards you as you sit under the tree and the footsteps are recognizable they're the footsteps of the person with whom you share
your life and I'd like you to imagine that this person with whom you share your life your Zig your soul partner your life partner sits down under the tree next to you and you look into his or her her eyes and you realize or you can say just as I have in the Sha so too do you have in the Sha and just as Hashem loves me Hashem loves you and just as I need to feel safe and secure so to you so do you need to feel safe and secure and you realize that this
is the essence of love the Safety and Security that emerges from your Nisha so with that I'd like you to imagine that you can now get up from underneath the shade of this tree and you can leave the garden and as you leave the garden you realize that all the while you were the parent but you were also the child and you were the de but you were also the flower and you were the Lily Pond but you were also the Lily Pad but you also the pond we give love we receive love and that's
the nature of who we are each of us inside that's an N within us and as your hands are touching perhaps touching each other in a gentle strokey way or perhaps being CED or touching your fingertips you realize that just the touch of your fingers and your hands reminds you of the gentleness shammer in each of us and just a gentle touch enables us to be aware of that deep delicate source of life that Hashem gives us at every moment and whenever you're ready you can open your eyes or you can keep them closed for
as long as you wish so this is the um meditation which I call centering and it um one way to effectively use this is anyone that you want to speak to could be your spouse could be your child could be your friend could be your parent all you do is permit your hands to touch very gentle way and you will find that as your hands touch you feel that you're being that you're centered you'll feel like they kid on the bicycle because he's not going to the left and he's not going to the right he
is balanced and he's on that he is he's sitting on the uh King of the Hill you'll find that you can say things in a much gentler way you'll find that the tone of your voice changes now we say um kamay when you're centered you will enable the other person to be centered as well even without their knowing it when you're centered you're providing go back to the Highwire now imagine what happens on that Highwire because at every given moment in our lives there are always two people on the Highwire one is always more balanced
than the other so what being balanced means is being centered means and that's the essence ofes because I'm taking all of these Kos and I'm able to create a symphony of movement and if I'm if I'm balanced and I'm centered I can say things in a certain way and I'm not going to be pulled in into the into places I don't want to go to and I can be reassuring and I can be caring and I can be everything I want to be to provide what I want to give to my spouse to my children
my friends parents I can find a way of expressing my own isama and find a way of enabling their Nish to emerge as well so that's the that's the nature of the experience of the of the high wire and um and of being centered so I think this is a maybe a good place to stop my presentation and if anyone has any questions i' like to respond how do you get into that Center place when you're in a place where you can't go into that mindset well there are two aspects to it one is you
want to be able to listen to The Meditation and for those of you who are interested we will make a a an audio available to you and um although perhaps we can cut out the meditation itself so you can just listen to it and it's a good thing to listen to it you could try to should try to listen to it at least once a day for a couple of weeks because you're cultivating an experience that is not a part of your life now that's but that you need however long it took it took May
11 12 minutes but you'll find that when you use centering in the here and now when you walk into your office when you walk into your home you don't need the meditation the medit meditation deepens the experience but all you need now is the touching of the hands and the touching of the hands not only reminds you of the delicateness of your Nish but also it enables you to stay balanced so everything you say and everything you the way you say it and the words you use the force behind them is going to be Modified
by that awareness of what a wonderful thing it is to feel like you're on on that bicycle holding those handballs with such a sense of Pride and Triumph that you're balanced You'll Always Find that you're not going to be pulled into any kind of dissonance Discord conflict because you're the one who's going to stop it who's going to because your balance you're not going to be pulled in into it so there are two elements one is the one is the is deepening or cultivating the experience and the other that you that you listen to and
the other is the experience of of a of of of just the sensory experience of having your hands touch and they can touch any way you want they can be cued right as we did they have the fingertips touching or you can be gently touching any part stroking but they all have the same effect so you should know that what it is they actually have a different effect because if if the fingertips are touching you'll find that that gives you a sense of stability and balance if they're CED you'll find that it gives you the
ability to be more expressive expressive in in in a gentle loving way and if they're T if they're just kind of touching each other it could be more soothing so they have different different qualities that you can bring out all of these things are their means to which we can enable ourselves to feel that sense ofish and and to permit ourselves to be aware of that the delicate within ourselves which then becomes the basis for the emergence of AA between two people and it's not a it's not an AA that we see that we you
know in Western concept of AA it's an NAA that enables two people to build their lives together to create this this this uh you know this warm tropical Fishbowl right it's a warmth it's a acceptance It's a support security that we where we throw as you yes it seems that describing could do this reciprocity well it's yes and no it it it if we do it yourself you'll notice that it does create a change eventually what you want to do is you want to share it with your partner you want to there's a book that
I've written that's outside or you can have listen to this him or her listen to this the audio so you really want to share the experience but you'll find that even without it it makes an appreciable difference in the give and the take in the of Life saying the other party is agitated well that do this but you'll find that the that the agitation does not spin out of control that's that's that's certainly a vital a vital importance importance you do want to take it to the next level where you want to but that in
itself is important because you're able to keep that that you're able to maintain the balance within the relationship but now because conflicts only occur when when both people lose their balance when they're on the Highwire and they both feel insecure and then they hit each other with the poles that's what conflicts are but if one person is balanced and secure but if one is on the high wire and one is falling it's going to impct the person well the Highwire is not really is not really a good example in that sense We're Never Falling you
know we we're not on the highw in that sense we're you know we're interacting we we don't fall we we take our cues from each other we kind of quiet down we learn to walk away we learn to to diffuse things the Highwire is a good the metaphor works up to a point it doesn't work after that good any other questions concept thoughts yeah just to follow up it seems that you're hoping that the other person takes the que well because your response is different but what if they don't words well they always will in
that sense in the sense that you're not going to be things will not SP spir out of control that in itself is a value in of itself it doesn't have to go any further than that and if you can share it with the other person and they become a partner in this so that even more so yeah just having gone through some of this training with SH because I found this amazing at one point it's very it takes two to tango it's very hard to have an argument with one one person and I actually went
through one real life example where I had a difficult situation in my office and we discussed this sort of thing and I almost didn't believe it and I literally went into a situation girded with steal that I was not going to argue with this given person who would bait me seemingly in argument and after what I say about a minute and a half this person got very exasperated and said you're just not going to get upset are you you're just going to really be calm aren't you well then I have no choice to be calm
what what are you doing like it it was very unsettling for them and it takes heroic ability to do this for one person but the idea that one person can make a difference all I can tell you is try it you'll be shocked about how a dynamic requires a dynamic of two people requires new people one person on their own is just not going to enjoy it if you're not there's no pleasure in arguing with no one there's no as upet as somebody is nothing but a warm warm c and a smile and and deep
sincerity of wanting to not argue it's not just wanting to argue it's not arguing it's actually embracing a concept of and and again the only way is through practicing the centering so that you yourself are in a position of being strong thank you not that I do this but it's wonderful when I can very good okay so I think with that I think it's a a good time now to stop
