Rabbi Mordecai Finley: A Jiu-Jitsu Blackbelt On Moral Philosophy, Virtue & The Inner Pharaoh

Our time is defined by a crisis of consciousness and broken spiritual connection. Driven by a materialist, zero-sum approach to everything, we seek answers in ego, money, power and consumption. It’s an addiction that’s wreaking havoc on the planet—and ultimately leaves us empty. Short of a spiritual reconciliation or outright revolution of the heart, I fear for the future well-being of humanity. It is this terrain that today we tread with spiritual psychologist, historian, philosopher, and the world’s only rabbi with a black belt in jiu-jitsu, Rabbi Mordecai Finley, Ph. D. The co-founder of Ohr HaTorah Synagogue in Los Angeles, Rabbi Finley holds a doctorate in Religion and Social Ethics from the University of Southern California. He’s taught Holocaust Studies, Talmud, Rabbinic Literature, Jewish Law and Ethics, and other courses at USC, USC School of Law, and Loyola Law School. And he is a founder and the former president of the Academy for Jewish Religion. Rabbi Finley’s gift lies in wisdom counseling, and today we are gifted just that. This is a rather extraordinary deep dive into the teachings of moral philosophy, spiritual psychology, skepticism, and stoicism. We deal with anger & fear, the relationships that divide ourselves and others, and what Rabbi Finley calls The Inner Pharaoh, the internal oppressor who keeps us trapped with the crushing persistence of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. In addition, Rabbi Finley helps answer questions like: what does it mean to pursue a life of virtue, wisdom, depth, purpose, and meaning beyond the material? how do we parse our inner voice from the ego? how do we connect our inner consciousness to the divine? how do we end cycles of anger, disappointment, and dissatisfaction? and most importantly, what is the role of spirituality in 2021? But the most powerful lesson imparted is the importance of thinking well. Exploring the depths of your motivation. And understanding that only you can heal yourself. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll614 YouTube: bit.ly/rabbifinley614 Rabbi Finley is a beautiful soul. I sincerely hope you find this conversation as powerful and fascinating as I did. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  There is a definition of self. Because when people identify their ego, self, thoughts, feelings, and emotions as the self, I say, you know, there is such a larger self that you're gonna discover, and you want to get out of that prison. Because you're observing the world through prison bars. And if you think that's all there is, you're gonna stay in that cell. If you actually want to break the shackles and prick out of those prison bars, there's a way. The main way you know you're living in that prison is suffering. If you're suffering or you're causing other people to suffer unnecessarily, there's an indication that your identification of self is insufficient. The examined life.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  You have to examine the contents of consciousness and go to the deepest place you can and do it every day. You'll hit the waters. You'll hit the living waters of the soul. Just keep at it.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  That's Rabbi Mordecai Finley, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:20Rich Roll?

  What does it mean to pursue a life of virtue, of purpose, of meaning beyond the material? Well, all you spiritual beings enjoying your human experience, today we transcend the mortal coil to explore such terrain. And we're going to do it with the world's only Rabbi with a black belt in Jitsu and the first Rabbi to ever appear on this podcast, Rabbi Dr. Mordecai Finley. Rabbi Finley holds a doctorate in religion and social ethics from the University of Southern California. He's the Rabbi and co-founder of the Or HaTorah Synagogue in Los Angeles. In addition, Rabbi Finley has

• 3:03Rich Roll?

  taught Holocaust Studies, Talmud, rabbinic literature, Jewish law and ethics, and other courses at USC, USC School of Law, and Loyola Law School, among other institutions. And he helped found and is a former president of the Academy for Jewish Religion. A few more thoughts to share before we indulge. But first.

• 3:32Rich Roll?

  Okay, Rabbi Finley. So, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure how this would go. I was a little nervous. I had a bit of trepidation. But he was delightful. And this conversation, I think, is a rather extraordinary deep dive into timeless wisdom, mysticism, moral philosophy, spiritual psychology, what else? Stoicism, divine consciousness, and what it really means to pursue a life of virtue, of wisdom, depth, purpose, and meaning beyond the material. He's a beautiful man, that Mordecai Finley. I enjoyed this one thoroughly.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  I think he did as well, and I hope you do too. So, here we go. This is me and Rabbi Mordecai Finley.

• 4:26Rich Roll?

  So nice to meet you. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate you coming out here.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  It's a real pleasure and honor to meet you and being on your podcast.

• 4:33Rich Roll?

  I appreciate that. Well, we were introduced by our mutual friend, Steve Pressfield. Any friend of Steve is a friend of mine.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Mutual?

• 4:40Rich Roll?

  He speaks very highly of you. And, you know, I've been doing this podcast thing for about eight and a half years at this point. And over the years, I've had many a spiritual teacher, spiritual seeker, in all types and forms, but I have yet to sit down with a rabbi.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Here you go.

• 4:55Rich Roll?

  So I'm very excited to talk to you today. We were chatting a little bit before the podcast started about our mutual adoration for Steve and his focus on resistance. And you were commenting, I thought it'd be cool to kind of kick things off with your sort of rabbi take on what that means and how you interpret that.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  The Hebrew term that matches on to resistance in Hebrew is called the yetzer hara. So the Hebrew word yetzer is from the word to shape or form, and ra means bad or evil. So it says in the book of Genesis, chapter 6, verse 5, when God is, as it were, looking at creation and notes that the human being, that all the thoughts of his inner life are all bad all day long. It's a pretty dour understanding of the human condition. The divine is very disappointed. But in there, it says, "All the shapes of the thoughts of his heart are all bad." So from that, we get the term yetzer hara, destructive shape.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  So here's the idea, that whatever's going on inside of you, however noble your vision, whatever it is you want to do, there's a spoiler. That sometimes the more you want to do something, the yetzer hara actually opposes you. It's not your friend. So it's somewhat connected to the Jungian idea of the shadow, but it's very active in the unconscious. So this idea is just not well-known in psychology. There's all kinds of ways they talk around the idea that there is an active intelligence in the inner life that is oppositional.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  Is that the same thing that you also call the inner pharaoh?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yes, one can call the inner pharaoh. So in the Jewish calendar, depending on what holiday we're working on, we use the terminology for the holiday to discuss spiritual psychology. So the inner pharaoh is an archetype for Passover time. But for the high holidays, we probably use a different metaphor. For example, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, when we talk about penitence and self-examination and confession, the resistance would be named differently. But I would say throughout Jewish spiritual psychology, including the spiritual psychology of the calendar, the Yetzer Harah, the destructive patterns, is an essential term.

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  And what is the path towards deconstructing the Yetzer Harah?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  So just a little bit of background. The Hebrew word "heart" or "lev", "lev" does not mean what it means in English. So in English, we think of the heart as the seed of moral sentiments. But the Bible, you probably know, says, "Do not follow after your heart or after your eyes, which you go astray." So people say, "Rabbi, shouldn't I follow my heart?" I said, "Actually, the Bible says, 'Don't follow your heart.'" "What does that mean?" I said, "Because the word 'heart' is something different." So the word "lev", which means heart in modern Hebrew as well, and I think it has that English connotation of follow your heart. But the Bible sees the heart as something like the mind-feeling continuum that's not connected to the spirit, to the soul, to a vision. So in a sense, it's a lens, a prism,

• 8:04Speaker 01

  through which the world is understood and then directs us according to its own needs. So I might, for example, let's say, in my conscious self-connected to my vision, I might want one thing, but my "lev" wants something else. It doesn't want difficult things. It wants the easier path. For some people, it wants to depress. Another person, it wants to dominate. Another person, it wants to be right. Another person feels guilt. So think of the inner life as having patterns. So the first step is to realize that we, let's say, in the beginning state...

• 8:39Speaker 01

  We don't know that there is an inner world, I call the ego self, that's actually driving us. We think our will is driving us, but the ego self is driving us. So then, if one wants to really do this work, you have to go to something called the higher self and examine the ego self. So that's the main thing. You have to know what's happening in your ego self.

• 9:02Rich Roll?

  Well, it presupposes that there is this duality, right? That there is indeed something called the higher self. And then, understanding what that is becomes a tricky process, right? I feel, my sense is that most people lack the ability to truly live an examined life and are predominantly living, you know, as an expression of the ego, for the most part. And despite all the work that I've done, I'm probably driving my life on self-will most of the time. And it's a constant reminder, like this refrain, to come back to this idea of trying to connect with the higher self and discern the truth of that in juxtaposition with, you know, my ego-driven will.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  So untangling that, you know, sticky wicket is something I suspect that in your counseling, you spend a lot of time trying to get people to understand.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yes, and that's one way, I think, Stephen Pressfield and I connected, was because when, he had already written The War of Art, and then he heard about that I'm teaching something very similar. So he came to study with me in my classes that I teach. And he saw that I have a very rigorous, detailed understanding of the inner life, what exactly the higher self is, what exactly the ego self is, the distinction between the colloquial use of the word ego and ego self, because they're actually quite different. And he really admired the precision. And then, we just, we met and talked about it constantly. And I learned a lot from him, clearly, because he's really suffered. He's really paid the dues of working through resistance.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  And I think he liked the idea that there is a concept that exists that I've developed. And so, our connection developed over that.

• 10:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  So, it is very important, I find. And this is where I have to say to people, "I'm gonna have to teach terminology. I'm gonna have to teach you a map." Because I believe that if one understands the map, and understands how to use language precisely, it actually helps in the journey.

• 11:06Rich Roll?

  So what are those terms that have to initially be concretely defined?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  First of all, the ego-self. Now, here's where the term ego, put the Freudian sounds out completely, because it's not helpful. But let's say when people say, "My ego got in my way." That has a sense of narcissism, domination, what I want. But many people suffer from guilt and shame. So they don't seem ego-driven people. They seem like very nice people. So the flaw in their ego-self is not narcissism, but self-loathing, self-doubt. So it's very hard to call that, "My ego got in my way."

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  There is a narcissistic flair to that in that you're still the protagonist in this grand play, right? Things tend to revolve around you, even if it's about self-pity and self-doubt.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's really at a higher level, understanding of ego. But most people, when they say, "My ego got in my way," they don't say, "My ego narrative, that is my narcissistic drama, that I'm always at fault." That's a level of sophistication that, I mean, you have it, but many people don't. So that's why when I say, "I mean ego-self," because when I look at what I call the 20 or so disruptions of the ego-self, anger at others, anger at the self, resentment, despair, shame, guilt, envy, confusion, low-level desire, I mean, the whole range of them. So these are all in the ego-self. So when a person starts out on this work,

• 12:37Speaker 01

  they have to find their way to the higher self so they can actually watch the ego-self.

• 12:41Rich Roll?

  And so how do you tease that out of somebody?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Okay. So the steps of the higher self start with what I call the observer mind, which most people do, but they don't do it in a rigorous, proactive way. So I'll introduce somebody to recounting for me a moment when what I call a disruption of their ego self took over their consciousness. And I gotta find out what their deal is, whether it was anger, resentment, despair, confusion, guilt, shame, whatever it is. And I say, I want you to try to see it, but not be it. I want you to have some distance. And you can see that it is happening to you, but it is not the same as you. And for some people, they can do that pretty quickly, that they can dis-identify from it.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  So the process of dis-identifying it, so you can see it and name it, there are little quips here. You can identify it if you can dis-identify from it. If you can name it, you can tame it. If you can see it, you don't have to be it. So there's a series of ways that I teach it, but the moment is when a person says, I can see the anger without being angry, but I can see it.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  That takes work in and of itself, though.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  A lot of work.

• 13:59Rich Roll?

  For most people, the minute you confront somebody with the truth of their lower emotional state, the impulse is to become defensive, right? It's a protectionism kind of reaction to that kind of thing. And, you know, as we were also chatting about before the podcast, like, I come from a 12-step tradition, long-time recovery guy, and in a very different, with a very, you know, with a sort of analogous but different set of tools, that whole journey and process is about getting you to objectively confront with the, you know, the factual state of your, you know, character defects and behavioral reality.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  That's exactly right, which is, we also said before the podcast, that two of the many influences in my life, one of them is certainly 12 steps. You know, I'm not officially in a 12-step program, but I've been 12-step world-adjacent for almost my entire professional life. I was the informal chaplain of a Jewish 12-step group back in the 80s.

• 14:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  And I've always stayed connected. I'll tell you more about that one, because it was a life-changing moment.

• 15:04Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  First time I went to a 12-step meeting. But in any case, the idea of being able to see what's happening in your ego self from the observer mind. Is the beginning of the journey. And so, the people that work with me, I say you have to do this every day. Every single day, you have to do the practice of the disidentification from the ego self, observe what's happening. And then there are several next steps that I would teach for what I'll call the beginner to intermediate. Now, why is that? Because at some level, I want to teach people virtue, which is the ability to observe the ego self and not do whatever it says, but rather act in ways that are according to your vision for yourself, which requires a virtue code.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Rationality, to try to understand the inner life of the ego self. Because every disruption has an inner life. Every disruption has a story. So anger has a story, depression has a story. So a person has to be able to rational, just like understanding another person. You have to rationally understand what's happening in your ego self. So I call it the virtue rationality. And then wisdom, you might say, is developing a sense of how to manage this whole thing. So we think of a wise person, they can regulate their ego selves, they live lives of virtue, but they also have a sense of where all this is heading. The larger picture of a life of goodness. And beyond that is depth.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Now, many people aren't that interested in depth, meaning the world of the soul. So if they can get virtue, rationality, and wisdom down, they're good to go. Right. No need to go further. No need to go further. But there are many people that just have an innate aching for depth. And it's not well taught in this country. So I save that for people who, if they've gotten past, I mean, if they have relative mastery of virtue, rationality, and wisdom, then we can go to depth. One step at a time. Yeah, I really think it's one step at a time. Because there are many people that love to go to depth, but they can't manage their emotions. Yeah. They can't manage their connection with their spouses, or kids, or parents, so.

• 17:14Rich Roll?

  Because we're emotional beings.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  We are emotional beings.

• 17:16Rich Roll?

  And when you talk about being able to objectively assess, you know, the true status of how you're behaving, it involves decoupling all of those narratives and stories that we attach to our experiences and things that we've done or, you know, kind of experienced throughout our lives. And, you know, I feel like human beings are predisposed to, you know, make sense of the world by storytelling. And so when something happens to us, we're like, this is why it happened. And then we, you know, attach some disproportionately, you know, emotional story to that. And that becomes our truth, right? That the emotions that surround that become real, whether or not they're tethered to, you know, factual reality.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people say, "That's my truth." And in spiritual psychology, you should say, "That's my lie."

• 18:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Right?

• 18:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And what happens when you confront people with that?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  When you basically realize that your ego self produces mendacious narratives. I mean, that's actually quite relieving. That's just what the ego self does. It creates narratives that justifies your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. That's its job. So it's the job of a truly sentient, wise human being. Don't buy into it.

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  Right. But it requires challenging your whole sense of self. Like, it's an attack on identity on some level. So I would suspect that over the years, you've developed a gracious set of tools for meeting people where they're at and very gently teasing these things out of them until they can lead with a sense of curiosity rather than a sense of this.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is curiosity. When you move to the observer mind, no judgment. Just observe what's happening. And but there is a definition of self. Because when people identify their ego self, thoughts, feelings, and emotions as the self, I say, you know, there is such a larger self that you're going to discover, and you want to get out of that prison. Because you're observing the world through prison bars. And if you think that's all there is, you're gonna stay in that cell. But if you are willing to accept the fact that there's actually a world, this is not dissimilar to Plato's allegory of the cave. If you actually want to break the shackles and prick out of those prison bars, there's a way.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I say, and the way, the main way you know you're living in that prison is suffering.

• 19:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  If you're suffering, or you're causing other people to suffer unnecessarily, there's an indication that your identification of self is insufficient.

• 19:49Rich Roll?

  But there's a competing idea that that suffering is serving that individual in some way, right?

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Serving the ego self, yeah.

• 19:55Rich Roll?

  The attachment to that suffering is playing a role in how this person navigates throughout the world, and when you come to them and say, "You gotta let go of this, and there's a whole larger world available to you," it's terrifying, right?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  It can be.

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  So unless somebody's in sufficient amount of pain, getting them to transition out of that is an uphill battle.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  It really is. So oftentimes, when a person comes to me, and I have several, I call this wisdom counseling. I have several methods depending on the person. But let's say a person comes to me and says, "Hey Rabbi, what's this all about? Give me the big picture before I sign up."

• 20:31Speaker 01

  So I'll say, "All right, I want you to give me a theory of the good in your life, every part of your life, your romantic connections, children, work, and a relatively precise, as detailed as possible, what you would like, what you would think, what would you feel, what you would say, how others would react to you, as precise as possible." I call this a relatively precise vision for your life. If you could live optimally, what would it be like?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  So it's not that I say you have to. I want them to say, "I have to." I say, "I'm not telling you to do anything." But if you have a relatively detailed vision that you know yourself would lead to a life, a flourishing life, the Greek idea of eudaimonia.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Then the question is, what's the gap? And how do we close the gap? If you want to close the gap, I'll help you.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  What is the percentage of people that come to you who hold that vision for themselves versus the individual who comes in and says, "Look, on paper, everything's good. Got a good job, drive a nice car. I've got a nice family. Sometimes my kids hate me, but I can pay the mortgage and I go to this job. It's fine, but there's something missing in my life. I don't know what it is, but I feel this sense of calling to something greater, but I have no connection to what that might be."

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not an uncommon question that I get. So then I have to say, "Are you signing up?" It's like my jujitsu club. Are you signing up? Is this a one-off?

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  It's a flirtation.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, if it's a one-off, that's fine. I'll give you a couple of ideas. But if you're signing up, which means you might come to my wisdom classes on Wednesday nights, come to one thing or another, then I would start, "Well, can we break this down?" So you're not getting along with your kids. I need to know more about that because sometimes people suffer because they're not nourished by their interpersonal relationships. And let's say, for example, their estrangement with their child is killing them. Or I have a nice job, but some level, they hate the job and they're done with it. So when a person says, "I'm basically doing okay, but something's missing," the first thing I have to do is find out exactly what's happening in each of these areas and see if something's missing in there.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Typically, something is. Typically, they don't know how to process with the spouse. They don't know how to process with the kids. Their work-life has, you know, reached its maximum potential for meaning. So once we start examining things, that I, the sense of something's missing, let's get to what exactly is missing. Now, let's say a person... Hardly ever, but a person reports, "Relationships are good, I'm regulated, we're processing." And I hear all that, and I say, "Okay, so it's depth." If you feel something missing, if you feel the abyss within, we call that depth. And that takes hard work.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  And then what is the process going forward of getting somebody more connected to that? Oh, to depth? So we're jumping to the end now, right? Yeah, yeah. We're talking like- I'm going AP course. Okay, man, so we're going to the brown belt, black belt level. Most people are happy with the blue belt. Okay, so if I got that person who says, "I'm not stopping until I get my higher belt." So I use the approach of Jung, Carl Jung. Not in any kind of doctrinaire sense. But ultimately, in the realm of the soul, it's a meaning-driven part of the inner life. It can be addressed through religion, philosophy, art. I think religion, philosophy, and art come out of the soul. And I think the soul is the aspect of the human being that actually apprehends

• 24:13Speaker 01

  symbols, myths, poetry, music at the deep level. So we'll call the soul, minimally, a faculty of knowing. James Hillman is one of my favorite people to study here. He says, "The soul is where events become experiences, where things are taken down." So first of all, the soul is always at work, but sometimes unnourished, unexpressed. And from Jung's perspective, that's why you suffer. You suffer because you haven't found a way to let the concerns of the soul manifest into your life. So unlike Freud, where he, Freud thought it was because of repression. Jung thought it was more the inability for a person to articulate the concerns of the soul into their lives. And then it just comes some time for investigation.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I gotta find out what medium they connect to immediately. Music, movies, books, poetry. You know, and now and then I get a person where the marriage is in trouble because the wife says, "I can't be married to a superficial man." So, you know, "We've done it for 30 years, and now I'm done." Right. She spent her weekends in Sedona. He says, "I don't know what she's talking about." So it's an external pressure? Yes. And he said, "What is this thing?" And you know accountant lawyer and I you know like and my marriage is at stake. What do I do Rabbi? I said, okay, so I tried to figure out like where's the opening here? So I found he he's a guy a little bit older than I am.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  I'm 66 about 70 and uh music, rock music. I said, okay. I said, are you aware that the Beatles changed from 62 to 66? You know that happened, right?

• 25:53Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  He said, yeah, I said, I want you to go back and listen to the Beatles after 65. Abbey Road, Rubber Soul, I want you to tell me what happened. Okay. So he called me and said, okay, I found a better therapist.

• 26:08Rich Roll?

  That's hilarious.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I know, huh? But.

• 26:14Rich Roll?

  You got scared.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  You got scared because listen to Abbey Road. What's happening there? Listen to Rubber Soul, listen to Revolver.

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  You know, listen, what happened to those guys?

• 26:22Rich Roll?

  Sergeant Pepper.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Sergeant Pepper, exactly. And and then I said, and tell me what happened to them? So I think he wanted to talk about his mother. Yeah, like, how do you feel about?

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Yeah. So yeah, it was a it was a spiritual awakening that they had. They went on a journey and they became more expanded individuals and in turn more fully expressed artists.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  And it's scary. Yeah, the Beatles, yes.

• 26:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And and the thing is, I have a lot of compassion for that guy who comes to you. I think that's the predicament of the typical modern human because we live in a time that I would define as a crisis of consciousness and spiritual connection, right? We're in this sort of competitive predatory relationship with other people, with ourselves, with the world. It's a zero sum approach to basically everything. We're materialists seeking answers in ego status, money, power, consumption, accumulation. And it's also a culture in which it's considered a lower order naivete.

• 27:29Rich Roll?

  To seek reconciliation or answers in the mystical and the unknown, right? It's almost perceived as a weakness in this age of science. And yet, when you look around, you see depression rates and suicide rates at unprecedented levels. We're seeing this breakdown in our ability to civilly communicate with each other. The seeds of social destruction have been sown, right? And from my perspective, the only way forward, the only salvation is in spiritual practice and learning to more deeply connect with who we are, to find our innate humanity that allows us to connect to others and live more symbiotically on this planet that supports us.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  And yet, I despair at times because I don't see that as a cultural priority.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  First of all, beautifully articulated, really impressive. You really nailed it. And it's not often that I sit in conversation with somebody who really articulates it as beautifully and concisely as you have. So, right on. So, the first thing I want to say is, one podcast at a time, you know? But at a deeper level, well, that's my work. So, you know, when I do my Torah teachings on Saturday mornings on Zoom now, this is what I'm after. I'm teaching it in order for people to master virtue, rationality, wisdom, and depth. And I gotta, I have to teach in such a way where no matter what level they're at, white belt to black belt, I have something for everybody.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  And I remember, it was a few weeks ago, we got to this. You could almost feel the depth in the Zoom room. And one person shared a statement from Kafka where he said, "There's ice over the lake of the soul and language is the axe. And we have to break through the ice to get to the water." Some great metaphor. And, I mean, it's like we're all in. Everybody was saying, well, Cates and Wordsworth and William Blake, I mean, all these quotes just beginning to flow in. And it's like, we all went into the zone. So I know it's possible.

• 29:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And for the people who weren't at that level, they were listening in and say, well, how do I do this? I want more. I want to live more deeply. I want to live with a greater sense of my soul and the souls of other people. So part of it is to let people know that it's there.

• 29:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  That you're connected to the mystery, but the path is not that mysterious. It's actually a path. I mean, there is a, an incremental conscious path that one can take into the world of depth. And so part of my work is to make the journey to mystery apprehendable and that people can master according to their ability.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  So, uh, yeah, I agree. And that's, I consider that to be at the core of my life's work.

• 30:18Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and your tools are, are the rabbinical traditions, social psychology, mysticism, Kabbalah, which I want to talk a little bit about. But how do these all kind of congeal? Because my sense is that you're, I wouldn't consider you an Akana class, but you're, you're different from the typical rabbi in that you're well steeped in military history. You've got a black belt in jujitsu. You were in the Marine Corps. And you have what I would consider to be, you know, a pretty objective lens on the pitfalls of religious traditions in general.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, a lot of life experience before I entertained the idea of becoming a rabbi. And so when I went to college, I began college at 22 years old after growing up and being in the military and...

• 31:07Rich Roll?

  You were in the Marine Corps for three years?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Three years, yeah. From eight, I joined out of high school. And I also had a, kind of a rocky time growing up. You know, I saw and experienced things that I know had an indelible effect on me that I had to deal with, to just name it. I, I grew up in Compton as a, as a white kid. And although my buddies on my street were fabulous, I mean, they fought for me. I saw hatred and savagery that a person shouldn't have to see and experience when they're 12, 13, 14 years old.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  It never made me hate, but it made me confused about the human condition. I didn't know how to talk about it when I was that age. And so, I was, in ninth grade, I was reading Camus and Sartre. I just, it just, something sprang open in me that said, "I have to understand the human condition." So, my first flirtation with existentialism. You know, we're thrown into an uncaring world and we have to create meaning ourselves. So, that was a big part of my high school life and...

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  It's interesting that your on-ramp, really, to the work that you do today was one that's rooted in philosophy, not religious tradition. So, you didn't come up through, you know, the sort of synagogue indoctrination of how you-

• 32:25Speaker 01

  I didn't take it seriously.

• 32:26Rich Roll?

  -do what you do now.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Look, I went to Hebrew school and went to confirmation, you know?

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  Didn't connect with you then, though?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  It didn't connect me. I was incredibly fortunate that I had a spiritual teacher in high school. Again, it's just a rare thing that my science teacher was a spiritual man in the Gurdjieff tradition. Have you ever heard of Gurdjieff? Okay, so Gurdjieff was a great spiritual teacher in the 20th century. I mean, back in the 50s and 60s, everybody knew who Gurdjieff was. So, he vetted me. Can I tell you a quick story?

• 33:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, so I'm in science-

• 33:01Rich Roll?

  That's what we're here for.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm in my science class at Linwood High School. And he would talk and, you know, like, the theory of spontaneous generation, when they didn't understand where bacteria came from. And he would say, "Some people believe that things spontaneously generate, but others know that everything generates from a deeper reality." And he'd look right at me, and then he'd move on. I said, "Is he talking to me?" So, he would do this, right? He was just like, talk, and then look at me and like, drill something in. So, I came after school one day and I said, "Okay, is this real? Are you actually stopping every now and then, saying something to me at some really deep level?" He said, "Okay, I was waiting for you to notice and to ask." And I said, "Yes, I noticed and I'm asking." He says, "Do you want to study with me?"

• 33:47Speaker 01

  I said, "Sure." He says, "Okay, every Wednesday afternoon, come to S109, Science Class 109." And I would go every afternoon, and he- Taught me about the soul and spirit and life and expanded consciousness. It wasn't on the curriculum, but, um, and he was a rigorous teacher.

• 34:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's wild.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  It was wild.

• 34:08Rich Roll?

  Everybody needs somebody like that.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  You know, I felt.

• 34:11Rich Roll?

  Too few get somebody like that.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  How do you get somebody like that? How do you, I mean, I just felt so incredibly fortunate that he was there. Because, you know, I was, I was, this is LA in the, I was coming apart. And he said, there's this great fellowship of human awareness. And there's not that many people, but when you are one, you can recognize others. And this is the most real thing. So he says, you gotta take this seriously. So I was his student. And, um, one, one thing I noticed was I was having trouble living up to it. Because there was drugs and alcohol, all these distractions. And I realized if I'm true to the deepest thing that I know, and I didn't get it from my synagogue.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  I got it from Jack Bishop. And I told Jack, I gotta get out of here and I gotta go somewhere where they're gonna make me be this. And that's why I joined the Marine Corps. I joined the Marine Corps because, you know, they shave your heads and you can't talk for three months. I mean, I, I wanted the eradication of that ego that I'd built up in high school down to the nothing and built up from there. And that's what the Marine Corps promised.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  You had that level of self-awareness about that at the time?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I'm sitting here thinking to myself, when I was 17, 18, I really can't believe those were my actual thoughts. I need to eradicate myself and build from the Corps.

• 35:34Rich Roll?

  So go into this institution, allow them to break you down, where you're confronted with yourself in that very real way and rebuild yourself.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  That's what I got after.

• 35:46Rich Roll?

  Under that kind of, that level of discipline and rigor.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it did it. It was, it was, it was true. It really did it. And what I discovered was in the, let's say, 100 guys in a platoon, in a basic training platoon, about 20 were these guys. There were so many spiritual seekers.

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  So when that was, what year?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Seventy-three.

• 36:06Rich Roll?

  Seventy-three.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Seventy-three, yeah. So my drill, I had, so my drill instructor was one of them. You know, a person in the fellowship, I'll say, for lack of a better term. So he calls me in, you know. So the way you get called in was they'd name a class of like a football players or whatever they needed. So he says, "All Hebrew motherfuckers report to the duty office." So they're all looking around. Okay, so I pound on the door, "Sir." "One Hebrew motherfucker reporting his orders." Sir, I go in and he looks at me and he looks at my file and he says, "I have a high IQ." Looks, he says, "What are you doing here?" So I said, "Well, I'll fight for my country." He goes, "No, what are you really doing here?"

• 36:51Speaker 01

  So I just had to be honest, I need to transform. I just kind of confessed. And he says, "Okay." He says, "How many people in the Marine Corps do you think are like you?" I said, "One in a thousand." He said, "One in 10,000." So he says, "Don't tell anybody about it. Keep your mouth shut." He said, "I'll try to help you."

• 37:11Rich Roll?

  Wow, a little bit of a guardian angel.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 37:14Rich Roll?

  Because he feared you'd get chewed up and spit out?

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he, in a way, I mean, he was a tough Marine Corps drill sergeant, but he had his eye out for me. It was crazy because, you know, okay, so one thing he did was he would play with our minds and he wanted to see who got it. So one time we're at the chow hall and he says, you know, we're standing here, he says, "I PT'd, physical trained, a platoon to death and the ghosts are here as are their ghost rifles. And I want everybody to pick up your ghost rifle because you think just because you're outside the chow hall, you don't have to do close order drill." He says, "Everybody get their rifle. Make sure you have the right rifle." All the guys looking around, so I and the 20 other guys, we all start picking up ghost rifles.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  So then everybody says, "Okay, so we all pick up our ghost rifles." He says, "Does everybody have the correct rifle?"

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Sir, this private doesn't, sir. So he goes, who in the fuck has Private Finley's rifle? So somebody goes, sir, this private, would you please give it to rifle? So we're doing all this stuff and the other guys are going, what is happening here? So he would play mind games with us the whole way through boot camp. And I and a few others got it. Expand reality. It's like my teacher in high school. I went from the high school teacher to the Marine Corps teacher. And the whole thing was, we're living in a world that you don't get. It's a mystery. Open your minds up.

• 38:39Rich Roll?

  The flip side of that experience would have been for you to, rather than join the Marine Corps, to go to India and do the Ram Dass thing, right?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  That's what everybody else was doing.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And sit at the feet of Neem Karali Baba, who essentially, you know, your platoon leader is a stand-in for that type of guru-student-teacher, you know, dynamic.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, to be honest, I wanted the GI Bill.

• 39:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  And we've been, I was a patriot. You know, Vietnam kind of destroyed our military. Everybody kept saying, oh, it's such a bad military. I said, why don't you join it and make it better? So I was really the kind of guy that said, hey, if we want to rebuild this military, it's going to be 1% at a time and I'm going in. I'm going to do my part. So as a patriot, but more than anything, it was a spiritual search. And the idea that I landed from my high school teacher bishop into my Marine Corps platoon with Sergeant Throneberry, who was, yeah, he was a guru. It was so unreal to me. Rich, I mean, truly.

• 39:41Rich Roll?

  When you look back, hindsight's always 20/20 and life always makes perfect sense in the rearview mirror. There's this feeling of predestiny, right? Like you're sort of being prepared for this life that you live now. My feeling is that we all have chance encounters with great teachers and it's incumbent upon us to have the awareness to really see and understand when we're having one of those encounters so that we can value it and nurture it and appreciate it.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with you. I didn't feel predestination as much as I was working and doors opened because I was doing the work.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  But the doors that opened with Bishop and Throneberry, for example, felt miraculous. And they defined me as human beings. So then, when it came time for me to go to college, I wanted to study religion because I wanted to get at the truth of things. So I did religion, anthropology, philosophy. And I had a really good undergraduate degree. I was really able to tailor, make it to my spiritual search. I studied with, I read great books and studied with great people.

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  Was there an idea that you'd be a professor? Or what was the sense of career path at that time?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I had no goal, other than discover the truth. I didn't, actually, I was a B student in high school. I didn't know I'd be, so I was a straight A student in college. I didn't even know I had the aptitude to tell the truth. And then they said, "Professor." Like, "Oh, you're professorial." And then, I studied religion, and I think, "I want to be a rabbi." And my motivation was, I think rabbis sit around and study ancient tomes.

• 41:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  I forgot they have congregations. So when I showed up at a rabbinical school, and I got my slip of paper, "Here's your congregation," I said, "What?"

• 41:28Rich Roll?

  You have to get up and talk in front of people?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  I gotta, I gotta go out there and preach. I thought, like, we just kind of studied ancient antiquarian books and knew God. So, I was so naive. It wasn't until they gave me my assignment, that I remembered, "Oh, congregational rabbi."

• 41:44Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's how it began?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how it began.

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  So where, you know, where does the, the interest in, in all these other kind of strains of thought come in to, you know, how you practice being a rabbi?

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Well, so my religion degree, we focused in the function of religion, not morphology, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the comparative approach. But what does religion do? Organize reality. So we understood, for example, Marxism is a quasi-religion. Which you might call the, what's happening in politics today. Some of them are quasi-religious, because they're in a way based on things that cannot be empirically shown, but they believe to exist. So they have a, something of a religious quality to them. So we learned how religion functions. I also took symbolic anthropology, so I, the degree that I cobbled together for myself... Was foundational how I understand the world. Human consciousness, the nature of the symbolic life.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Introduction to Carl Jung. The whole history of philosophical hermeneutics. How language functions, the connection between language and consciousness. I mean, I really had an extraordinary undergraduate degree. Then I went to rabbinical school for a couple of years and I realized I don't know enough. So I went back and did a doctorate in religion, social ethics. So I could understand this thing better. So I'm one of those few people, I think, that my degrees, both my undergraduate and PhD, were part of my search for truth. And I just lucked into the best program with the best teachers who at some level let me do what I wanted.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  And so I still am reaping benefits from my undergraduate and doctoral program. In rabbinical school, I mostly learned how to read the text. Meaning in rabbinical school, I learned how to do Talmud and Midrash and read Aramaic to study the Zohar. So that was a very good education in accessing the mysteries of the tradition. But the intellectual tools I got from my two degrees from USC. And I would say that trajectory is still moving forward. I mean, here it is.

• 44:01Rich Roll?

  Right, right. And how is your, clearly, the way that you kind of do what you do is a little bit askew from the typical rabbi. How does the sort of Jewish community perceive you? Like, are you considered, like, is it, certainly, there's different, you know, traditional strains and Orthodox and all of that. But are you, like, welcomed as an equal voice in this conversation?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I mean, what I hear is, I'm highly respected. That's what I hear. I'm a Reform ordained rabbi, but I'm not in the social justice thing. And there's enough people trying to fix society, fix other people, I'm not involved in. I want to aim at the human soul. So my colleagues know that I'm not the guy that you call when you want a social justice warrior. I'm the guy you call if you want access to the mysteries of the inner life. And so I'm not in step with what I'll call Reform Judaism.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  But I think there's a lot of other rabbis in Reform Judaism who are interested in this very thing. Very few of them got it started when they were 16, right, and have been on it since they were 16. So I think I have an important voice. And also because I studied Aramaic, which opened up the Zohar to me. So at a young age, I mastered skills that have opened up texts that some rabbis just can't get to because they didn't spend time on the original languages. But many are. I'm not alone in this. There are other Reform rabbis that are equally deep, equally learned, have mastery of the languages, and we end up in similar places.

• 45:40Rich Roll?

  Well, I would imagine being so well-versed and steeped in a variety of traditions and philosophies and traditions around psychology that that would really make your perspective on traditional Jewish philosophy and text much more robust.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yes. So I tell people I don't like theology, for example. Theology wants to take the mystery and put it into a box with a nice bow. So I'm more interested in symbols, myths, metaphors, as mediating between the conscious and the unconscious mind. So I have a specific way that I teach people how to read a text as an entryway into the soul. It just so happens that in the Hasidic tradition, which branched off from the Kabbalah, that's also their main way. So when I discovered a Hasidic text that says, "Every word of the Bible and the prayer book is an opening into a cavern

• 46:42Speaker 01

  filled with souls and worlds and angels." I shuddered. "Oh, so you've been there too."

• 46:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's beautiful.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Isn't it? So I discovered it by myself. And then I found out it's actually, it's a theory that goes back to the late 1700s. So when I discovered that the branch called Hasidic Judaism, Hasidic doesn't mean ultra-orthodox. It's a specific kind of mystical teaching that most of them happen to be ultra-orthodox. But once I discovered those worlds and those texts, man, that was, it's like I felt I discovered, you know, my people.

• 47:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  So I still am deeply immersed in, like, last night I did a two-hour, because it's a Jewish holiday, last night and today. I did a two-hour teaching on a couple of paragraphs from a Hasidic text from the 1870s. And we just went deeper and deeper and deeper. You know, I got off and people were saying to me, "Put it online and we have to study it and tell us what your sources were." And, you know, so it was extraordinary.

• 47:44Rich Roll?

  Well, I love the, I love the deep appreciation for the mystical. And, you know, when I think back to how we started this, talking about Steve Pressfield and Resistance, one of the things that, that I really appreciate about Stephen's work is that it's very practical. Like, here's what you do. If you're, if you're dealing with resistance, here's a path towards, you know, overcoming it. But within that, there's a whole universe of mysticism because it's about courting the muse and showing up for the work so that the muse can become present. And I just find that life is more colorful and beautiful when we make room for things mystical. And it allows me to connect with my own innate, you know, with humility.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  That's beautifully put. And I always remind people, the reason I want to deal with the disruptions of the ego self and deal with the resistance is to leave space to live a life of wisdom, you know, so virtue rationality. Now we can, now we can actually live with some wisdom. We're not always putting out fires that the ego self creates. We're not always dealing with disruptions with other people. Relationships aren't always skidding into a, a car wreck. Okay, now, now you're ready for the mystery. In fact, I just said to the rehab guys on Friday, I talked about, I said, "Sobriety prepares you for the mystery. Sobriety is good in and of itself."

• 49:09Speaker 01

  But one thing that using does, again, this is a private theory, doesn't apply to everybody. The mystery is so deep and painful that people would rather drink and use drugs than to feel the pain of the mystery. And so, for some people, sobriety is a way to say, "I'm now gonna go into the mystery, and it's gonna be painful to discover the beauty." That life is both beautiful and ephemeral, which is unbearable sometimes.

• 49:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Do it anyway, and you're not gonna drink.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you were sharing before the podcast about working with people in recovery, and how receptive they are to these ideas, right? And I think my theory on that is that, maybe not all, but a lot of addicts and alcoholics are fundamentally seekers. They're seeking answers, they're seeking a resolution to their discomfort, they're doing it in an unhealthy way, and they're using substances as a portal to an alternative reality, right? It works until it doesn't work, you're confronted with the truth of your behavior, you've gotta find a new way forward, but because you've had those experiences of trying to fill that hole, that spiritual hole, you're already predisposed to wanna be on that journey.

• 50:30Rich Roll?

  And I find that, once somebody has built a solid foundation of sobriety, they're thirsty, they're really hungry for that path.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And that's why, for some people, who, once they gain sobriety, and 12 steps is part of their lives forever, I say, "And now go find whatever you grew up in, whatever you're comfortable with, to go on the spiritual religious path, if it fits you." But you just have to find the right church, the right synagogue, the right mosque, you have to find the one that's gonna speak to your soul. So I say to people, 12-step is necessary but not sufficient for some people.

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  It is a spiritual program.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  It is completely.

• 51:09Rich Roll?

  But how do you parse somebody who's walking a spiritual path versus religion?

• 51:16Speaker 01

  That's a great question, and the distinction between spiritual and religious is a tough one. Religious sometimes means, let's say from a Jewish perspective, you officially accept the dogma. Like, what do I got to believe, you know, one God, whatever?

• 51:31Rich Roll?

  There's a buy-in.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, just I buy into the dogma. Now, depending on your denomination, you got to buy into enough ritual. You know, whatever your denomination is. And then you show up and you have community, and there's fellowship, and as long as you stay within, you know, those four cubits. But oftentimes, when you start asking questions that no one else is asking, and you're seeking deeper things, at some point, you got to either find a couple of people in that church or synagogue, let's say, or find another one. And Judaism is a religion more rooted in a common text and a common practice than a common theology. So you have, for example, Aristotelians like Maimonides, you have the Kabbalah, and it's all one religion.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  So what I say to people is, look, commit yourself to the text. Commit to yourself to some ritual life, because the ritual life has symbolic depth that reaches into the soul. Now find your particular path. Now find your teacher and your community. And that's what I recommend to anybody, is get a basic sense of, you know, is it Catholic? Is it Protestant? Is it Episcopalian? Like, what the deal is, what you're comfortable with? Now go find the place that's hospitable to you. Find the teacher and find your fellowship.

• 52:46Rich Roll?

  Right. I think a lot of people find their way into religious institutions out of, you know, some kind of family legacy or an attachment to, you know, the cultural bells and whistles that go along with it. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. But there's a very surface-level engagement with the actual teachings, and then an even broader gap between understanding those teachings and practicing them in your daily affairs.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and there are people who show up at my synagogue, and they say, "My rabbi told me to come to you. I told my rabbi my concerns." He says, "Well, you got to go to Finley." He says, "I don't do what he does." And by reputation, he does it well. And I, sometimes people come to me and they say, "But what about Maimonides? What about Maimonides?" I said, "Look, I'm not the guy." I mean, there's a rabbi down the street who's all over Maimonides and Aristotle. I'm just not that guy. Or, "Why don't you do more social justice work?" I said, "'Cause the other rabbi's doing social justice work." So, there is something of a free market. And I think people need to go to the place that fits their needs. So, I have this niche of spirituality, depth, mysticism on one side,

• 53:57Speaker 01

  the virtue, the Greek tradition on the other, the Stoic tradition. You know, just over my life, I've just mastered many different traditions. And people who like this mix, they come to me. If they don't like the mix, they go to somebody else. How does Stoicism play into your counseling? Uh, thank you. So, a very big part of my teaching has to do with resilience, or another way of saying, dealing with resistance. But when I studied the Stoics, I realized that actually is a product of something deeper. And the something deeper is realizing the logos. So, the logos is the most important idea of Stoicism, not resilience. So, the logos is there's a fundamental order

• 54:41Speaker 01

  to the universe, and therefore, there's a fundamental order to human consciousness, and therefore, to the moral life. And if you don't live according to the logos, that's when you suffer. So, Stoicism is, "I will live according to the logos, no matter what." That's what the resilience is. There's a proper way to order my life. And nothing's gonna throw me off how to order my life, 'cause I'm ordering my life according to the order of the universe. So, the idea of the logos clearly comes into Christianity, in the Gospel of John. But the idea of that there's a mind of God emanated into our realm, I mean, you have that in, I think, throughout Greek philosophy. You have it in Judaism, Christianity, Islam.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  So, all of them have idea of the logos. So, the most important thing for me in studying Stoicism was not the resilience, because that kinda came natural to me. You know, I mean, so many, there's so many Marine Corps legends. We hold the line. They will not get any further. All I'm gonna die trying. That's like, that was the mythos that I, into which I was inducted. But the idea that there's a rational ordering to the universe, and that if you don't align yourself with it, you'll suffer unnecessarily. That was something that I found really profound.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  That is interesting. I mean, I've, I've spent quite a bit of time with Ryan Holiday, and I've read all his books, and have read a fair amount of Stoicism. But I'm not super familiar with that idea of logos. And when you were talking about it, I was drawing a comparison between Stoicism as, as a philosophy, and how that differentiates from religion. But on some level, there's a buy-in with respect to the logos, right? In that you have to believe that there is an ordered universe, and that there are these natural laws that are at play that require adherence on your part.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Precisely.

• 56:33Rich Roll?

  Or suffering, right? So, on some level, there is a religious flair to that philosophical tradition.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yes, very well put. And that's why there are books on the Stoic element in rabbinic Judaism. Because rabbinic Judaism, for example, is many way propelled by the idea of a mitzvah, a commandment, whether you feel like it or not. So I'll give you an example. There are some Fridays when my wife and I are just exhausted from a tough week. But it's Friday. So we have to dress up. My wife picks flowers. We gotta set the table. We don't feel like it. But Shabbat is a mitzvah. So despite what we feel, we have to welcome the Sabbath bride into our home, which means we set the table, we put out the challah, the loaves, we set out the candles, my wife picks flowers from the garden, and we create a little Garden of Eden around our dining room table. And, you know, our daughters rule over it.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter what else is going on.

• 57:27Rich Roll?

  You gotta do the deal no matter what.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  You gotta do the deal, exactly. The mitzvah is more important than your feelings. So this idea, it doesn't matter what I feel. Now, look, we're not Orthodox. But the idea is, when Friday night comes, I don't have a choice. I will snap my feelings around my duty. So that idea, so, so, in the idea of mitzvah, a holy urging from God, to which in general, you can't say no, in general.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Is a very stoic idea. It's your duty, it has to be done.

• 58:01Rich Roll?

  But it's behavior based.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 58:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  And this is where the, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with the idea of the outside end. First you do your duty and then it sinks in.

• 58:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Cause then when you do sit at the table and you sing the songs and you smell the flowers and we look at each other and, you know, we light the candles. Whenever we light the candles, I think of the verse from Proverbs, "The light of God is the human soul." And I look at my wife and kids, whoever's at our table, and all of a sudden, man, I'm in. But you see, had I not just said, "It's a duty," that dragged me to the table and put the candles out, candles are lit, "Light of God is the human soul," consciousness changes.

• 58:38Rich Roll?

  You know what I call that?

• 58:39Speaker 01

  What's it?

• 58:40Rich Roll?

  Mood follows action.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Mood follows action, exactly.

• 58:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which is something I learned in early sobriety.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  There you go. So, so that's for me, stoic duty snaps you into the logos. And for, now, I'm not a orthodox stoic philosopher. So for me, part of the logos is love, justice, truth, and beauty. And beauty is a very big part of it. So, one thing that, you know, for example, in the Jewish observance of the Sabbath, a big part of it is beauty. It's an interesting thing. If you don't make your table beautiful, you haven't observed the Sabbath. So we have an obligation to create beauty.

• 59:17Rich Roll?

  I love that.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a duty because beauty is one of the garments of God. So how can you experience God if you don't cultivate beauty in your life? That's something I teach a lot, by the way. To that person who's a spiritual seeker, I said, "What's your connection with beauty?" They say, "What does that matter? I want truth." I say, "Beauty is a garment of God, just as much as love, justice, truth, and beauty." So you have to cultivate a connection with beauty. They say, "What do you recommend?" "Sergeant Pepper's."

• 59:46Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Start with what they're already.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Start with what they know, yeah.

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  Right. As imperfect beings, we are all as humans, a big part of this, and I know you've spoken about this, is the idea of essentially the daily inventory, right? Beginning your day with an objective assessment of how you lived your life in the prior 24. What does that look like in practice for you?

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  So in my practice, I actually call this the wisdom practice, which is I'm sitting typically on my mat outside in the morning. I go to my observer mind. I look down at my ego self and I just run through ego anger at others, anger at myself, resentment, despair, unresolved grief, envy, guilt, shame, just I run across the, you know, what I'll call the, the dirty dozen, you know, whatever they are. And when I discover one, it's as if it perks up. It says, yeah, I'm, I'm active today. So then I want to go in and

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  find out. So for example, this is something I teach. Anger almost always means a frustrated need, expectation, entitlement, or demand.

• 1:01:02Rich Roll?

  Right. The N E E D acronym.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  That's the N E E D acronym. Everybody who studies with me has to know this chapter and verse. Okay. So if I'm upset with somebody, it's not what they did. It's they disappointed my need. So I want to, I want to stop being mesmerized by their deeds and focus on my needs.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  All right. Now here's what happens. When you focus on your needs, your anger goes down 90% because you're not transfixed by somebody else's behavior. People say, well, what about what they did? I said, we'll get to them later.

• 1:01:35Rich Roll?

  But is this not all rooted, two things. First, is this not all rooted in, in expectations around outcomes?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:01:45Rich Roll?

  There's that. And do these, are, are not these, all of these emotions really all rooted in fear? Like fear is the antecedent emotion from which all of these other sort of-

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not convinced of that. Sometimes it's domination. And sometimes aggressive dominant people are not motivated by fear. They're just motivated by domination. And when they don't get their way-

• 1:02:05Rich Roll?

  But what is that, what does that urge towards domination come from? Does it, it's this idea that somebody else, if somebody else gets at, I can't, then-

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  You know, I think there's a, that in the so-called alpha being, they're not motivated by fear. They really ultimately want domination and extinguish anybody who stands in their way. It's a type of person. Now another person says, please stop. That's fear. The person says, how dare you disobey me? They're not motivated by fear. I think, I think, I think aggression and domination are pretty pure as emotions. I don't, I'm, I could be wrong here. But I don't think fear is an antecedent emotion. I think aggression and dominance over others is primary.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  I could be wrong, but you know, there are times, like, I say I find myself upset. You know, like, let's say I've asked my kids to do something, like, super clear, rational, and they just don't do it, and I feel angry. Like, I asked you to do something, clear, rational, you know, when, and they just decided not to. So I see the anger. There's no fear there. I just don't like being disobeyed, but I don't want to be an angry guy. Okay, so I have a neat expectation and tell them and demand that my child chose not to perform.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Now I have to look, and so my path is, was my need moral, rational, and useful? And when I go to moral, rational, and useful, from a rational perspective, that's part of the dance for parents and children, is children etching out independence by disobedience. It's not personal. It's part of healthy ego development of a child. So if I respond with anger, I'm stunting their growth. I'm not helping anybody. So I calm myself down. I say, "Okay, say, can I talk to you a minute?" "Sure." I said, "So I asked you to do this." "Yeah, Dad, I'm sorry. It's not about sorry now, because I have my coach hat and I have my authority hat." This is the coach hat. "I want you to look inside yourself, and I

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  want you to find the meaning of the disobedience." See, I found the meaning of my anger, but I'm gonna get rid of it, because what replaces the anger is my calling as a parent, which is to parent the soul of my child. So now I'm calm, and I say, "Okay, this is actually a soul moment." So my child says, "Okay, I'm sorry." I said, "Sorry is for next. Right now, I want you to ask why that was meaningful to you to disobey me." They say, "I don't know." I say, "I have time."

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  I'm just imagining how this would play out with my kids.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Try it.

• 1:04:47Rich Roll?

  Leave me alone.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  No, try it. I've been doing it ever since they were seven or eight years old and they do something. And you say, what happened in your inner life where that decision made sense? They say, I don't know. I said, I know you don't know. And that's what it means to be a child in this family. Because your answer is, let me think or I'll look it up. That's something you're all trained. You can say, let me think or I'll look it up. After you say, I don't know. I see you and.

• 1:05:19Rich Roll?

  I know that you, I know that you, you made this commitment with your kids that you were never going to be angry. Right. And you put something on one of their doors saying, this is like a dad angry free zone or something like that.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Rich Roll?

  Which I loved because it's really, you know, it's, it's, it's a challenge to the self, right? When you feel that impulse and it made me think about all of these buttons that we have installed that are the result of the experiences that we've had or the traumas that we've survived. Wherein when they get pushed, we, you know, logic goes out the window and we just impulsively react. And it's only in the aftermath that we can reassess or feel guilt or shame or try to repair whatever damage is done. But the trick is like, how do you uninstall those buttons or, you know, kind of untrigger them?

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, is the virtue practice, which is, I call it the four Cs. I start with, I will not anger under any circumstances, under any provocation.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Fine print, I will not criticize people. I will not complain to people about their behavior. I will not condemn other people. I will not engage in escalating conflict. Now, I fail, but if I fail to my standard, I don't have an excuse. I just failed.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Now, I set that every day. I mean, when I wake up, I will not anger and I will not be defensive. I will not criticize, complain, condemn, or engage in escalating conflict. Someone's upset with me, after a couple of tries, I'm not going to engage what I call the bad Jedi. Justifying, I have all these acronyms.

• 1:06:59Rich Roll?

  Bad Jedi, I've never heard that one.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the bad, I will not justify to an angry person after I try to explain my point of view. Because oftentimes angry-

• 1:07:07Rich Roll?

  I'm sorry, but-

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Never, oh my god, someone says that, I will sit on my goon squad, I will hunt them down. I say to people, if you're gonna study with me, you never say, "I'm sorry, but." An apology's an apology. And by the way, that's a big thing for some people, they've actually never heard the gold standard apology. Okay? So anyway, so, I will not justify, explain, defend, deny, try to give more information to a hostile person. So those are my, that's my virtue practice, under any conditions whatsoever. If I find myself upset, I say, "Okay, I've already committed, I'm not gonna do it." Now, my emotions are not obeying me. So what I call the wall of virtue, steps between my emotions and my speech and behavior.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  I call this the wall of virtue. So I set up a wall of virtue that says, "I can have anger. I can feel anger, I will not speak it, I will not act on it." Okay? So I say, it hits the wall of virtue, bounces back into what I call a wisdom mill. So I got all kinds of cool names for this stuff. Okay? So that's, but that, I set myself up, and I have people who I work with, whom I work, they tell me about all the escalation, and I say, "Okay, wall of virtue time." I do this, I have a Wednesday night wisdom class, and it just began last week, wall of virtue. For the regulars, it was a great review. For newcomers, it was the most stunning thing they had ever heard. That when you get up in the morning, you set up a wall of virtue, and there are no exceptions, and if you fail, you apologize.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  And that's, that's pretty stoic.

• 1:08:38Rich Roll?

  It's a power, yeah, it's a powerful practice. I found that- Meditation and mindfulness go a long way towards creating that buffer. So if you visualize it like you're inside of some kind of sphere as you navigate the world and like what's going to bounce off and what you're going to let in, how porous is that membrane? Mindfulness or a strict meditation practice just buys me that little moment of self-reflection before I act. And oftentimes, that's the difference between doing something you're going to regret or aligning your actions with your values.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that reflection practice is what I call my wisdom practice. But the wisdom practice taught me to do the virtue practice when I wake up. Because what people say is, "I know I shouldn't have done it. My emotions got the better of me." I say, "So your reflection creates a wall of virtue." And this is actually mind training the brain. Because what happens is there's a stimulus and a response. So I train people. "What was the stimulus?" "My child disobeyed me." Response: "Anger." I say, "Now, I want you to try this. My child angers me. Wall of virtue. Train." And this is like martial arts. You know, like the beginner in jiu-jitsu, if someone gets on top of you, what do you want?

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  You would push them off. What does that mean? Arm lock. The instinct to push somebody off of you is inviting an arm lock. So whatever you're going to do in jiu-jitsu, do not push someone on top of you because you're saying, "Please arm lock me." Well, what do I do instead? I say, "First, you're not going to do that, right? What do you do instead?" I say, "Okay, you hide your elbows and your hands and you move your hips." White belt the next week. I keep forgetting because you're a white belt.

• 1:10:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  So when you feel the instinct to push your arms up, instead you hide your hands and arms and turn on your hips. And it takes six months. So it's called an intervention. When I get the stimulus, okay, now I don't have somebody on top of me, right? I have, let's say, the disobedience of a child. I've trained myself that my response is gonna be "wall of virtue", which is like hiding my arms and turning on my hips.

• 1:10:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  It takes training. So how do you train? I say, "You wake up in the morning and you train."

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  And do the thing.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  You train to say, "Wall of virtue, no anger, no force, no bad Jedi, train, train, train", and one day your kid's gonna say something, you're gonna go, "Wall of virtue."

• 1:11:15Rich Roll?

  Hmm, but good Jedi training is the path, right? I often think, "What would a Jedi do in this situation?" Jedi never reacts, never loses their shit.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Jedi's gonna have fun. They can joke and they're spontaneous, but the minute things go wrong, the Jedi says, "Oh, oh, we're in that space now. Okay, there's an adult in the room. Okay, I'm gonna hold down the moral center." So the kid does something, they say, "Oh, so you've changed the game. You're doing the disobedience game? Okay, I have a response to that.

• 1:11:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  But I'm not going to give myself a moral arm lock."

• 1:11:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Because pushing is like, "Arm lock me." That's a white belt thing.

• 1:11:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  So you wanna go up in the belts? When someone does something to anger you, wall of virtue kicks in.

• 1:12:02Rich Roll?

  Well, what you resist persists, right? In that way, because if you're in that context, you're allowing your child to do what they're doing, you're not pushing your arm out, to use the jujitsu analogy. You're kind of, you know, adjusting in a counterintuitive way. But the pushing back is what then amplifies.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Exactly, so ideally, if my child does something...

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Look, my kids are, my youngest is now 24, but still, it can happen. And typically, if she does, and she'll probably listen to this, if she does something that I don't like, I'll probably say, "Yes, that's not working for me right now, so I'll talk to you later."

• 1:12:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  And she'll say the same thing with me. She'll say, "Dad, it's not working for me." And we disengage.

• 1:12:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  And then we'll talk about it later.

• 1:12:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  So the thing is, you train yourself. When I feel anger, I go to the wall of virtue, and then I have a script waiting for me, which is, "It's not working for me right now. Can we talk later?" Now, that's training. That's what a good blue belt can do.

• 1:13:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  You don't do what you feel like doing. You've learned a next behavior. And a purple belt, it's become their habit. They don't even have the instinct to make a wrong move, because they've ingested the game.

• 1:13:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the training has been ingrained.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know this.

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  How often does jujitsu find its way into your rabbinical sermon? Like, I would imagine this is a constant...

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Within minutes. It's a game with my congregation. They have like a betting pool. When's the rabbi gonna mention jujitsu?

• 1:13:41Rich Roll?

  Thirty seconds until he drops the...

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. They don't really have a betting pool, but it's almost that. Okay, Rabbi, we're just waiting till you mention jujitsu.

• 1:13:56Rich Roll?

  One of the amazing things about you is that you not only got into jujitsu and became a black belt, you didn't start jujitsu until you were like 45, is that correct?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was one of those karate guys, and then I saw the Gracies at the UFC. And I said, "Okay, I'm doing the wrong martial art."

• 1:14:12Rich Roll?

  Wow. And that brought you into it? And you committed. I mean, how long did it take you to get a black belt?

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Fifteen years. Listen, I went through a heart attack and a herniated disc. And I was the longest blue belt ever.

• 1:14:25Rich Roll?

  I think you, three years to get a blue belt?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  I got my blue belt in three years, 2000, 2003. Then a heart attack in '06, which really set me back. And a herniated disc in '08. And so when you have a herniated disc, you have to learn everything again, because your back...

• 1:14:41Rich Roll?

  Did you have surgery, or how did you rectify that?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  But I stayed in.

• 1:14:48Rich Roll?

  And you're still at it?

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Still at it.

• 1:14:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, how often do you train?

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Four times a week.

• 1:14:54Rich Roll?

  Wow, wow.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57Rich Roll?

  And so what are some of the other lessons that you've learned through martial arts that find their way into timeless wisdom?

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Jiu-jitsu in particular is, the way out is not where the pressure is.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  So for example, if someone has mounted me, you know, straddled me, and they're pressing down on my neck, their hips are light. By definition, they can't be equally heavy on their hips and their chest.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  So if I feel chest pressure, I know their hips are light.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Okay, if their hips are heavy, I got space on my chest. Okay, and so what you learn to do is you kind of feel where the other person is. Don't get flustered, the big thing is, the higher the belt, the more calm you stay. Doesn't matter what their pressure is. And you start to detect where the way out is, but you don't respond to pressure.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  When there's pressure, you figure out where the escape is. So that's one of the main things, is stay calm under pressure. And slow them down, you know, hooks and angles, just gotta slow their progress down. And then from training, you know where the escape is gonna be. So if somebody has a mean to choke, right?

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Somebody has a mean to choke. I can tell by their choke what my escape's gonna be. So I don't, first of all, I don't get flustered. I just know that if you're, someone's choking you, they're both, they're both putting a move on and they're also giving something up. By definition.

• 1:16:21Rich Roll?

  And extrapolating on that, where's the wisdom that's applicable in other areas of life?

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  For example, the spouse is pressing on you. So I get this, where the spouse is angry and pressing on you. They wanna throw their arms out. Stop, stop. And so the idea is distract. Say, "Could you repeat that?"

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  What? No, that what you just said, that was really important. I don't know what I just said. Well, try to remember, honey. And all of a sudden, their ego self is just spinning because someone just said, can you repeat it? So when you ask someone to repeat something, their eyes go up into the archive and their anger plummets 90%. It's a move. So there are many scripts for de-escalation. So fear does not help. So I say to people, are they gonna hit you? No. If they're gonna hit you, we're having a different conversation. Right? Okay, so your body's gone into fear because of their aggression, yes. And you know you're not gonna hit, right? Yes. Okay, I'm gonna teach you some scripts that are similar to jujitsu moves.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  And so there are scripts you can use with a brain of an angry person that are almost infallible.

• 1:17:30Rich Roll?

  That lead to de-escalation through distraction.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by we call it deflection. Like, I don't wanna hit somebody, but I know how to bob and weave and deflect. So when people say, well, they said this, and so I said this, I said, you hit them back. I said, don't do that. Just deflect. Bob, weave, through de-escalation techniques. So sometimes I actually train a person in five de-escalation techniques. So the thing is, I'm being threatened, I have to be defensive, I get scared. All right, first thing is jujitsu, calm down. Just calm down.

• 1:18:03Rich Roll?

  Well, you gotta go back to the wall of virtue.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:18:05Rich Roll?

  If you don't have that, then you're just gonna, you know, succumb to your basics.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. So one wall of virtue is for the angry person, and the other one is for the defensive person is, you feel fear, go to your wall of virtue. I'm physically safe. Don't let this thing escalate. Therefore, if a person, if you feel fear from a person who's not gonna hurt you, your job is to de-escalate, not to defend yourself. They're two different things. So the white belt wants to defend, the higher belt wants to de-escalate. And it's a learnable skill. So there's an example where what your white belt self wants to do is not what the higher belt self knows is the right thing to do. And how do you do it? Train, train, train, train.

• 1:18:47Rich Roll?

  Are you the only rabbi that has a black belt in jujitsu?

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  So far.

• 1:18:54Rich Roll?

  No one else has come forth yet.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  And, and once they get it, they're coming for me. I know that right now.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  The challenge has been placed.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  You know, when I got my black belt, man, I was, I was a hunted person.

• 1:19:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Just the nature of the game. Everybody wants to snag their first black belt.

• 1:19:08Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a cool, it's, it's a really cool thing.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it, man. I really, you know, I go in there and, look, guys, you guys are very respectful. Look, they know I'm 66 and, and, you know, I have bad shoulders and a bad back and...

• 1:19:20Rich Roll?

  But you're grappling with younger dudes, I would imagine.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Big, young guys and they're respectful, but they're there to train. So I can't say, hey, be nice to the old guy. I just say, just be careful with the old guy.

• 1:19:30Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  But they're there to train. I gotta respect that. So I need to be a good training partner. I need to, you know, we're sparring.

• 1:19:37Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. For people that come in for your counseling, I would imagine a lot of couples or people that are divorced or on the precipice of getting divorced, what are the kind of things that you're commonly seeing?

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Escalating arguments, sometimes taught in therapy to talk about their feelings, which is one of the worst things you can do when you're, when things are, when, you know, things are rocky. So they say, well, I told my spouse how I felt. I said, don't do that. In the beginning, don't talk about your feelings. So what do I talk about? I say, what exactly do you want them to do or not do in one sentence with a clean motivation and a clear goal? Well, I don't want them to get so, I said, what exactly do you want them to do now with a clean motivation and a clear goal that is observable?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  And people are just so perplexed, the idea of, it's not about my feelings, we'd like them to do. So one person says, well, I would like my husband to apologize. I said, ask him. Say, honey, I'd like to apologize for what you said. I look at him, he said, "I don't have to apologize." Just say, "No."

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Say, "No, you don't have to go into a big story." Just say, "I choose to not apologize." I look at, let's say, the woman in this case of this couple. I'll say, "Now, you'll have to learn to take 'no' for an answer." It's a skill. Take 'no' for an answer. "I'd like you to apologize." "I choose not to." "Okay." "But how can I take 'no' for an answer?" Because anything you say next will escalate and you'll be back where you started.

• 1:21:20Rich Roll?

  But is there not room for acknowledging the feelings in the context of making that ask?

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  After about a month.

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  Because if you're to say, "Listen, the reason I'm asking for this apology is because when you did this, it made me feel unseen." Or like if you could get past the reactionary response in the moment to what's behind it, like, "I feel unappreciated," or whatever the case may be.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  After about a month. Because what will happen if you say, "I feel unseen." "I feel unseen."

• 1:21:49Rich Roll?

  Oh, right.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  "I'm not appreciated." "You're not appreciated." "I'm not appreciated." So what you start with is minimal. "I'd like you to apologize." "I choose not to." "I can take 'no' for an answer." Wow, no one got their eyebrows singed. And it's incremental, like jujitsu. White belt, white belt, white belt. Put a stripe on your white belt. More moves, more moves, more. Put another stripe. And eventually, when you're blue belt, you can talk about your feelings. So what I've discovered is many people think they have higher belt skills, but the minute they try to use those, "Here's how I feel." "I don't feel seen, I'm unappreciated." Things escalate.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  So my job is de-escalation. I say, "You will talk about your feelings when you both know how to talk about your feelings and you both know how to listen to the feelings of another person without getting defensive and then wanting to pile on, which is very typical." So you've intuited something correct. Many people don't like this. They say, "I have to talk about my feelings." I say, "Can you wait a month?" They say, "No, I can't wait a month." I said, "Okay, so I'm not the guy."

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Because this is Stoicism. Right? What's the natural order of things? When things are spiraling apart, you don't get to say whatever you want. You gotta be careful until you build up trust, you build up a good rhythm for good communication, and then learn how to introduce those things slowly. So I'm a big believer in when things are careening out of control, everybody talk minimum.

• 1:23:21Rich Roll?

  So what do you say to the person who comes to you and says, "You wouldn't believe what my ex-husband, ex-wife did. They're doing this, they're doing that, and it's terrible, and I don't get to see my kids, and, you know, they're telling all these other people, all these li— there's a whole story, right? And there's an attachment to that story, and there's a perverted kind of, what's the word I'm looking for?

• 1:23:55Rich Roll?

  Kind of attachment to how that story is received when told to friends, right? There's an out—you get affirmed, like, "Oh, it's so bad, and you're right, and that person's wrong." Like, teasing that apart and trying to get to an objective truth with that person.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Sure. So first thing I say, "Well, how's that going for you?"

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Meaning, having the story in your head and acting on it, is it producing what you want?

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Typically not. That story, those thoughts, is part of your, an ego self of blame. It's called the blame disruption. I'm gonna tell a story, and there's a hero, and there's a nemesis. I'm the hero, they're the nemesis. I'm good, they're evil. Now let me tell you my story.

• 1:24:37Rich Roll?

  We're all typically the hero in our own version of events.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. We have to bust that up. How do you bust it up? I call it the police report. I say, "You were fighting on the front lawn. The cops arrive. So you stand there, you stand there. They take out their little notebook. They can't put more than on one little page than what's what happened." "Well, when I was coming home from work—" No, "What happened?" "Well, when I was a child—" No, "What happened?"

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  So you get what happened. So what I do for a person, I say, "What happened?" For a newcomer, it takes them more than half an hour to tell me what happened.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Because their brains are in the accusatory narrative part of the brain, as opposed to the objective brain. So notice, ego self, accusatory narrative. Observer mind, shhhhh.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Objective mind, what exactly happened? Now, when a person can tell me in a lean way what exactly happened, half the job is done. Because they've accessed a part of their brain that is not the emotional accusatory brain, which is the reporting brain. So I say, "Can you just give me like five sentences of what exactly happened?" And they say, "Okay, so I did this." And I say, "Okay, got it." So what would you prefer that they do instead of that? "Well, I don't think they can." I said, "That's okay." So now we're out of accusation to an ask. Different part of the brain. Different kind of virtue.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  I say, "Now, what I'd like you is ask them." And they're gonna say no. I said, "That's okay, they can say no." But instead of arguing, accusing, defaming, just ask them for what you'd like them to do and tell them you can take no for an answer. And they're gonna say, "No." And you say, "Thank you for answering my question." Now, their ego self just learned something. It's not a fight. It's just an ask. And they can take no for an answer. That's why they keep saying no. I said, "It's incremental." Start by, your communications are low level. Simple ask, simple answer, take no today.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  You do this, we'll get to more complex conversations. And they say, "Well, I don't believe it'll work." I said, "Give it a month." What you're doing so far hasn't produced any good.

• 1:26:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but Rabbi Finley, you don't understand the reason why that makes me so upset when that person does that. You can't appreciate until I relate to you the entire history behind it.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  I say, "Go ahead."

• 1:27:10Rich Roll?

  So I can give you the police report, but it's meaningless because you don't understand the context.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  So I say, "Everybody gets their statutory 10 minutes to vent." So people vent. Thing is, I've heard it all before. So I'll say, so may I share with you now, everything that each of you now said from this point on, because I know the whole conversation, because everybody's the same. They have the exact same conversations. I've never, once they get into this mode, I know everything they're going to say. I know it sounds maybe a bit dismissive, it's just true. You know, defensive people and accusatory people have the exact same conversations. So they say, "Oh, you need more background." I say, "I actually don't, but if you need to give me more background, I'm happy to do it, but I'd love to get to work."

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Our situation is unique. I know you think you've heard it all before, but you don't really understand.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I say, "Okay, try me out." And they tell me, and I go, "It's a little bit unique, but not unique enough that I'm going to change what I'm going to tell you, which is no anger, no foresees, police report, ask, answered, get everything down to minimum to learn how to process." I said, "You tell me where this does not fit you guys." Because this is approach of virtue, calm down the ego self, higher self-regulating ego self, what exactly do you want, ask for, take no for an answer, and move forward. So I have found that when, you know, people are very attached to, "This is unique, I'm so angry," I say, "It won't get better if you stay angry or defensive, it's just not

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  going to get better." It's as if one day they go, "Oh, what you're saying is anger defensiveness won't help solve the problem." Bingo. "But what they're saying makes me angry." I said, "No, they're triggering the anger in you. That's your trigger. You disassemble your trigger, they cannot make you angry."

• 1:29:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have control over that anger response.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  They don't feel they do, because they feel, "Someone made me angry." So for a person to realize, they triggered your anger, but the trigger assembly is in you.

• 1:29:16Rich Roll?

  Sure, and why are you giving that person that much power?

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  Precisely, yeah. So when you get to that conversation, now we can get some work done.

• 1:29:24Rich Roll?

  How long, with willing pupils, how long does that typically take?

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  With willing people who are not, um, I'm gonna say in the first session, if they'll let me be in charge.

• 1:29:37Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  If they'll let me be in charge, I give them, everybody, their 10 minutes of

• 1:29:41Rich Roll?

  How many people let you be in charge?

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  More, I'd say, you know, 60%, because I say, look, you came to me. So, I'm gonna fix this for you, but you have to let me.

• 1:29:50Rich Roll?

  And how is what you do different than what a traditional therapist would do? Because it's not therapy.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  It's not therapy. It's wisdom coaching. A typical therapist would ask, "How do you feel?" And what feeling from the, what event in the past is being activated by this current situation? I'm not saying they're wrong. Many people are traumatized and they're driven by ghosts and demons. Everybody has them. This is not my specialty. Now, I may refer a person to a therapist and say, "You need to, someone, to excavate the ghosts, you know, the demons in you." But interpersonally, talking about your feelings to another person usually escalates. Because when you say, "You make me feel unseen," that is a kind of a criticism and complaint, whether you know it or not.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  So, talk about that with your therapist, because you may have to really do some excavating of demons. What I'm gonna teach you is how to make this thing better, if you will let me. And so, people say, "Yeah, I actually heard that no one can make you mad only." I said, "Yeah, it's actually true." So, because everything I have, they've already heard somewhere, right? These are people who read.

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  So, I say, "Well, what are you doing different?" I said, "I train you. I'm gonna give you things you have to do every day, and if you don't do them every day, it's not gonna make any difference." So, the next thing I ask you is, "Will you give me 10 minutes a day to train at home?" Because my method does not work without training. If you're not gonna train, I'm not the guy.

• 1:31:16Rich Roll?

  They can come to your Jewish dojo.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:31:19Rich Roll?

  And put them through the paces.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, yeah, so I give people exercises.

• 1:31:22Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh. You should give out belts.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:31:25Rich Roll?

  You do?

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  I mean, not real ones.

• 1:31:27Rich Roll?

  Like, you should, no, I mean, like, have real ones.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  You know, I sometimes say to somebody, "Put a stripe on your belt." That was incredible. Like, my spouse did this, this, and this, but, you know, I remembered, Rabbi, some people have bad days and don't take them so seriously and kind of let them get it out and say, "I'll talk to you later." I said, "Put a stripe on your belt." And one day, I said to a person... You got a blue belt today. They go, "It's like a blue belt in the studio." "No, I don't deserve a blue belt." "No, no." I said, "No, you keep this up. You're an honest, wisdom, virtue, blue belt."

• 1:31:56Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Right. Because it's skills. I can see it. It's like at the rehab center. At the rehab center, sobriety is not about days. It's about processing. So when I, you know, when there's a newbie in the room, you can tell by the way they process that they're not using, but they're not sober in the aspirational sense. And then they're there for a while, and suddenly I watch them process differently. You know, and then you start to see like a human being has come, and the light is in their eyes, and they show some wisdom. I go, "Wow, they're a blue belt. Wow. Whoa, that's a purple belt. That's like, that's not too often."

• 1:32:39Rich Roll?

  Talk to me a little bit more about working with addicts and alcoholics. Like, what does that look like? And how does that mesh with 12-step?

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Well, I work at a fantastic place. The founders are, he's actually my rabbinical assistant, a guy named Yeshaya Blakeney, and his parents and others. They have doctorates in moral psychology. He grew up in the 12-step world and has a counseling degree from Antioch, if I'm not mistaken. So they created a place that's based on teaching people how to process well in addition to 12 steps. So they brought me in to do this piece that I'm sharing with you. And they said, I said, "Look, I'm not a company man on 12-step. I studied it, I know it, but I really do my thing." They said, "That's why, that's why you're on the faculty." So I have a group every Friday morning,

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  and I teach these things. I teach Wall of Virtue, Four Seas, Bad Jedi, Higher Self, Ego Self. I mean, every day I come in with a skill. And I say, can you recreate something that happened with a parent, a spouse, a child, that made you want to relapse? And can we process it through wisdom? And so that's a typical session, is I'll present an idea and someone says, "Yeah, I want to process this." And, you know, "This made me so angry and this made me depressed." I say, "Okay, so let's process it with higher self-observing ego self and doing an intervention, coming out with something wise."

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that's a bare-bones sketch of what I do.

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  What actually comes out in the room is sometimes quite...

• 1:34:22Rich Roll?

  But I would suspect there's a great receptivity, though, because anybody who's worked the steps, specifically the fourth step, knows how to perform an inventory and has engaged that muscle of trying to parse, you know, what's my part in every situation that occurs? Where can I find, you know, how I contributed to this, you know, terrible outcome? Where am I displaying fear, anger, resentment? Like, all of these sorts of things.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so 12 steps really helps them in that. So they're, in many ways, they're already being propelled. But I'll give you an example. So, a guy borrowed the parent's car and it ran out of gas. And so, of course, the parents, "You're irresponsible," all these insults. And he flipped out. I said, "Okay, let's just go deep inside. What did you want your parents to do or not do?" I didn't want them to criticize me. I was in enough trouble already with a car out of gas. I said, "Got it." "What's the likelihood that they, at this point in their lives, they would know how not to blame and accuse you when you did something they didn't like? Where are they at in their moral development?"

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  He said, "It would be impossible for them." "So your need, expectation, entitlement was not connected to reality." "Okay?" He says, "What do I do?" I say, "You feel incredibly sad." "Well, what do I say?" Say, "Yeah, you're right, I should have been more thoughtful." "Well, you're not responsible." "I know I'm not responsible." "Well, what are you doing about it?" "I'm in recovery program." "Well, don't you think you should be responsible by now?" "Yeah, I should be, but I'm working on it." Just deflect, deflect, deflect, deflect, deflect. They're gonna calm down.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  And then afterwards, you can say, "Hey, Mom, Dad, can I have a minute of your time?" "Sure." "I want you to know, I really felt horrible when I ran out of gas. I know it's my old self that doesn't plan ahead. But I want you to tell me that when you guys piled on on me, it didn't feel good. And it didn't make it better for me." "Well, what do you expect us to do?"

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  "That's all I needed to say." And then they come down to the center, and we say, "Don't do that anymore. When your kid gets in trouble, you got a kid in trouble. This is not the day that the parents pile on. It's the day where the parents say, 'Well, you probably feel bad enough already. What can we do?'" So this is a whole retraining of the parent brain.

• 1:36:36Rich Roll?

  Sure. But the Jedi, from the perspective of the kid in recovery, the Jedi move is to not be ruffled by whatever the parents say. And I think there's value in mining that need even deeper. It's not just, "Hey, I don't want my parents to get mad at me." Like, there's a deeper need, which is, likely, "I've been a fuck-up for a long time, and I screwed up a lot of stuff, and now I'm sober, and I want to be perceived as such, and I can't get a break." Like, no matter what I do, it's never gonna be good enough, or they're never gonna see me.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're 100% right on. 100% right on. And that's where the conversation goes. "When are they gonna give me a break?" And I say, "We're gonna have to work with you and your Jedi skill, and then we're gonna work with the parents, and you're gonna be able to just sometimes say your little truth to the parents and say, 'I really am in a program, and I'm really working it.'" And I would love it if you guys would give me a good word, be a little bit patient with me, because what you want out of me is what I want out of me. And sometimes the parent says, "Wow, you're right. You are doing what we want you to do, and we're not making it easy on you." And these are moments that are almost miraculous, when the kid comes back to me and says, "You

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  would not believe the conversation I had with my father."

• 1:37:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  "I was able to stay calm and say, 'Hey, Dad, you're 100% right.'" But I'm working the program. And for the dad to say, "I really apologize, it wasn't helpful, was it?"

• 1:38:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  And the kid says, "Wow, it's just like a new dawn."

• 1:38:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it seems like such a small thing, but that's a really big deal.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so managing that moment of anger and defensiveness, centering yourself, de-escalating, "You're right, Dad. You're right, Mom. That was irresponsible of me." "You're right." "Well, what are you doing about it?" "I'm in recovery." "Well, when are you gonna stop doing this?" "I hope soon." "Well, why aren't you doing it now?" "Because I'm not there yet." It's like, they go, "Okay, alright."

• 1:38:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  So you understand that when they, it's all guys. When they learn this stuff, it's like, "Wow, I can just be calm, Jedi, deflect, deflect, de-escalate." And you come out of it.

• 1:38:52Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  And then you start to go in with wisdom. So it's really, I mean, the guys for whom this works, they are so grateful and transformed by the things that you and I are talking about here today.

• 1:39:06Rich Roll?

  It's hard, though.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  It's hard, man.

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  It takes a lot of work. I mean, especially when you're newly sober and you don't, you no longer can hide with your best friend and you don't have that coping mechanism. You're just this live wire, ready to pounce at anything.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Yes, and that's where-

• 1:39:21Rich Roll?

  Everything's on the surface.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  And that's where, the place where I teach, Recover Integrity, it's a warm community of people who can be vulnerable with each other. They've learned how to talk and trust. It's an excellent faculty. So this is where the friend they would talk to, they're all working the program.

• 1:39:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  And the faculty were all of one mind. I mean, we have all different approaches. But, I mean, I really believe in this. You know, when I look at the transformation that I have seen, I'm one part of the thing. I think I'm an important part. But people get better. And it's an

• 1:40:05Rich Roll?

  It's beautiful to witness that.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Beautiful to witness it.

• 1:40:07Rich Roll?

  And over many years, I've seen that unfold in lots of different people. And it just, there's nothing more encouraging or heartwarming than seeing that light go on in somebody else. And then, over time, watching their life not just change, but flourish. It's truly miraculous.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  It really is. And so, this is a quasi-religion, which means you have a community, you have a text, you have rituals, you have a teaching, you have novices moving up through the program.

• 1:40:36Rich Roll?

  You got a book, too.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  You got a book?

• 1:40:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  You got a Bible? Yeah, so I get it. I get it. I admire it greatly. And all I can, what I add to it is, the outsider, you know, virtue, rationality, wisdom depth.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  So I have my own take on each of the 12 steps. So I said, "We're gonna talk about this step today, but I want to give you my take on it." So it's a

• 1:41:04Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I learned a lot. I wouldn't be doing this if every time I taught, some part of my soul wasn't opened up.

• 1:41:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  I mean, it's transformative, working with people who are doing the work.

• 1:41:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Beautiful.

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:19Rich Roll?

  I want to shift gears a little bit here. I want to spend a few minutes talking about Kabbalah.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:23Rich Roll?

  Could we do that?

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:41:25Rich Roll?

  I'm fascinated by this, probably in large part because I know very little about it, other than that, at some point, there was a cultural inflection point that involved Madonna and a lot of people wearing red strings on their wrists.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:39Rich Roll?

  And I know it's, you know, it's a journey into mysticism on some level, and also, you know, steeped in Jewish tradition. But help me understand this by unpacking it a little bit.

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  So I want to share with you a quip that a friend of mine said, and I borrowed. He taught a course called "Kabbalah, No Red Strings Attached." So that's my approach.

• 1:42:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Kabbalah, no red strings attached.

• 1:42:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:08Rich Roll?

  You're not allowed to walk around in the world and advertise that you're

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  And they have no efficacy. If you're into the

• 1:42:15Rich Roll?

  What is that about?

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  It's an amulet. So I'm not in the amulet Kabbalah. There is a big part of Kabbalah, which is amulets. It's a very big thing in the Middle East. I'm not into amulets. You know, little Hamza signs and, you know, things you put on your bed, around your neck, around your... I just, I'm not in that world. So, I'm more in the, um, the hard work Kabbalah. Like, it's a way to do the work, not the magical Kabbalah, which is put a red string to protect yourself. So, I say, "Okay, fine, if it works." I don't know if it works, but if it works, great. But that's not what I do. So, let me try to give you the, a basic, um, understanding. For anybody who wants to understand Kabbalah, they have to understand Plato and Platonism.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  With the idea that there are these ideal forms, let's take the example of justice. And let's say there's something called "justice in the mind of the infinite", and it percolates down through lenses. And then it gets to a human being. And for them, justice is, uh, whatever I want. Like a little kid saying, "That's not fair", meaning I didn't get what I wanted. That's a pretty low level. And then justice is whatever the law says. Or justice is whatever benefits my group. And so, there's, you might, higher and higher ideation of what justice and fairness is. You ask your average person, they actually can't go very, very high up the ladder of ideation because they're just not trained. But try to imagine that a...

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  I have a doctorate in social ethics, so I'm, I'm steeped in moral philosophy. So, I know how to climb that ladder. And people find it exhilarating. So, try to imagine there's a mind of the infinite that emanates a metaphysical concept down the ladder, through the prisms, through the lenses, until it gets to human consciousness. Most people start out at a very low level of consciousness, and, but they can climb up. It's called the, the chain of being. The Kabbalah is rooted in a similar idea called the emanations. So, if you, if you type in your browser, "The emanations of the Kabbalah", they're called the Sefirot, S-E-F-I-R-O-T. Type that in, you're gonna see these 10 emanations. That is the Kabbalah.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  If you have those 10 emanations, it's Kabbalah. If you don't have it, it's not Kabbalah. So, the first thing about Kabbalah, it's an emanatory system from the infinite mind of God that emanates these, these, these powers, these values, as it were, into the consciousness of the human being. Okay, that's the first step. So the next step should be pretty obvious is just if we are created in God's image, then just as this happens in the divine is happening in us. So everybody has their own copy of the 10 emanations. And so my job is to work my 10 emanations.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  I'll just add one more step. There's a Kabbalistic teaching that as some of these emanations are cracked, broken, and flawed as they get into the human being. So what is my life's work? To repair my emanations. It's a way of ordering the inner life. Now, I'm talking about the spiritual psychology of the Kabbalah, not the... Not the 100 hours of teaching I could give if I were teaching it more academically, but I think you're asking with the practical usage. It's a way to understand the mind of God and human consciousness in these 10 emanatory systems.

• 1:45:47Rich Roll?

  In other words, finding a way to tether the flawed human consciousness and relate it in some way to the infinite?

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  Yes. Very well put. From a spiritual-psychological perspective, for example, one of the emanations is called Chesed, which means love, beneficence, loving kindness. So let's say I have an emanation in me that is love mind. But then I look and I realize some of my acts of love are actually after reciprocity. Sometimes I'm trying to be super accommodating. Sometime I'm trying to manipulate somebody by being a nice guy. That's lower level stuff. So that's cracked. Another one is called Gavura, which has to do with judgment and rationality. Lowest level is prejudgment or prejudice.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a judgment, but it's all messed up. Produces hatred. So notice in each one of these emanations, for example, love on one side, judgment on the other, this is Finley's teaching, they have higher and lower manifestations.

• 1:46:53Rich Roll?

  Right, I got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  So each one of these, now this is my adaptation.

• 1:46:57Rich Roll?

  There's an ideal, and then there's the human manifestation of that at various levels.

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  Correct. So I have to have a theory of what is the ideal idea of love? So if people ask me, I say, well, it has to do with service.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  Truly benefiting another person, which is not what I think they want. And maybe even not what they think they want. It's complex, and that's another part of my spiritual psychology is the willingness to think complexly, because most people want to simplify. I say as simple as possible, but don't avoid complexity. So, thinking about love, thinking about rationality, about justice, so these are two. They merge into one called truth and beauty. So, deep meditation on truth. What do we mean by truth? What does it mean to be a true human being? What does it mean to know the truth? What is beauty? These are deep conversations. So, try to imagine, I'm talking about the lower seven now. These are the non-mystical ones. Studying the lower seven

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  is exhilarating. It's a curriculum to think about the deepest things of human consciousness in orderly way with other people who know the terms. So, for me, the Kabbalah is a way to study human consciousness in a relatively contained system with other people who know the jargon. So, it's exhilarating. It's also transformational, meaning as I study them, it's ways of self-understanding and a standard for growth. So, emanatory system that has a spiritual-psychological dimension that in some way sets out a curriculum for lifetime inner work.

• 1:48:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. So, in the context of love, for example, there's divine love. The sun doesn't choose upon which it's going to shine on. It shines, you know, equanimously on everything versus transactional love or a relationship that's really a social contract and all the various permutations in between on this escalating scale towards a more divine expression.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, or agape, love your neighbor as yourself. Yeah, so the more you know about the word in as many languages as you know. And then including philosophy, psychology, different kinds of psychology. So whenever I say I'm gonna study that Sfira, Chesed, I invite people, bring in everything you know, and let's create a theory that that seems about right, and then assess ourselves. So if I say, "I love my wife, I love my children," does that mean, for many people, "Now that I love you, here's what you must do."

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:49:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Conditional love, which most relationships on some level are a function of.

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but even worse-

• 1:49:47Rich Roll?

  We say we love, you know, so-and-so, no matter what, but they go off and they murder somebody, or you know, like, you're out.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a metaphor, that's not real. But I'm even speaking with a person that says, "Now that I love somebody, here are their duties."

• 1:50:02Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  That actually happens. So I say, "No, how about if, now that I love somebody, here are my duties." Well, what about what they have to do? I said, "We'll get there."

• 1:50:11Rich Roll?

  But that even gets more complicated, because service is self-serving in many ways. Like, I feel better when I'm in service, so how much of my pull to service is motivated by my personal or selfish desire to feel better versus being completely altruistic?

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but a consequence is not a motivation. So if you know that when you serve somebody, you know the consequences will be inner well-being, that's not your motivation.

• 1:50:34Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  You have to distinguish between motivations and outcomes. So the outcome of service is well-being, but that's not my motivation. My motivation is to serve other people.

• 1:50:43Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna question that. So a person says, "Well, what if I'm really only doing it for the good feeling afterwards?" I said, "Well, are you?"

• 1:50:50Rich Roll?

  Sometimes.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Sometimes, okay, so that's pretty good, sometimes?

• 1:50:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  That's like a C?

• 1:50:56Rich Roll?

  But I think being honest about that is important, and that's, you know, in part, based upon the way you just described it, it feels like Kabbalah, in certain respects, is a path towards disabusing humans of the delusions that we commonly harbor about our actions and why we behave the way that we do.

• 1:51:18Speaker 01

  It can be, I mean, in the way that I teach it. So if we're gonna talk about love and service, and a person says, "But I don't know if my motivations are clean," I said, "That's a great conversation to have." And if that's the conversation you need to have, let's have it. How do you understand the depth of your own motivation? If that's what's haunting you, let's have that conversation. So are you the type that believes that all motivations are narcissistic? They go, "Yeah, aren't they?" I say, "No, they're not." You asking me? No, some motivations are pure. Sometimes we truly want to help other people. And if you're asking me, as the Rabbi, don't doubt that, because it's true. Sometimes we are motivated to serve others. Now, if you say, "Well, I don't know when," I say, "Great, then that is what we're gonna do with Chassid."

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  So notice, sometimes when I teach Chassid, the person will reveal to me very quickly, "Here's what I need to study." Yeah. Same thing with Gavurah, boundary setting. "But Rabbi Finley, when I draw a boundary, it makes other people feel bad." "Is it a righteous boundary?" "Yes," I said, "so what do you feel bad have to do with it?" "I don't know, I just don't like to disappoint people." I say, "Great, so now we know what to talk about." So because I've been studying this forever, by the way, not that I can live up to- But there's a narcissism in that. You harbor the power to make somebody else feel poorly. There you go. So you see, you're right on it. See, if I were to study this with you, you would bring a set of questions to every single one of them that need to be addressed. But these ten emanations give us the curriculum of which questions.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  So if we're studying love, we'll have one set of questions. If we're studying justice and rationality and judgment, we'll have a different set of questions. So this is the beautiful thing about it, is when we're studying the spiritual psychology of the Kabbalah, we're studying this one today. Now, they all interconnect, obviously. But you see, the two things you just brought up, they're fabulous questions. But why would we have them? Because I'm doing the spiritual psychology of the Kabbalah. So sometimes when I study with a person, they go, "Oh, my God, this is like what you do?" I say, "Yeah, that's what I do." But I want to wear the red bracelet, so that everybody knows what I'm up to. Okay. Right. You know, people gotta do what they gotta do, right? I'm not judgmental about that stuff. Your strain of this is called Lurionic, right? So explain that a little bit.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  Okay, so Isaac Luria, so the Kabbalah develops in the late 1100s, 1200s. And Isaac Luria added a dimension that these emanations that we're talking about cracked and broke. So he added the idea of the breaking of the vessels. Okay? So it's, as it were, "The mind of God that we can apprehend shattered."

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  So we therefore are each articulations of the shattered mind of God. I know it's a strange theology.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  So, how do we heal God? By healing the shattered vessels within us.

• 1:54:14Rich Roll?

  Hmm, I like that.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  Isn't it great? I don't pray for God to heal me. God wants me to heal God. How do I heal myself? Repair my vessels. That's how I heal God. That's how I heal you. If you and I have a relationship and we both know we come with shattered vessels, let's help each other. And in doing so, we heal God. So it's ultimately humanistic because the focus is not on, "Oh, God, please." But rather, "God, you gave me a duty to repair the vessels. I'll spend my life trying to repair my vessels and help other people. At the end of my life, I'll show you my work."

• 1:54:48Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a Zen Buddhism flair to that in that the path forward is really an internal journey of becoming the most fully authentic version of yourself.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  You nailed it. So this is a path toward authenticity, inner work, moral growth, guided by the system of the spiritual psychology of Kabbalah. And when people say, "Oh, so I found something wrong with me." I said, "No, you found out the nature of your shattered vessels." And that's why, on the character defect-

• 1:55:19Rich Roll?

  What a beautiful, what a beautiful epiphany and a great place to begin this journey.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  When I say to people, I say, "There's nothing wrong with you. You discovered your work." I mean, that really relieves people. And that's one reason when we do the character defect in the 12-step, I say, "If I may, we don't have defects, we have work." I know 12-step, you gotta do it all by character. Are we talking to Finley? I don't like that word. What I like is, "I've discovered the work I need to do." Which means you discovered your configuration of the brokenness of God. Now you're called upon to work on it. There's nothing wrong with you. You discovered your participation in the brokenness of God. Get to work. So for me, it's, um, it takes away the shame of, "Oh, my God, this is wrong with me. I'm bad at this and, you know, uh, you know, I'm not an Iron Man."

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  It's okay. You just discovered your work. That's okay.

• 1:56:11Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  We just discovered your work.

• 1:56:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's really cool how that, how that intersects with recovery.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely. All you've done is discover your work. There's nothing wrong with you. So for me to say, "Guys, I'm such a fuck up," I said, "No, you're not. You discovered your work. You've been avoiding your work."

• 1:56:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 1:56:27Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  But you discovered your work. Let's just get to work.

• 1:56:31Rich Roll?

  You avoided your work. The universe has been knocking. Starts knocking a little bit louder.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  God's saying, "Please..."

• 1:56:38Rich Roll?

  Till Finley shows up.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, God is saying, "Please heal me." "No, I'd rather drink." God says, "I really need you to heal me." See, this is where like, I don't...

• 1:56:46Rich Roll?

  That's such a flip.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Isn't it?

• 1:56:48Rich Roll?

  On how I've always thought about that.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm not saying, "Don't say..." Turn over to higher power. But rather, the higher power is saying, "Please heal me. Only you can do it."

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a...

• 1:57:02Rich Roll?

  There's a, in just pondering that, there's a, there's like this infusion of agency. Right?

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  You got it, man. You got it. Now, this is Finley's interpretation of Luriana Kabbalah. But for me, Luriana Kabbalah produces a powerful degree, exactly as you said, of human agency. "God needs me to heal God. It's up to me. And we're gonna do this together. And as we heal each other and heal God, that actually makes the whole human condition better, if enough of us are doing it." So it's, um... So when people discover this, I mean, you know, I've had people break down in tears when they heard, "There's nothing wrong with you. You discovered your work."

• 1:57:51Rich Roll?

  Some, I suspect, would find it blasphemous, though. The idea of man healing God is outrageous.

• 1:57:58Speaker 01

  I've had people walk out of my synagogue when I said it. I said, "It's okay, go study with someone around by." So, I say to people, "I'm in the spiritual-psychological neo-Lurianic, neocapitalistic tradition." It's this thing that I do. I'm not telling anybody they have to do it, I'm just telling people what I do. And if you like it, join in.

• 1:58:21Rich Roll?

  Right. We've got to wind this down in a couple of minutes, but I do want to ask you about one more thing, which is, it's somewhat related to my Zen Buddhism comment, which is that you had Leonard Cohen in your orbit.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  He was a congregant, yeah.

• 1:58:38Rich Roll?

  And I know you tell an amazing story about how you guys met. Can you share that with us?

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you what happened.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  The person who produced Anjaney, his woman, wife-woman, blew alert. This guy named Larry Klein.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Larry's a member of the congregation, and Larry and Luciana got married by the day of their wedding.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  So, Larry and Luciana asked me, "What do you recommend for entertainment? We don't want to do like the old thing." I said, "Well, have a few cool people talk about the wisdom of marriage." They say, "Okay, you." So, I was seated next to Leonard, I didn't know who he was. I heard the name Leonard Cohen, it didn't ring any bells or anything. So, then I got up and did my thing. So, I had this little shtick that I did. "Ten contrarian commandments for a good marriage." So, remember that "be happy, don't worry"? So, I said, "Worry," because it was actually a Jewish spiritual practice, which is worry about if you're a virtuous person. Not worry about outcomes, worry about yourself. And then, instead of being angry, be sad. So, I said, "Forget about 'don't worry, be happy,'"

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  and then I explained, "Be sad and worry," but I translated it into Jewish spiritual psychology. "You want to be a good person, worry about yourself."

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  Don't get angry, be sad that you're not getting your way. So I went through these ten contrarian commandments of a good marriage. And I got a lot of laughs, a lot of depth. And people lined up to talk to me, like at the wedding reception. And I sat down and Leonard Cohen says, "That was really cool." So he and Anjini really dug it.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  I go home and call my wife who's in Israel. I said, "Hey, ever heard of this guy Leonard Cohen?" She said, "I used to cry at night listening to his albums." I said, "I didn't know who he was, I'm sorry." She goes, "You sat next to Leonard Cohen?" I said, "I didn't know." So he and Anjini walk into the synagogue the next Sabbath.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  And they just start coming to the synagogue and attending all my classes. And we became, we four became good friends. And he and I became very connected. And I was his rabbi. You know, all I can say, he was, um...

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  We weren't chummy because we felt a little bit awkward around each other, unless we studied something. So he really knew Kabbalah very well. He clearly has the gift of a muse. I got the inner life of his poetry. So he comes to me, he says, "Hey Reb, uh, you want to hear a poem I've been working on?" I say, "Sure." He goes, "How long have you been working on it?" I says, "15 years." I said, "How long is it?" He says, "120 verses." I said, "I got time." So, you know, and I would say, "My favorite song is 'Bird on a Wire.'" He goes, "Oh, you want to hear the rest of the verses?" So, I mean, all of his songs have hundreds of verses, right? So, we had a great connection, you know. I say, "He wasn't my friend..."

• 2:01:34Rich Roll?

  But based on philosophy and discourse.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  Philosophy, and he wanted a teacher. I knew what he wanted. Because in the Buddhist world where, you know, consciousness gets emptied out and, you know, meditation is a tuning fork to reality. He wanted a guy that actually taught moral realism. And the world is real. And there really is a divine interfacing with human beings. And it was not what he believed. But he liked being in a relationship with somebody, with a rabbi, that did not tell him what he believed.

• 2:02:08Rich Roll?

  Right, to stress test his ideas.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  And for me to stress test mine on him. And he loved hearing what I had to say. It was an interesting thing.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  I think he wanted a rabbi who meant it, in the deepest way imaginable, and he thrived on it, and I thrived on him. So, people ask me about his music, I said, "Look, I'm not an expert on Leonard Cohen music." And we were friends to a point. I was his rabbi, I don't have anything more to say.

• 2:02:37Rich Roll?

  And he characterized himself as more of a Zen Buddhist.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Well, he said, "Zen Buddhism is not a religion, it's a tuning fork for consciousness." He says, "My religion is Judaism," right? And he said, "And you're the best rabbi I ever met."

• 2:02:51Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  So, I said, "Okay." So, I never asked him about Zen Buddhism. He, you know, like, you don't say to Leonard Cohen, "Where'd you get the ideas for your songs and tell me about Zen Buddhism?" He came to me to be his rabbi. So, I gotta find out, "What are you looking for? And can I do it?" And what he was looking for, I could do. And that was our relationship. So, it was, people say, "What was it like?" I said, "I was his rabbi, I don't know how, we're trying to explain it." It's like, "What do I do to anybody who chooses me the rabbi? What are you after? Can I do it? All right, let's get to it."

• 2:03:23Rich Roll?

  What a cool experience, though.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  It really was. He was one of the, man, just, you know, one time I said to him, I said, as I started really reading his poetry, I said, "You know, Leonard, I think most of your poetry is liturgy." He says, "I thought all my poetry is liturgy."

• 2:03:40Rich Roll?

  You want to know which parts weren't?

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, "What are you saying?" you know? And so, then when I realized that he sees, he saw himself as being in the line of King David. The, you know, the Psalms, and then all these great liturgists through the years, people who wrote all this beautiful liturgy of the Hebrew tradition. He saw himself as in that chain of tradition. He says, "I'm a liturgist. I write poetry about God and for God and for people who want to sing to God." So, that was what alerted me to what's happening with him. And, um, it was extraordinary, it really was. I miss him terribly.

• 2:04:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he was a gift.

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  Something that...

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  Kind of person to be around and talk to was just utterly unique.

• 2:04:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, wow.

• 2:04:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was nice because he really loved my wife. They had a very cool relationship. Leonard and I were a little bit awkward with each other. She got him, he's a ladies' man, and my wife got him quickly. And he couldn't pull his thing on her. So he felt safe with her. She's, "Yeah, Leonard, yeah, whatever." And so, he felt so safe with my wife. They really had a beautiful relationship. And then my wife became best friends with Anjani.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  You might not know this, but I'm actually awkward socially. So, between the three of them, they had all this love going on. I'm kind of like the guy...

• 2:05:02Rich Roll?

  You're on the outside.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  I'm kind of like the guy watching this.

• 2:05:04Rich Roll?

  Hey, I'm the one who he came to.

• 2:05:06Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I don't have any of that. I know I'm awkward. I know I'm a socially awkward person. And sometimes, the best thing for me is just to sit back and watch the magic.

• 2:05:15Rich Roll?

  I'm not, I'm not, I'm not reading a lot of social awkwardness today.

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  I know, because I'm on. This is my happy place. But, you know, like, if we sat socially, I'd run out of things to say.

• 2:05:26Rich Roll?

  I have a hard time believing that. But we do have to end this. Final thing. I think it would be good to just end this with a few thoughts for the person who's listening or watching, who is tiptoeing around the idea of what it means to be a spiritual being, having a human experience, is trying to reckon with finding a little bit more meaning and purpose in their lives. And doesn't have the vernacular or the experience to really do this by themselves. Like, how do you...

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  Sure, I love the metaphor. It's a very available metaphor. Spiritual being, having a human experience? Is that what you said? But to mean that takes a tremendous amount of work. Because you have to go to your spiritual center, and that is the most and only real thing. And getting to that spiritual center, you know, to the place deep in the inner life, where the love of God is flowing in through the fountain, and you're standing right there in the fountain. You're at the deepest part of the soul.

• 2:06:46Speaker 01

  And you come out of that, and you have one urge, which is to love other people. And anything that gets in the way of that, you gotta stop it. And love life, and create beauty. So so many things come from rooting yourself into the deepest part of what I will call the life of spirit, which for me, as a religious person, is the interface between the you know, the mind of God and the mind of the human being, or the soul of the universe and the soul of the human being. Now, when you get there,

• 2:07:18Speaker 01

  it's not as if you have meaning. Meaning has you. This is one thing I really believe deeply. We like to say I have meaning in my purpose in life, but if you really feel it, it arrives at you and it grabs you by the lapels, and it owns you. So I don't have meaning, meaning has me. I don't have purpose, purpose has me. It's claimed me. You know, going back to the Stoic sense. So when you feel claimed by love, justice, truth, and beauty that propels you, now that we have claimed you, here's what you must do. So what happens is that deepest sense of being claimed by the divine, I'm speaking as a religious person, when God claims you in the garments of love, justice, truth, and beauty, and pushes you into life, well, now you know how to be a human.

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  And what you have to do is you have to be, you have to live interfacing in the world, propelled by the meaning and purpose that has claimed you. For me, in the modalities of love, justice, truth, and beauty, but always go back.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  To that deep experience of the soul. So it's a constant dialectic between being present in the world and being present to the soul. Present to the world, being present to the soul. So the person who's hearing this and says, "How do I do that?" I would say, "Think deep things." What is love? What is beauty? What is truth? Just start taking your consciousness and drilling through the block between the mind and the soul and drill down. I remember it happening to me when I thought, "Well, I have these holy words." And knowing that they had soul resonance and drilling down through that granite block and when I hit the water and the water just flowed up, that's what I want to tell people.

• 2:09:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. I think there is an epidemic of people feeling a desire for, but a lack of that animating force. And I think for those that lack it or are seeking it, that was beautifully put, this idea of it claiming you. But in order to put yourself in a position to be so claimed, you have to commit to living an examined life and understand that patience is going to be important because it's not a light switch.

• 2:09:34Speaker 01

  The examined life. You have to examine the contents of consciousness and go to the deepest place you can and do it every day. And that, you'll hit the waters. You'll hit the living waters of the soul. Just keep at it.

• 2:09:49Rich Roll?

  That's a good way to end it, I think. I think we landed this plane.

• 2:09:52Speaker 01

  We landed the plane.

• 2:09:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, how do you feel?

• 2:09:53Speaker 01

  I feel great. I feel terrific. You're terrific.

• 2:09:56Rich Roll?

  I loved it. Let's do this again.

• 2:09:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely, man. You're the man.

• 2:09:58Rich Roll?

  Can I come to your synagogue too? I'd like to hear you.

• 2:10:00Speaker 01

  Anything you want, of course.

• 2:10:01Rich Roll?

  Do your thing.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  I would be so honored. And this was really, this is, we did a significant thing here today.

• 2:10:06Rich Roll?

  You think so?

• 2:10:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:10:08Rich Roll?

  I hope so. I hope it's helpful to people.

• 2:10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:10Rich Roll?

  I loved it. I loved every minute of it.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  You're right in the zone too. It's a really, it's an honor to be interviewed by you, truly.

• 2:10:16Rich Roll?

  Thank you. If people want to connect with you, what's the best place to send them?

• 2:10:20Speaker 01

  My synagogue, orator.org, my website, rabbiphilee.com. It's all very 90s clunky and we're promising to upgrade it and one day have a room like this, this wonderful studio you have. And I've got so much to do and so much to say. But in the meantime... I have my classes on Tuesday and Wednesday nights on Zoom, 45-minute each. My Shabbat evening, a 20-minute teaching on Friday night, an hour teaching on Saturday morning, open to everybody. Many people are not Jewish, because I don't teach Judaism. I teach using Jewish symbols, metaphors, and myths as a way to get at truth. So, everybody's welcome, and I think any person like you would love it.

• 2:11:01Rich Roll?

  Excellent. I'm gonna check it out, and I'll put all those links in the show notes, so everybody can figure it out, and hopefully send a few new people your way. Thanks so much.

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  All right, man. It's been a pleasure, a real pleasure. Thank you.

• 2:11:12Rich Roll?

  Thanks.

• 2:11:24Rich Roll?

  Thanks for listening, everybody. For links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page on richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast

• 2:12:05Rich Roll?

  was created by Blake Curtis, portraits by Ali Rogers and Davy Greenberg, graphic elements courtesy of Jessica Miranda, copywriting by Georgia Whaley, and our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. You can find me at richroll.com or on Instagram and Twitter at Rich Roll. I appreciate the love. I love the support. I don't take your attention for granted. Thank you for listening. See you back here soon. Peace. Plots. Namaste.