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Intuitive Choices
Intuitive Choices is a podcast which asks and answers the question, "What is intuition and how can it help us". Philadelphia based mental health therapists, Kimberley Dobbs and Jacob Miller, hold conversations with guests who have made brave choices to live more meaningful lives.
If you know any inspirational people who you would like us to interview, please let us know at intuitive.choices.podcast@gmail.com
***Please note that these episodes are not recorded therapy sessions and that listening to this podcast is not considered an alternative to mental health therapy.***
If you are interested in mental health therapy please visit us at our practices website at intuitivecounselingofphilly.com
We hope you enjoy the show!
Intuitive Choices
Best Selling Author Moshe Gersht: From Punk Rocker to a Spiritual Author
What would it look like if your teenage dreams came true? Would you be a happier, richer, wiser, or more satisfied than you are now? What if you realized all your dreams came true and then you realized there were still some thing missing. Moshe Gersht set out on a quest to figure this out.
Before he was a USA Today and Wall Street Journal best selling author, Moshe was on a meteoric rise to accomplish his goals as a Punk Rocker from an early age. But the more he saw his dreams come to fruition, the more he realized that he wanted more meaning than rock and roll could offer.
As Moshe's journey progressed, he delved into the world of spirituality, exploring foundational Jewish texts and turning to Hasidus and New Age Wisdom. As he navigated this new path, his personal life also underwent significant transitions, including marriage, parenthood and teaching - experiences that had profound implications on his spiritual quest. Listen in as Moshe shares how he leveraged his intuition to guide him through uncharted territories and the incredible impact this transformative journey has had on his life.
Moshe's Website
https://www.moshegersht.com/
Sample Chapter of The Three Conditions
https://moshegersht.us21.list-manage.com/track/click?u=793c7ce32ccaecea32781e9d8&id=bfc55128cb&e=adfb697ff5
Moshe's Books
https://www.moshegersht.com/books/
Moshe's Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/moshegersht/?hl=en
Hey everybody, I'm Kimberly Dobbs.
Speaker 2:And I'm Jacob Miller.
Speaker 1:And we'd like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices.
Speaker 2:Kim and I are mental health therapists working in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1:Each week, we invite a guest to speak about how their own intuitive choices have led them to live a more meaningful life.
Speaker 2:We hope that this conversation encourages you to make meaningful choices in your own life.
Speaker 1:Alright, off we go.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. I cannot describe how excited I am to have one of my dearest mentors friends I don't really know how to describe our relationship fully Just someone. I'm so grateful to have my life, Moshe Gerst, here to talk with us on Intuitive Choices. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Moshe when I first moved to Israel in, I guess, 2018. I think that sounds about right, and Moshe was so influential in really teaching me what it meant to be joyful and in my own battles with anxiety, depression, etc.
Speaker 2:Like so many of us have, Rabbi Gerst kind of just gave me a sense of like it's good to feel okay, In a profound way, that I believed, which was a task Since then. You know, being able to be in Moshe Gerst's home, meet his family and continue a relationship with him. Since I left Israel, I've had the pleasure of reading his book. It's all the same to me. Which I like to describe is the sensation that you get after hugging a loved one, which I hope is not too hyperbolic a statement, and I've recently had the pleasure of reading the sample chapter introduction to his newest book, the Three Conditions. Rabbi Gerst knows how to harmonize a tremendous amount of ancient wisdom, spiritual wisdom, and make it more relevant than anything we could imagine. So, without further ado, it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Moshe Gerst to Intuitive Choices.
Speaker 1:Hey Moshe.
Speaker 3:Hi Kim, hi Jacob, wow, what an introduction. You are invited to come with me everywhere. Take me, let me tell you something.
Speaker 1:My eyes welled up with tears hearing you and, like you know, just like feeling your energy as you were talking about Moshe. It was so beautiful. I just have to say that Welcome Moshe. This is a huge. This feels like such a gift. Well, the podcast itself feels like a gift and just the opportunity to have this conversation with you is such a gift. I really just want to jump in and say and just ask you know you? You are on a spiritual journey. We all are, you know, and yours started with you. I'm not even going to say with you leaving a rock band, because I would even, I would even say challenge you to say, like it started with you joining your rock band. You know we're starting it in the first place. I just want you to just start there. Like, can you tell us from the beginning?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I appreciate that, kim. I think a lot of people think that the journey started leaving the band, but the truth is I was born into a really open minded, open hearted home, so I had a lot growing up. I feel very blessed to have been raised with parents who were really understanding and were on their own journey. So I was raised in a home of a journey and joining the band. I was probably 13 years old when the band started. I was.
Speaker 3:I was able to go and pursue that dream in high school and try to get signed to a record label and tour with my favorite artists, and all of that because I was raised in a home that said you know, you're here on a mission and listen to your calling. So calling was was very much so a part of, like the home ambiance and if there was something strong that you felt, be it, call it intuition and inner knowing, a sense of direction. It was strongly encouraged, and so the band was just as much a part of the journey as much as leaving it was after seven years.
Speaker 2:Moshe, I hope you don't mind but and I know like not to name drop artists, to name drop artists, but just to give a context for our listeners, a little bit like what type of bands were you touring with opening for what genre were you involved in?
Speaker 3:I mean, this was like a pop punk band. So think panic at the disco, a Blink 182 Green Day ball out boy like so emo pop punk style. And we were opening up for the plain white teas and my chemical romance and Papa Roach and story of the year and did a bunch of shows with the Warp Tour.
Speaker 2:It's so, it's so. I was listening to actually some of your music yesterday in preparation for the interview, because I don't know if you know, but it's on Spotify and after listening to your album I had Green Day stuck in my head.
Speaker 1:Green Day came to me to listen to your music also. Oh my God, yeah.
Speaker 2:And just I think that's just a testament to like. Sometimes you hear music and and it just sounds like a song that existed in that era, not like something like oh, like a couple kids were putting together. It's like such I mean, clearly you were signed to record label such professional level music that it's a younger me would have listened to constantly.
Speaker 3:Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, that was probably the number one vocal comp I got was to Billy Jorm from from Green Day. So yeah, if it, if it still sounds that way, then the music, the music, still hitting.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this you joined a band, but, but larger than that is obviously the gravitational pull toward creating me, maybe creating music or, you know, singing music. How did you know you even wanted to create music like? What was that process like for you? Because you were only 13.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question and one that I haven't gotten on any other podcasts that been on. So thank you, kim, I appreciate that. Welcome. Thank you. There were probably two elements to it when I think about it. One of them was I was probably 10 or 11. The first time I sat down with my best friend, adam, who played for me an album of a band called Weezer.
Speaker 1:And Buddy Holly and.
Speaker 3:Buddy Holly and I sat there. I heard Buddy Holly and it got to the solo and when, when it hit that high note, I literally felt in my body this is what I'm doing. That was it. That was the beginning and the end of the conversation. I knew right then that that's what I was doing going forward. I didn't own a guitar yet I didn't play music yet, oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:I did. I did. We did have a piano in the home. I played some classical piano, for I probably started at five or six and I was. I played until about 12. But after hearing that it was like I went straight home. I was like you know, dad, I need a guitar. He's like why you don't play guitar. I need a guitar like now.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't.
Speaker 3:I didn't get it now, but over over the next year or two. It was working towards getting a guitar, starting the process of getting into it. It was one of those like absolute, clear, knowing this is what I have to do. It wasn't. It didn't even feel like a choice. It was. This is part of who I am.
Speaker 3:And again being in a home where you're encouraged to listen to that piece it was. It was encouraged and I walked forward and fell in love with the guitar again. The guitar wasn't even. It wasn't even about the music, it was I wanted to sing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I keep feeling about you, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, just I knew that it was something I wanted to share. My voice wanted to go and share whatever message it was. It was melody and it was ideas and it was rock music like like really punchy fun upbeat. You know, get off, get off the floor and jump, kind of music that I wanted to share, but it's almost a no, but yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's almost like that moment of hearing that note right, and you're hearing it and it's you're experiencing something through your whole body, through your whole being and and, and then it to be so young, like 10 or 11. And I don't want to speak for you, so it's more of like this, like a question form is a statement, but I am just wondering, was it this like I? It wasn't like I want fame and fortune, I want to be like weezer. It was like this larger experience of like I want to. I want to feel like this and experience this, that I'm feeling as you were experiencing that song. Do you know? Do you know what I'm trying to ask?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I do and I would. I would frame it in the following Following way it wasn't about doing what they did. It wasn't about doing it all.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:It was more like I am yes, I am this, and I was looking for whatever that was to reflect.
Speaker 2:Kim Kim's dog is a. I think everyone who reads it's all the same to me has Some really like the one-liners that come out of it and and to me it's like I Want what's that? Give me a second. I want us to phrase it the way you phrase it, but it's no. Outcomes are yours and all outcomes are good. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and that just is like I Just open up, when I in, when I internalize that I allow myself to to know that's true, I just I completely relax.
Speaker 1:Really to piggyback on what you were saying about the, the having faith in the process. One of the things that I say to my clients all the time is the phrase faith over fear, almost like as a mantra, because it really is this idea that like You're being carried, like it'll be everything. It'll be, everything will be okay, but you suspending those expectations of whatever that I love how you said. Like when you're entrenched in this Idea of whatever that outcome is supposed to be, you number one. You're not present and number two it. It doesn't allow for the openness of whatever is to come.
Speaker 1:You know, and I love the one-liners too- I was telling Jacob yesterday that when I was listening to your book that there's a line that you did, that you wrote where you said this isn't happening for you, this is happening, this isn't happening to you, this is happening for you. And I said, I said to Jacob I go. It was so profound to to know that you wrote that because in 2015, as I was really in the throes of like losing my eyesight, you know, I had just I had to give up my guide dog that I'd only had for about a year and that was gonna present its own challenges of like navigating the city with a white cane, you know those kinds of things. And I was sitting on myself. It was 11 o'clock at night and I was, I was crying and all of a sudden, I had this I can't even call it a thought because I say to people it didn't, it just didn't even come from me.
Speaker 1:It said this is happening for you and not to you, and it was like I remember my kids were sleeping, right, just put them down. And I just was like, oh Okay, like I don't know what that was, it's not even. It wasn't like a voice, it was just, again, this like this. I don't know how to explain it. You do a great job in your book, so I highly recommend our audience read that. But yeah, so it was just so many powerful things, so many powerful takeaways from. I can't wait for you for the next book.
Speaker 3:You know it's funny. I remember exactly where I was when I got. I got that that was a download, that sentence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker 3:I was. It was actually probably an event that Jacob might have been at. There was. We used to have a large event at my home every Thursday night, and sometimes it could be as little as 10 people, but sometimes the best other other groups join and we could have, you know, 50, 60, 70 people in the room at any given moment.
Speaker 3:Very powerful, lots of energy, beauty, everyone with their own Angle on how to appreciate life and the divine experience. And there was one Thursday when I had an entire Set up of what I wanted to share. And for one reason or another, it became irrelevant, like I had to rewrite my entire Whatever it is that I was gonna give over that evening, and and and. Then I started getting phone calls and my wife was asking for certain things and my kids were talking to me.
Speaker 2:That's like one after another.
Speaker 3:I couldn't get to Rewriting and putting together what I wanted to share that evening.
Speaker 3:And then it was about 10 minutes before Anyone was going to show up and I knew that that night it was gonna be 50, 60, 70 people walking into my door and I had nothing to say and and I sat down and did a very simple basic meditation and just cleared my mind and cleared my heart and Sat in that space and right before I kind of walked up To you know, take care of last minute pieces that knowing came through. What these words just showed up no outcomes are yours, all outcomes are good. And that itself became the anchor for everything I spoke about that evening. But beyond that, became the anchor for so much more of my own personal journey and spiritual practice.
Speaker 3:I'm like, right, that was, that was the point. The point is you can't nap out Every bit and piece of the end. You can have a vision and a plan and a direction and you walk in that direction, but you keep an open mind and an open heart because you are a co-creator in this universe. It's not all about you, it's not just about you, but you are part of something so much bigger and when you open yourself to that, that the process itself is the joy and that's actually the goal. That's what we're doing here.
Speaker 1:Cultivating joy through the process. Yeah. Okay where did we leave off with so we?
Speaker 2:did leave off, with Rabbi Gersh talking about, like the, becoming inspired to pursue Singing, singing, and we can either go back there or what I'm thinking is maybe just for, if you'd like, rabbi Gersh, for, like the remainder time, just to do the three conditions now, and then, when we hop back on, we can do more of your personal Stories. That's on our right, kim.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, is that okay? It's, is that okay with you?
Speaker 3:I'm following you, guys. This is for you.
Speaker 1:You know, Let me do. Can we do a time check? Yeah, so it's just, it's 1255 and then Moshe, you have to hop off one.
Speaker 3:I probably have safely around 20 minutes from now.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me think for one second. Okay, okay, I Think that.
Speaker 2:Face the band? Yeah, I, because I just said it in my head and I got the chills.
Speaker 3:So like yeah.
Speaker 1:Read my mind.
Speaker 2:Yep. Okay so so, moshe, where did we were? The last thing we were speaking about was, if you just want to pick up, perhaps from Well, he was.
Speaker 1:He was talking about how it was more of a calling to become to sing and all of that. And then I wanted to ask a question about you. Know you? You got a guitar. You did you start the band yourself?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know it's funny. The name of the band was in theory Because before I changed my name to Moshe, which I mean it's a birth name, but I always went by Theo. Theo is my name before I came to Israel. Happens to be that, like France, in Israel there's no th sound, so there's no th, there's no th, so I had to go with a different name. So I switched it pretty early on, when I had made my move to Israel.
Speaker 2:But when I was.
Speaker 3:Theo that that was the reason why I called the band in theory, because I wanted my name in there, because it was really a solo project for the first year was I wanted a band but I didn't have one. I Went into a studio, recorded a number of songs myself and then I found other people to kind of come together.
Speaker 3:We, we joined as a band eventually and then we spent the next six and a half years Really working towards trying to reach as many people as possible. I think we pretty, we did a pretty good job during that process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but even like you said, you created the name and then you're like, yeah, and I just went to a studio and just recorded a bunch of songs and I'm just like, but even that it takes Something. Yeah, no, you're right, you know.
Speaker 3:I haven't thought about it in this way in so long, but you're absolutely right. It really all comes back to that same space of knowing. As soon as we got into a room and I mean even down to the songwriting process, I am very, very much so Would get into a creative space, sit there, play through chords and then the melodies would come through, and no second guessing, just allowing the melodies to come through and then allowing the lyrics to come through. So much of the right word is allowing, it's keep stepping into a space and allow the process to happen and Then, only after so much of the ground work was laid, come back and think through methodically how to then adjust and make something Better than what it was the initial download. And then it was just like okay, so how do we put this into? At the time it was CDs. How do we make a CD?
Speaker 3:and go and just finding a A a recording studio. I'm from LA, so there's recording studios on every corner. It's like you know many recording studios is Starbucks. Everywhere you go, there's like a recording studio.
Speaker 1:So you can look back now, right, and you and you can identify that that was your process, right, like I just allowed it to flow, did. Can you say that at that age you Knew that that was what was happening? Were you as aware that that was like I'm in a flow I'm having, I'm having these intuitive downloads, I'm do you know what I'm saying? Like, how much of that were you aware of, as it was happening, to help continue to cultivate it?
Speaker 3:sure I was less. I Think I was less aware that these were intuitive downloads. I think at the time I was more aware that I was being guided and I really was aware that, like I mentioned earlier, that's how it was raised that there is direct guidance and Direction in our lives if we keep our eyes and ears open to what's happening.
Speaker 1:When I was 13 the art.
Speaker 3:Our first major gig was at a venue called the whiskey a go-go which in Los Angeles on the sunset trip. That's a. That's a nice venue everybody who's anybody has played there, from the Beatles to Lincoln Park, and Everyone in between you start there right start. So the story behind that is I. We just went, we literally opened up. If I say the yellow pages, most people don't even know what I'm talking about if they're not 35, right? Yeah, that's, true, we sat and we picked up. They used to have phone books Before.
Speaker 3:Google fanbox yeah, and we sat and we opened up a phone book and we looked up the whiskey a go-go, which was a huge club in on the sunset strip got the number call. I vividly remember sitting at my friend Yona's house and calling up the venue. I'm saying hi, my name is Theo. I'm with the band at the time. We were called global warning and Not with an M, with an N, yeah, yeah, and saying hey, this is you know from the warning, just want to you know, see if you'd be open to an event sometime in the next couple months and they responded saying oh Wow, we love you guys.
Speaker 3:You guys are great, come whenever you want, like when's a good date in August. And it would immediately hit me that they thought we were somebody else.
Speaker 3:So I said how's the 16th, or something like that and I'm a 13 year old kid and they said that's perfect, okay, well, you know, we'll be in touch, we'll send over the tickets. You know, keep us posted. Blah, blah, blah and I showed up at the venue. We get you know, they gave us like I don't know how many tickets that we could, you know, presale, whatever it was and we showed up that night and we had sold 300 tickets for the first night. Again, we were a bunch of high school kids.
Speaker 1:We sold yeah, tickets to everyone we knew in.
Speaker 3:you know every school we could get to, and after the event, the people who booked us came over and said look, we realized you're not the same band that we thought you were, but you sell three times as many tickets, so you guys can come back whenever you want.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, and once we had an in there, so then it became an in everywhere.
Speaker 3:So we started yeah, we're in, yeah, so we started playing a bunch of different venues and eventually we got an agent and you know that's this kind of history in that regard.
Speaker 3:But again, it's that same piece that we spoke about earlier which is something in some we could have called a hundred clubs in LA, but something inside said we got a couple whiskey. Why I don't know. But the guidance was that's what we have to call. And we listen. And so we sat there and make the phone call and we get this incredible Synchronistic. You know, chance, possibility that they think or someone else and that allows us in the door, and you continue to. You know, follow the lead, bamosha. You know it's.
Speaker 2:Anyone starting a band is like one day will get to the whiskey and even maybe someone would have the Inclinations like I'm gonna even give them a call and then maybe talk themselves out of it. Like I'm trying to think of like how much money we're gonna spend on the melting m 테. You know, I didn't apply. I only applied to two colleges because I didn't think I was going to get in anywhere, which was, in retrospect, ridiculous, and that was me as a like a 17 year old, 18 year old, and I, and like I had such a strong off switch You're, are you crediting your, your parents in the environment itself? Is giving you that really powerful on switch or does it come from somewhere else?
Speaker 3:Yes and yes, I do think, without just to answer the second half of that of the somewhere else, I do think it comes from somewhere else. Also, I think that there is certainly, whether you call it your soul, or divine guidance, or God that's, I find it to be without question.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I think if you ask most people who've done great things in this world, they'll respond with some level of you know, a deeper knowing or guidance or something in that sort. But I, I, I as wherever. I? Can I tell people I was so lucky to be raised in a home that said listen and go for it. Listen and go for it. And you know I take no credit for that.
Speaker 3:That was my upbringing and my parents really did give me the ears to hear it. What, what was being said? They didn't give me, that's coming from somewhere else, but the fact that I was paying attention to that, that's. That's a good way to say it. I'm so.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that, jacob, you brought that up and I'm so glad to hear you say that, moshe, because one of the things that I consistently discuss with clients is you know, when, what happens when they are, you know, are raised and they they don't have any kind of encouragement or messaging, or rather, they might even have messaging that conflicts with their own internal guidance or excerpt whatever it is that and and how that then might, you know, cause a person to to have more doubt about whether or not something will work out or or not. You know that it is. It is a big piece to to growing up is having, you know, an environment that allows for the opportunity for you to be able to see it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and that's why so much of the work that I do with individuals and with groups are really working on that reprogramming, because when the way we start our life doesn't have to be the way we end our life, doesn't have to be the way we live our life, but we're all given a certain set of circumstances, of beliefs and paradigms that were handed down by our parents, by our societies by our friends.
Speaker 3:You know, everything makes a difference the city you were born in, the time in which you were born, the country that you're in the social network you find yourself with and that has such a deep and profound impact in your psyche as a child and then as you start to grow up. If you want to expand, grow, change. So the opportunity is there. But even the ability to see it as an opportunity is a gift.
Speaker 2:So so many people I speak with it's.
Speaker 3:that itself is a stretch, like, really I, can I actually change the way I look at myself? Can I actually change the way or expand the way that I look at life and the way that things unfold Am?
Speaker 2:I even allowed to do that Is. Am I worthy of doing that? Is it?
Speaker 3:possible and the, the ideas that were given those, those certainly set the, I would say, like the baseline of wherever you are coming in to the game of personal growth, your spiritual growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, circling back to creating the band, being in the band, and then there I had imagined there was, you know, a circumstances, a circumstance or a combination of circumstances that started to present itself that led you or guided you away from Okay.
Speaker 2:Do you mind if? I ask another question first. Is that all right? Yeah, Thanks for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah of course.
Speaker 2:So, moshe, if you could please just like let me know about some of like of the peak moments of being in the band in which you were like I'm really doing it and I completely love this.
Speaker 3:Great question. Wow, I'll do as many podcasts as you guys want. I mean, this is just. You guys are so good Um.
Speaker 2:Pete, you can come back every week.
Speaker 1:Jacob. Dude, that is the best I have to tell you. I'm so thankful that you, that you asked that question first. Okay, sorry, I just had to say that I'm grateful to Jacob for doing that.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, peak, peak moments, I would say there are many. One stands out is the day that we signed our record deal, all of us standing in this room with the CEO, vincent Bittetti and the president. Barry Fosman. A blessed memory, he has to say, and standing there and having this very almost out of body experience I'm signing a record deal right now, like that's happening, and I remember that. So who did?
Speaker 3:you sign with we signed with a company called Shelter from the Storm Records in Indian LA. We had distribution through a company called ADA, which is a subsidiary Warner Brothers, and so our album was in every Target and Best Buy and Tower Records. If anybody remembers Tower Records, Wow.
Speaker 3:And so that moment of just being there, we did it, we signed the deal. That was huge Again when we were opening up for some of these big bands Plain White Teens and Papa Roach and Story of the Year playing with them was one thing, but speaking with them and hanging out with them before the concerts and just talking to them about the experience and the journey these are the people we grew up listening to and we're now doing this.
Speaker 3:And then when Tom, the singer of Plain White Teens, when we first met he invited me to sing with him on stage during our set together and I just remember thinking. I was listening to your album like an hour before. You're now asking me to sing that same song with you on stage. And then getting up there and doing the refrain with him was yeah it's mind-blowing. Couldn't believe this was actually happening Really amazing.
Speaker 2:It's both what you're going for and surreal at the same time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what we're trying to do and it's happening. And when it's happening, it's just larger than life, it's a cosmic experience and it's a gift that you can be present for it.
Speaker 2:You know it's so fun. This happened so I mean so long ago, relatively long ago in your past, and when you were heading to, weren't aware of where the director would take you today. But I feel like I have an adrenaline rush imagining my younger self being like I. Just I feel so aligned with your story. But maybe that's because it's such a it's like a fantasy that so many kids my age grew up with. But then, to know you personally, I just really feel like you're taking me along for the ride now, and the reason I wanted to know what those peak experiences were like is to really highlight what it meant to leave and move on to the next phase, and I feel like I'm being torn away from that dream just in asking you.
Speaker 2:So I really can't begin to grasp what it was like for yourself, and if you could speak to that for a few minutes, I'd really appreciate that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, and I appreciate that very much. The right before I had made the decision to leave again. This is coupled with many there are many factors here.
Speaker 2:How did you even get there, like, like you're saying, before the decision to leave, but to go from like singing on stage with the plain white T's to. I even could leave or should leave. How does that happen?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's, that's the right question. About four or five months before I left, unfortunately, we found out that our drummer had become addicted to the meth and the amphetamines, and that was. That was a big blow, I mean look.
Speaker 3:I was in a circle of people where everybody was doing something, but meth was really heavy and it came to a head when he missed one of our shows which, if you can imagine, we showed up where I don't know, maybe the second or third act in a list of three or four acts, and then there's no drummer.
Speaker 1:There's no drummer means you don't know, were you able to perform?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I played an acoustic set. You know me and my guitar player. And then that then that happened a second time. Back to back shows and we're talking hundreds of people who came to see a band and the band's not there. So that itself was probably the first major turning point where, you know, we spoke to him and he went to rehab and that was really good of him and we got a substitute drummer.
Speaker 3:But that was the first time I saw like, oh, all that stuff they tell you about rock and roll there's. There's a lot of truth to it. And when it right before the album came out. The record label my manager everyone, everyone on the team came to me and said, you have to make a decision, Like you either have to keep the drummer or lose the drummer. But if you keep the drummer, we think that your chances of being successful are significantly less.
Speaker 3:And if you lose the drummer, get somebody else your chances of success are much higher, and that was a very intense experience to go through as a 19 year old.
Speaker 3:This was one of my closest friends. We've been playing together for almost seven years and now I'm being told that I have to drop this individual if I want to have any shot at making it. So I said I needed to take a break. I took a two week hiatus. I went. I went on a trip.
Speaker 3:I went to visit my family who at the time had moved to Israel, and when I was in Israel I spent this time reflecting on whether or not I should keep this guy in the band, keep the dream alive, or do we choose the relationship over the dream and hope, you know, by some miracle we get there? During that trip I didn't just start to introspect on my my drummer and longtime friend. I started to think deeply about what I was doing. In general I never really thought too deeply about it, I just kind of went for it because that's where I was called, and so it started to bring up other feelings and other ideas about the vision and the dream, because it was the first time I was presented with a major conflict of interest. This is my friend and this is my life, my dream, my business.
Speaker 3:And after that trip, when I came back, I made you know probably top five hardest decisions of my life, and said we're not going to work together anymore and we were going to pursue the dream, which was extremely challenging.
Speaker 3:During that same time period, it came to light that I knew that you know being I was raised in a religious home, though I wasn't all that religious.
Speaker 3:At the time, I made a decision that I wanted to do something to stay connected to my heritage, stay connected to the life that I was brought up with, and so one of the things we do is we wear these things called Tefillin, which are basically a ritual that you put something on your arm and on your head to remember God and divine guidance. I told myself that I'd keep this with me as I kind of went forward in this journey and day by day, as I was, you know, putting these things on my body, thinking about life bigger than the band. I never really thought about life bigger than the band. For me, the music was what it was all about, and every now and then you're given opportunities where something points you in the direction of thinking beyond what you're doing. For me, that was one of those inflection points, and the way that life unfolded was, at the very same time, maybe six, seven weeks later somebody came over to me and asked me how long I was going to do this for, and I said do what?
Speaker 3:And he said play music, which I think is a funny question to ask a musician.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know on their upward trajectory. Everything's going in the right way. How long are you going to do this?
Speaker 3:for and I said I don't know, I guess until we're successful and then we'll settle down. And he said when's that? And irritated I said when's what he said? When is success? At the time I told him to have a drink and leave me alone because he was bothering me. But I went to bed, woke up the next morning with that question in my mind when is success? I? Never thought about that as a concept outside. I thought success was you just live your life and you live a successful life.
Speaker 3:I never thought about what does a successful life look like, and is it possible to be successful at what you do and still fail at life? I never thought that that was.
Speaker 2:That's huge, that is to be profound to be successful at what you do and still fail at life. It comes from that point of allowing yourself to be bothered by the question that he asked, and sometimes people are so made numb by their success or actual substances or a pursuit of a goal that they get high off of it. And there are things that we really should be made upset by, and I'm sure you didn't feel that way in the moment that it's something that you wanted to make you upset, but that was. It's a gift to be able to become upset about that type of type of question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, and what I wouldn't even call it upset I was, it was almost somewhere between intrigued and obsessed, like I needed to know the answer to the question.
Speaker 3:I actually I spent a lot of time. The way that I got to the answer for myself was I went and did the math, like I went and started looking up online. Google was still pretty new at the time. I was looking up OK, how many number one singles do we have to have? How many albums do we have to put out? How many homes do I need to own? How many cars do you need to drive, like all these different? You know, I wanted to create a map of like. Then I'm successful. But then I've done it, which I think that's. The atypical part of the story is I don't know how many people in the music industry sit there and try to figure.
Speaker 2:Ok, once I get this point, then I'm successful.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, not punk rock with me, and, and, but along the way, the more you dig into, these things and I did the research.
Speaker 3:I just saw a lot of unhappy lives. I just saw a lot of people who were living lives that weren't in alignment with what my deepest values were, which became an incredible conflict of interest for myself, which was I have this dream, but I also know what. I deeply know what life is supposed to be about. That included family. That included peace of mind. That included being healthy. And the vast majority of people who are involved in the industry I was in at the time and in the area of the industry I was in, they didn't have that. They had a lot of fun and they had a lot of fame and they might have had a lot of money, but they didn't have things that, deep down, I felt they really knew were important to me personally.
Speaker 3:And not long after that, I was kind of hit with like a lightning bolt of clarity. It's not like I was walking home and it was down the street from my house and it hit me. And when, when you're hit with clarity like this, and the clarity was I need to go somewhere else. This isn't it. I didn't know. I didn't know what the answer was yes, but I knew what was no and no was going forward with the band and I sat down in an alley about a block away from my house and I just sat down and I cried because I knew. I knew that the band was over. I knew that seven years of investment time, energy, money, my the universe. I didn't end up not going to university because I decided to pursue music instead.
Speaker 3:I like everything was out and I didn't even have an answer to what was in. But I knew that that was, that wasn't the right place, and that's when I started kind of the shift and I knew that I wanted to look for something deeper. I knew that there was more to life that I hadn't yet found. I didn't know what it was, but I knew.
Speaker 1:I think that that's that pivotal, that just when I'm hearing that story about like well, what is success, when? When is that success? And then you were googling. What's interesting is you were googling already your idea of what success was, because there, there had to have been some kind of an idea of what success was, because you were, you were on a mission to achieve it.
Speaker 3:Right, somebody has done this before.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. And so you had all these. You had these preconceived ideas. Ok, success means a certain amount of money. It's something, these tangible things, and you were having a moment in life of what is success really mean and, like you said, it was this. It was this deep. It's this deep, knowing and like looking for what that is, you know, looking or moving toward it. Right.
Speaker 3:It was the opening experience to sing. I don't know what the answer is but I know it's time to start really looking and where I am isn't the answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. What was it like getting from LA to Israel, the entry into Israel and that transition.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, thank you so much. It's a great question and I don't get a chance to speak about that very often. It was, you know. I think I mentioned before I was kind of laughing and crying on the whole flight over. It was a very it was like an emotionally.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know you did. No, I don't know you did not. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah right.
Speaker 3:So okay, if we go back to like my last night in LA, I had told the band that we, that I, was leaving. The truth is that's actually not even how it happened. There's a whole story beyond that, which maybe is a story for another podcast. But by the time everyone found out and they were very upset I had still we sell out a few more concerts that we were under contract to do, and so I was probably around three or four weeks away from my flight out of LA, but I was still Part of this band.
Speaker 3:We had to go play together on stage a few more times, which was extremely uncomfortable. They didn't speak to me from that point on. I didn't, though they were not. They cut me off Instantly in terms of outside of you know Any sort of business that we had together. And then we showed up at the very last concert and we got on stage and it was a really powerful. It was like a 35 40 minutes set and it was so powerful. I remember it so vividly because during those 40 minutes it was like nothing had happened. I think all of us, kind of transcended in those moments, forgot the whole of the drama that was ensuing and we were just playing music again and it was like everything was forgotten. We had melted into our instruments, into the audience and you know, we let we let people know that it was indefinitely our last concert. So lots of people came out.
Speaker 1:Wow what a good, would it give that moment must have been what it must have been. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:I don't like this is your last concert, but then also to say, like you transcend it. Yeah, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1:And it got to almost like relive on a deeper level what I'm thinking about the moment that you heard the Weezer song, the Buddy Holly song and I'm just like mm-hmm, and I'm just like oh, and that is that moment, your last, your last concert, right, is it just? I mean, I'm not you, but I just I'm like oh, that's a full circle kind of moment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was big. It was big and like I remember looking at my bass players face while we were on the stage and he was smiling and looking at me like it was any other day. You know, we were just, you know, jamming out and rocking out on that stage and and there was a moment where I thought we'd get off the stage and we'd all just embrace and and say goodbye and the concert ended. We walked off stage. I said hello to a couple people. I went to look for them. They'd they'd all left. Oh, my god, it was like no, there was no goodbye. I went to see my tour manager, who was my best friend at the time, and I walked over to him and I gave him a hug and I said you know, we'll make it through this and he looked at me and he said, no, we won't. And that way I'm like and it was like as cold and cut as you could have possibly imagined that moment to be, and that was like the very clear oh, this is, this is different.
Speaker 3:And then I jumped in a car that a friend of mine was taking me to the airport and that was it. I went straight from there to the flight. I got on the flight and it was. It was this they were laughter and like real ecstatic joy and there was like sadness, because it was both. It was a liberation of have. Okay, I'm chasing and following this calling towards something higher or something Deeper, and at the same time, it was saying goodbye to this family that I created, to this dream that I was Following. It was it was trading one dream for another right. So it was a really intense experience on the way out and I think that that's just a more dramatic version of what we all go through when we walk away from Something that's special for something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah or walk away from anything, it doesn't you have to be special. You know people get attached to who they are at any moment. Yes and it doesn't matter if it's, if it's like you know you're, you're the front man of a rock band you know, it's any perception of self just makes it.
Speaker 2:The perception of self becomes the illusion of self. Yes, transcending away from that is devastating For anyone you know. And it's like what. What I heard and what you were saying is like the transition. That flight was a simultaneous birth death experience, which I think those transitions Maybe always are, if it's the right transition.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a Visceral Experience that you know, I just I can't forget, you know. I just remember being on that seat. Lightly it was, it was back and forth and it's sometimes at the same time, so it was just a lot of emotion. And then away I got here, I landed, I remember my my father came to pick me up from the airport and drove me to where I was gonna be staying for the rest Of that year, which was that a sheva I got had mentioned before and I had no idea what to expect there either. Honestly, I didn't really know what I was walking into.
Speaker 1:But talk about like having a little bit of faith, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It was all faith. And I think for for many years people asked me how'd you do it? How did you leave the band, how did you leave that life and that dream, everything you had been working on? And for a long time I said it wasn't me, I, I was, you know, taken out. I kind of I blamed, I not blamed, but I put it on God as as a concept. And then over the years, as I, as I've matured, I realized that you know, that's, it's not that it's not true, but my part in that was the, the faith element of believing in something deeper in the world, in myself, in yeah that you had a hand in that and you have a hand.
Speaker 1:We have a hand in our in, in, in our lives, you know, and how our lives go as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course, and so I got. I got there, I landed and and almost instantly fell in love with what I found in that place. Both I went to a very special a Shiva, called my home, yako, where it really facilitates independent personal growth in just as much as creating a positive collective experience. Going deep into the, the psychology, philosophy and metaphysics of what Torah is, what life is about, all the ideas were speaking to me at a very like a primal level. I could just feel so much, layer, layer upon layer of truth that that I was experiencing. So it was, it was powerful.
Speaker 3:I fell in love very fast and, and that became my, my prime mover. I've always been less you know, one to listen to my heart, you know one to listen to, kind of my higher self. And so, when I felt so resonant with what I was hearing, what I was seeing, and then I was watching people walk the walk to live the life that were actually experientially living in accordance with those philosophies which I didn't always see. So it was both. I think it was seeing the, the depth, and hearing the depth of life, and then watching a community of people who didn't just see it as ideas in a book, but a roadmap for for life and human expansion you were inspired to go to Israel, to go to your she even pursue, you know, a depth of Jewish learning and, hopefully, a depth of understanding yourself and your context and existence.
Speaker 2:Okay, and there was an inspiration that led you there and you saw it becoming manifest and it was real when you arrived, when you were in the band. There was an image of inspiration of like who you could become as the lead singer of the band, who the band could become in their success and what life that would give all of you. And, as you saw, saw that experience start to manifest itself. It became less attractive over time yes, that's true for sure.
Speaker 3:This was something that continued to evolve in a way where I, I, I saw it making more and more sense. You know, the it's like the more time you, you spend working on something, that's true, you know the the brighter it shines. Yeah, it was like really just allowing myself to go in and I really had, I, I the great privilege and fortune to be able to spend years dedicated to something like this. Is how many years it? Well, it was probably close to 12 years before I really started transitioning into like more authorship and speaking.
Speaker 3:I did. I started teaching about six years into my learning experience and I taught for about six years subsequently and then and then started transitioning more into the role of a teacher, as opposed to. You know that anywhere from eight to 14 hour days of study and meditation. So somebody that's dead, I think, has a has a little bit of a distance myself that I have a little bit of a distance from, from that type of life.
Speaker 1:Right, so you went to Shiva and really the you set out to be a learner, is that the? Is that right, like you you know to to go to Shiva and have, like, explain that? Because you just sort of took us through like I, I learned and now I'm teaching. So yeah, yeah, no, I get it. I get the question great.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to go ahead and yeah, yeah, no, I get it, I get the question great, thank you because, right, I think most people, they go to a university here, they go to some certification programmers, they go to learn something in order to do something that's exactly right, that that's, that is the normative way that we look at education.
Speaker 3:Right, and this was going to learn something so that I can be someone, but not to not to do anything in particular. It wasn't like, okay, I'm going to do this and then, once I have my degree, then I can go do something else. It was this is the information about how to live life and to be, and so it was a psychological, philosophical, mystical path right to be on where it was and what a shift from your original, from your original thing of like I'm going to go play some music, to do this thing.
Speaker 2:I'm, you know, yeah it's almost the exact opposite you didn't have to you didn't have to go to school to be a rock star, you, you just were a rock star somehow yeah but and you didn't even go to school to learn how to do a finite task you you went from inherently being a rock star to I'm gonna mine my soul via learning the, the foundational Jewish texts, and figure out who I am and who I can continue to be through the experience of like being a musician.
Speaker 1:It's like incredible, what a story. And so now, and you know what's interesting, it makes me think of the of like human being. Right, we it's. We're not called human doings, but yeah this is how we like this is how we operate in the world, right? I think, moshe, that's a really, really great point that, like now, you are living a life where you are being yeah and the.
Speaker 3:I think over the years there was a part that did need to synthesize. Right, there were meaning there's, there is a both and like a. The elephant in the room is that it's not one or the other yeah because we are in a world that doesn't just demand action in Kabbalah. This world, is this dimension of reality, is called the world of Asiya, which means the world of action or doing. Even if you were to sit and meditate on a hilltop, you would be doing that right, right, exactly I mean even your non-doing is a form of action it has to take place that's with
Speaker 3:what, while you're still breathing and your heart is still pumping right. So we're not here to to be in one world or the other, but to to marry those two worlds together. And I was I think I it was just intuitively listening to the part of me that said now is the time to go inward and to grow your mind. And it wasn't even yet, I mean, it was maybe partially a soul thing. But I think this if over those 12 years, the first six years were really about building deep foundations that were primarily I would even say almost completely philosophical and somewhat psychological, but very the deep underpinnings and foundational ideas of what, what it means to be a human and to live this life, and the next six years were really about then going inward, which is when I took a deeper dive into, like, the side of Kabbalah and mysticism and where, with all of that, philosophy intersects with consciousness and you know, the human self. So there were stages to this process all, and then in the end, it was now. How do I share this?
Speaker 3:I felt very much so called to share this find, all my findings, with the world.
Speaker 1:I and I want to circle. So when you, before we get into becoming an author, right, so now, like taking all of the that 12 years and and now you are sort of putting that back out there as a as an author of now two books, you mentioned six years and six years, which I just feel like is important to like. How did you know what one when the first six years was over and then when the next thing? Like I don't understand that process. Is it that you know?
Speaker 3:no, no, it was. You know again, it's cosmic timing, you know, divine hand over there. I got married In my fifth year. I met my wife about four and a half years into my learning experience. In my fifth year, here I. We got married in my sixth year. We had a child and it was during that year that I got super overwhelmed and had like a minor breakdown.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean meaning like it wasn't just it wasn't timed in that, in that in a I didn't sit there and create a plan. Yeah, it just happens to be that when I was in my sixth year, I went through a really hard time Emotionally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I want to do, to point out.
Speaker 3:Is that what you do, listening?
Speaker 1:is gonna go. Oh well, you go to college for four years and you go get a master's. It's two years and that's not how you're your this process work for you, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, not at all meaning. Had I not gone through this, it probably just would have looked more like the first side.
Speaker 2:Yes, and this is what you touch on in the introduction to the three conditions.
Speaker 3:That's right it was. It was hard, you know. Look, I had spent at that point right, five, six years not involved in All that many creative projects. I wasn't working, I was living an extremely minimalistic life in every way you can imagine. And and then, all of a sudden, there's responsibilities and there's a child, and there's a spouse to take care of and, like you know, things pile up really fast. There's finances to take care of that. There's other human emotions that you are now responsible for. Yeah and so that was the very first time in a very long time because my family had moved when I was a teenager still that I really felt Bound to anybody or anything in a way that was outside of myself. So turns out, I had a lot more ego than I thought I had. Even though I was learning all this godly stuff, I was still quite full of myself.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm sure there's so much inspiration when you met your wife and, like you don't like fully Be time off, think about myself also here. But like you know to especially in like the context of like orthodox Judaism, like the gravity and the beauty and what it means to meet your Bechert, like the one who you're supposed to be with your Zeevub, your partner, and you're like now I'm gonna be like my best stuff and everything's gonna be great. I'm gonna be the best version of myself, and that's actually when everything becomes so real.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was all of that. I also started teaching at that time. So it was I'm teaching, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm I'm responsible. Yeah just on another level, which?
Speaker 3:again that's the beauty, but it also was my, my gateway into some version of a dark night so that I could find a new light on the other side. And I searched really hard in all the places that I had been working on those six years prior. So, as far as you know, foundational texts of Judaism or concerns, that's the Talmud and that's Halacha and that's the works of philosophy, but I wasn't finding Help. It was truth, but it wasn't help.
Speaker 1:What would have what? What did help look like then?
Speaker 3:So I mean, in the beginning, it was me going back to my mentors and Saying you know, yeah. Yeah, I said you know, I feel like what? What happened? I dropped my entire life. I came to this world. I've immersed myself. I know, you know, after six years of learning, I've got like a master's in Torah. Yeah, but yeah, it's like yeah, so I've got all this, this wisdom. Yeah and I feel far from myself. I felt far from my intuition, which I was always felt guided by. I felt far From God at times.
Speaker 1:It's almost sounds ironic to me, you know what I mean that you get like you, you're saying this and then, but yet you're, you're so disconnected From your higher self, or for and or from God, right, like that's. And yeah, that's incredible. Okay, keep keep going.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no, and it was. It was astounding to me because I felt like I was having all of these, you know, feelings of guilt and anger and shame in my, in my home. Or you know, I would go and I would give a class and the classes would be great, but I had this extremely powerful what's it called, imposter syndrome at the time, because I was giving over these deep, deep ideas which a year and a half earlier I would have felt in very much in alignment with, but at this point in my life, because I was in a down, you know, mentally, emotionally, so I would come back and then feel guilty and shame and just kind of crash on the couch, you know. So it's like it like felt upside down and then All the while feeling far from myself and from God. So I turned to my mentors and I was saying what am I doing wrong? Like I, you know, I thought, I thought this was it and it all.
Speaker 3:It's all true, it, the truth, resonates, but it's not fixing me. It's not fixing you know, I'm not my own personal psychology and how I relate to the ideas, because at the end of the day, the most true idea isn't Going to help you if you don't know how to take that and integrate it into your life. So until you have the bridge from truth to you, it's not helpful. In fact, sometimes it can hurt, because now you have an ideal that you're striving for, but you don't have a vehicle to get there.
Speaker 1:So what was your bridge? Yeah, so the truth to you. So, what was? What was the bridge For you?
Speaker 3:the first major bridge was introduced to me through an element of Torah that I'd spent Not too much time in which was the world of Hasidus. So that's the teachings of the ball, shemtov and his students and Restlove and Chabad Hasidus.
Speaker 1:I was actually very much attracted to it when I was younger, but those do you mind using some a little bit, and can you use a little bit of it like different language for our listeners who don't know?
Speaker 3:It's an element of Torah that really does deal more with the consciousness side of, like the human self, much more the emotional side of what's going on.
Speaker 1:Okay, that feels like a definition. That feels great. Okay, keep going yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean it's, it's, it's all rooted in the more Kabbalistic texts alongside the Talmud. So that that was the beginning of a bridge for me. But there was a point where it got so challenging where I said there's, there's got to be a way to this place. Hold on one second, let me see if I can relocate my apologies, because it is going to get loud in a moment rowdy.
Speaker 1:Yep party time.
Speaker 3:Well, four kids, it's gonna be a non-stop party there was a point where it got so challenging that, even with all the books, I still felt that I was missing a key, because I saw the truth and it was staring me at the face and in the face and I was Unable to open it. And someone just of course there is a perfect timing and synchronicity in this world and someone handed me a book called the power of now by Eckhart Tolle, and it was the first book that wasn't a Torah book that I'd ever read.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. Wow but that means, you also, we like ever yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:You didn't read like the tale of cities in high school or nothing.
Speaker 3:If you knew what my high school I Literally Two books in high school For the, for the record, I had the capacity to read. Yeah, I just didn't want to. You know I was. I was skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, playing video games. For music, that was yeah in high school and doing whatever I had to do to get by, so that I wasn't, you know, feeling high school.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Okay, so you read the power of, and then, and then. Not only did you start reading, but you started reading the most ancient text on the face of the planet, which is so interesting, in a totally different language. Okay, so you start reading the power of now, which is Right and and, and.
Speaker 3:What that book represented to me, other than the beautiful truth that it holds, was that he spoke in a language that took the concepts that I was seeing over and over and over again throughout Everything in the world of Torah, but was speaking it from the 21st century experience. Wow and so that was the first time I was really hearing that type of language and expression to this side of Torah, right again.
Speaker 2:I was.
Speaker 3:I was. I have great mentors and rabbis who gave great classes and I got I Went. Sometimes, when I speak about this element of my journey, it sounds like, well, no one spoke about that before. That's not true. I was getting it, but not to this level of depth and this level of clarity, and so that that book, for me, represented a point in my journey where I said, oh wow, you know, I've never actually looked outside of the Torah to see how people who live with us today speak about these ideas, and that opened me up.
Speaker 3:And I spent the next few years Deep diving into these two well strings, with two, two well springs, one of them being the world of Hasidus and Kabbalah and the other one being the world of psychology, new age spirituality. And just see, seeing the, the, the beautiful, both Confluence of ideas because, at the end of the day, the major, major themes and realities of life are. They're ubiquitous and we, they're universal and they're shared, right, so you can, you'll find them everywhere, and it doesn't matter what Religion you're connected to or what people you're a part of or you were born into. Everyone agrees gratitude is good, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Everyone agrees that love is at the centerfold of what we're doing, right? So if you, when you, when you drill all the way in what makes us human and what makes us move, so it turns out that we have way, way more in common With all of us on the planet collectively, then we have less in common.
Speaker 3:So that that's a really beautiful one of the journey for me, which was, which was an incredible bridge, because now I was developing a sensitivity to the language by which I could share the same ideas that I was seeing in the world of Torah, but to a larger space, and the only reason why I knew that the language was true is because I was changing. It was impacting me.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna, I'm gonna risk Pushing, pushing back just a little bit, if that's okay, and I'm like I I had this feeling when I, when I read the introduction of the new book and I Just wondering how, like, what the answer to my question is, which is when I was studying religion academically when I was an undergrad and I was studying, like philosophy, I saw many of the same common themes that you see as well. You know, the love, respect, gratitude, like being in a harmonious system connecting with nature and humanity. You know, these are, I think, very universal terms through lots of different types of philosophies and religions and traditions. But I also feel that while those tone, the Concepts, are the same, they each have a different flavor in each one and so they're both the same and different simultaneously. And If this is not something that you want to address here, that's fine. But like, how much do you feel they are the similar, independent of whatever tradition is, and how much do you think they are different, dependent on the specific tradition?
Speaker 3:So I, first of all, I think the question is terrific and so I appreciate it very much. Thank you, jacob. You know, for me there was a line I Think it's in a book called the course and miracles, that says a Universal theology is not possible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary. And that, to me, is the answer to the question, which is yes. I think if you're looking at it from an intellectual, ideological perspective, they are. They're all gonna have their own flavors and Reasons for why they might understand One value over another, one position in terms of morality over another, but at the very end of the day, the experience of you giving a hug to your child because you love them, that is the same.
Speaker 3:And so once we can get beyond the language which is again one of the reasons why I titled the first book, it's all the same to me is because when you get beyond the surface, the underlying experience is where the sameness is.
Speaker 3:So if you read Seneca and then you come and read ancient, you know Torah philosophy, they'll be overlap, but obviously they're coming from very, very different places, and so if we were having a philosophical debate, we could say let's focus on the nuances of the difference, because obviously there's elements of overlap, but if we go to the experiential level of what it means to be a human being, the levels of overlap are, are are not just similar, they are the same in experience of what's going on. So when we talk about connecting to a Deeper part of yourself or a higher part of your mind, or being Present or conscious or awake or aware, just gonna be lots of different modalities by which you can speak about that experience, but once you get into that more awakened state, that more mindful state, so it doesn't matter what words you put there or where it's coming from. That's the state, is the state I.
Speaker 2:Actually, I was surprised by how much I understand and agree with that answer, which I was not expecting.
Speaker 1:But I, yeah, and it sounds like the power of now actually like, did that for you, that like you were at that like intellectual Level, and I think that's why you were experiencing a lot of you know, your own pain and discomfort or dis-ease, you know. And then you, how did you find that book?
Speaker 3:It was given to me by a good friend of mine who you know, he didn't even give it to me, yeah mentioned it and said it was really important. You should read this book, so I went out about it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so how do you go from reading your book?
Speaker 3:I should mention right just to cook, to tie that in a bow. At the same time, because of everything that I was going through, I also went and saw a therapist Right. A lot of people think that, oh, you just read a book and that's it. Your whole life changes and that does work for a lot of people. But I had a lot of traumas. I had a lot of things that I was holding in from my youth, that I was unaware of things, resentments that I was carrying, and I needed someone to hold my hand, and that was really important. I'm a big advocate of people going in, whether that's a mentor or a friend or a professional, but having someone to speak to about these things, who can help guide you down that path Invaluable. For me, it was absolutely life-changing.
Speaker 1:That's great and also just to name that your children are there and we hear them, and and that's wonderful. Yeah yeah, so just for our listeners, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Moshe. If I can ask a question that may take us towards the end of the episode today, moshe, how'd you get from reading Eckhart Tolle to writing your, your own new age wisdom books?
Speaker 3:I think for me, the the point really what happened was in 2019 I went through my own Kind of spiritual breakthrough, like a. What felt to me was like a second awakening in terms of who I am and what I'm doing. It was almost like the application side of everything. I had been working on that in that second six-year group and when I came to that level of clarity deeply about who I am and my place in the world, in the beginning it didn't translate as an action to do or a place to go. It was just a clear sense of, of knowing, knowing what life was to me, for me. But not long afterwards I was.
Speaker 3:I was working on a, a project, a group of ideas that I was working on putting together, not not to produce, but for myself.
Speaker 3:I was sitting in synagogue somewhere and I was sitting at a desk and I stopped and I remember in that moment Internally saying okay, at in this moment, right here.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm ready for whatever the next piece is. I don't know what the piece is, but I'm ready for the next piece of whatever the chapter, the next chapter of my life, and the next day it was the next day or the day after whatever significantly close together after that moment. Then it was a clear moment that I can remember exactly where I was sitting and how it was feeling and the books that were right in front of me. And it was this clear moment of ah, okay, there's a readiness and I'm open to receive guidance from within or from without as to what that next step looks like. And then, a day or two later, I was hit again with this big clarity of like oh, I'm supposed to share this now. And I know that it sounds like a funny thing to say out loud Like, oh, I'm gonna share this, but it wasn't. I should share this now. I'm gonna share this now. It was that same knowing with that weasel.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say the Buddy House song. It was exactly where I was sitting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It was like oh, this is what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:Right At the time, I was reading a book called the Universe has your Back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard of that book.
Speaker 3:And it was. I had read a paragraph in there of a similar kind of knowing, and it was right after I had this experience which was like the confirmation, like the universe kind of winking back at you. So you're like, yeah, at that moment you just had other people have it too, it's clear. And that was it. I knew that I had to share it. I didn't know what, by what medium to share it in. And then a couple of weeks later I was sitting in a seminar and someone had a sit down and meditate and then just write out what it is that you were doing this year, and I sat down and I wrote oh, I'm gonna write a spiritual book rooted in Torah, that's what I'm doing now. And that was it. Then I became like a, basically a person on a mission, and I didn't stop. The next month I sat down and I wrote the three conditions in three and a half weeks.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. In three and a half weeks, yeah. And when is yeah? When does that book come out? Yeah, when does it come out?
Speaker 3:November 7th. That book comes out November 7th. Yeah, that book I wrote in three and a half weeks and then four months later, covid came out and then we had to stop the production on it and during COVID that I had this feeling that the three conditions was the wrong book for the timing, because people were feeling a lot of fear and anxiety. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:That is. That is Chills chills, chills.
Speaker 2:To know that you had the inspiration and intuition to write the book and then to also have the wherewithal to know like, oh, I wrote it. It exists, but it's the wrong time.
Speaker 3:Which means it's the wrong book. So I wrote another book and that's when I wrote. That's all the same thing, amazing.
Speaker 1:So wait a second. So you wrote the three conditions first, then you were going to get it published and then you were like no, no, no, no, because now there's a huge pandemic. And you're like the world can't receive this right now. Like, intuitively, you knew that. And then, and then, but here's the thing you didn't just, you weren't like, let me just see if there's something else that I could just whip up. What guided you then to write? Was it something about the pandemic? Like what inspired it's all the same to me at that time.
Speaker 3:It's all the same to me came from the combination of what the world was feeling at the time, which I just kept hearing from everyone around me the kind of the fear, the loneliness there was, a lot of existential dread people were living with.
Speaker 3:And then it was my own personal practice. I've been working on this for a while at the time the concept of Pistavos, which means sameness. I was working on this concept of sameness for a long time and then the first six to eight weeks of the pandemic, where I was there was heavy lockdown, couldn't go anywhere, couldn't leave your apartment. I was feeling a lot of it too, right In a deep way, and so I made it my practice to work on this concept in a deep and meaningful way. And coming out of that, about two months into the pandemic, that's when I said this is the fact that I'm working on this and it works for me, and I know that this is an elemental, fundamental truth that we can share to actually help people get to this place. That's what I want to write about and share with people now, Because we didn't know if the pandemic was gonna last two months, two years or 20 years.
Speaker 3:So we need help, and so I wrote that and that was such an incredible blessing. I mean such a blessing from the darkness of that time.
Speaker 2:Well, it certainly helped me, and I know dozens of people had helped, and I'm assuming it helped hundreds if not thousands. I don't know how many, but anyone who can pick this book up, I think, should pick it up, yeah it's worth reading or listening to because it's on.
Speaker 1:you can get it as an audiobook, too, and it's really worth it and I'm really excited for the three conditions.
Speaker 2:Could you speak to the three conditions? I don't know how much time you have, Moshe, but since the three conditions came to you first, and we'll get to it last. I guess I don't know what you have time for, either to name the conditions or to open up one of the conditions for us. Whatever you like.
Speaker 1:Whatever feels right. Yeah, just to share whatever comes to you, if you don't mind.
Speaker 3:Well, the title of the book is the Three Conditions how intention, joy and certainty will supercharge your life. What the book is about is really that last part of the subtitle, which is how to elevate and supercharge the life that you're already living. We all have to go through this thing called life. You're born not by your choice, but how you go through life, how you live your life, how you experience what's going on you have far more control over. And the way that one can elevate their state of consciousness, their general energy, their frequency, how they go through this world, is by making a shift in their psychology, in their state of awareness.
Speaker 3:So the three conditions by which you do that are number one intention and, in short, intention is coming back to what our soul intention is in this world. What are we doing here? What is the overarching desire of each and every one of our individual souls? And that is to be the full expression of our authentic self, who we are, without feeling bridled by popular opinion or the belief systems that you might have locked yourself into as a child or which may have come through some sort of trauma, but to really feel the depth of your soul and then to express that that's in your creativity, that's in your choices, that's in your ability to experience the truth of who you are, which is a pure, good and elevated being. The second condition is certainty, and what certainty is about is going beyond just the fact that you're connected to your own innate goodness, but being certain that life has purpose, that life is not chaotic but has order. The word cosmos actually means order, so the recognition that all of, even all of chaos is just unseen order.
Speaker 1:Oh, I never heard of it that way. I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so it's really coming back to that place. And you don't have to come to an internal reference point that says everything's good all the time, even when I see all the bad. That's an unreasonable expectation. But to at least come to a place of open-mindedness, that I'm certain that I don't know the whole picture and that there is more to be seen, and I'm open to that. And staying open to that means I'm also open to opportunities. I'm open to good for coming from this. I can learn a lesson from this this could be leading me in a new direction in my life that I need to go on and that openness allows for nourishing, restorative, healthy positivity.
Speaker 3:And then that third space is the third condition, is joy. And when I call it a condition, what I mean is those three things are the space by which you can get to the supercharged level or the elevated state of consciousness. So joy is the measuring stick, it's the barometer by which you can sense and measure how much are you living with intention, which is the expression of authentic self and the experience of authentic self, and in alignment with certainty. So it made simple if you can recognize and be awakened to your innate goodness and the innate goodness of life. So you will naturally experience an underlying joy, piece of the goodness that is, and it'll be something that's tangible. If you don't feel that, it means that there's still a disconnect somewhere between how you're perceiving yourself or perceiving the world you're in. There's no two ways about it. That's the only.
Speaker 1:That's a really helpful tool. Just you saying that, like if you're not feeling that that this is what you might expect, this is possibly why that's not happening for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, our feelings are the physical interpretation, or energetic interpretation of what we're thinking, believing and focusing on. So if you are thinking about yourself or believing about yourself in a way that is derogatory or negative, so you're going to experience that in your emotion and if you're blocking that out, then it's going to show up in your body.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:You know, when you talk about harmonious things in different traditions, like the golden rule of treat others the way you'd like to be treated, you see that in many different places and that statement can only be supported by the assumption that the person actually wants to be treated well, or that they love themselves, or that they think that they are deeply good and I've had to do this work for myself and with many of my clients and friends of like. What does it mean to grow to a level where you just know you are inherently good in a deep way and that the world around you is also inherently good in a deep way? And how do you align yourself in that with the proper mind to experience that? And that's what I hear you saying here. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, the world is the way that the Balashankov says it is. He says the world is a mirror, right? So the way that you see yourself is going to be the way that you see everything in the world. The world that you see is really just showing you how you see the world how you see yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, you know, mosha, I was so excited to talk to you again today because I feel like I could talk to you and listen to you and talk to you for hours. I really do. This has felt like such an incredible, like a real gift, just the conversation and what you're sharing. And I feel so, so grateful that not only are we able to have this conversation, but there are these books out there that if people can't, they can't have a conversation with you for whatever reason, they get to have a piece of your insight and wisdom through the books you're writing. It just feels incredible.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad, so great. Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I got to tell you guys this has been such a pleasure. You guys are amazing and I love what you're doing, and thank you so much for having me and being a part of this and I look forward to another time down the line. We cannot wait.
Speaker 1:Thanks, mosha, and when next time you're back in the States, we'd love to spend some time together. Maybe do another episode in person, it'd be amazing.
Speaker 2:But you are coming back to the States but not to Philadelphia, so do you want to share a little bit about your upcoming tour, how people can buy your book anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, the most important thing is that people should go out and get the book. Not just because I think it's good for me to sell books, but because I think they'll appreciate it. I think you really like what's on the inside, and because my publishers have put so much into this. They put just as much love into this as I have, and I really want people to see what it's like to work in this amazing team. So it was all of my life story insight and wisdom and packaged with just elegance.
Speaker 3:So I think people really enjoy what they're going to get.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. And then what about when you're touring right? So you're going to yeah, and then I'm going to be in the States.
Speaker 3:We're going to do a tour that starts on the West Coast in Los Angeles at the end of October of 2023. If you're listening to this now in 2027, you missed it. Information on the tour and the book and everything else can be found at my website. So it's moshugarshcom.
Speaker 1:OK, great, we'll put that on the show notes.
Speaker 3:And yeah, and the books on Amazon and parts of the book are wherever people get their books. And Audible, yeah, and Audible, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome, all right. Yeah, that's it Very unfortunately.
Speaker 2:I think we have to grab a grish. Do you have to run us about?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Thank you so so much, Thank you.
Speaker 3:I found thank yous. And absolutely my pleasure. You guys are amazing.
Speaker 2:I think what you're doing is amazing.
Speaker 3:I think the idea behind what you're trying to bring forward in the podcast is beautiful, wishing you continued success and blessing and everything you're up to.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Marcia. This has been beautiful.
Speaker 2:OK, we'll be in touch.
Speaker 3:OK, looking forward to it. Have a great rest of your day, you too.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye, bye-bye.
Speaker 2:We want to thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If anything in today's episode spoke to you, please like subscribe rate and review. Also, don't forget to share this podcast with friends and family.
Speaker 1:And if there's anybody that you know that you think would be a great guest on Intuitive Choices, please email us at intuitivechoicespodcast at gmailcom. Finally, if you want to know more about our mental health practice, intuitive counseling and wellness, please check us out at intuitivecounselingoffillycom. Thank you.