 Good day mate 40 here. So I just saw a comment from a friend like what is rabbi Luke been preaching about lately? Seems like he's abandoned activism to discuss mental health Well, there's a time and a place right? I love the guidelines on the serenity prayer You know God grant me The serenity to accept the things I cannot change The courage to change the things I can and the wisdoms know the difference so Activism mode versus understanding mode very different modes so when you're trying to get something done your focus of attention tends to narrow and You're interested in understanding something may even narrow just down to okay. I'm interested in understanding to whatever extent it will help me With my activism but when you're you're in activism mode, you're just gonna narrow your thinking and and you're gonna be very tempted to look at people as means to an end rather than ends in themselves and Probably won't spend that much time trying to understand Beyond what's necessary for your activism so We don't want to be thinking thinking thinking Like driven driven driven All the time right sometimes we just want to be an awareness, right? So I'm being particularly in activism mode for many many months. I enjoy just being in a state of awareness of the world around me Just trying to understand the world around me without need for passing judgments Or unnecessary judgments. I'm enjoying not eating have my mind raised And try to figure things out and to propound solutions So I Notice when I'm simply an awareness rather than judgment That there's less tension in my back and my neck and in my shoulders in my face and around my jaw and around my eyes And around my lips and in my forehead Right. See this is the This is the forehead of a man who's in awareness Not reaction and judgment This is the face of someone who simply wants to understand look at this face. It just wants to understand bro Not here to judge you. I'm not here to do activism right now Just want to be aware of the world around me understand the world around me Breathing comes easier Naturally breathes deeper more efficiently movement is more efficient All my actions tend to be more efficient when I'm in awareness rather than in judgment So I've pretty much gone through my life regarding the outside world as the enemy to be debunked And so like my habitual reactions to authority right would be heavily programmed by my instinctive reactions to authority when I was a small child Right. So I was hit a lot when I was a child when I was in foster care So I developed a lot of reactions of just instinctive hatred towards authority And just wanted to treat the outside world as the enemy to be debunked in this distrustful hyper active hyper aware hyper vigilant hyper alert mode I did not serve me now I became addicted to this mode because when I was a kid and I was getting hit like this this mode might have served me If you're in a dangerous situation, you want to be hyper vigilant and hyper aware But when you get addicted to that kind of response and then you take it into situations where you don't need to be hyper vigilant and hyper aware you're not being served so one of the biggest developments in my life I'd say over the past 13 years is to with discretion And depending on the situation learn to trust certain people in authority I can choose I can pick and choose who I trust And just become willing to trust so I finally finished my conversion to orthodox Judaism about 12 years ago so that that meant uh trusting to put myself through that process once again and give the rabbis power over me And you know allow rabbis to judge me and have my conversion hanging the balance for a few years and years and uh, I learned to trust and then I trained to be an alexander technique teacher and that was three years of daily training in a small room with a group of other people who I'd see for months and years on and And uh, I had to trust that I'd I'd get a fair go And I was given a fair go had an excellent experience with my alexander technique teacher training Even though I was a bit obnoxious at times even though I was careless With my opinions at time even though I didn't put as much effort into shaping how I said things as uh, as would have benefited me Then uh, learning to take jobs, right? So between 1997 and 2000 2010 I was primarily self-employed and then over the past 11 years at times I've taken jobs and to work for people and not have an instinctive hatred for those in authority and to sometimes at a job learn to trust my co-workers learn to trust employers learn to trust clients selectively based on their own individual merits so I'm enjoying moving into an understanding and awareness mode kind of letting go of my instinctive reaction as the outside world's the enemy to be debunked and anyone with power and authority is uh likely to use it to hurt me and I should not Allow myself to be vulnerable and if you don't allow yourself to be vulnerable you can't form friendships. You can't love people You can't connect with people