What Happens When You See That What You Are Running After Isn’t What You Want? (#207)

[00:02] Bobbi: Welcome to UnYielded Thriving No Matter What, where we talk about how to make your next chapter in life your best chapter. I’m your host, Bobbi Kahler, and I believe that the best is yet to come.

What happens when you see that what you’ve been running after, what you’ve been working so hard for, what you’ve been striving for, is no longer what you want?

When that happened to my guest today, David Green, he decided it was time to make some big life changes. He went from being in the music and film business in Hollywood to moving to Israel and becoming a rabbi. In this conversation, David shares how to get in touch with your true inner self, who we are in our soul. He calls it the journey to the real you. In addition to that, we talk about things like how our inner voice already knows what’s actually best for us. We just have to learn how to listen to it and even hear it. He also talks about that there is treasure to be found inside of all of us. We talk about bouncing back from mistakes and failures. He also shares something that, I have to tell you, is one of the most reassuring things that I’ve ever heard anybody say about finding your purpose or your calling. And it was very, very comforting.

So a little bit about my guest before we bring him on. For over 30 years, David has been teaching topics such as individuality and soul awareness. He’s helped his students deal with issues such as loneliness, self esteem, inner awareness, making major life choices, how to find your soulmate, and more. He spent time in the Hollywood music business as a songwriter at the young age of 16. He also spent time in the film industry. He won a cable ace award. And the Cannes Film Festival for Deadly Currents and the Health and Medical Film Festival for a movie starring Martin Short, which was distributed by Disney. David, welcome to the show.

[02:11] David: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

[02:13] Bobbi: Well, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself before we kind of dive in?

[02:19] David: Okay. Well, it’s a little hard to tell about my story without diving in, because my story dives in for me. My background. I grew up in Toronto in Canada, and by 16 years old, I was in the music business, and I was trying to make it big in the R and B pop music scene, even though my background was more jazz. But I wanted to cross over into the pop world, and I was running really fast at a very young age to be successful, totally out of touch with myself. I didn’t know what I really wanted, but all I thought I wanted was to be successful in the business, in the music industry. And by the time I was 18, I was in La. Recording an album with one of the top producers there in the R and B music scene. And what happened was he was nominated for a Grammy Award, and he had won numerous Grammy Awards in the past, but he couldn’t make it. So he asked me to accept his award on his behalf. And you can imagine what an opportunity that would be to expose my name to the world, to the millions of people watching and the thousands of people in the hall. And I rented a tuxedo. He had his limousine pick me up. I had these special passes for people who were nominated, and I was heading down the highway in La. Towards there, and I became so anxious that I felt myself not having a panic attack, but feeling very scared of the possibility of him winning and me going up there and making a total fool out of myself. It’s one thing to be introduced to the world, but if you introduce to the world and sound like a fool and it’s worse than it’s worse, I’d rather not be introduced. So I actually was, like, praying, please make him lose. Please.

[04:26] Bobbi: Oh, no.

[04:28] David: Yeah. So. Thank God he lost. They did not win that year. But what happened, because I had those special passes, I was allowed to go to this big celebration after the Grammys, and there were different rooms you could go, and I chose to go into a room where they had this big spread of food and television showing the Grammys all over. And I had been running after being a certain type of musician, like a talented jazz musician who broke into the R and B market. And there was one band that I think won a Grammy that year, and I saw the head of that band there who you could say was my idol, and he represented everything I was running to be, and he looked miserable to me. He was sitting there smoking a joint, looking like, really? Like, I’m a miserable person. That’s how he looked to me. And I had this epiphany of like, whoa, why am I running so fast to be this person when this person looks miserable? I think I better figure out what makes David happy, and then I can use my music as an expression of that, as opposed to believing that the music is going to make me happy. And I turned around 180 degrees. I decided to go to college. I went to music school in Indiana, and after a few years of being there and finding everybody trying to run after being that musician in La, I decided, you know what? This isn’t for me. I have to go somewhere where I can hear myself, so you know who I really am. And that is what I called my Journey to The Real You, which is the name of an album I produced about ten years ago. And I went to Israel, and in Israel, in Jerusalem, in the old city, I lived right across from the Western wall and where the temple used to stand. And I was just so inspired by being around people who were philosophically interested in what this life is about and what is a soul and who we are as individuals. And the more I studied, the more I felt happier within myself. And I felt like the type of person I was was to strike up a philosophical discussion with my friends in college. Well, here there were a bunch of people who were like that, and there were these rabbis teaching us stuff that were fascinating and made us all stay up and talk about these issues. And over time, I became observant. And that was a very important change in my life. But one of the things that really bothered me was because there’s so many laws in Judaism that we all keep that I felt I was going to be robbed of my individuality. But the truth is, in the physical realm, it’s the same thing. We all have to brush our teeth and we wear glasses if we need them. And we go to doctors that basically assume that our bodies all are functioning basically the same. And that’s why there’s rules that they follow in order to treat us on a physical level. On a spiritual level, it’s the same thing. There’s all these common denominators about how the soul works and what happens when we get angry and what happens when we fall in love, and what happens with all these various things on a spiritual level. So then I started to realize the spiritual physics of how we work. And the more I studied, the more I started to see that there’s nothing more that God wants from you than to be the soul he created you to be. And that became my mission, to discover who that soul is, what makes me different than everyone else in this world. And I started doing more teaching over time. I became a rabbi, and I started teaching people how to discover who they really are. So I just put out my second book called Pictures of Your Soul. The first one is called a book about you. And my music is all expressing the same thing. It’s all about self discovery and fulfillment of what your true purpose is there in the world. And that is why I’m on the show tonight.

[09:00] Bobbi: That’s cool.

[09:01] David: Or today in your part of the world.

[09:04] Bobbi: Yeah. Gosh, David, there’s so much in there. I have to go back. So I’ve got some questions. Obviously, when you saw your idol, right, the person that you were trying so hard to be, and you saw how unhappy he was, you were 18 at the time.

[09:21] David: Yeah.

[09:22] Bobbi: Wow. Did that surprise you to see him in that state?

[09:28] David: Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. There are about three piano player composers out there that at the time were like they were untouchable. And you would think somebody who was on such a high level in his creativity and his music that he would be a person that feels a sense of satisfaction. And he just looked miserable. And I feel it was a moment of not of a prophetic vision. It was a moment of just seeing reality by the shock of seeing that face that just did not match what I was running after.

[10:13] Bobbi: That’s right. It’s amazing that it had to be profound because you were 18, you were working hard, you’re going in a certain direction. So the fact that it hit you that hard and that it made you change course, I mean, did you have any inklings of that before that interaction with that guy?

[10:37] David: No, I was just running too fast to be successful. In fact, picture the environment. There I was with all the celebrities who had won Grammys for that year. They’re the ones who are allowed to go into that party. It was the executives of all the big record companies. So there I was doing my thing, rubbing shoulders with all the big players. So I was on a high, going faster and faster, accelerating towards that goal. So in the midst of that fast paced target there, I had a face that just did not represent what I was running after. It was just and I’ve learned since that we all have moments in our lives, quite frequently, in fact, where we can see reality, like with a deep inner awareness. But the problem is that the way we live our life, especially now with phones, we’re constantly waiting for the next message. We’re not hearing what’s going on inside. And so even if I had this incredible insight to glean from, I’d be too busy looking at my phone or whatever else is too much static going through my brain that I can’t hear that voice. But that was at a time when technology wasn’t the way it is today. That was at a time where I was there basically my eyes looking at him. But we have to learn to do that in our age as well. We have to do that now where we’re open to hearing the inner voice that comes out of us, that it’s like an internal sense of prophecy, of hearing something deep down inside of ourselves that tells us who we are and what we’re meant to do and where we’re going in life. And if people are always running away from themselves, then how in the world are they expecting to be able to be happy?

[12:42] Bobbi: That’s right.

[12:45] David: I try to help people with that. Just to slow down. Meditate. Listen to your inner voice, listen to your soul. We can talk about that more, what that means to listen to your soul and build your way back up to what you’re doing in the present. But first, get in touch with the roots of what that person is that you’re busy being. Don’t be so busy being something until you discover who that is that is doing that. Who is that being busy?

[13:19] Bobbi: Yeah, I think you’re totally right that had you had cell phones, had that.

[13:26] David: Been in the area, no way you.

[13:28] Bobbi: Would have been taking selfies. I mean, you’d have been posting on all the different social you would have missed that moment.

[13:37] David: Right.

[13:38] Bobbi: I had someone on this was, oh my gosh, almost two years ago, he was on and he said that God is always talking to us. The problem is we don’t always hear because we think we’re too busy in air quotes. Right?

[13:51] David: Right.

[13:54] Bobbi: You said something like hearing that something deep down inside. Right. How do we go about hearing that, tapping into that? How do we do that?

[14:07] David: Well, the first one is to realize that an inner voice already knows what’s best for you. Okay? There’s an inner voice, there’s the depth of your soul that has a personality and a mandate of what to do in this world. Now, if you believe that that’s there, then it’s a very different type of experience than if you don’t believe that it’s there. Our tradition is that there were thousands of prophets at the time of the Temple. And they were not prophets just to tell us, like what we read in the prophets, but rather prophets that could come to you and say, you know, what your particular mission in this world is this. This is what God has assigned to be your particular mission, and this is your personality. And what happened is prophecy left us, and that’s a whole issue why that happened, but it left us in exchange for a desire for idol worship when idol worship was the desire for idol worship was removed. So prophecy had to be removed as well. They’re like a pendulum. But what happens is that what those prophets did, they didn’t get a sign from God telling you what your personality was. They were able to see into who you are and see that inner voice that you have, and they would just tell you what’s going on inside you. It wasn’t that they were getting a message from God, they just had the ability to penetrate into your soul and see who you are and what you’re there for. Which means that for us, that has not gone away. What the prophets saw did not go away. But what we have to do is dig down until we see for ourselves what they were able to see from outside. Now what we have to do is learn how to do that and see what there is inside of us. So now that changes the picture because that means now I know that there is a gold mine inside. And if you go out, let’s say, somewhere, and you have no reason to think there’s gold there, but you just start digging, you’re going to be a very frustrated digger because you don’t have any reason to believe that there’s something there. But if you follow a tradition that says that there actually is a gold mine inside you, and that’s a soul, and that soul has a particular mandate in this world to achieve. And that when you fulfill what that mandate is, that’s what’s truly going to make you happy. Because a person who has a job in this world, they do someone else’s job, they’re not going to be happy. When you’re doing where the job that you know is the one you’re meant to do, so then you feel fired up every day. You don’t have to go on holidays. Every day is a holiday. You’re always being who you want to be. It’s a happy world. So what we have to do is learn how to dig down knowing that there is a treasure to be found within us. Therefore, what I try to help people do is start by getting in touch with their breath, their breathing, which is what mindfulness does a lot of, because breathing is connected to the soul. Every time we take a breath, that’s a fresh new breath that God is breathing into us. The first is to just get in touch with that spiritual element within us and just become aware of that. And even though that’s not going to tell you what you should do for a living, and that’s not going to tell you who you should marry, and that’s not going to tell you what other major choice as you have in life. But it’s a very important start. So when you ask what can people do to try to get in touch, that’s the very first step. It’s just getting in touch with that you’re alive and that you’re not just this physical being. And as a spiritual being, there’s so much to achieve that has to do with the uniqueness of your soul. After that, I go into individuality. And what makes different people different how? Some souls come from a certain channel, in a heavenly channel called hessid, which is kindness. Some people are rooted to kindness. Some people are more rooted to discipline. They’re the ones at the gym in the morning. They’re the ones who open up the office door. Their desks are always neat. They’re always on time. Where those who are more into kindness are people. People. So they’re more late. They’re very spiritually inclined about meditation. And my first book about you talks about three personalities. And by helping people discover which one they are, that’s another level, getting closer to who you are. It doesn’t take you all the way there, but it takes you to a much further step deep down inside by discovering which ones you are. And by the way, on my website, there’s an online personality test that you can take, and it’ll tell you which of them they are. But then you got to read my book to know what that means.

[19:26] Bobbi: But at least you know what the personality type?

[19:29] David: That right.

[19:31] Bobbi: Okay, I have a question. So in step one, you said get in touch with the breath and also the blood flowing through you and basically the life force and that type of thing. This is something that my father passed away in November, and since that time there’s been a lot of exploration in this area for me. But I think that there’s still, when people hear get in touch with the breath and meditate, I think that there is a perception that that means you have to go in a quiet room for an hour at a time, maybe 2 hours at a time. Is that necessary, that level?

[20:15] David: Well, as I said, my first album was called Journey to the Real You. That is actually the statement that was said to the very first Jew, Abraham. Right. You heard of the Abraham Accords, right? So Abraham was the father of the Jewish people, and when something is said for the first time in the Bible, so it has tremendous significance. So the words leha were said, which means go to yourself, which means the journey to the real you. Now, there’s two parts of that. The first one was go, which means that by you picking yourself up and removing yourself from your regular environment, you go somewhere different. That change of environment in itself is a powerful tool to start removing the static of noise that covers up hearing our inner selves. So meditation is you can do that by turning off the lights, turning off your phone and your computer, and you are already into a transformed environment because those two things alone occupy so much space and noise in our brain. It’d be even better if you went into a different room where your phone and your computer aren’t there, so you don’t feel tempted to say, well, maybe that person is texting me now I’m going to make a big deal here. So there is a physical removal from the environment you’re from. So for me, I picked myself up and I went to Israel. So that was a very influential transformation that took place in terms of my environment that helped me see who I was inside because I was no longer surrounded by all these goals of being artsy and cool and all the things that the music stool students have to be. So that was a very helpful thing. But today I go three times a day and I pray. That’s a form of meditation. But I could just close my eyes where I am and just remove the distractions that around me and do what I can to change the mindset I’m in, as if I’ve gone somewhere else. But all I’ve done is in a sense, I’ve removed what’s around me and taken that away as opposed to me moving from it to somewhere else.

[22:48] Bobbi: Yeah.

[22:49] David: My second book starts with walking through a forest and you don’t have your phone with you and you’re hearing the birds and you’re starting to hear the water of the river, and you start hearing. And the more you do that, the more you find yourself getting in touch with who you really are, right? So there’s something about being in nature that you feel at peace with yourself in an environment that’s natural and that amplifies the voice of that inner voice of the soul by being in a place where you’re alone with God’s creation. It’s a very strange thing, what I used to do. I had no reason why I did it back then. Now I know for sure why I did it. But when I was in college, I used to like to go to a park down the street, and it was a grassy park with a little ditch in it, a very small ditch that was only about, I’d say, eight inches deep. And I used to lie in the ditch and it was almost as if I was part of the grass that just went like the grass went over me and then continued. I was part of the ground. I was, like we say, dust of the earth. And what I was doing was I was letting go of all the expectations that my friends, my professors in college, all the people who expected this certain type of music from me, who expected me to be a certain type of person. And I said, you know what? I’m going to take a break from all that, and I’m just going to be this little piece of earth. And when you develop the ability to nullify yourself to being a piece of earth, then suddenly you become very great. The greatness of the leader of the Jewish people in the desert of Moses was that he was so humble that he was allowing God’s voice to speak through him because he nullified himself, and therefore he was the greatest leader because of how nothingness he made himself be. So similarly, we can go through a meditative process, but it should also be directional. It should be to get more in touch with ourselves, which essentially is like dust of the earth. And then our true personality with vitality. Everything that we want to express in this world, it’s coming from a very pure place, as opposed to being influenced by the social media or the movie stars and all the various input that we’re getting that’s so hard to determine whether it’s genuine or not. I just want to be me. And the only place to be me is by starting at that very low place where I’m actually seeing myself like a piece of dust, and then I can blossom like a fruit decays. And then you have the pit, and then the pit decays. And then what comes out of that decaying process? Life. And so too, part of the meditation process is recognizing that we are just like a little seed dropped into the ground and we’re going to blossom from there. So let yourself go there. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of like, you’re letting go of life. No. When you feel this sense of surrendering to God, a feel of surrendering, all this, everything you’re trying to achieve based on what society and what your parents are demanding of you or did demand of you, the more you can let go of those things than you actually discovering yourself. But it’s scary. My second album that I put out is called Empty Spaces, which is part of a meditation that moves from the nephew level of the soul to the second level, which is called ruach. And that’s more the emotional realm. But when you go there, it’s black, it’s a touch of infinity. The more spiritual something is, the more it’s touching the infinite and therefore it’s very scary. Oh no, where am I going? I’m like flying into somewhere in nowhere’s land. So that empty space, it’s considered like in a Torah scroll. In the Bible, the letters are considered very holy, every letter. But the spaces between the letters are considered even holier because they are what contain the letters within them. So too we can find the empty spaces. And that’s what that song is about. It’s meditating into the ruach level where I’m going into the empty spaces and it seems very, very scary. But actually when you allow yourself to go there, then you are actually getting much more in touch with yourself. And it’s very much the same thing in a relationship. When my wife and I unite and we feel we surrender to each other, there’s no embarrassment of anything. It’s a total openness of who we are with each other. So there’s a certain vulnerability of exposing that to somebody else. But the truth is, the greatest intimacy comes from when you’re willing to let go of yourself. And that’s when you’re going to get the most of yourself. So the meditative process of going and digging deep, discovering that you’re a soul and then starting to explore that territory, that may be very scary, you’re actually coming more in touch with yourself. That’s the second level.

[28:33] Bobbi: Wow. Okay, so a few things I heard in there. It seems like a lot of the work is to remove the distractions, whether that’s the cell phones, the noise, the static, preconceived ideas that you might have about yourself that maybe your parents or peers or whatever are putting on you. And I’m also wondering, like, we tend to really overthink anymore. We think, well, if I just think harder about something, I’m going to find the answer. And it seems like that would be another distraction. Am I on the right track with that?

[29:11] David: Right, because of the patterns of thinking can become overly influenced by the way other people think. If it was your own way of thinking and you could be very genuine in the way you think, then there would be a very pure process. But just like are accustomed to a certain environment and my coffee shop and my friends and everything that I normally do, those are almost like my instinctive reactions to the world around me. So the way we think also has adopted patterns of thinking. If you go to somewhere else in the world, if you go to China the way people think in China, it’s not the same linear path that we have. They think in a different way. And if I was born in China, I would think that way. So why am I claiming that I have the only right way to think? Rather, I have to try to hear the way my brain really was gifted by God. I have to tune into that positive gift. And it’s no fluke that I was born in Canada. There’s no fluke that I came to Israel. That’s all part of a gift that I have. So you were asking before about it sounds so much like we’re moving distraction. Yes, and that’s a very big battle in today’s world. But the La ha to yourself part of it, you have to discover incredible gifts that you have. So I teach a lot about self esteem based on this because self esteem in a lot of the secular world is taught in a relative way. So, for example, if I’m successful in a way that other people aren’t, then I have a right to love myself. People tend to gauge their worth based on other people’s reactions. But if you know that you are given a soul that is a jewel that nobody can touch, that its absolute value is there. So no matter what mistakes you make in life, you’re never hurting the essence of who you are. And your self esteem should be based on loving that true essence of who you are, not loving yourself. Because today I did well in my music performance and people really clapped. And therefore I really feel I’m a good guy today. That’s the world I was growing up in. And it’s a complete opposite. It’s a complete reverse from that. So in terms of the positive aspect of finding yourself, it starts with finding the reality that you are a soul. And what I try to help people do is become more aware of that soul. Because soul is something which we throw around but we don’t really know what we’re saying. We say soul food, soul music, right? I’m getting in touch with my soul. What do you mean? What is that soul? But the more you can learn about what that soul is the more you can establish a relationship with it and know what it’s not. That’s also important. So we have a tremendous amount of teaching in the world of Kabbalah, in the world of Hasidis which teaches us about what the soul is and how to elevate the soul and how to identify the personality of your soul. And that’s. The proactive part of self discovery as opposed to the removal of distraction.

[32:57] Bobbi: Okay, so that’s really interesting, and I love what you’re saying there about the self esteem, and it’s not based on did I do well today? How many likes did I get on my social media posts? All that kind of nonsense. You said the soul is kind of a mystery for many people and that we need to get in touch with that. So what is it and how do we get in touch with it? I know it’s a big question.

[33:27] David: It’s a big question, but it’s not that big a book. This second book I wrote called Pictures of Your Soul takes you through what a soul is and what I’ve described so far from the nephew level of a soul, you can actually try to experience it. I put meditations throughout, which are meditations not closing your eyes and forgetting something, but actually walking through a process of getting more in touch with your soul. Besides the fact that it has five levels, we actually have two souls. We have a soul which is called the animal soul, and we have what’s called a divine soul. What I’ve been describing up till now is the divine soul, but the animal soul is what even your dog has. You can look in the eyes of a dog. You can’t say there’s no life in there. There is life in there. There’s an animal soul in there. And we have the same kind of animal soul as an animal has, because there’s an animal side to us, and that’s necessary for us to be able to survive procreate, be able to eat, be able to do all the basic functions of life. So the thing that’s driving us to do that is the animal side of us. But when I say the animal, it doesn’t mean a negative thing. Its voices can be very negative if it rules over your body and if your choices are being driven by the animal soul. So then it’s going to take you to do things that are below your dignity, right? I don’t like to say morally corrupt anymore because nobody has any measurement for that anymore. So I’ll say only on an individual level. If there’s a certain point you don’t want to stoop so low to do well. The animal’s soul is the voice that’s trying to get you there. And there’s a battle between that and the divine soul, which is just connecting you to God in a very pure way. It’s a very elevated part of who we are. But what we’re supposed to do is like a horse and a rider. The rider is the divine soul, and the horse is the animal soul. And the divine soul is supposed to ride the horse and be in control of the horse. Right? The divine soul take the animal soul and use it to achieve various spiritual goals in this world. So the anatomy of the soul is to first know that you have two going on inside. And the essence of who you are, the one that I said your self esteem is based on, is the divine soul. But sometimes the animal soul will win. That doesn’t mean you’re bad. That means that you didn’t pass that particular test that was put in front of you at that day. If we were able to succeed at every spiritual challenge there is, then we wouldn’t be these things called humans. That’s called an angel. An angel has no free will, though. We’re given the gift of free will, and the only way we can enjoy that gift of free will, which is making that’s what makes us Godlike, is the choice that we have in life. And therefore by me being able to make a choice to do the right thing, so then that is me doing it for real. And if my animal soul ruled over me and made me do something that’s below my dignity, so then, okay, fine. But that didn’t change the essence of who I am. It just put me in a different spot in my ladder that I’m on, trying to reach up to a higher place in life. I’m also always climbing this ladder, and sometimes you have to go down a little bit before you can climb up even further. It’s like a bow and arrow. You have to pull it back. But pulling it back is the thing that’s going to make it propel really quickly going forward. So instead of getting down on myself about the mistakes that I’ve made, I use those as a trigger to help me then go on a much higher level from that lower place. And we see that the Jewish people were in Egypt as slaves, and we had no chance to make any choices. We were being persecuted, as we’ve seen throughout history, but it was from there that we were brought out and all these miracles happened. And we received the Bible after being in such a low place. It’s from the world who’s struggling when in my own life, the times that I’ve had to struggle, those painful times actually served as triggers to elevate me to a place that I would have never gotten otherwise. So we don’t look at our mistakes as being a definition of who we are. We look at them as part of a journey. And the essence of who I am is always my divine soul. And therefore I have to always hold on to that awareness, otherwise the world is going to pull me down much too low.

[38:41] Bobbi: That’s right. Okay. And I love that. The mistakes and the struggles, it doesn’t mean you’re bad. Those are not who you are. But you said something like you use those as a way to ultimately be able to climb higher.

[38:57] David: Right.

[39:00] Bobbi: How do you intentionally use mistakes and struggles in that way?

[39:07] David: First of all, there is a process called chuva, which is repentance. Now, repentance sounds like, oh, my gosh, I’m such a sinner, I have to repent and come back. But even the slightest mistake you supposed to repent for, we have in our prayers every day, we say three times a day, and we tap our hearts and ask for forgiveness. And we believe that forgiveness is a real thing. In other words, the mistake that I made, it’s almost like in a relationship, if you hurt somebody you love, when you get the courage to say, I’m sorry, it usually is followed by a hug. It’s followed by affection. It’s like, wow, there was this tension there, and now what’s happening? It’s that tension has been relieved by clarification and acknowledgment of what I’ve done wrong. And therefore, it’s followed by a hug, an embrace of love. So similarly, in my relationship with God, my mistakes are between me and God, unless it’s with another person where I have to ask forgiveness from them. But in my spiritual climb, if it’s something I’ve done below my dignity, that’s because I’ve distanced myself from God. And therefore, when I apologize and I ask Him for forgiveness and trust that he loves repentance, he loves us coming back to Him. So then I’m, in a way, I’m getting like, a hug from God. There’s this loving connection that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. It’s the fact that you got in an argument that made the love stronger. It had to rebound from somewhere else to reunite. Even on a closer level, it’s a very beautiful, real relationship we have with God. We don’t think of God as this thing way out there. He’s in the room with me right now, and I’m always trying to develop that loving relationship. It’s a commandment to love God. One of the Ten Commandments is love God. Well, how am I going to love God if God is this abstract being out there? So we’re given commandments that help us by giving to someone else, you develop a love for them by giving to your children. That develops a love for them, even if they don’t understand what giving is and what taking is. But for you to invest in your children, it creates a bond that’s a much stronger loving relationship in the direction of the giver than the taker. And therefore, God gives us a chance to give back, so to speak, through the various commandments, by our prayer, by being proactive in our relationship. And therefore that loving relationship is built. And that’s ultimately what we’re trying to climb towards. That’s the relationship. It’s not a relationship of reward and punishment. You’re going to get in big trouble if you do this. So you ate this? You shouldn’t maybe do this? No. We are looking for a loving relationship with our Father in heaven. That’s what we were looking for. And therefore, climbing the ladder is climbing that ladder of love. As long as I remember that that loving relationship is always there for me and he’s always open to it. So no matter how far I drop down, so then he’s always there. So I can use that mistake as saying, oh, gosh, I’m sorry I did that. I didn’t want to do that. I feel bad that it made a distance that I don’t want. I want to come closer. And that wanting to come closer is the ingredient to come closer. That desire to come closer creates a true loving connection.

[43:01] Bobbi: Yeah. Wow. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I like the visual of the hug right when you ask for forgiveness. Wow. One thing I want to ask before we get to start wrapping it up before that, though, earlier you said that when you’re on this journey, it can be scary. Right. What advice would you have for someone in terms of continuing to go forward anyway, even though it is scary?

[43:41] David: Perhaps you can use analogy of when you were born, you went from being in the womb and your body functioned completely different, and then you’re born and now you breathe and you have light and you’re in this world that is completely foreign to you. So in a way, it’s very scary. You can be sure that every baby is crying out of fear of being in a new world that I never thought, I never imagined before. And yet it’s where we want to go. It’s a place we want to be, it’s a place we want to grow. And every stage of life, in a sense, has its rebirth, so to speak. I don’t want to say born again. I mean rebirth, right?

[44:34] Bobbi: Yes.

[44:36] David: Every step in life should have that freshness of being willing to travel into new territory, but it’s aimed towards God. I’m aiming towards God and I’m going to come to places that I feel very uncomfortable. To me, that doesn’t mean I have to let go and forget who I am. I should actually feel a good sense of my inner self, but I’m still entering into a territory in a relationship that has a lot to be developed. My relationship. There’s an infinite level of closeness that we can continue throughout our lifetimes to have with God. And if that’s something that continues infinitely, it means it’s going to be scary at times, and therefore the fear should be almost a sense of comfort. Wow. I feel comfortable that I’m actually entering into territory that I’ve never been before. And this is something that people intuit. Like people go on these camping trips, these Outward Bound camping trips, or all kinds of challenges where they go places where they’re going to be left with hardly anything, any resources, only water, and they have to go without food for a certain amount of days. They like the challenge of going somewhere where there’s a mystery to it. They have these escape rooms now, like where you have to get out of this place, and the whole thing is supposed to be scary. People pay to be scared. It’s true. That’s because deep down inside, there’s a part of us that does want to explore the unknown. And since the soul is so abstract, there’s so much that feels unknown that you’re supposed to travel along that path to discover a new level of who you are.

[46:27] Bobbi: Yeah. Okay, one other question that came to mind. I’ve been wanting to ask this earlier. You said there’s an inner voice that already knows what to do. Right. We just need to learn to trust that. And you said that it begins with believing that is true. Right?

[46:44] David: Right.

[46:49] Bobbi: How does someone begin to believe that that is true if they don’t already?

[46:53] David: Okay, that’s a good question, because I can only tell you, as a practicing Jew, I’m sure there’s other teachings that will encourage the same thing. But I didn’t invent that I learned that from deep Jewish philosophical sources that I trust. And because I trust those sources, I’m able to therefore know that it’s true. And therefore, within me is a message of what I’m supposed to do with my life. So I can’t tell you, trust me. You have to go through your traditional sources or look into Judaism and discover what it says about knowing that God has a particular mission for you. When I teach this to my students, I read over sources that tell us that we have a particular mission in this world. For example, there’s someone who’s referred to as the Ariha Kodesh. Someone goes to Israel and goes to a city called SVAT up north. That’s where he’s buried and was one of the greatest Kabbalists of all time. And he said that a person who doesn’t know what their mission is in this world is like someone walking blind, not knowing where to go. Well, if a person has an obligation to know what their particular mission is in this world, it must be possible to find out what it is. God wouldn’t command of you to fulfill your mission unless it was something you were able to discover. And therefore, that should be enough of an incentive to do the search inside for who you are, because you know that that’s what’s necessary in order to do that, which is God is asking of you. And the COVID of my first book, a book about you, has got the word you with a thumbprint on it. And that’s because no two fingerprints are the same, just as no two souls are the same. And we have to discover what the thumbprint is of our own soul. And if you know that that is necessary to do God’s will, so therefore, it has to be possible to find it, because you wouldn’t be asked to live a life that you’re incapable of doing. You’re not being asked to fly around like a bird because you are not given wings. But if you are asked to achieve certain spiritual purpose in this world. So then you must be able to discover what that is. It means you have the faculties to be able to discover those things.

[49:50] Bobbi: Yeah, I think that there are a lot of people who it’s elusive, like purpose. Right. People look outward and hopefully there’s comfort knowing that it’s inside. It’s already inside.

[50:11] David: Right.

[50:12] Bobbi: I love that.

[50:13] David: And that’s the way the world works today. You put on a television and you completely disconnect yourself from who you are because you’re allowing the outside stimulation be the thing that’s controlling you. Turn off the TV and watch the Inner show. It’s much more dynamic and exciting.

[50:37] Bobbi: A lot more going on. Well, this has been fascinating, David, so I want to give you a chance. How can people learn more about you and your books and all that kind of stuff?

[50:49] David: So everything we discussed is just touching the tip of the iceberg. My books are there to help people discover what their individuality is, get to know what their soul really is, and help them on the journey that we’ve been discussing today. So I have a website called Realyouproject.com Realyouproject. And on there are links to my books where you can buy my books. Both are on Amazon or from my website. You can order those or in Jewish bookstores. One of my books was just rereleased by a non Jewish publisher who felt that he wanted to get it out to a more universal audience called Morgan James. As a publisher out of New York, they put it out. So I don’t know if you may even find it in an airport store bookstore, but that’s a book about you. So my music is all on Spotify, apple Music, all those streaming stations. As David H. Green. There’s so many David Greens in the world that I have to put my H in there to be found. But you can also listen to it on my website, Realyouproject.com. The music is there, but it’s better you do it on Spotify.

[52:07] Bobbi: Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. And you mentioned one thing that was on your website, too.

[52:13] David: Personality quiz.

[52:15] Bobbi: Yeah, the personality quiz. Is that it?

[52:18] David: There’s both books. Personality quiz. There’s videos that I’ve produced. I have a music video that did extremely well about a song I sang about my soul and its connection to Jerusalem eye of the Universe. Can find that on YouTube. Yeah, it’s all there.

[52:36] Bobbi: Excellent. Well, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for sharing all that. This was just a fascinating conversation, so I appreciate it. I appreciate your time.

[52:46] David: I enjoyed being here. Thank you so much.

[52:49] Bobbi: I hope that you found a lot of insights on that conversation. I know that I did. It was very eye opening in many aspects, so I hope that you enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much for being here and for subscribing. I appreciate that and by the way, if you haven’t subscribed yet, now is probably a great time to do it so that you never miss another episode. Other than that, I hope you have a terrific week and that you continue to thrive no matter what. You close.