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In this shiur, Rav Dov Ber Cohen teaches the fifth and deepest path of Jewish spirituality: meditation. Drawing on classical Hebrew terms and vivid imagery, he distinguishes between passive meditation
The Rabbi Dov Ber Cohen Podcast explores Jewish mindfulness, emotional mastery, relationships, and real inner avodah.
In each shiur, Rabbi Dov Ber shares practical Torah wisdom for navigating anxiety, deepening connection, strengthening emunah, and living with greater presence and purpose.
Rooted in Chassidic depth yet grounded in everyday life, these teachings are experiential, honest, and transformative.
If you’re seeking clarity without pressure, growth without guilt, and spirituality that actually changes how you live - this podcast is for you.
Spirituality, authentic, real, deep, true, Jewish spirituality, we said means one thing and one thing only, and that is a re-identification. Re-identification with soul. I am a soul in a body, for the purpose of authentic, palpable, real relationship with God. There's an infinite divine consciousness, my soul is a finite expression of that. I need to identify as my soul, feed my soul, express my soul, ultimately in order to have a personal, palpable, tangible relationship with God through following the divine guidebook, Torah and mitzvot, and bringing God-consciousness into the world around me is not about me, actually. True, highest level of spirituality is when you're not living for yourself anymore, you've transcended your your self-centeredness. That doesn't mean you ever stop working on yourself and investing in yourself, you have to do that, but even your working on yourself and investing in yourself isn't for yourself, it's for the greater good, A, of the Jewish people, B, of humanity, and C, of God Himself, that you shall bring God into the world around you. So we said there are a few ways to do this. First way we said is be less identified with physicality, less identified with and controlled by physicality in the material world. Number two we said mitzvot. Mitzvot are basically mindfulness. The whole of Judaism is a mindfulness tool, really. You have something called the Shulchan Aruch, which is the foundational book of Jewish law. I call it the foundational book of Jewish mindfulness, cuz every single halacha we have is there to tap you back into the reality that there's an infinite Creator of the universe, and that your soul is a finite expression of that, and that you have a purpose in this world, which is spiritual enlightenment and manifestation and transcendence in the world. And that's what mitzvot are, pumping up your soul, connecting it to Hashem. Number three we spoke about was teshuva. teshuva is the process of undoing any—I don't want to say damage, cuz you never damage your soul, but any covering up that you may have put on your pure soul. We gave the analogy of a light bulb, a thousand-watt light bulb. Every time you eat pig or break Shabbat or speak lashon hara or do anything that's not good for your soul, you you draw some paint on the light bulb. So you didn't damage the light bulb, you didn't take away the light, but after a while you put so much paint on the light bulb you can't see the light anymore. So teshuva is the process of cleaning the light bulb again. And it's a wonderful, joyful process. And yesterday we spoke about tefillah. tefillah is communication. Communication. Communication. We got to communicate. How do we communicate? How do we speak? How do we use use our power of speech? Specifically with Hashem. And really tefillah, prayer, is creating a a personal, intimate, authentic relationship with Hashem through speaking. And we said there are four main ways: praise, request, thanks, and just speaking, chatting. And we explained how all of those ways work, because obviously Hashem doesn't need praise or request or thanks or any of that. So it's all for us to be more conscious. And now we come onto number five, which is really the maybe the highest and the most direct path of Jewish spirituality, and it's called meditation. I don't know if you've heard this term before, meditation, but meditation is the practice of calming and clearing your mind, and then filling your mind again. Calming and clearing your mind, and then filling your mind. That's why it's called mindfulness, because you are filling your mind. Most people say it shouldn't be called mindfulness cuz my mind's already so full, that's the problem, I'm trying to empty my mind. So really there are two major paths of meditation. One is called passive meditation, and one is called active meditation. Passive meditation is the first stage really, which is to calm and clear your mind. Calm and clear your mind. So the three analogies we've been using in our classes together for the last two months are number one, a garden. You have a garden, the first thing you need to do is clear out all the rocks and the thorns and the stuff that you don't want in there. So now the garden is just fresh and able to receive. So that's passive meditation. Active meditation is then using your mind, filling your mind, so it's choosing, what do I want to plant in the garden? Because when you first got to the garden, it was full of rocks and weeds and thorns. You didn't want them in, you don't want that, you didn't choose that, it was just there. With your own mind, 90% of what's going on in your mind isn't useful, it's not helping you, it's probably quite negative and over-analytical, it's not helping you. So first you just got to cultivate your mind, just get rid of the stuff that you don't need. So David Hamelech says סור מרע ועשה טוב, which means get away from bad, and in Judaism bad means something that's not serving its purpose, i.e., it's not bringing you closer to soul and God. ועשה טוב means and and invest in good, and good means things that are taking you towards your purpose, which means closeness to yourself and God, and positivity, and happiness, and love, and joy. So passive meditation is clearing, active meditation is planting, sowing. The next mashal we used was a whiteboard. We have a whiteboard over there. Did you choose what was written on the whiteboard? No, it's up there already, it could be scribbles, you might not even like what's written on the whiteboard. So passive meditation is clean the whiteboard, let's make a blank slate. Active meditation is, now I'm going to choose what to write on my whiteboard, I'm choosing now, and I'm filling the whiteboard with stuff that I want to fill the whiteboard with. The third example was the car journey. We said that you're sitting in a car, you're driving for three hours, the music in the car is going to define your journey. If it's really, really bad, loud, depressing, horrible music, it's going to ruin your journey even if there's great views outside. But if the music is very wonderful and uplifting, even if you're driving through an industrial zone, you'll still enjoy the journey because it's the music in the car that really dictates your experience of the journey. So too, the music in your head, the soundtrack in your head, that's going to dictate how good your life is. So if you have a negative soundtrack in your head, your life's not going to be good even if you have everything externally good, and the perfect house, and the perfect job, and the perfect woman, and the perfect car, and the perfect everything. But if you have greed, and anxiety, and guilt, and doubt, and fear, you're just not going to enjoy that. Want more boomboxes? No, you're going to do the opposite, you're going to calm your mind. So let's say the music in the car isn't very good, you got two options: one is turn the music off and just enjoy the peace. Very peaceful. So that's called passive meditation. And then there's something called active meditation, which is choose the music. What music do I want to put in my head? So that's that's the whole idea of of what we're doing in our meditation. But the foundational thing is השקטה. השקטה means to quieten, peace of mind. So in Hebrew, it's called ישוב הדעת. It's a very, very important term, maybe the most important term you're ever going to learn: ישוב הדעת. It has many meanings to it, but the most simple meaning is to settle the mind. How often do you have peace of mind? How often does the voice in your head just stop? For most people, never. Never. So you run you run away into screens and drugs and stuff, and it doesn't help. Do you want me to spell it in English or Hebrew? Hebrew. י, ש, ו, ב, ישוב. New word: ה, ד, ע, ת. ישוב הדעת, ישוב הדעת. Peace of mind. Peace of mind. Peace of mind. Peace of mind, settling my mind. It's just very nice. So so life is like treading water, you know, you're just trying to stay afloat and the next issue happens and then the next thing, and it's actually quite exhausting. So meditation is basically like going and sitting on the beach. So it's like get away for a while, stop stop the struggle. It's just finding this room of peace and quiet and rest. So we have another term, very important term: מנוחת הנפש, מנוחת הנפש, מנוחת הנפש, which means a sense of well-being and presence, that I'm okay, I'm at rest. It means rest, but really I'm at physical, emotional, and mental rest, I'm at rest. Most people never have מנוחת הנפש, they're chasing, and running, and accomplishing, and achieving, and it's a complete state of rest. That's why we say Shabbat is יום מנוחה, it's a day of rest, and it doesn't just mean I'm not working, it means I'm literally I'm in a restful state. I'm not chasing, I've stopped chasing, I've arrived. I'm at the top now, there's nowhere to go, I've just arrived. ישוב הדעת, מנוחת הנפש. So what these things do is they bring immense presence. I'm just present. I'm not all over the place and I'm thinking about this and I'm there, I'm there, I'm present for my wife, I'm present for my children, I'm present for myself. We're just very present. and therefore calm person. And I don't get triggered anymore. So, you say something not nice to me, it just doesn't trigger. I'm just not so there. My ego is not so manifest, because you only get- your ego gets offended. Your soul doesn't get offended. You can't get offended. What are you going to say bad about my soul? There's nothing. You can say something bad that would hurt my ego, but the less I'm identified with my ego, the less I can get triggered, because it doesn't matter what you say. I don't identify with those things that you're saying not nice things about. So, this is what meditation is doing. It's taking you into a place of immense peace and presence, peace and presence, peace and presence and rest. And then, and and some traditions really stop there. Once we we we mentioned things like The Power of Now and books like that, which is let's kind of de- detach and go into the a state of bliss, presence, the power of now, let's be now, which is a very, very important stage, but Judaism says it's just the first stage. The real stage is then what am I going to do with my presence? I'm going to come into relationship at that point. So therefore, there's active meditation, which is now I'm going to be thinking lofty thoughts and I'm going to speaking to Hashem. Power of Now, Untethered Soul, that whole world of books, there's no they don't speak about prayer. They don't speak about mitzvot, they don't speak about doing what Hashem might want from us. It's just basically a pulling back, which is an amazing first step that we must do, but then we need to reconnect, the retethered soul. So, there's two major forms of Jewish passive meditation. The first one is called השקטה. השקטה, you know all about this. השקטה really comes from the word שקט, which means quiet. What is the key to quieting your mind? The key to stopping your mind jumping around, in the East, it's called the monkey mind. In Judaism, it is called the horse mind. Mainly because in the Ukraine, you don't have so many monkeys, but you have horses, and in Thailand, you don't have so many horses, but you have monkeys. So, your mind is generally not in your control, so it goes where it wants to go, and it's all over the place. Most people mind, jumping past and future, past and future, past. In fact, your mind almost by definition is always in the past or future, probably 85% in the future, and also a bit in the past. How do you stop your mind jumping around all over the place? So, the way, and you've experienced this, is when it's totally focused on something in the present moment. So, if you're playing a tennis match, you're not thinking about what's for dinner and what people think of you. You're if you're focused, if you're focused, you're you're there, or if you're watching a good movie, you're so in it that you're not thinking about all those things. The problem with tennis matches and movies, it does stop your mind jumping around. It does bring your mind into the present moment, but it doesn't calm your mind down. It doesn't clear your mind. So, it does the first step, but not the second step. It focuses it in the present moment, but the present moment is focused on isn't intrinsically calming. So, really what you need to do in order to calm your mind is focus it on something in the present moment which is intrinsically calming, which is basically your breath. Your breath is the key to everything. The other things that are in the present moment that could calm your mind are your five senses. So, you could use nice smells, lavender oil, you can use soft music, you can even put a piece of chocolate on your tongue, something like that to bring your attention in the present moment, so that will calm you down. We spoke a bit about that in the anxiety class. But really your breath is the key, because it says at the beginning of the Torah, ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים, that your soul was blown in through your nose. When Hashem made Adam, the first human with a soul, ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים. He blew his his soul in through his nose. So, when you breathe through your nose, the word for breath in Hebrew is neshimah, which is neshama. Your neshama is Hashem's breath. Your neshama is Hashem's outbreath, so to speak. So, when you breathe in, you're you're doing many, many things when you're breathing in. Firstly, breathing in deeply through your nose calms your system down, physically speaking. Physically speaking, it's very healthy for you. The breath is much more refined and healthy breath. Your nose filters and moisturizes the air, so you're getting better air. And breathing deeper, you're getting more oxygen. So, physically it's just very healthy for you to breathe deeply through your nose. Emotionally, it's very good for you, because it's sending a message to your system that, \"I'm okay. I'm at rest.\" When you're triggered, then your breathing is very shallow, very fast. Just you can override your system. I work with people who have anxiety, and one of the main thing is to breathe very deeply through your nose. Obviously, probably need to use lavender oil, some powerful, pleasant experience in the present moment to help with that. It helps mentally because your mind calms down, your mind is now focused on the present moment, and obviously, it helps spiritually because you're connecting into your soul. So, you have these four levels of yourself, which is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. You have a body, a heart, a mind, and a soul. Your breath is the link between all of them. Your breath helps in all of those areas. That's why I keep saying to you over and over again, the single most important thing I can ever give you is consciousness of your breath. I can't even give it to you. The single most important idea and thing, gift I want to give you, whether you use it or not is up to you, is to become very much more aware of your breath coming in and out through your nose. So once you completely clear your mind, then you can connect into your soul. We gave the analogy of the blue sky. How many days a year is the sky blue and the sun shining over the streets of London? And everyone says, \"3! 10! 50!\" So the answer is 365 days a year there is blue sky and sun over the streets of London, it's just that on 335 days a year there are clouds and rain in the way so you can't see it. But any day you get in a helicopter, you can go above the clouds and you'll experience blue sky. Your soul is always okay. It's always full of love and joy and playfulness and everything. Your soul is always that. It's never not like that. It's just that your mind is in the way, the clouds of your mind, and your overthinking and your anxiety and the past and the future. But once you can go above the clouds of your mind, then you tap into this place of the blue sky of your soul. Another analogy is actually the almost the opposite. However big the waves are on the sea, and there's crashing waves and thunder and lightning, if you go under the water, 10 m, 20 m, it's completely quiet and calm under the water. Doesn't matter how big the waves are, you go under the water, quiet and calm. Doesn't matter how big your anxiety and trauma and pain, everything is, the deeper you go into yourself, the calmer and quieter it gets. Deeper you go, it's always, it's there. So we're trying to access that place of of natural calm and peace and presence, and what comes out of that, which is love and joy. So that's what השקטה is doing. We're also given another another analogy. Have you ever been to a movie and it was so good that you were so enrapt in the movie that you forgot that you were in a cinema or in your living room? You just you just weren't there. You weren't, it wasn't, \"I'm watching a movie,\" you were so in the movie. And then the movie comes to an end and you look around and you're like, \"Oh, I'm in my living room,\" or \"Oh, I got to put my coat on.\" You've you've completely lost all sense of self. There wasn't you watching the movie. People sit there with their popcorn halfway up to their mouth. Why are they doing that? Really. Either put it in your mouth or put it down. They're doing that because they've lost all sense of self. No one's thinking, \"I'm doing that.\" They've just been sucked into the movie. Now that's a very good thing when it comes to a movie, but you've been sucked into your psyche. So you've forgotten that there's a self. Basically, your whole life, you've been sucked into the movie of your life and your roles and your persona and your issues and your problems, and you've forgotten, hold on, there's a neshama here. It's a very important mashal, analogy to understand. When you're in the cinema, it's a very good thing that you lose your sense of self. If it's a bad movie, you don't, by the way. You're checking your phone. If it's a good movie, you get sucked into the movie, you lost your, and that's a good thing because that makes an experience. In your everyday life, it's a terrible thing. You've been sucked into the movie of your psyche and your roles and your issues and your decisions, and you forgot, hold on, there's a me. So what meditation is trying to do is help you wake up. Wake up, there's a me. Very important. Once again, maybe other traditions would then say, \"Now stay in that state of beyond everything.\" Judaism says, \"Do not do that. Go back into the movie. Just become the director of the movie. Be the manager of the team. Get in there.\" So we're always we're we're pulling away, but then we're coming back in with more consciousness. That's what Shabbat and the weekday is. Shabbat is, let's pull away and reconnect, and then come back into the weekday and move and shake and change the world, and Nobel prizes and do everything good in this world, but still with Shabbat consciousness throughout the week. That's why say brachot, that's why we have a mezuzah, that's why the whole rest of Judaism is that mindfulness technique to keep tapping us back in, tapping us back in, tapping us back into that place, state of presence. So that's that's what השקטה is doing. What What kind of imagery should we have while meditating? Like, are you meant to be thinking about anything like that, clear sky or Yes, if that helps you. There are different types of meditations, but the basic, basic, basic one is you're just trying to literally focus on the breath coming in and out, no imagery. But yes, eventually if you want to have some imagery, clear sky, white light, something like that. Later on, there are Kabbalistic meditations where you imagine God's name, י and ה and ו and ה, and different types of names, and very advanced Kabbalistic meditations, but we just got to try and focus on our breath for now. Then then then there's something called הבטה. הבטה is another passive meditation where you just watch your thoughts going past, like clouds in the sky. The first one is, you're focusing on your breath coming in and out. After one second, your mind's going to wander, and rather than getting frustrated and upset and bored and angry and anxious, smile, and bring your attention back to your breath. And then your mind will wander again, bring your attention So if you do this for three minutes, trying to just focus on your breath, you'll probably in that three minutes focus on your breath for about three seconds, at first. And 20 times in that three minutes, your mind will wander, and you'll bring it back. So that's how the practice starts: wander, bring it back. So you think, \"I failed 20 times.\" I say, \"No, you didn't. You succeeded 20 times in bringing your mind back.\" And then after a while, you can focus on your breath for three seconds, and your mind wanders for three seconds, and then you catch it. And then you can focus for four seconds, and your mind wanders for two seconds, and then And sometimes you have good days, sometimes you have bad days, but in general, that's what the chart is going to look like, until you can just focus on your breath, connecting to your soul, which in itself is an amazing feeling. It's just very blissful and peaceful. It's like when the baby, you'll see, it doesn't stop crying. 3:00 in the morning, it's just been crying for five hours, and then suddenly, falls asleep. That feeling is It was almost worth going through those five hours of nightmare to enjoy that moment of like So you are going through hours and hours and hours of your mind just being annoying. So once you can actually have peace of mind, it's just like, pshhh, wow! That's what life is could be like? Yeah. Then, so הבטה it's called. הבטה is, so watch the thoughts going. So when a thought comes, don't engage in it and judge it, \"I like that thought. I don't like that thought,\" judging myself, just say that's a thought, and let it go. Just watch thoughts coming and going, coming and going. And once What's going to happen is, you're going to get involved in a thought, and you're going to start thinking it. As soon as you notice that you're not watching thoughts, you're involved and you're daydreaming, take a deep breath, come back out, and start watching again. הבטה, watching state. Very quickly because we're running out of time, then active meditation is, \"Okay, now what do I want to fill my mind with? I'm going to now sit for the next three minutes and focus on everything I'm deeply grateful for.\" So that's a form of active meditation. \"I'm going to sit for the next five minutes and just think about all the things I love and appreciate about my wife.\" So this is called hitbonenut. Hitbonenut, which means contemplation. I'm going to choose the soundtrack basically of my car. So when I get on my bike in the morning, and it's a 10-minute ride to yeshivah, I don't just let my mind do whatever it wants, I choose, what do I want to think about for 10 minutes? If I haven't planned my class, I'll think about what I'm going to teach. If I if I have planned my class, I'll think about what I'm grateful for, or whatever. So I actually choose what I want to think. I don't just let thinking happen. I choose, what do I want to think? On the way home from work, I think about what how my day was, and what I could improve, and if there's anyone I need to apologize to, or what I I I choose what's going on in my mind. That's an active form of meditation. There are other active forms of meditation, like I said, with imagining God's name, and have imagination, imagine you're on a beach, and the waves, and the this, that's an active type of meditation. Yeah. So this in this way, you do two things: number one, you train your mind to think loftier thoughts, and that connects you to soul and God. But number two, you clear your mind, so then you're just in direct experience of God. So I do this in the middle of Shemoneh Esrei. I don't just say all the words, I stop. If I don't feel like I'm actually saying things to actually God there, I'll stop, and I'll take a few deep breaths. And then I'll say, \"Hashem, I'm actually talking to you now.\" Before I say a berachah, I take a deep breath. Before I put on my tefillin, I take a deep breath. Before every all everything. If someone says something to me, before I reply, I take a deep breath. I take I'm breathing very deeply. My son, who was born three months early, he was on a respirator. And I could literally see he was being kept alive by this machine. He was being breathed. He wasn't breathing. He was being breathed. So you got to understand, you're on a divine respirator. You're not thinking of your breath most of the time, which means you're not breathing. You're not beating your heart now. Your heart's being beaten, it's beating. You're not actually breathing now. You're being breathed. But you can make your breath conscious. So that's how you tap into the divine life force that is flowing through you. So you're going to breathe like what, 22,000 times today? How many of your breaths are going to actually be conscious? For most people, none, ever. If you can just make five of them conscious, that would change your life significantly. 10. 15? 20? Certainly these are our five paths, our five paths. They're the ones that God gave us. There are other paths. People say, \"Ah, psychedelics, and plant medicine, and this type of thing,\" and it's not our path. Those aren't our paths. Now, once again, if you have PTSD and you're you're sick, then you might need to use those things, but it's not a spiritual path. We don't see those as a spiritual path, we see it as healing from PTSD and trauma. That's what those things are used for. There are other paths which are really part of tefillah, like nigun. Nigun is singing, usually without words, but just over You can sing the same tune for like an hour in the dark, third meal or Friday night, and that nigun, the tune, the song, starts vibrating through you. So that's also another path. I should have spoken about that more in tefillah, but these are our five paths that God gave us to connect to our soul and Him in a authentic, vital, joyful, conscious way. Not easy, just smoking weed is much easier, but it's not transforming you, it's not taking you to into it's not tapping you into your soul. So what we want to do is we we don't chase after high peak experiences and then crashes. We want to start building slow, consistent, higher consciousness, until you're actually just vibrating on a much higher level of consciousness. Just more than people who are just going through their lives and then microdosing something to feel high. So you're constantly living on a psilocybin high without psilocybin. We have our five methods, do they not? Be'ezrat Hashem, yes. According to you, so active meditation is probably the best way that you get today is tefillah? tefillah is a form of active meditation, but I I I don't like it when people say, \"I meditate, I pray.\" And I'm like, it's a form of meditation, but it's not meditation. For now, when I say meditation, I really mean the first thing which is השקטה which is ישוב הדעת, peace of mind, that's what meditation really means. Yes, yes. So you can't Someone who says to me, \"I don't ever sit and focus on my breath in order to calm my mind,\" I say, \"Well, you didn't meditate then. That's the foundation of everything. If you don't do that, you're not meditating.\" And then then we have something called mindfulness. So I put on my tefillin mindfully. The difference between meditation and mindfulness very quickly is meditation is you set aside time to practice and exercise. Mindfulness is a way of life. I'm just more present when I'm putting on my tefillin, when I'm eating, when I'm speaking to people. I'm a mindful person. So my prayer can be mindful, so I wouldn't confuse prayer and meditation, but you need to be a very deeply mindful person. Present and mindful, and that's going to take meditate I really actually don't understand how anyone can fully be healthy in general and definitely not spiritually connected if they're not focusing on their breath for 3 to 5 minutes a day. I just don't understand. And I, you know what, I do understand, people aren't. People aren't, people are struggling. Favorite app? My favorite mindfulness and meditation app is the kavana app. K-A-V-A-N-A, kavana app, because it's all based on Torah sources, guided by Torah observant Jews. And it's very, very, very professional, very well done. And it has about 64 guided meditations and wisdom classes by Rabbi Dov Ber Cohen. Who? Who is he? Who's this guy? It's not my app, but there are many, many different teachers. And Rabbi Dov Ber, is he well-known? Turn around if you've heard of him. Okay. So, it's an amazing app. So you don't need Headspace anymore, and you don't need Insight Timer, because you have a pure Torah-true meditation app now. Yeah. How long in the morning do you typically spend doing like a...? I think you should do 5 minutes. You should I spend 16 hours on my meditation retreats. At the moment, I'm not spending an hour a day focusing on my breath, I just don't have the time, but... Yeah, but you were saying you can do it in 5, 6 minutes. Yeah, but I think you could be doing 10, 15 minutes. You don't have a family to look after, you don't have money to make, you don't have You you don't really have any responsibilities, so I think a good 10, 15 minutes would be good.