Getting at the Root of Aveiros

Talked about this either last year, two years ago, maybe both. I don't recall but it's one of the most potentially upsetting or depressing moments over the course of Yom Kippur beginning with Erev Yom Kippur where we begin to misvadeh is when a person claps the Al Cheit and finds that all the Al Cheits are just as meaningful as they were last year and the year before. Now, it's yitachen that that's true for a very positive reason. It's yitachen that that's true because as a person reaches a higher madreiga, he becomes more sensitive to past chasronos and recognizes things that he didn't recognize in the past. So yitachen that last year when I clapped Al Cheit for b'machal u'v'mishteh, so I thought machal u'v'mishteh was eating without a bracha, that's what I was sensitive to, or eating without what I considered proper kavanah in making a bracha, or eating too much. Having a year of teshuvah has passed, so now I realize no, there's something more subtle in the Al Cheit of machal u'v'mishteh, that what I thought was kavanah was very rudimentary and probably inadequate. Having achieved that level of kavanah, I now realize that no, there's a higher level of kavanah which until this point I had no hassaga of. That's why the Chovos HaLevavos says that chasidim do teshuvah on their teshuvah. It's a beautiful, beautiful idea that a person has to do teshuvah on his teshuvah. What's pshat? Pshat is like this. So last year I was doing teshuvah for Chet X. Okay, so on the madreiga I was on last year, I felt and I recognized that X was wrong. X was wrong. And commensurate with my understanding of what was wrong and how wrong it was, I had that much charata and I did teshuvah. This year a person comes back and is on a higher madreiga, so then he realizes what I thought was a minor infraction, let's say milei d'alma, a person gets a ticket because he parks in front of a fire hydrant. Okay, so he has a charata, he realizes you know the city has rules and regulations about parking, so I'm sorry, I won't do it again. A year passes by and he realizes no, it was sakanas nefashos. There was a fire and because my car was parked at the fire hydrant, it caused a delay in putting out the fire. So now not only does he have to do teshuvah again for parking at the fire hydrant, he has to do teshuvah for his teshuvah because it was such a... because in doing the teshuvah I belittled the chet. That's also a chet. That's what Chovos HaLevavos says, a beautiful, beautiful idea. A person has to do teshuvah on his teshuvah. So yitachen and halevai this is the case that when we say the Al Cheits and somehow or other every year they continue to resonate, every single one of them, maybe that's why. Maybe that's why. That's not depressing. That's not depressing. That idea of the Chovos HaLevavos is something similar to what the Meor Einayim says. The Meor Einayim says what's pshat Chazal say

לעולם יעסוק אדם בתורה ומצוות אפילו שלא לשמה שמתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה.

So what's pshat l'olam? Nefesh HaChaim talks about this diyuk also. What's l'olam? It should have said l'chatchila יעסוק אדם בתורה ומצוות אפילו שלא לשמה. The whole point is שמתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה, so it's not going to be l'olam. Ich veis, you begin and for the first five years, ten years, twenty years of your avodas Hashem will be shelo lishmah and then zol Gott helfen it will become lishmah. notion of lishmah is how high can I see? I can only see a little bit above myself. I can only tilt my neck back so much. So where I am now is shelo lishmah. I see that as lishmah. I get there, so now I can see a little higher. And now I realize that what I thought was lishmah, it's also a shelo lishmah. It's also also a shelo lishmah. And he says that's a never-ending cycle. Same idea basically when you when you dig as the Chovos HaLevavos doing teshuvah on teshuvah. So that's one that's one reason Al Cheit can can resonate every year. And it's not a depressing one, that's actually very encouraging. A person shouldn't be complacent, Rachmana litzlan, but it's encouraging. But too often that's not why it resonates. Too often it resonates on the same madreiga. Mamash on the same madreiga. So how is that possible? Last year, a person doesn't Yom Kippur by Neilach, people don't posture. Right? A person doesn't posture when he's holding by Neilach. What he says he means. So how can it be that this year I begin Rosh Chodesh Elul, I begin Rosh Hashanah, I begin Yom Kippur, and the all the Al Cheit, they mean the same thing? It's not that they now mean something more subtle and nuanced, they mean the same thing. But I was sincere last year. So the teretz is that too often when we do teshuvah, we target the symptoms rather than the underlying causes. When you go to a doctor, so if the doctor gives you two Tylenol, so he's not treating the underlying cause of the fever. He's trying to relieve the symptoms. He's addressing the symptoms. If the doctor takes a blood test and he finds out there's an infection and he gives you an antibiotic, so then he's addressing the underlying cause. So the Rishonim based on the pesukim in Nach all use the metaphor of sickness for cheit. So in cheit also, a person can clap Al Cheit sincerely, with a charatah, with a nechamah, with a bushah, with a kabbalah l'haba. But if it's all on the level of the symptom, of the manifestation, and it doesn't go to what the root causes are, it's going to be extremely inordinately difficult for that teshuvah to hold. Yeah, it's sincere, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu betuvo u'v'chasdo accepts it. But lemaiseh, the person is is on track to regress because if a person doesn't get to what the yesod of the cheit was, b'ma'achal u'v'mishteh, what the yesod of of of the cheit was in all these cases, it's extremely, extremely difficult and because of that, unlikely that he's going to be successful in holding on to the teshuvah. Let's maybe just to to concretize, give a couple of illustrations and then obviously it's something that that every person has has to think through for himself. A person does a cheshbon hanefesh, Nachpisa dracheinu venachkora. He finds himself lacking bein adam l'chavero. Bein adam l'chavero. Maybe at times the way he he speaks to to people isn't isn't with the the appropriate sensitivity. He gets angry at at people and and verbally lashes out. Kahena v'kahena. Okay, pshitah. So if he does just teshuvah, okay, I'm not I'm not gonna I'm gonna refrain from speaking in an offensive manner to people. And I'm not gonna get angry and I'm not gonna lash out, but if he doesn't understand why he's doing that in the first place, the chance that he's gonna be able to stick to that commitment is not so good. Not so good. If a person understands, he looks inside himself and he sees that when I speak that way to people, the emes is it's being fueled by ga'avah and that's what I have to work on in order to undercut it, in order to preempt that type of behavior. If he's getting to the shoresh had'varim or anger, frustration with other people, which then if a person says but if I would successfully internalize my belief in hashgachah pratis so I would know that Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants me to deal with this frustrating situation, not necessarily that that's the other person's kavanah but for whatever reason Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants me to deal with that, so that also undercuts the frustration, the anger. A person has to get to the shoresh had'varim in order to increase his chances of being successful to holding onto the teshuvah and holding onto the commitment that he makes by Ne'ilah. Another very common shoresh had'varim in bein adam l'chavero is that I think everyone naturally, I don't mean this in a crude or vulgar sense, but everyone naturally is self-centered. It can't be otherwise. You know, life for us, okay, בריאת העולם ה'תשס"ט, but lema'aseh life for us, believe, begins when we're born. A person by nature is self-centered. Again not in a crude way, not even in a selfish way. Now what then follows from that, unless a person engages in an avodah that it should be otherwise, is that a person sees the world from his own vantage point. And he doesn't experience what the other person is going through but he sees it from his vantage point. So from his vantage point, the other person is a nudnik, the other person is disrespectful, the other person is this, the other person is that. If a person works on his middos to be able to see the world from other people's vantage point, so that undercuts a lot of the anger, frustration, discord, v'chulu. So these are just examples again of how if a person recognizes failures, flaws bein adam l'chavero, he has to then go look and try to understand what the shoresh had'varim is. And in that way, he has a much better chance that next year when he says the same Al Chet, if they resonate, it won't be that they resonate on the same level. It'll resonate because he's now on a higher level and he's sensitive to things he hadn't been sensitive to before. So as we try in these few days left to us to engage in a cheshbon hanefesh, as Rabbeinu Yonah says we should be doing throughout this period, so the cheshbon hanefesh is not only for the details, the cheshbon hanefesh has to be for the shoresh had'varim to understand what's the what's the fundamental flaw which generates this and how b'ezras Hashem we can be metakein it. Okay, gut yom tov.