Judge yourself

The Meaning of Life

     At the time of the Gemara, the intent of prayer was to ask for our needs. Today, maybe more than ever we need prayer for self-improvement. Materialism is the way of humanity and prayer concentrates on qualities. Prayer increases character and personality. It can lift our belief and trust in G-d. To do that we judge ourselves.              

Tefillah and Mispallel are two Hebrew words that mean prayer. When one goes to pray, the term tefillah is used.  When he finishes, the word pallalti, which is a conjugation of mispallel is used. The literal meaning of Pallalti is, I judged myself, but that meaning is often overlooked. When one says palalti, he is only indicating that he prayed. 

     You do not have to pass by the meaning of mispallel when you pray. Judging yourself is an important element in prayer for this reason. We need to judge ourselves and know who we are so when we commit wrong behaviors such as committing a sin, we can look at ourselves, find out what drew us into the act and why we made that choice, admit the truth, and make teshuva. It is also important to judge yourself so you can expand your future. Judging yourself is an act of prayer that should not be left out. If we bypass self-judgment before G-d, we are adding insult to injury.          

What is Judging Yourself 

     Judging yourself is the process leading to knowing yourself down to your deepest feelings. You learn from yourself what drives you to do the things you do. You look at your life to find what happened to you in your earlier days that caused you to act as you do. Then you compare what you learn to how you want to be when you will be at your best.   

     When you think about judgment, maybe your first thought is seeing yourself standing before G-d on the high holidays and being judged. You may think of a judgement at the supreme court, or someone facing a judgment in family court. When one is judged by others on a legal basis, a case is presented, a judge presides, and maybe a jury is present. Then, a judgment is determined. A punishment can be given, or one will go free, or someone will be given a reward. 

     When one judges himself, the objective is getting to the truth and facing it so one can know something new about himself. There is no price to pay for losing and no reward for winning. To judge oneself one only needs to be introspective and have the courage needed to say the truth. 

     A person judges himself on one specific point, not on his total makeup. There is no blame cast onto another in self-judgment but instead, one takes a better look into his own soul. if he is satisfied at that moment with what he sees on that one point, that is good enough, he moves on in prayer, but if he isn’t, he can ask himself further questions on that point, or do something more.  He can face the point head on and try to overcome it and change his life. He might opt to change a behavior, improve a character trait or a spiritual quality, apologize to someone, or in the end, let go of it. No one tells him what to do.  After he judges himself, he is holding onto a secret that is between him and G-d, and no one else. 

The Public Persona

     Why is it so challenging to question ourselves? Doesn’t everybody have that ability? We all have the ability but the image we have of ourselves stands in the way.  In public, people present a positive image of themselves to others. It is normal to show off success or some other image others respect. We do not plan out our image: it is a set of habits meant to convince others we are who we are not. Yet, some people know how to find the truth about someone by watching their facial expressions, such as rolling their eyes, a stare, or body language. They bypass the words they hear the individual say which tell a different story. What is most unfortunate is we believe our own image, the lie we tell the world, while those others who see past our image know us better than we know ourselves. 

     The self-image is called the persona. A persona is a mask we develop that protects us from what others may think. It stops them from seeing our flaws and frailties and judging ourselves critically. We learn through behavioral science that the persona is developed starting at around eight years of age and it likely comes out of early childhood feelings of shame. The problem is, most others we know believe the persona is our real self, but G-d sees through that image. He sees our true personality and knows us for who we really are. 

     A person might fight for his life to prevent others from seeing past his persona. For instance, an individual might treat his wife, or his children with contempt behind closed doors but before the public eye, he shows his persona. He is calm, open minded, and patient. Which personality is the one people believe? It depends on how well one acts out his persona before others but when someone wants to believe the persona is the real personality even when the real personality is uncovered, they will continue to believe the persona is more real than the personality and the individual will do everything he can to protect his integrity by promoting his persona. 

     If you judge yourself when you pray, over time you will move forward, from believing your persona is you, to seeing your true personality and then to becoming the person you want to be.   

Judge Yourself and see the Real You

     When you judge yourself, you get to see the real you. That is the side of yourself G-d wants you to see: it is your true personality and character. It is taught, “The unexperienced life is not worth living.” Judging yourself leads to taking responsibility for a single behavior, a thought, or a habit, so you will not point fingers at others and deflect blame, or give yourself undeserved credit, and not work on creating self-improvement. 

How does one Judge Himself?

     Judging yourself is basically, playing a mental video of yourself to yourself. You do not have to see yourself in the video or hear anyone speak. It is a video in your mind’s eye in which you see yourself asking questions to find out truth and accept it on a particular thought or behavior you are doing or have done in the past. Then you form an opinion about it. In your video you might think, I feel cheated, or I keep letting that thing happen to me, when will I ever learn. You might also say, I am happy about the way I do that. I want to get better and better at it. The camera is on you as you interview yourself and immediately afterwards, you can judge yourself. You will place a feeling or maybe a new opinion on your video for the future. Your judgement is based on the questions you ask and your accuracy depends on how honestly you answer your questions.  

Helping Yourself Out

     Today, many of us are lonely or depressed. There is a problem showing love and receiving it. Earning a living can be a problem and raising children and planning for the future is difficult. Pain is everywhere and it affects all of us. We do not know who is to blame. One cannot fix the world but fixing yourself is the next best thing. You need to look at sadness and go to G-d. Before judging yourself, pick a point of contention, admit your feelings and recognize how you treat other people and how you have been treated. Speaking your mind before G-d is very important. He can help you go through a difficult time. Be introspective and search for answers. Anything can be fixed, or recreated besides death of others and even that can be worked on. 

     Since heavenly judgment includes having a strong connection with your fellow Jews in your heart, it is good to look at how Jews affect you. Do you love all Jews or are you discouraged by the wrong behaviors of some of them that make the news, or one Jew that takes advantage of you, or the one who divorces your relative, or is on their fifth marriage? We are a beautiful people with some who are exceptions. Keep your big picture in mind when you Judge yourself and do not compare yourself to those who go astray. You are a member of a marvelous ancient people. 

     Sometimes a person is extremely honest with themselves and over time they develop a lovely character. The way it is done is by judging oneself over and over, and taking responsibility for mistakes and character flaws. Then one makes teshuva. In that situation the individual might overcome the persona he shows others and be tuned into the image of himself that G-d sees.  

     Improve yourself by taking your positive traits seriously. Judging yourself is the method that improves character and removes personality flaws, and spiritual flaws. For instance, if you are an honest person, you might be disturbed and frustrated with yourself when you are dishonest once in a while with another. If it doesn’t happen often, you might be upset with yourself and in self-judgment, blame yourself for a failure.  If you do not want a misbehavior to happen in the future, pray to G-d for His help so you can overcome a habit. Use this technique of judging yourself to improve any trait you are uncomfortable with. Then develop the habit of tidying up one’s character traits, one after another. If you become motivated enough, you might work on yourself for a year or more and fix most or all of your traits. You can work on your own self-improvement all your life.          

     Since G-d knows the truth about you, you should know the truth about yourself as well. If you acknowledge a truth, give up blaming others. Admit the trouble you give them. For that, G-d can change your life for the better. In other words, the more truthful you are, the more help you will receive.

Self-Judgment and Teshuva

     Judging yourself and making teshuva are not the same. In self-judgment you can ascertain how you think, feel and behave. You widen your perspective. You do not have to do teshuva on it. Teshuva is the next step. It is a process that creates change. Teshuva takes precedence in the siddur but self-judgment is an important step that precedes it.   Maybe, to G-d both are major aspects of prayer. 

Self-Judgment is not Supposed to Feel Good

     Judging yourself is never easy. When you set your sights on a behavior that is truly yours and you know it isn’t right, that is when you delve in. It is normal at that time to feel guilty over something you did. You think it through and decide if you are going to do something about it. If your choice is to change something you can move towards making teshuva. If not, you have already faced the truth during prayer, before G-d, and that can change the events in your life, or persuade you to overcome that issue in the future. 

Why are Things Always going Wrong?

     We live in a kind of fantasy world, picking up information from media, friends, and family that is racked with false beliefs and expectations. We accept them because we wrongly trust where they come from. We should not trust information from others outright unless we know that we can trust the source. Through self-judgment, misleading information is brought to mind. Then, one can change their behavior and make it habitual. 

Take Your Medicine

     Self-judgment is like taking medicine. it doesn’t taste good before you swallow it and it can be painful going down. That means, there is some pain when we criticize ourselves through self-judgment. There can be some shame and regret in that so one needs courage to do this work. But at the time of judging yourself on a behavior you do not accept, in the background is your positive self-image. You know that generally you are close to G-d, and the cornerstone of your life is being a good person and probably learning Torah and doing mitzvahs. Even if for some reason you believe that that is not the case, you can do this work as a way of self-improvement anyway. 

     Sometimes one will judge himself and find a behavior he wants to change, but he is not willing to change it at that time. Then, it is enough to notice it, except that it is a detail in your make-up, and say, I want to do something about this situation in the future but I am not ready to do that yet. Afterwards he can have some inner happiness for knowing the truth. 

     In self-judgement, if you notice something about yourself that you excel at, you may take comfort from that, thank G-d for His gift, and think of a way to make it stronger. That is also improving yourself. You might look into a mitzvah you enjoy and that improves your self-concept. You can feel your inner glow. 

Rewiring your Brain

     We all have our own unique way of thinking. We develop that through family, education, and friendships but that way of thinking can have limitations. It can limit your closeness with G-d or others, or prepared you for trouble. Rewiring you brain is thinking thoughts that shift your entire belief system. For instance, if you believe people take advantage of others at every turn, then see them as honest, caring and creating safety for others at every turn. If you often see G-d as a creator of punishments, then see him as the creator of peace, only. If you are an observant Jew, you may have also have learned a way to think the way the Torah thinks. If your thoughts have any negativity about the Torah in them, then rewiring your brain is learning how to think everything in the Torah is truth and those who learn it know truth. Additionally, you have your level of intelligence, your opinions, your habits, and your biases. On the other hand, you might say, your way of thinking is the way your brain is wired, and you function by depending on your choices which are within certain predictable patterns. If that is your behavior, you will continue to think the way you have. 

     Due to patterns of behavior you are predictable most of the time. If you have a certain belief that makes you sin, you will not correct that behavior until you put the sin together with the belief, discard the belief and adopt a new one. When you Judge yourself, you are identifying the way you think and then if you want, you change your thinking. You recognize old habits that do not serve you, old biases, maybe a bigoted way of judging others that offends them, and you replace them with points of view, and new opinions that satisfy you. If the way you behave causes others to have a negative opinion of you and that translates in to a problem you have with your self-image, rewire the way you think and change your behavior. You can say to yourself something like, “I do not like the way I behave. Others do not accept me and I am wrong. I have been wrong on what I believe about others until now. It makes me sick. That is such a wrong way for me to think. I can do better than that. That makes me believe I am no different than those other people I can’t stand.  I feel so much better thinking I can change the way I do things. I do not want to think that wrong way ever again. I don’t want to waste my time on that. Now I know another way to see things and I will use that way from now on.” When you rewire the way you think, your habits change and you can be much closer to G-d.

The Primary Goal is Eating from the Tree of Life

      G-d warned Adam against eating the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. We learn that at a future hour, man will have permission to eat the fruit from the Tree of Life. We have not reached that hour yet but we should be prepared. It makes sense that eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is actually telling lies, practicing deceit, being deceptive, and casting doubt. The fruit of the Tree of Life is speaking absolute truth. Self-Judgment leads to finding a point of truth about yourself and separating it from anything else that is possibly not true. The more truth you find in yourself, the more you will find lies and deceit wherever you go and not fall into it.

The Personal Prayer Protection Method

     There are three prayers that work together as self-protection method. The first is the Bracha Arucha in Birchos ha’Shachar the has an Yehi Ratzon blessing in it and a second Yehi Ratzon blessing following it. There is a statement of what we want to hold by; may G-d help you cling to Torah learning and doing mitzvoth. Then, may G-d protect you from error, sin, challenges, and scorn. You should not give in to the yetzer h’rah, and that G-d keep you at a distance from evil people, a friend that can move against you. In the second Yehi Ratzon we read, may G-d protect rescue you, if you need His help, from people who have continuous bad intentions and can act out against you, all kinds of evil people, a bad happening, a distructive spiritual happening, a difficult court case, an opponent in a court case, whether or not they are Jewish. 

     The second prayer is the Bedtime Shema. In it we give forgiveness to anyone who acted out against you, in spite of your morning blessings. Then the next morning, we recite Birchos ha’Shachar and you can judge yourself, on anything that happened that will likely affect you and your judgment on the upcoming day. That means, when you recite Birchos ha’Shachar followed by Yehi Ratzon, Yehi Ratzon goes on the upcoming day, while Birchos ha’Shachar can go on the previous day.                       

The Siddur is a Book for Judging Yourself

     The final act of the day is reading the Bedside Shema. This prayer includes a daily recollection of the people who disrespected you, or took advantage of you in any way. You cannot judge them but you can forgive them before the day ends. If you judge them, G-d might judge you to see if you sometimes behave the way they do. 

     After a night’s sleep, we begin Shacharit with Bichof ha’Shachar. If you wish you can continue to look into your previous day’s activities by judging yourself on what you did to others and to G-d. Some of the blessings in Birchos has’Shachar are your best helpers for self-judgment. As you recite them you can clear up a reaction you had that you do not agree with.   

     At the center of Birchos ha’Shachar are fourteen blessings. You can interpret them in different ways depending on your needs that morning. If you are cheerful, you might read them as blessings of thanks to G-d, with joy, for what He gave you. Sometimes they can give you guidance. You might state regret or choose one or more blessings for self-judgment. Some of these blessings are suitable for self-judgment and others are not. The blessing, You provide me my every need, is a blessing of thanks. Birchos ha’Shachar is versatile. If you judge yourself during Birchos ha’Shachar, G-d may decide, since you judged yourself, He does not have to judge you.   

     At the time of the Gemara, Birchos ha’Shachar was a set of blessings one recited upon waking up. There was a blessing for opening our eyes and others for getting out of bed and getting dressed. Today we recite Birchos ha’Shachar in shul so the original meanings of the blessings do not apply to us the way they applied then. You can thank G-d for giving you a new day of life but now they lend themselves to self-judgment. 

Birchos ha’Shachar

   The order of Birchos ha’Shachar presented here is the order found in the Ashkenaz siddur. The shelo (for making me) blessings follow the first blessing. They should be recited with all seriousness and a specific meaning should apply to each one. When the one praying has no issue for self-judgment, which happens much of the time, positive interpretations are correct. 

     Birchos ha’Shachar blessings can be recited for events that happened the day before or for the upcoming day. You can even recite a blessing for today and the next one on an experience that took place previously. In fact, you can recite a blessing thinking of both yesterday and the upcoming day.

     If you cannot decide if you have a need to address in self-judgement, remember this Japanese maxim. There are three monkeys before you. They are see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. If that happened to you yesterday, you likely have no situation to bring into self-judgment. If you are looking at your world, for the most part, with brightness and optimism, if you want to see yourself in that positive light, you can judge yourself on the fine way that you behave, just to see if there is a positive behavior you want to improve upon. If you recall a negative situation and it is in the back of your mind, bring yourself into self- judgment on account of that situation.    

     It is good practice to recite these blessings while standing. In a similar manner, when one is judged by others, he stands. But when you judge yourself, take the time you need. If you are more comfortable seated, in order to concentrate and be in in-depth prayer, be seated and get up before the next blessing. If someone sees an individual seated in self-judgment, he might have the impression that he is deep in thought and far away. One’s closeness with G-d may be noticeable.

Entering Self-Judgment

               If you want to address an experience through Self-judgment bring it to mind. Here are some questions you can thing about as you run your video of your situation.  Consider the way it occurred. When and where did it take place?  Why does this incident stand out? What was driving you to behave the way you did? How do you want to address it in prayer? Do you believe the yetzer ha’tov or the yeter ha’rah had an impact on you? Do you feel guilty about something? Is your situation an ongoing problem, maybe a sin that you fall into over and over again? Is there something you are afraid of? Is this a behavior you cannot accept? With your eyes closed see yourself. You are already judging yourself.                

When You are Ready to Pray

     You pray each day with your entire personal make-up. That includes your wins and losses, your fantasies, your burdens, your strengths, your inner-happiness from childhood, and your defeats. Your goals and your life missions also go with you. Your prayers can be coupled with dimension and emotion but that is up to you. 

      What is the driving force in you like? Does anything stand between you and G-d? How do you see yourself? Are you your personality or your persona? 

     If you are kind to yourself, you might think, “I feel like a winner.” That makes you  peaceful and you might think, you have G-d riding on your shoulder. You can say, “G-d lift me up in the direction of my life goals. Share my journey.”

     Another person might believe he has a rocky life journey. He might not want to go to shul because he might be thinking subconsciously, “People don’t know me. I am an enigma.” One can think, “I am one who others love” or he can think, “I am one who others do not love.” Someone can think, ”I am a person that speaks loshon ha’rah,” or, “I am a person that skips services,” or, ”I am a person that is guilty of this or that,” or, “I am hurt so I don’t blame myself for my actions.”        

     To be in one moment before G-d, do not say anything. Close your eyes for some seconds and then say, ”There You are  G-d. You are my entire goodness and greatness and love. You have no malice.”   

     Be open minded when reciting Birchos ha’Shachar and remove all distractions. If while you begin praying a thought comes to mind such as, “I give in to temptations, or, I act out against others,” you might start preparing to pray from self-judgment and choose your most suitable blessing. Even if you pray from self-judgment, pray with optimism. If you practice this way of reciting Birchos ha’Shachar, over the years, your character, personality, and spiritual qualities will dramatically improve. You can become a Tzadik.        

 La’sechvi and Shelo Asani

The Heart Distinguishes Between Day and Night (l’havchin bein yom ubein Laila) –   This is the first of the fourteen blessings in Birchos ha’Shachar. At the time of the Gemara, you would have recited this blessing to thank G-d for giving you a new day, upon opening our eyes. But, today you can say it to open your eyes to any evil or negative thoughts you have, towards others, towards the world at large or G-d forbid, against G-d. Then, in the blessings that follow, on the first thought of sin against others, you can instantly move into self-judgment. First there is the thought of sin and then a thought about yourself. A sin can come to mind on a topic of another blessing. You can have the thought, “A situation might come up today that I will give into. I might sin and then regret it. I do not want that to happen. I want to walk away from any situation unscathed, without sin.”   

     Think of day in this blessing as meaning truth, love for others, and making proper decisions that have no negative consequences. Night is hurting others, making costly mistakes, making poor choices, or falling into sin. Day gives life, but night takes it away.  

     There is an opinion that the word sechvi means heart and another opinion that it is a rooster. For self-judgement, the human heart is the better translation. The heart can distinguish between situations which are good and evil. In this blessing, day represents good and night represents evil. Any wrong choice that brings about a bad outcome, of any size, is evil. You likely participate in day and night according to these meanings from time to time, so you will experience both possibilities during prayer.

     There are times when evil is on the rise in the world. There is an abundance of problems in the world today. Many people are suffering. If that affects your peace of mind you do not have to face self-judgment on what the world does, but when you read “Bein Laila” you can ask G-d to bring peace to the world.

     Each of us should experience a positive connection with G-d. For most of us, that experience is acquired through prayer and living a right lifestyle.           

     If you feel comfortable with your recent choices, behaviors, thoughts and feelings regarding right and wrong, and good and evil, and you do not recognize anything you regret since yesterday, then you are meeting your self-expectations and you should continue ahead with your service. If you wish, identify an act of truth you are involved in and think, “It is a good day for me.”  Say some words like, “Thank You G-d for helping me avoid evil.” When you are ready move head to the next blessing.       

For not Making Me A (Shelo Asani) – There are three blessings phrased in the negative. They go by the Hebrew term Shelo Asani (for not making me a —). You can judge yourself on most any wrong choice, wrong behavior, or sin associated with one of these three blessings. If you have no issue during your recitations of these blessings you can thank G-d for assisting you in life. Don’t make the mistake of being repetitive when saying these. Don’t say them without meaning and walk away from them. There are halachas on why they are worded in the negative that you can research.        

For not Making Me a Non-Jew (Selo Asani Goy) – The traditional way to recite this blessing is to be thankful that G-d made you Jewish so you can do the mitzvoth. However, the blessing is written in the negative because there are Jews who do not want to perform the mitzvoth. That Jews would saying thanks for having the mitzvoth while many do not observe them would be a problem.   

     As you say these words ask yourself, “Yesterday, did I make a choice or behave in a way non-Jews behave, but Jews are supposed to avoid? Did I go to a non-kosher restaurant, or a ball game, or a bar, or a mixed beach, or joke around with the boys and girls (who are not Jewish) at a meal? If you wish, there is a custom to not watch television or go to the movies. Did you watch? Did I skip my Torah learning and go out to have fun? Did I spend my time inappropriately? What you did might not be a sin but it can be a mark on your character, in Jewish terms. Any behavior you engaged in, even if you do it every day, if you are not in agreement with it, sit in self-judgment or accept it and dismiss it. If you accept it, are you willing to create change or would you rather put off change for another time?              

     For not Making me a Slave (Shelo Asani aved) – Jews have not been slaves since Roman times. Jews have not been treated as slaves since the time of the Romans so it seems out of line to recite this blessing daily. However, there is another way to think of slavery, in which you can bring yourself into judgement. Ask yourself, am I a slave to my anger? Did I become angry at someone recently? Do I become angry at people often. If your answer is yes, bring your behavior into self-judgment before G-d. You can ask for His help in overcoming anger.  Then you can work on overcoming it. Are you a slave to substance abuse or alcohol? If you are, do you want to break that habit? It is difficult to do that so go to G-d in prayer for His help. Then work on it. Are you a slave to any other bad habit? Do you procrastinate? If you do, you are a slave of time. If you overspend or underspend, you are acting like a slave to money. Do you spend hours a day on your cell phone or other tech devices? Some people become slaves to screens.  Do you read or look at pictures or videos too often? Unfortunately, some people look at things that are inappropriate and that is also a way to be a slave. If your job comes before your family in importance, you might be a slave to your work, and if you have any unhealthy habit it is difficult for you to break, you are a slave of that habit. 

     If you identify yourself as a slave, in some way, stop when you recite this prayer. You are before G-d, and this is your spot for self-judgment. Look at your issue and don’t be afraid to go into in-depth prayer. Ask for G-d’s help. Spend time on this prayer every time you face a problem. It is ok to have feelings of regret or loss as you pray. You do not have to solve things. Bring them up. Think, do I want to keep going through this or am I ready to change? Think, “Do I want to change, am I ready to work through this issue today?” Even if you Judge yourself today, and bring it up in teshuva, your habit will likely bring you back to self-judgment again. Accept that. It takes time and a tremendous effort to overcome a bad habit; slavery. 

For not Making me a woman (Shelo Asani Isha) – This blessing has been controversial because it gives the impression that a man should feel superior. The true meaning is unclear. It is often interpreted to be, men give thanks to G-d because they have the commandment to learn Torah and women don’t. If you recite this blessing that way, you will likely come to feel uncomfortable reciting it day by day and you will not and change your life. 

     There is an interpretation that lends itself to self-judgment. You can say it and change bad habits regarding relationships with women. G-d does not allow me to do certain things with women that two women can do.  

     Judaism is specific on proper behaviors between men and women. There are behaviors that two women can perform which an unmarried man and a woman should not perform. For instance, if a man notices an attractive lady and cannot stop himself from gazing at her, he has sinned but it is not a sin for a lady to stare at another lady. If you engage in a behavior the Torah finds unacceptable, between a man and a women, that is a temptation to you, including thinking inappropriate thoughts, that causes you to feel shame or regret, or causes you to feel stuck in an unbreakable habit, bring your situation into prayer, here, as a matter of self-judgement.   

     There are even certain behaviors between a husband and a wife that are not sanctioned by the Torah. If you engaged in a behavior that was inappropriate, bring that into prayer during this morning blessing. Bring your situation into prayer as a matter of self-judgement. If a sin was enjoyable to you at the time, how did you feel afterwards? Change a habit. Most transgressions seem like little errors but watch out for the big ones.

Who Gives Sight to the Blind (Pokeach ivrim) – Today, Pokeach Ivrim has a number of interpretations. It can mean, may G-d help you recognize where you are, and you should see what you need to see. To open it up for self-judgment on a daily basis, it must be expanded upon.  

     Let us interpret it this say. “G-d please open my eyes to see the various faults I have and the positive events and experiences that are around me.” Let me notice the blessings that you have given me so I can appreciate them. What are my life missions that I need to solve? Open my eyes to see the entire picture of the life You have planned out for me. I want to know how I can positively affect the people you have placed in my life. G-d, my life is so complex, I cannot figure out too much of it. What is my whole existence about? I may only get a small glimpse at all that stands before me so I do not know how I will reach my maximum potential. I will do my best by going through all the situations that have to go through. Please open my eyes to see what you want for me, and through me for the world.

     When you think this and that is going wrong for you because you are making mistakes, sit before G-d in self-judgment and bring your concerns up. You can say, “G-d, You gave me this situation to solve and that is not what I am doing. I did not mean to hurt that person’s feelings: I never thought I would do that. Now I need to get her forgiveness and not fall into that problem again.             

Who Dresses the Naked (Malbish Arumim) – This is a blessing you say to G-d for items that you benefit from. This includes items like the clothes you wear. 

     In the abstract this blessing can mean, the naked who need to be dressed in clothes relates to current situations in your life and your possibilities of working through them.  You want your problems to be worked out. If you are G-d fearing, try to find a positive angle to an event you are going through. 

     See G-d as One who brings you gifts. Gifts are the events you go through. If it is difficult for you to think your problems are gifts, try to understand whatever you can. If a situation is difficult to solve, work on it. Yet, there are times when you are challenged and see no way out. For instance, if you are a farmer going through a famine, you are doing your best to not lose your money and your crops. You might be overwhelmed. You have a problem with money, a family issue, and caring about others who are also suffering, and you have no answers. You might judge yourself on your faith, your trust in G-d, or your behaviors. In this prayer, you can judge yourself on any matter you are familiar with.          

     There are times in life when you are unable to stop yourself from repeating a sin over and over. Every time a certain situation comes up, you give in to it and commit a sin, and no one can help you. You might need to judge yourself on the sin, and ask for help. Your answer is out of your reach. You have to prayer for G-d’s help to resolve it or it will continue indefinitely. During this prayer bring in what happens to you, and how it makes you feel when you fall into the sin. Judge yourself as one who has no answers and feels guilty. G-d always wants to help.         

     Bring up your anger when you cannot follow through on a plan you feel driven to make happen. If you run out of patience as you try to resolve a problem, believe there is a way to achieve your goal. 

Who Releases the Bound (Matir Asurim) – This blessing is about getting your freedom. The soul wants to have freedom to move about, both in this world and in the spiritual worlds. 

      You are entering into moments of mystery because this blessing is your encounter with what has not happened yet. You want answers but they are unavailable. This blessing is most useful when you do not know what is coming next, or you want an answer to a situation you cannot understand, or your mind is on creating self-improvement but you do not know what you should change. You are interested in finding out more information where there is none. 

     G-d does not put information into this world until the right time arrives. It stays above us, just out of reach. We must respect that but at times, one can desire what he cannot have. When you want information that is not available to you, bring that into this prayer. Give G-d your reasons for wanting that information. Maybe G-d will point it out to you even before the service ends. 

     If you desire information so you can break any bad habit or end any repetitive sin, one you do because you cannot control yourself, sit in self-judgment. Raise a prayer to G-d bringing up your guilt and shame. Beware, you are asking G-d to perform an open miracle for you by providing information outside of your reach. For G-d, open miracles are easy to perform but he does not hand them out without a fight. It is ok to be strong, showing G-d how important it is to you to have that information and what you plan to do with it.         

It was Debbie !!

     This happened to me more than twenty years ago. I had worked hard to overcome all the sins I was aware of, but every now and then I would fall into one particular sin. I felt guilty and I felt shame each time it happened, I made teshuva over and over and each time I planned out another strategy so I would not fall into that sin again. Nothing helped. Time would pass, the same situation would arise, and once more I would fall into sin. I was frustrated because nothing I tried to do, or no words of prayer would help. Time passed. 

     Leah (My wife) and I attended a week-long meditation seminar. The instructor announced that each student, one at a time, would go into a room for an initiation, it was part of the course. When it was my turn, I entered a room with the instructor and participated in my initiation. He asked me to repeat after him, twenty-six times, the word Shabbat. Then he turned the lights out and we each said word Shabbat over and over. Afterwards he let me remain in the room by myself with the lights out, until I was ready to join the others. As I sat quietly in the dark, in silence, I heard a scream. It was only in my head. I heard the word Debbie (or Deborah) being screamed out. I experienced strong emotions but I could not explain what those emotions were. The name Debbie meant nothing to me. For two days I worked at figuring it out. Then the answer came as a message. It said, “Debbie was a little girl you were friendly with on a train when you were six years old. She took your hand and wanted to walk with you.” That was new for me at the time because no one but my mother had taken my hand and walked with me. I had to decide, would I permit Debbie to take my hand and lead me. I decided to let Debbie hold my hand and take me along with her because I thought she was pretty, I liked her, and I decided I could trust her. That decision set me up for a habit I would have all my life. If I wanted to perform an act that I did not think was right, I would allow a girl to take me by the hand and I would perform it.   

     That was the answer I was looking for so I could end my sin. I wanted to do this sin but I knew there was a prohibition against it. If I could get my wife to extend her hand to me, metaphorically, and take me along, I would give in and sin. Unconsciously, my mind found a way to make that sin happen. My wife took the role of a six-year-old girl named Debbie. Once I knew the mechanism that brought me to sin, I stopped going to my wife for her hand and the sin was immediately resolved. 

     G-d knows all information and anything else you will ever look for. Nothing is far away from G-d but it can be out of your reach. If you want G-d to give you information you need, outside of your knowledge base, go to Him over and over, showing Him your love and your need, during your recital of this prayer. If He wishes, he might give it to you in an open miracle, which is what He did for me.                    

     Who Straightens the Bent (Zokef Kefufim) – Today, you can ask G-d for strength, so you can make changes.  

     You will not be the same person one year from now. G-d sends you events, you participate in them, and you will have to change. G-d wants that change to be uplifting. What ever is bent over within you, and causes you to make unwise choices, G-d is working to change. That is why this is a blessing of thanks. You are thanking G-d for helping you fix even the things you do not want to fix. That mitzvah that fell into your hands, that Torah you learned, that prayer you recited, accomplished whatever it was that G-d wanted to get out of you, that is, to the extent that you allowed it to. It also did something positive in the world above. 

     You are involved in a day by day process of straightening out and straightening up. If you work on yourself in this prayer, you will be a touch better each day, providing you did not sin. If that happens, you may find that you feel guilty and are bending over rather than straightening up.  

     In this blessing accept upon your shoulders the responsibility for your choices and actions, anything that has kept you back. But if you feel cleaner due to your choices, you have enhanced your image. You dwell in the physical world which is your domicile, your temporary residence, where everything you see is bent, it is a lie, it can be absurd, yet, you have your feet firmly on the ground. Say hi to your essence, that part of you that can never be bent. That is your G-dly nefesh. You are spirit and you are also a physical being. 

     If you feel dragged down, then bring the situation that disturbs you into judgment. Put it before G-d and say, “I cannot move ahead because of my situation.” Then be optimistic. If you have the potential to reach you goals, most any situation can be rectified. That means, if years have passed and you have not achieved a sensible goal you long for, G-d is waiting for something from you. He does not hold goal out of reach indefinitely. If you are bent but you have changed an aspect of yourself, thank G-d for bringing you along and ask Him to give you your goal. 

Who Spreads the Earth Upon the Waters (Roka ha’Arez al ha’Maim) – The world floats on the infinite but our world is small compared to the infinite. You are sitting on the infinite and your feet are dangling over into the physical world. Take a moment to notice reality. You are a physical being but the words you say in prayer are communications that shatter anything that gets in their way, they are in heaven.                                          

     Who has Provided Me My Every Need (She’Asah Li Col Zarki) – G-d fulfills your needs. Identify yourself within that statement by knowing what your needs are. Some change each day so Stop. Enjoy this moment and consider the question, “What are my needs?” You need events and opportunities. You need physical items such as furniture, a car, a home, and you need G-d to take care of you. You need to feel abundance. More than that, you need to fix your life here in this world, so you get to have your World to Come. You may want to experience the upper world. What matters to you matters to G-d.  

     Even the best of us take a tumble sometimes. G-d is giving you your needs but you may not be satisfied with what you have. Do you want more? Take a moment to think, I appreciate what I have. 

     This is likely the best place to thank G-d for your body. You can and should do this every day. Thank Him for your eyesight, your hearing, and your other senses. Thank Him for your legs and arms and hands. Thank Him for your heart, brain, and lungs. You have teeth and toes. You think and you talk. All you need to do is thank G-d on all you have once a day. Do it here.          

Who Firms a Man’s Footsteps (Ha Mechin Mitzadeh Gaver) – G-d has given us the potential to make our animal side subservient to our human side. Here is a related thought. When we are young each new step we take is a giant step. That means, we do things wrong and learn from our mistakes. See yourself as one who is progressing, coming closer and closer to G-d, all the time. Look at the size of your spiritual footsteps. It is best if they are becoming smaller and smaller. The smaller they become, the less you have to change and develop. Think of yourself later on in life. You will want to take tiny, tiny steps because most of your life’s work has been done successfully. Of course, if you identify yourself with big footsteps, sit in self-judgement. Look at the image of your steps. Identify the area of your life that you want to improve upon and speak with G-d in prayer.                   

Who assists Israel with Might (Ozer Israel b’Givura) – The way this blessing is interpreted is G-d gives us the ability to conquer the animal soul, and raise the G-dly soul. Related to this point is looking over your spiritual gains. You do not have to be competed to see where you have come to. Your mitzvahs might be uncountable because you have been doing them for so long. What is waiting for you in the world above? This can be a prayer of joy. 

     If you believe you have given in to temptation too many times, stop at this point and question your motives. Look into your spiritual self. Try to see your accomplishments but don’t overlook what you still have to do. Be careful not to let disappointments control your prayers, which come from love.                 

Who Crowns Israel with Glory (Oter Israel b’Tifara) – A way that this blessing is interpreted is, the Jewish nation was given the crown of prophesy. In a similar way, look at this blessing as a crown of understanding. Add to the term Tifara, a similar word Tiferet. This is the quality of walking on a minute line of truth, between loving kindness – giving from the heart, and the willpower to judge and hold back. On key decisions, before you act by giving or chose to hold back, discern the differences. Ask G-d in prayer, “Am I lined up in the center. What do you expect of me? What is right.” If you get an answer, before you act, review It and go over it with others until you are comfortable with your decision. 

     Since this blessing concerns a crown, it is not the correct place to make self-judgment. Most of the times you pray, you will not have a major decision to make so take a moment and feel the power of the new day. To G-d, this is morning and there you are. Do this and you are praying with passion and fervor.                   

Who Gives the Weary Strength (Ha’Notein l’yaef koach) – Although this blessing seems to be your request for the strength you need to get you through a difficult day, that doesn’t really work. Since it is morning, life should feel bright.

     You have overcome many obstacles through your years without giving in. You know what people say is real and what is not, according to your experiences. It has taken you this long to get where you are. You are asking G-d to help you reach your life goals when that seems to be too far to go. Therefore, do not give in when things do not go your way. Don’t give up on your prayers and go into mind wandering. G-d knows your struggles so give Him the chance to help you. There are some days you are so weary the only thought you might have is, “I want to climb back into bed and be between the sheets.” Don’t give G-d ten minutes of your time when you pray, pick yourself up and leave, with sadness and no hope. Don’t judge yourself here. If something is not working, bring it into your service. You can bring it into the Yehi Ratzon prayers that follow the fourteen blessings.        

Teshuva

     Teshuva is one of the greatest steps in life improvement. In lower level teshuva one takes back as being wrong behaviors that he put into action. On a higher level of teshuva one strives to improve his qualities of character and personality that lead to right or wrong behaviors. 

     We learn that if an individual stands before G-d in prayer and takes responsibility for a wrong choice or a behavior, or especially for a sin, that is teshuva and on the spot G-d accepts his teshuva. If that is the case, introspection leading to self-understanding and improvement would not be necessary and the individual would be susceptible to falling into the same sin again. Therefore, don’t take the teshuva process casually. Be driven, go deep, get down to your core beliefs and defenses. Do your best to understand the mechanisms that make you override your Torah beliefs and love of G-d and allow you to commit sins.                       

     When you recite your daily services, you should feel clean of sin. There should not be feelings of guilt that are unaddressed, lingering in the background and there should not be memories of your past actions standing between you and G-d. 

     To pray that way demands of you that you make teshuva until your entire teshuva has been accepted by G-d. You should not follow a crowd of people that have low expectations of their prayers and please do not think of this kind of teshuva as being beyond you. Connect to G-d the way He connects to you. Maybe all it takes is willpower. 

     There is more than one way to make teshuva. You can become highly emotional or you can make an intellectual teshuva. One way or another you have to regret a sin you made. No matter how you do it, there is one theme in common; teshuva is creating change. 

     Lower level teshuva follows a procedure that rectifies sin. One most acknowledge that he participated in a sin. He must regret what he did and plan to not fall into the same sin again. There is a small amount of character and personality improvement in lower level teshuva, even if one does the minimum. If one judges himself, does not like what he sees, and before G-d he is touched and sickened by what he did, he can create a greater and more meaningful change. It can cause him to look farther into the way he lives his life. He might find real damage in his soul and that can cause him to want to rectify other poor choices and behaviors he does not agree with. It might also cause him to make a higher level of teshuva because he does not want to leave this world with sins he did not work to overcome. 

     Some of us want complete teshuva. That is the highest level of teshuva one can attain. If that is your goal, you will do all you can to create self-improvement for the sake of G-d.  Since teshuva is a life-long process, at the same time there is dedication to completing life missions participating in project that help others. You may strive to make the world a better place, and influence others to rectify sins. In that way are lifting the world up from the sin Adam and Chava made, and following through on Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yakov’s desire to make that happen. You should consider every act you do that helps others to be teshuva related and the will of G-d.      

He stopped His Work that He Created in order to Do

     A verse In the Torah that reads, “The work that G-d created in order to do.” It is also a verse we read in the Shabbos evening Kiddush. Why is that verse important to the Kiddush? Let us say, you are acknowledging that you participated in a week packed with events that G-d brought you. G-d’s continuing work is the further creation of you. What does G-d create? They are the events in your life that G-d will bring you next week. G-d will create them for your good. What does it mean, in order to do? The verse seem to not be speaking about the work that G-d does, G-d creates events, puts them into your life for you to do. G-d creates your opportunities.  

     When G-d created you, he stopped short of completing the job. He created around 95% of your being and left the last 5% unfinished. Now, He asks you to be His partner in your own creation. He wants you to help complete yourself and He wants you to get the credit that goes with it. But you do not create yourself. You will not make yourself a finished product. You are G-d’s assistant, helping G-d along as He creates you. You do not create the situations that contribute to your growth, you only participate in them. 

     We have no idea what takes place before we are born, that made us 95% complete. All we know is from the time we are born we make decisions. One can say, “I want this, or, I don’t want this.” That is how you help G-d along in His creation of you. When you say, “I want this,” G-d looks into you, sees what that will mean, and then he adds or takes away something from your entire make-up. He does that on a spiritual plane so you are usually not aware of how your decisions change you. He adds something new to your character and personality or He takes something away. Your success happens when you make enough healthy decisions to become a better person. Making money or getting recognized on the world stage is a limited experience and it counts in your favor if it makes you a better person.            

Let’s Make a Deal

     When a person makes teshuva in all seriousness, he is saying to G-d, “I am coming to You, with humility, asking You to make a deal with me. My deal is, You remove the chaos I did to myself by engaging in that sin, and I will work with you in creating my self-improvement. I want a better character and personality.” If a human being was offered that deal he would not accept it. He would think, “I can be taken advantage of.” But G-d is not human. He knows how we think. In spite of that, G-d forgives the individual and puts in all His effort in bringing that person along. The individual on the other hand, usually takes advantage of G-d. He might read words written on a page in the siddur, lightly, and think that that is a strong enough teshuva. Although one satisfies the minimal halachic requirements for teshuva, he has not lived up to his deal, creating a  meaningful life through changes in character or personality. In a way he holds G-d to His responsibility while trying to get away with things. 

     When one makes a heartful teshuva, it is unlike other times in prayer where we ask G-d to work for us or give us a free gift. In teshuva we ask G-d to do most of the work but we take responsibility for doing a small part. G-d considers that deal to be the real thing. Following through with your side of the deal is truly regretting a sin and improving a small part of your entire make-up. What do we expect of G-d? We say, “G-d, the sin I committed is on the heavenly books. Please look into my negative behavior because I do not know what heavenly books really are. I am not capable of changing anything on them. Please do all the work involved. I am asking for a lot and doing a little.

Reincarnation 

     According to Jewish belief, almost all Jews living today are reincarnations of others who lived before. When those souls left our world, they left behind unfinished life missions or sins they did not atone for. That does not mean we lived before and are here to live again. Your soul is a life-force that is here on earth, as a human being, for your first and only time. But you are connected with one or more souls who were here before and need to correct something. You are standing in their stead. Therefore, you are groomed from early childhood to make good decisions in the areas that a soul or souls connected to you failed at. For instance, if another soul connected with you was not faithful in marriage, you can be tried on how well you keep monogamy, or if that other soul was wealthy and selfish when he lived, you might have a shortage of money and under difficult circumstances, have to be giving.  

     There is an opinion that G-d devises the events you go through so that if you improve upon the choices and behaviors the other soul made when he lived, both you and the other soul win the game of life. If your fail to improve upon what the other soul did, by making poor decisions, both of you lose together. There are also events you experience which are corrections for the sins or poor choices you make on a daily basis but most of your life corrections relate to the needs of the other souls in your life. Make teshuva and you are helping all of you. 

Judging yourself and then Making Teshuva

     Judging yourself and making teshuva are quite different. Self-judgment is logical, you are doing the work of analyzing a behavior you did, and deciding if you should accept it. Teshuva is not a logical process. You are calling out to G-d, and maybe others in heaven, and correcting sins that are on the heavenly books. You are saying, “Please overturn what is written in the books. Please remove any punishment that was decided upon in the upper courts because I have a change of heart.” 

     We learn that if an individual asks that a sin be erased, in all earnest, that G-d puts in its place a heavenly rectification of what took place. What you ask for is granted and history is rewritten in your favor. No one knows the amount of work that heaven gets involved when it judges a case a second time and rewrites the original decision. No one knows how much regret is enough, following a sin, to bring up another court hearing. If the behavior committed was costly to another, or destructive to many, or cannot be mended on earth, what is involved in the world above? These are factors we know nothing about. Yet a sin can be changed to a mitzvah, and instead of their being a punishment, there is a reward. Instead of a stain remaining, the sin is rewritten to look like a positive choice was made from the beginning and there was a positive outcome. On earth among people, that would never happen.    

The Raw State for Teshuva

     If you make teshuva the day you sinned or the next morning, that will certainly benefit you. You will likely be open to feeling regret and questioning yourself because the sin was recent. Your memory is strong. In general, the day you sin you are in a raw state of emotion. When a new sin stands before G-d, that is when you make your best claim for teshuva. The next morning, in Birchos ha’Shachar, judge yourself. Your self-judgement will come from your raw state. Take responsibility for what happened even if that is painful. 

Making a Sin and not doing Teshuva

     By making a sin and not doing teshuva you might become saddened because within your nefesh, something has been ruined. You have inadvertently destroyed something in your spiritual self. You might hope that with time you can forget your problem and the pain will just go away somehow but that doesn’t happen. The sin will not go away. If you have a recurring sin, you may find yourself in a rut you cannot get out of.  

     If you are observant you want to feel great about your achievements but a single sin can make you feel like one hundred mitzvahs were shattered on the ground. That is so confusing to the individual that he looks for a way out. He comes up with excuses. One thinks, I could not have been the one that did that sin. That is not my style. Maybe someone else tempted me and I couldn’t resist the temptation. That can take the pressure off but when you check your feelings, nothing has changed, it is your sin and it will just get worse over time if you do not do your best and your strongest to make your sin go away. Yet we say, if you make a sin once, you feel terrible. Do it twice and it doesn’t feel so bad. Do it three times and you will believe your sin is a mitzvah.    

Your Sin

     If a sin could speak it would say, I “I am the follow-up to an act that was not allowed to happen. I infiltrate, I invalidate, I dull the senses and cut off communication. I cripple the spirit of the individual. I prevent healing and I want to confuse right with wrong. 

     Do you know what a sin does to you? It breeds Klipah. Your sin becomes stabilized, it is placed in a spot you can’t get to, and it becomes part of you and your thoughts. It causes guilt, it removes optimism, and it opens one up to making more sins. It acts as a spiritual virus, a disease. 

Klipah

     There are two ways to explain the term klipah. One way is, it is a crusty covering that wraps around a spiritual truth, preventing the individual from accessing it. The second explanation is, it is a crusty membrane on the inside of a spiritual truth. The truth is compromised because when the individual wants to access it, he cannot reach beyond the klipah. Any sin you make that stands in the face of a Torah law, will wrap itself in or around the truth itself. The more one commits the sin, the stronger the klipah is. It will prevent the truth from coming out.       

           The term klipah is translated into English to mean shells or the peal that surrounds a piece of fruit. On a spiritual plain it keeps an individual at a distance from  G-d because it has the ability to remove spiritual expressions. Maybe you do not think that it can block you from information but that is precisely what it does. When a Jew tries to retrieve spiritual information either it doesn’t come to mind, or it is inaccurate. Klipah hides insights and inspired ideas. It will likely not get in the way of secular information so one can get by, doing his daily responsibilities and routine. Klipah will probably not hinder your secular work. 

Teshuva, Thanks, and Praise 

Your Greatest Goal

     Teshuva doesn’t end with self-improvement but it is a high goal shoot for. Making complete teshuva is a higher goal but if you reach that goal the game isn’t over. You will need new goals to get the best out of yourself. 

     Don’t lose hope or feel overwhelmed. Reaching your best by making teshuva is not out of reach but you must know there is more potential in life than that. First, prevent sins. Then over time, to the extent that you can, make teshuva. At some point, have the goal to have all your sins forgiven. That includes the sins of souls that are connected to you.  Work on that until your life has been rectified and your sins resolved. Then there is more.  

The Information of the Soul

     Imagine, some of the information you learned is stored in parts of your brain but other information is kept outside of your physical body, in a place related to your soul. All information is owned by your mind and your soul. To the mind, all information is the same but the information kept outside of your body can be especially inspiring and useful. It may inspire you to improve. Some say, “I listen to my inner self before I do anything.” 

        There is a level where G-d’s presence is with you always. Other souls can be there as well. Some of us reach a high level of being due to prayer, Torah, and deeds. When they pray, in heaven, souls hang on their every world. It takes one wrong thought and those in heaven that are with them, react with shock. When they are shocked, one might lose his equilibrium and feel compromised. One can topple over that entire mountain of souls with one thought or one deed. You can put your mountain back by putting yourself back onto a right way of thinking. At this level of prayer, you do not have the right to think wrong. There is a higher level of being where If you try to do something wrong, you are stopped and the right way to do that is brought before you. It is as thought you have no choice but to do things right.  

     There are those who know G-d’s presence is with them. Sometimes there is less of it. Yet every time that individual looks up, it is there. It is love and it is in the emotions and the mind. That individual has a love for G-d that is never ending. There is no negativity when he prays, and it is seldom present during his daily activities. He has more free will. If he goes wrong way, he knows, he has only himself to blame. A mistake is costly. More teshuva is needed. 

     No one lives alone. G-d is there and that is amazing, but we ruin that bliss by wrong behaviors and by not looking up at Him. Know the potential within you. It is beyond anything you can imagine. Climb for the stars. Fear G-d but do not fear the upper world. Just like earth is under G-d, Heaven is under G-d.                         

Making Teshuva

Fear of Sin 

     Teshuva is a two-sided coin. On one side is having fear of sin and on the other is making teshuva. That is because one of the first things that comes to mind when one has to make teshuva is, “Before I sinned, did I try to go against my fear of sin.” One who is able to overcome his fear of sin when he wants to do the wrong thing, will find it more difficult to accomplish teshuva. That is because when he tries to make teshuva, he doesn’t have fear of sin before him. He treats his sins as acceptable behaviors. Even if one has right and wrong and Jewish laws to look back on, that is not enough to prohibit a sin from taking place. 

     If one does not place fear of sin before him so he is couscous and careful when he makes choices, he will certainly fall. Fear of sin must come before love of G-d or any other spiritual quality. Yet fear of sin is only a low-level fear. It should not stop you from living your life out of joy. 

     When one depends on his fear of sin, any time the potential for sin comes close, it is cut down. When the potential of sin is activated, one might say to someone, “I would like to do that but I do not want to face the guilt I will feel afterwards. I do not want to sin before G-d.”

     If fear of sin is not active, when one wants to participate in an activity he knows is not permitted, such as breaking a Sabbath law, he might say to someone, “I know there is a prohibition against this activity on Shabbos, but I am not going to be stopped from doing it. I want to do it.” This individual might sin without feeling guilty.  

     When one commits a sin in spite of his fear of sin, he can be disappointed because he let himself down and he let G-d down. He can think, “Now I have to make teshuva. How am I going to do that? I should have known better.” Then I thinks, “Maybe I can bring my weakness up before G-d and that will be my defense.” Then he thinks, “I have no excuse. I let my guard down. It’s my fault.” 

     When you make teshuva out of fear of sin, care and love for G-d, and respect for yourself, you can do what you need to do. You can begin your teshuva process by judging yourself in Berchos ha’Shachar, and when you arrive at the Tachanun prayer, you make teshuva, and move ahead. That means, you can remove a sin without difficulty. You can also go steps farther. You can improve a character strength or a spiritual quality. 

The Tachanun and Teshuva

     When the Tachanun prayer is recited on Mondays and Thursdays, there is a longer version. During these pages one can ask himself questions on his attitude. He can say, “I may regret my sins but what is my belief. A verse reads, Forgive my willful sins. 

     Then one can seek to find a reason behind his willful sins by asking himself a number of questions. He can say, “Do I think 1. I am right 2. I am angry 3. I can’t get to my feelings. 4. I feel cut off 5. It was only a small sin 6. I enjoyed my sin 7. I really do not want to change 8. I do what others do 9. It is impossible for me to change 10. I want to stop this sin from happening again because You want me to – not because I want to stop it.

   A verse reads, Let Your great Name stand up for us in times of distress. At that spot you might respond by saying, “I sinned and I am distressed. 

   A verse reads, For our soul is diminished. At this spot you might respond by saying, the  damage that my sin did to me was, 1. bringing in anger, 2. hate, 3. resentment,  4. Jealousy. Find the character or personality flaw behind your giving into that sin.   

     Each day we read the verse, And David said to Gad, I am exceedingly distressed. At that point people in shul sit and put their heads down and make teshuva. If the congregation takes a minute or two at that moment, don’t let them influence you. Don’t  follow along. It is impossible to make real teshuva for a sin that fast. How long does it take? It takes the length of time for you to feel the sin is being removed. Then it takes the time for you to feel the difference. If you do not experience it being removed, then at some point you stop looking for the removal to happen and say, “G-d, I understand that the removal of my sin is not going to happen now so I will come back to you again and work on this some more.       

    If you make teshuva in Shacharit, it is likely, you are making teshuva on a sin that happened another day. If you make teshuva at Mincha, it is likely that you are making teshuva on a sin that happened that day.        

The Art of Making Teshuva

     Making teshuva is an art. It is painful and creative. It might be similar to the creativity a good lawyer will use before a judge to have his client released. If it were not for teshuva one would not be able to get out of a sin. He would have to live with it. Because there is teshuva, if you find a proper defense, you will walk away afterwards feeling clean and forgiven.     

     The individual stands before G-d with a strong fear of sin and that stands up for him. He has the pain of guilt, for the pain of committing a sin, for the pain that comes with going against his fear of sin. And for going against G-d, and for disappointing himself. 

     One makes teshuva during the Tachanun prayer in Shachrit. That is a proper spot because Tachanun follows the Shemonei Esre so one has an open heart and sensitivity. He is not self-protective. He wants to repent. He says, I was taken down by the yetzer ha’rah. It was strong and I gave in to forgetting G-d and the Torah. I do not want to give in now and resist making teshuva. I wronged you G-d and I know that that will not just disappear. You did not forget what I did. I feel horrible. I want to get a hold on my behavior. What was my attitude before I sinned? Did I sin in a moment of anger or loss? I want to fess up. I want to strengthen my sorrow over what I did. Please remember all Jews and please remember that I am a member of Klal Israel. If I am not forgiven for this sin, there is a chance that I will fall into sin again, as it says in Ethics of the Fathers, a sin leads to another sin. 

     Then, one returns to his feelings of sorrow over the sin and how his fear of sin did not help him this time. He starts out again with a new set of arguments. He looks at his sin and tries to figure out what tempted him. He finds his answer and shows G-d that the enjoyment of the sin was much smaller than the price he is paying. Once more, he returns to his feelings of sorrow over the sin. 

     He moves to another plan. He says, “I hate this pain. I can’t live with this pain if I am not forgiven. Please forgive me and I see a way for me to not fall into this sin again. Please give me another chance.”

     One might have to return to an argument he already made or keep finding new defenses but strength comes from the conviction, “I will not walk away if my teshuva is not accepted. I will keep speaking up for myself because I cannot go away and continue to feel guilty. 

     In most cases, at some point in the teshuva process a different feeling comes up. One becomes overwhelmed by an unnatural feeling that comes from outside of himself. It is usually a form of anger directed at himself. He is feeling guilty and that becomes anger. If he is seated he puts his head down. There is no more argument. One stays with the flow. If he can, his insides, his emotions are heightened by the process. When G-d removes a sin, it feels like part of you is being removed. It is not like a surgery is being performed, it can be like the removal of an item from your body that is so large it cannot be removed. There is a fear that the item will never be able to come out because you are struggling to get it out and your muscles are tightened up, yet it won’t go out. It can feel like you are pushing a watermelon or a basketball out of a very small opening. It might feel like a liquid is oozing out of your body from every pore. It is a spiritual removal but it is completely physical in that it affects your entire body. Afterwards there is a feeling of being clean and some weakness because of the process.  Sometimes one will not have the physical feeling that go along with teshuva, and it seems going back into teshuva again is not necessary. Then he can believe he was forgiven without the pressure. 

The Advanced Stuff

Making Teshuva for the Nation – A prayer

     Dear G-d, may it be Your will that our days in exile draw to a total end at the soonest possible time. Those that long for unity believe that is our primary aim. The world has become confusing and unsafe. What’s next is unpredictable. Observant Jews have faith in the face of stories, conspiracy theories, tales, and threats that make fear abound. 

     Due to the blessings you placed upon our forefathers and the wisdom of our great rabbis and zadikim, You have placed a direction for us to follow into the written Torah, the oral Torah, and their commentaries. We are a nation of strength, but we fear our future. The largest group of Jews today are the ones who are not observant. Even in Israel, there are more Jews that do not keep Shabbos then there are Jews who do keep it. We are a scattered people, with around half of our population living in countries over the face of the planet. Most of them have secular points of view. They try to blend in. Many of them mock those who search for You. It is easy to see the results. 

     Those who desire You, pray each day but our prayers lack passion and fervor. We are distracted and just say words. We are learning Torah in record numbers, but we do not learn as well as Jews did hundreds of years ago. Our eyes are on money. Money breeds greed. Our eyes are on power and power breads arrogance. Those who are not able to achieve as much as others around them are depressed and can feel hopeless. We live in a world of anxiety because, who knows what’s next. We worry that a bomb may drop or world economies will collapse. People cannot make their marriages work the way they should. We are out of patience. People do not trust their governments, maybe even in Israel, because they believe everyone cheats. Sometimes our rabbis fail us and sometimes our schools fail us. When we look at our people who still live among the nations, they seem to be worse off. 

     How does a nation so scattered and so disconnected make teshuva? Is it possible for such a nation to gather together in unity and speak with You with one voice.? That will happen but when will it be? It seems, we will never do it on our own because we lack leadership and the right expectations. What do we think lies ahead? Is it more money and power, a bigger house, and new tech devices or the end of the world? We do not read, think introspectively, look up, or look around. We check on the stock market report and political news. 

     G-d, please forgive our nearsightedness. Please forgive our inability to think for ourselves. Please forgive our secular thinking and assimilation. Please look past our lack of emotions and the pain that lies below. We are helpless and numb. We can’t see past confusion. We lack connection with the inner spirit so we cannot delve into ourselves. We look outside instead of inside. Please help us. You were there in the days of Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yakov who gave birth to a holy nation that You would lead and bring back to the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life. Please remember Moshe Rabenu who lead a nation of slaves out of Egypt. Please remember Yehoshua who brought that nation into the land of Israel. Please remember our prophets including Shimon ha’Zadik, and our sages from the time of the Mishna and the Gemora, including Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Shimon Bar Iochai, and Rabbi Tarfon. Please remember our great Kabbalists and the fabulous leaders of Askenazi and Sephardic Jews, and all of our denominations. 

     Maybe the best we can ask for is that you hear our prayers individually. Sift through them. Sort through them. Put together in groupings, all of our prayers for unity, all of our prayers on our broken hearts, all of our prayers of fear, and all of our prayers of loneliness. Put together all of our love for You, our yearning to be with You, and all of our prayers jam-packed with words of suffering. Please build our Bet HaMikdash, and bring us together to our promised land, Israel, under Torah law, with blessings and You.

Making Your Complete Lower Level Teshuva – (This is not for Everyone)

    Making complete lower level teshuva is a fabulously entertaining, deep, and introspective process. It is a trip down memory lane. The time it takes depends on your memory and the way you lived your life. If you have an excellent memory that goes back to when you were three or four years old, that is where you begin. The more complete mental pictures of your childhood you have the better will be your results. If you have lots of memories that you need to do teshuva on that takes more time. 

     This is a way to make teshuva and rewire your brain at the same time if you have hundreds or thousands of memories to go back to and on many of them you can make teshuva. To go over much of your life, a memory at a time, there is a time frame. It may take four or more months. You can make teshuva as you pray but it pays to also make teshuva in your free time. You can make teshuva while you are driving, at home, or during any free time you have. Maybe one reason G-d gave us long term memories is so we can go back to our earlier days of life and change things. 

     Making teshuva on early memories from childhood is not much different then making teshuva on a sin you were involved in a week ago. You bring your memories up, one at a time, as conscious thoughts, remembering everything that happened. See the place, all the people, and the event. Bring up your feelings as well. Your memory should come up in color. It is taught in behavioral science that some people can remember events from the age of one, but if you remember an early event you might remember only a part of it. Fill in your picture with a reasonable replacement. Try to remember, did someone threaten you, or did you threaten someone else? What did you do? Do you remember being bord or do you remember winning a prize? Then what did you do? looking into your reactions in order to find out your behavior. If something happened to you, if you were traumatized, then work that through (That self-treatment is not covered here but it pays to learn it). In many events, you will find something you had done that now you want to fix. I do not believe you have to find each person you had a problem with when you were five, and ask them for forgiveness. Find their forgiveness in your mind, in a memory. If someone hurt you, you can forgive them. If you enjoy a memory do not let it go until you want to. This is not a game: it is genuine teshuva. 

     You will find that early life events took place when you were immature. Now that you are an adult looking back, you will want to use your adult brain to make teshuva. Change events around as you make teshuva to see yourself making a better decision. If you pushed someone down on the ground, excuse yourself and pick them up. See the individual accepting your apology and smiling at you. Each time, give your image a happy ending. You will walk away with a much better image of yourself in your mind. You have rewired your brain.                                        

Making High Level Teshuva 

     Higher level teshuva is the way to improve your best qualities. It is bringing yourself up to be the person G-d hopes you will become. It is unusual at this time in history to be introspective, trying to improve character traits such as giving, caring about the word at large, and wanting the best for others who seldom if ever think about your better good. Yet, those are the parts of our character that bring G-d in, and make us shine.          

     Making this higher level of teshuva solid takes more than thought. It takes action. G-d will give you events and situations that will take your personal sacrifice. People may do you wrong and you give them room. You do not have to take things personally all the time because standing up for ourselves in many cases is only a matter of ego. In higher level teshuva the part of the ego that sees to your success, as a matter of having a greater well-being, is brought lower. What counts sometimes is standing up for another’s dignity, out of love for another. We try to act like G-d. 

     At the same time there is teshuva in prayer, teshuva in participating in hearing rabbis speak, in readings or lessons, and all of these are higher level teshuva. The time it takes for this to change your life is individual. You start and time will tell; G-d is your guide. 

Get the Correct Order in Making Teshuva 

     Making teshuva starts soon after dedicating yourself to praying at your best. You find that making light teshuva, reading passages in Tachanun, is not praying at your best. As you learn to pray, you work at making teshuva. You experiment. You try one way of connecting with G-d, and then another but your commitment to overcome a sin is always strong. Learning to pray with strength means you almost always seek improvement. It might take around ten to fifteen years to reach the first step of strength. By following this book and working at character improvement consistently, you will likely cut that time frame down to a fraction of what it would be if you learned to pray by experimenting. It is wise to start at a young age, by your early thirties if you can to do this work in its entirety. 

The Step by Step Plan 

     Making lower-level teshuva is progressive so you have to work at making strong teshuva. You can do it your way but please consider using the methods I have described above. Since one who is close to G-d does not sin regularly you work on teshuva only when it is needed. That means, it takes more time to become proficient at it. 

     You will figure out that in order to speed up the process, you can bring to mind past events that you did not make teshuva on or events that you made teshuva on but without strength and commitment. Even if you did teshuva on an event, if you do not believe your teshuva was completely accepted, you may certainly go back and make teshuva on it again with more strength. If you do not remember if you did teshuva on an event, do teshuva again.

     If you have been working on being your better self for a while, at some point, you decided to make long term teshuva because to likely felt inside when you prayed, that that you could be more spiritually clean. You felt that your past was pulling you down and that was a problem.    

     At some point if you wish, go back to your early childhood year by year looking through every event you can remember. You will go through every memory of times when you hurt someone in a relationship, any time you did not tell the truth, times when you broke Shabbos, and the times when you did not honor your parents. You will go through at least some of the times when you looked away from G-d or failed to trust Him (G-d forbid). That might take many months of effort but at some point, it is done. Then you turn the corner and work on higher-level teshuva but that is a life work. Keep the order. You move from one step to the next step with no guarantee where you are going. At some point have in mind that you want full teshuva. That is, being accepted by G-d above, to have satisfied the needs of correction, of any reincarnation attached to you, the acceptance of teshuva for any wrong doing during your life, and that you have significantly raised your character and spirit. When you are accepted for complete teshuva it does not mean that you corrected everything you ever did wrong. It means  G-d is putting aside or dismissing from your future, the need for teshuva on events you do not remember. If G-d is satisfied with your great, great effort, He might, or will, do that.              

     It may take many years before you are ready to work at removing all of your sins but at some point, start the process. It does not have to mean you are ready to carry it out from start to finish, you are trying it out one day at a time. You chose an event from childhood and go through it. Make teshuva on it so it disappears. Do the same over and over until you believe you have gone through your life and made teshuva on everything you could remember. 

     At some point you, as you pray, make a seamless change from working on past events to working on your character traits. Working on overcoming flaws or developing strengths it is all the same. You bring one up, and notice how you are not satisfied with it, you close your eyes and judge your trait. Ask yourself, “Why is this trait of mine in the state it is in? What do you want that trait to look like? Find ways that it failed you in the past. You can work on a trait for a long time. If you are working on responsibility see the times you should have been more responsible at home or at work. You can take days at a time working on one trait. You can go to another and return to it again. Bring in situations involving others where you did not live up to your own expectations. This work can easily go on for nine months. At some point you will want to complete your teshuva but if you do, you will know that your entire teshuva was not completed. Also, at some point teshuva can become painful. That is, each time you bring up a memory and work through a situation you find upsetting, you may have emotional pain. You may think, that was another failure. We do not feel failure, we feel pain. 

     I found it helpful, to listen to lectures on making teshuva and go through them one by one in order to make your complete teshuva. When you come to the point, likely, after more than a year of making teshuva hours a day, that you cannot possibly make teshuva one more time on one more item, you have to continue. You might say, “I will continue making teshuva day by day because my entire teshuva has not been accepted. My prayers are extremely strong, my behavior is strong but I know I have not completed the job. You must wait even though you do not know what you are waiting for.                                     

Completing Teshuva 

This happened to me the Summer of 2010. 

     Being accepted for making complete teshuva is not in your hands, it is not your choice. As amazing as it sounds, Heaven reaches out to you, judges you in an upper court, and makes a decision whether or not you will be granted teshuva. I do not believe it must work that way but that is the only way I know that complete teshuva is granted to a person.     

     This is one more reminder. Making a light teshuva is saying to G-d words of regret and having the belief one’s teshuva will be accepted. That may be what happens when an individual does light teshuva over a sin but does not add to your development of a strong fear of sin.        

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Meron

     After 1 ¼ years of intense teshuva I had the opportunity to pray Shacharit in Meron, Israel at the gravesite of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. As I began, Rabbi Shimon’s spirit was standing at my left, silently. Above me was an open entrance to a spiritual court. I felt it above me, I was confused by it, and I did not look up. I had a single chance to speak. I said, ‘It is painful for me to continue to make teshuva.” I did not ask for anything. I was told, “Do teshuva on Cynthia.” Rabbi Shimon left by flying high up to the opening above faster than fast. On the spot the spiritual door above me closed. Some were together and I believed I was the subject of a meeting. 

      I recited Shacharit and the entire time I prayed meeting was in progress, above me. I brought to mind a young girl named Cynthia I had a relationship during my master degree in college. My world became black as I prayed. It was the darkest prayer service of my life. As I prayed, I went over my time with Cynthia, believing this was a subject I had worked out at a previous time but now I had to do it again. I went over my poor choices and behaviors until I understood what I had done. I had been involved in a relationship and deeply hurt Cynthia’s feelings without knowing it. The sadness one a boy can cause a girl during dating can go beyond what the boy can understand. A girl can also cause a boy incredible pain. In the upper world, that is a blunder that can have serious consequences. It is not taken lightly. By the end of my service I had a better understanding of what I had done and a deeper regret. 

     I should have learned my lesson through this supernal experience but I didn’t. Afterwards, I spent more time thinking through this episode of my life, my time with Cynthia, until I learned my lesson. This experience taught me that what we take lightly, such as hurting anothers feelings by accident, even due to a lack of understanding, can be considered tragic in the upper world. If you hurt the feelings of someone innocent, that will influence heaven to not accept your complete teshuva. Yet, if you take that event, bring yourself down, tear it apart, understand yourself and change yourself by rewiring your brain, your history going forward will change. Then your complete teshuva can be accepted. I needed this experience to understand hurting the feelings of others is not unacceptable but more importantly, poor behaviors, whether or not they are sins, are tragic, and do not think you are in the right, from heaven’s point of view when you   have a disagreement in a relationship. If I had this t big a problem over a short-term relationship more than thirty years earlier, be careful. Imagine, what marriage strife looks like to those who are above us and involved.     

     During Alenu, Rabbi Shimon returned. I could see him as his spirit returned and stood before me. Once more he did not speak. I learned through him that our great rabbis of the past did not waste words. I knew what I had to say without thinking anything out. That made no sense to me. I said, “I do not want to come to G-d through teshuva, I want to come to Him through thanks.” He answered, “You have got it, but remember, there will always be teshuva.” He was gone. It was not scary. Something had happened that I did not understand and I thought, this is something I will not understand. Later that day a word came to me. I was told, the first level is teshuva, the second level is thanks, and the third level is praise. I had entered the level of thanks. When I prayed, I felt completely clean. I found that over time, I had to do teshuva on areas of life I missed, and on sins I would make, and that is expected. 

     Before one’s full teshuva is accepted, he will think that, that kind of teshuva is only done by the greatest rabbis. We should know, it is a matter of choice. 

Life Under the Sea

This is how it works. Before making full teshuva we are like people living under the sea. It is a sea of sin. Having your teshuva accepted is coming to the surface. You know what is below you and when you look up you see that there is much farther to go. That means, the level of teshuva is below the surface and the level of thanks is above it. In day to day life, activities are robust and filled with miracles. You enjoy mitzvoth. Praying can be an event like going to a special wedding. One has the chance to thank G-d from all angles, for work, for family, for health, for learning, for clothes, and for anything else. One learns that the entire Torah is true and that heaven, with all its levels of beings is greater than life on earth, and there is a belief in G-d that becomes more and more complete until one knows G-d is there. The time of thanks can go on for ten years or more. During that time, you might receive more than you could have imagined. That is confusing because receiving more that you think you deserve is hard to figure out. Eventually you reach a level of being thankful that is emotional and spiritual and powerful. It is much stronger than being appreciation.  Whatever you think of brings you to thank G-d. You are not a thanking machine because that machine does not have feelings but great feelings lie below the words, Thank You. Each item you have, such as watching children at play, looking at a building, praying from your own siddur, kissing the Torah, or being in yeshiva and looking around the room, are crowns on your head and they bring up overwhelming thanks to G-d.            

Categories to Work on in Character Improvement

     Character improvement is teshuva. You can work on one trait and then another. You make your order. Of course, whatever you do will work for you as long as you do your work.      Do not make your work tedious or uncomfortable. Loosen up. When you pray, don’t hold your child in your arms or fidget with something you have in your hands.  Consider the character or personality trait you want to change and what you want to change it to. Look towards G-d so you can have a merciful change. You can move through your prayers fast or pray slowly, whatever makes you comfortable. You can pronounce the words on the page and sometimes eye them. You can spend time on a verse as you work on your improvement or just move on. In all of these cases, G-d does not create your circumstances as you pray, you do. Don’t let distractions get in your way. You can work on change outside of prayer.   

     Look through the list of character strengths below. You will see a category of strength on the left and on the same line, on the right, the opposing category of weakness. Consider each trait and if you wish rate yourself, give yourself a percentage on how strong are your character traits. Decide if you are satisfied with your behavior within a given quality or if you want to improve something. If you want to improve a quality stand before G-d and identify what you want to work on and ask G-d for His help.   

Honoring others – Disgracing others     

Validating others – Contempt for others 

Trusting others – Distrusting other people

Truthfulness – Being deceptive

Sharing, Giving – Selfishness

Being respectful – Being disrespectful

Humility – Conceit, Jealousy, Envy

Responsible – Irresponsible 

Leadership – a Servant

Maturity – Childish

Consistent – Impulsive

Social – Withdrawn

Accepting – Resentful, Angry

Attachment – Leaning towards being alone

Flexible – Rigid

Self-Confident – Fearful

Positive – Negative

Follow through – Give up easily

Open minded – Closed minded

Contentment – Frustration   

Peace of mind – Stress and anxiety

     If you challenge others, or G-d, your flaws will challenge you. That is, all Jews are joined together in heaven and when a person acts out against someone else, G-d is automatically involved and maybe what you do not expect will challenge you. Improve a behavior and we all benefit. Bring your character and personality weaknesses into prayer, face them before G-d and that is how through prayer, G-d will work to resolve your issues; G-d helps. In Uva Letzion, recite the verse, Do His will and serve Him wholeheartedly so we will not have to struggle in vein. Then consider a character or personality flaw you are not satisfied with. You might remember a time when something went wrong. It is ok to desire change and ask G-d to direct you. Like spiritual changes, character and personality change takes much time but don’t think about the time investment, think about the gain.