Repentance

I'm reading "The Thirteen Petalled Rose" by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.  (I'm reading three different books at the same time.)  Regardless of how people feel about the genocide of Palestinians, Rabbis have very rare and profound knowledge.  Also maybe keep in mind that many Rabbis probably do not support what's been done to Gaza.  

This excerpt may be of interest to those who were part of the dark forces who joined the Light Forces – those who were not destructive enough to be sent to the Galactic Central Sun who chose to change sides.

“Repentance is not just a psychological phenomenon, a storm within a human teacup, but is a process that can effect real change in the worlds.  Every human action elicits certain inevitable results that extend beyond their immediate context, passing from one level of existence to another, from one aspect of reality to another.  The act of repentance is, in the first place, a severance of the chain of cause and effect in which one transgression follows inevitably upon another.  Beyond this, it is an attempt to nullify and even to alter the past.

This can only be achieved only when man, subjectively, shatters the order of his own existence.  The thrust of repentance is to break through the ordinary limits of the self.  Obviously, this cannot take place within the routine of life, but it can be an ongoing activity throughout life.  Repentance is thus something that persists; it is an ever-renewed extrication from causality and limitation.

When man senses the wrongness, evil, and emptiness in his life, it is not enough that he yearn for God or try to change his way of life.  Repentance is more than aspiration and yearning, for it also involves the sense of despair.  And it is this very despair – and, paradoxically, the sin that precedes it – that gives man the possibility of overleaping his past.  The desperation of the endeavor to separate himself from his past, to reach heights that the innocent and ordinary man is not even aware of, gives the penitent the power to break the inexorability of his fate, sometimes in a way that involves a total destruction of his past, his goals, and almost all of his personality.    

Nevertheless, this level of repentance is only a beginning, for all of the penitent’s past actions continue to operate – the sins he committed and the injuries he inflicted exist as such in time.  Even though the present has been altered, earlier actions and their consequences continue to generate a chain of cause and effect.  The significance of the past can be changed only at the higher level of repentance called Tikkun.  

The first stage in the process of Tikkun is of equilibration.  For every wrong deed in his past, the penitent is required to perform certain acts that surpass what is demanded of an “ordinary” individual, to complement and balance the picture of his life.  He must build and create anew and change the order of good and evil in such a way that not only his current life activity acquires new form and direction, but the totality of his fate receives a consistently positive value.

The highest level of repentance, however, lies beyond the correction of sinful deeds and the creation of independent, new patterns that counterweigh past sins and injuries; it is reached when the change and the correction penetrate the very essence of the sins once committed and, as the sages say, create the condition in which a man’s transgressions become his merits.  This level of Tikkun is reached when a person draws from his failings not only the ability to do good, but the power to fall again and again and, notwithstanding, to transform more extensive and important segments of life.

It is using the knowledge of the sin of the past and transforming it into such an extraordinary thirst for good that it becomes a divine force.  The more a man was sunk in evil, the more anxious he becomes for good.  This level of being, in which failings no longer exert a negative influence on the penitent, in which they no longer reduce his stature or sap his strength, but serve to raise him, to stimulate his progress – this is the condition of genuine Tikkun.

Thus the complete correction of past evil cannot be brought about merely by acknowledgment of wrong and contrition; indeed, this acknowledgment often leads, in practice, to a loss of incentive, a state of passivity, of depression; furthermore, the very preoccupation with memories of an evil impulse may well revive that impulse’s hold on a person.  In genuine Tikkun, everything that was once invested in the forces of evil is elevated to receive another meaning within a new way of life; deeds once performed with a negative intention are transformed into a completely new category of activity.  To be sure, forces of evil that had parasitically attached themselves to a person are not easily compelled to act in the direction of the good.  Spiritual possibilities of which a man who has not sinned can never even gain an awareness have to emerge and become a driving force.

The penitent thus does more than return to his proper place.  He performs an act of amendment of cosmic significance; he restores the sparks of holiness which had been captured by the powers of evil.  The sparks that he had dragged down and attached to himself are now raised up with him, and a host of forces of evil return and are transformed to forces of good.  This is the significance of the statement in the Talmud that in the place where a completely repentant person stands, even the most saintly cannot enter; because the penitent has at his disposal not only the forces of good in his soul and in the world, but also those of evil, which he transforms into essences of holiness.”