Every year anew, as we enter the gates of the month of mercy, the great challenge of the avodah of teshuvah stirs and awakens within us. On the one hand, we certainly desire with our whole heart to return and draw close to Hashem; yet on the other hand, we face a significant difficulty in finding and forging a stable course in this lofty avodah. In order to make any real progress in this work, we must first identify the basic point that is holding us back and preventing us from acquiring it.
The Core Requirement of Teshuvah: Change
The fundamental principle required for teshuvah is change. As we learn from the words of the Rambam (Hilchos Teshuvah 2:4), a person doing teshuvah must reach the point where he can say: “I am a different person, and I am not that same person who did those deeds,” and he changes all his actions entirely for the good and for the straight path.
The trouble is that when we look closely at the matter, we find that we struggle mightily and instinctively recoil from creating real change. We readily agree that we ought to strengthen ourselves in various areas, but we view this only as an additional layer of chizuk, not as genuine change. This is especially true for us as a tzibbur of shomrei Torah u’mitzvos who strive to do the will of the Borei Yisborach. We certainly recognize the need to grow stronger, but we struggle to identify where we are called upon to become something entirely different. Indeed, it is precisely because of our own spiritual standing that we feel pressured and uneasy at the prospect of fundamental change.
Why We Resist Change
This pressure and this recoil from change do not stem specifically from our own weakness. On the contrary, their root lies in the firm stability that the Borei Yisborach embedded within Creation itself, so that the world would be stable and predictable. Just as the sun rises every day, so too does a person rise each morning in the very same way. In order to establish a world that is stable and enduring, the Borei Yisborach set into the fabric of His world an ingrained reality that resists change and pushes away foreign surprises, and so He fashioned every living creature and every plant to resist change and to push away the occurrence of surprises.
It would therefore appear that the avodah of teshuvah operates, in a certain sense, against the very nature of Creation, and this is why we find it so difficult. This is the reason that the resolutions we make, time and again, lack sufficient staying power, and we quickly return to our fixed habits — because the entire makeup of both man and beast fundamentally wants to remain the same and to resist all change. We are thus called upon to consider: where, then, is the place to nevertheless attempt to work toward the kind of fundamental change described by the Rambam?
Two Opposing Forces Within Us
Within human nature there exist two forces that appear, as it were, to be opposed to one another. The first is the conservative force, which seeks stability and consistency and pushes away change and surprise, while the second is one that is continually interested in novelty, change, and surprise. The primary force that sustains a person is the first — the force that seeks stability — while the second does indeed seek out change, but only in a non-binding, tentative way.
Indeed, our serious and weighty approach to the avodah of teshuvah — in which we resolve upon immediate changes — is precisely what stalls our progress, for it immediately arouses the central force embedded within us that resists all change. We must therefore find a different way to think and to act, one that does not immediately trigger the mechanism that rises up in protest against change and overpowers and rejects it.
Opening the Door Gently
It seems that we must first make ourselves flexible and open ourselves to a new way of thinking in a non-binding manner — approaching it, as it were, from the perspective of that second force within us, the one that is interested in novelty — yet still without committing to any decision. It should be nothing more than the thought that perhaps we could think differently; perhaps we could immerse ourselves more deeply in learning, or become more pleasant toward our fellow man, and so on.
When we approach the matter in this way, the force that resists change will not be aroused right away, and so we will be able to contemplate the new thought calmly and at ease. And in truth, little by little, we can even allow it to become a central direction in our lives, until it becomes, in itself, a complete reality — and in the end, we arrive at genuine change, without having faced fierce resistance from the very outset of the journey.
We find support for this in the words of the Navi (Yeshayahu 55:3): “Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, and your soul shall live.” An “inclination” is a turning away from the straight, familiar path onto a different path. First, we must be open to hearing a different thought and a new direction in a calm manner, even if we are not accustomed to it. “And come to Me” — meaning, provided that the entire purpose of this new direction is l’sheim Shamayim. And only afterward, “listen, and your soul shall live” — meaning, only afterward is there room to reflect on what this thought has awakened within us. And when we act in this fashion, we discover that inclining the ear at first in an open, non-binding way ultimately brings about the revival of the soul — techiyas hanefesh — genuine, fundamental change, becoming, in effect, a new person entirely.
Very often, our resistance to hearing a new and creative direction in thought from a rav or a chavrusa stems from the heavy weight we place upon the words the moment we hear them, as though they demand of us an immediate and sweeping change across our entire way of life. Hearing things in this manner immediately puts us under pressure and arouses fierce resistance to any change whatsoever on the part of the conservative, consistency-seeking force within us. If, however, we learn to listen properly — to think it through first calmly and without commitment — we will find that, in the end, these words will make a powerful impression upon us and will bring us to fundamental change, to the point of a genuine techiyas hanefesh.