Tefillah - 064 Getting to the Root of Sin

Asking Forgiveness From Hashem, For What Caused Us To Sin

מחל לנו מלכינו כי פשענו – “Forgive us, our King, for we have been negligent to sin.”

When a person asks Hashem to be forgiven for his sins, this can either be done in a superficial way, or through an inner understanding.

The superficial approach is that a person asks Hashem to forgive him for the act of the sin he committed, because he does not want to be punished. We know that intentional sins (someone who sinned in order to anger Hashem) have a more severe punishment than unintentional sins (someone who sinned out of evil desires); thus, the person is afraid of retribution, so he wants to be forgiven from his sins, in order that he not suffer as a result of his sins.

The inner understanding of a person who asks Hashem to be forgiven, though, is because we should want to be forgiven for the evil motivations that caused the sin in the first place.

This is not simply about becoming aware if the sin was committed because the person was overtaken by a desire, or if a person did it to anger Hashem. It is rather referring to a deeper motivation – the negative ratzon (will) that is behind the sin. If a person would have had more clarity of ratzon and he would have thought more beforehand with hisbonenus (deep mental reflection), he wouldn’t have to come to sin in the first place.

Let us examine what is going on inside the mind of a person who sins because he was overtaken by desire, as well as what is going on inside the mind of a person who sins intentionally in order to anger Hashem.

When Desires For Sin Overpower The Mind

When a person sins because he was overtaken by a desire, this is really because his emotion of desire overtook his rational, thinking intellect. His emotions are ruling over his daas (maturity of mind), and therefore desires are able to overpower his mind. The person sinned because he did not develop his power of ratzon (will) and seichel (intellect). Had his ratzon and seichel been properly developed, emotions wouldn’t be able to overtake him. In fact, even if his ratzon would weaken, his seichel\intellect can still save him when he is tempted to sin and gain control over the emotion of desire.

The One Who Sins Intentionally

As for a person who sins intentionally to anger Hashem, what is going on in his psyche, deep down? It is really because man has a nature to oppose anything that he feels challenged by (in Hebrew, “hisnagdus”).

Chavah was called “ezer k’negdo”, a “helpmate opposite him”,because a woman’s nature opposes a man’s nature; the idea we see from this is that man is opposed by anything that challenges him from outside himself. But even before Chavah was created, man feels opposition towards anything that challenges him from the outside.

On its basic level, a person can use this power to oppose whatever opposes him, in order to deal with his simple challenges. This power can be further developed to fight off harder challenges. But when this power of opposing challenges is used by man for evil, a person comes to oppose the will of Hashem, chas v’shalom.

It can get to the point that a person feels more alive from these kinds of challenges, and he derives his whole vitality in life from always opposing Hashem’s will, chas v’shalom. That is the depth behind a person who sins to anger Hashem; it is because he has gotten so used to challenging anything that opposes him, that it has even become his whole sense of vitality in life.

Inner Oppositions

A deeper kind of opposition, however, is when a person feels opposition within his own self!

The root of all war and strife in the world is because of this human trait of feeling opposed by challenges. But the deeper kind of opposition is when people feel opposed within their own self.

Every person can feel contradictory desires in himself. Generally, this is called “yetzer tov” and “yetzer hora” – the forces of good and evil that are within man. But the deeper understanding is that we have different retzonos (desires) in us which contradict each other.

Reb Yisrael Salanter said that there are two kinds of yetzer hora – a force of evil that comes from outside of man, which is called the angel known as the Yetzer Hora\Satan\Angel of Death, and an evil that is more within.[1] The outer force of evil is the angel known as the yetzer hora, and it resides in the left chamber of the heart; it is a voice that tells a person to commit a sin or not to do the mitzvos. The more inner, deeper force of evil is within one’s middos (character traits).

An example of the deeper yetzer hora is that even when a person wants to do a mitzvah, at the same time, he also doesn’t want to do it. His motivations are mixed with both pure and impure motivations. For example, he wants to learn Torah, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to learn. He wants to do a mitzvah, but at the same time, he also doesn’t want to do it.

Thus, everything has in it some degree of inner opposition coming from within the person. If a person doesn’t feel his inner contradictions, he doesn’t understand properly why he should ask Hashem to be forgiven from sin; we can consider this to be like “immersing in a mikveh while holding a sheretz” [insect that renders him impure].

In other words, in order for a person to do teshuvah for his sins, he has to know the reason that caused the sin, and from gaining that perspective, he can properly ask Hashem for forgiveness. He is not asking Hashem to forgive him merely for the act of sin committed, so that he can avoid the punishment of what will result from the sin. Rather, he is asking to be forgiven for the reason that caused the sin [which was that he didn’t listen to his inner oppositions and thus he didn’t come to the point of deciding how to act properly].

When we ask Hashem to be forgiven from sin, the basic requirement is to fulfill the four parts of the Teshuvah process: to abandon the sin, regret it, confess it, and resolve not to do it again. But in order for this teshuvah process to start, a person has to also touch upon the root reason that caused him to sin.

Becoming Aware of Inner Oppositions

When a person lives a more inner kind of life, when he lives in a “world of clarity” (olam barur) towards his soul – and there are levels within levels in this – he understands that for every ability in his soul, there is another power that opposes it.

For example, when a person feels a ratzon to do something good, he should also be able to feel that at the same time he also doesn’t want to do it. If he doesn’t notice it, it might be because he is so immersed in what he is doing that he doesn’t pause to listen to his inner forces that are really clashing within him.

Usually, when people are immersed in what they are doing - and thus they don’t listen to others - it is not coming from the fact that they are so busy listening to their inner voices. It is rather because they are focused on listening to one voice alone inside themselves. This doesn’t help a person gain the power of listening to what’s going on deep inside himself, though.

If a person would notice the two different voices inside him and listen to this opposition inside himself, he would discover that he can listen better to others when they argue with him, because he has gotten used to the concept of listening to different voices going on within a matter.

Inner, Subtle Listening

A person needs to listen to himself and hear the contradictory desires in himself, and this will also develop his power of listening to others.[2] When he has gotten used to listening to his own inner voices, he will discover that he listens better to others, and will be able properly hear out others’ voices\ opinions in a matter.

When people aren’t able to listen to their own inner voices, they can’t either deal with others and be able to listen to them; when they come home to their family, they aren’t able to listen properly to the different voices in their own household.  

Most of the strife and arguments in today’s times – which are usually not “for the sake of Heaven” - are not stemming from the actual argument at hand, but rather because one of the sides is not really listening to the other side. One of the sides is not prepared to listen to the other. When there is no listening, when one side of the argument doesn’t try to understand the other, then of course, differences will erupt, and the arguing will be blown out of proportion.

We find this idea from the concept of how things are done in Beis Din, where each Dayan has to hear both sides of the opposition, or else they cannot give a judgment.  Whenever there is an argument, one has to understand two opposite views on the same situation. If not, a Dayan is considered to be mentally bribed by one of the sides, because he has only come to understand that particular litigant he heard, and his judgment will naturally be swayed to rule in that person’s favor. In order to mete out of a fair judgment, the Torah wants us to hear what both sides have to say.

There is a famous statement of Reb Yeruchem Levovitz: “A person cannot kill someone”. How then could Kayin kill Hevel? It was because he didn’t realize that Hevel even existed! If a person doesn’t stop to think that another person exists, he is able to kill him, because he is unaware that the other exists.

This is not only true about murder; it applies to all arguments and strife. If a person can’t feel his own inner oppositions, he will not either be able to hear other people’s opinions that oppose him.

Developing Your Power of Opposition To Oppose Evil And Choose Holiness

Once a person becomes aware of his inner oppositions, he can develop his awareness further and then use his power of opposition for holiness. He can choose to use his power of opposition to fight the evil arguments of the yetzer hora. He can hear himself inside - two different voices going on - and decide between them.

But this is only once he becomes aware of the two contradictory voices inside him. He can then be a ‘judge’ on the two ‘parties’ going on inside himself, after he has heard the arguments of each side.

The Ramchal writes that it “is the way of the wise to always think” – the depth behind this is that a truly wise person is always listening to his inner voices, and deciding between the two different forces inside them.

This is not limited to thinking about if something is permissible according to Halacha or not. It means to become aware of our inner motivations and to notice the contradictory desires in yourself; to listen to yourself.  For example, even if you know you are doing something that is Halachically correct, ask yourself if your inner motivations in carrying out the act are pure.

Thus, if a person asks for forgiveness from Hashem for his sins in this blessing in Shemoneh Esrei of סלח לנו, and the reason for the sin still exists, it is pointless to ask Hashem for forgiveness.

Therefore, if we are ever in doubt about if a certain act is okay or not – even if it is Halachically correct, but we still feel uneasy about doing it - we should separate from it, and instead seek to purify our motivations.

In Conclusion

May we merit from Hashem to a true forgiveness from sin – not just to be forgiven from the actual act of sin, but that the reasons that motivated us to sin should be uprooted totally, and through this we should merit a spirit of purity upon the world with the coming of Moshiach, Amen.