Know Where to Jump · Second Addendum

Two Steps of Repentance (תשובה תתאה & תעלה) 0:00

Well, no, a person can't, that's the thing. There's two there's two things, like a person wants to do תשובה, there's two steps: תשובה תתאה and תשובה עילאה. תשובה תתאה means that you're just going to stop doing the bad thing and do the right thing, right? But you're going to commit to do that. So that's really changing the עצם רצון, that your goal now is like to serve God, not to serve yourself.

But then תשובה עילאה, it says, is being like מסדר your מוח ולב. It's like what he's talking about in סמ״ך ו״ו, he's talking about it.

Because once you know your goal, you have to figure out what will bring you your goal and what will not. So you have to be מסדר what to associate to what, to make a יושר for it.

So a person can have the רצון, the עצם רצון for in a good place, and want to like, you know, be connected to God, want to do the right thing, but if they don't first fix up their understanding of the תורה and what it wants and what the רבי wants, and you know, all these kind of things, then they can mess up and jump in the wrong place.

Jacob’s Strategy: Preparing Before the Big Jump 1:15

You know, like a person wants to have מסירות נפש, but you have to know where to where to jump. That's what he says about why like יעקב went to לבן first before going to עשו, because like his עבודה with the place of לבן was like just figuring out everything within קדושה, and you know, figure like working out, you know, what his רצונות should be and everything. Once he had that all straight, then he was ready to make like the jump on the level of like a בעל תשובה, to like commit higher than שכל.

But first you have to he had to have the שכל to figure out what's קדושה and what's not, and how it should work, and clarify all that.