Teshuva does not mean guilt – teshuva means return to functioning as Nishmas Am Yisrael

Being alive is a constant source of opportunity to reveal divine dignity. Inherent in life are the necessary concealments of what divine dignity is, for covering our divine dignity is a body, with an ego and subconscious and unconscious mind. What we experience in our natural responses is tangible and experiential. That “delivery system” for stimulus, thought and emotion is one that we can bend into service for revealing divine dignity. It is a lifelong journey. But our effort to do so creates positive influence.

Imagine all the benefits we get from a tree – wood for building, shade, fruit, home for birds and animals and ultimately, its waste product, oxygen, which is formed through photosynthesis. A tree takes in carbon dioxide and produces so much benefit for us and its waste product is necessary for our very lives. If we were to ask which is the most noticeable of a tree’s function, we would say most likely shade, home for animals, or even wood. It takes scientific understanding to know it is also producing oxygen.

Thus can we understand what a return to functioning as Nishmas Am Yisrael is like. When the Jewish people do mitzvahs, when we rise above our natural tendencies with love in our heart to put aside our self-referencing in favor of emulating Hashem’s Attributes of Mercy thereby revealing divine dignity, we are expressing a higher understanding of the spiritual science of the universe and of our functioning. It is empowering to understand that what we go through is not the basis of our esteem, either here or in the heavens. What we go through here is the playing field upon which our free choice is given so that we can do the functioning of Nishmas Am Yisrael. The functioning of Nishmas Am Yisrael is to generate positive influence that Hashem can then fold into the elements and His utterances in creating and re-creating the world each moment.

With love in our hearts and emunah as the place from which we view our intellectual understanding of circumstance, may we cry out to Hashem that we understand that He is the place of all, that His is the only Glory, and to please help us to access the koach of what is natural with expression of divine dignity so that divine dignity is what naturally flows through us, rather than self-referencing. We do this by refining our unrectified attributes. This is teshuva, but it is not to feel guilt. It is teshuva to produce positive influence we are created to produce and to build our being into one that can hold and reveal His Glory.

May our effort to do so be a merit for klal yisrael that we should be deemed to be the generation meritorious for redemption and may the koach of our past mistakes now having taught us be brought to the side of merit as they teach us and impress upon the natural delivery system within us an expanded ability to hold and choose to reveal divine dignity over lower responses.