Teshuva (repentance) has two main elements[1];
1) "Departing from the sin."[2] 2) Admitting the sin before Hashem (G-d). The best way to truly understand these two concepts is to delve into the Rambam's explanation regarding this Mitzvah of Repentance, yet we can explain a tiny, minuscule, minute element of these two elements in terms of doing teshuva by getting organized. For example, when a person wants to organize their closet they look at the current state of their messy closet, they envision what they want their closet to look like so it will be more organized, and they begin to organize it. Depending on the size of the closet this process can take an hour, a day, a week, or even years yet by working to organize the messiness in effect this person departs little by little from the messiness since they admit their closet is disorganization. By organizing our time, our relationships, our speech, our thoughts, etc. we clean up the messiness found there and thus we do teshuva (we repent). The main mistake is that people approach this process extremely systematically and do not take into account that real organization is a best done in a deep form of meditation as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan z"l[3] explains, "Meditation as a controlled manner of thinking. On the simplest level, you can decide to sit down for the next half hour and just think about…rearranging your furniture. In your mind's eye, you might imagine how various arrangements would look and even plan how to move the heavier pieces. During that half hour, you will have been meditation on furniture arrangements." But we can take this "organization meditation" to a much more meaningful place, "suppose you decide to spend a half hour meditating on how to rearrange your life…" suppose you decide to spend a half hour meditating on how to do teshuva (to repent), suppose you spend a half hour meditating on how to organize your life to return to Hashem (G-d)… Shalom, Reb Matisyahu Manin NOTES: [1] הלכות תשבוה פרק א הלכה א [2] פירוש רמב''ם המאיר הלכות תשובה פרק א הלכה א עמוד ז [3] Jewish Mediation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan. Chapter 3 Techniques p. 16. 1985., Schocken Books Inc.
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