Question: What does it mean to “correct past mistakes and transgressions” and become a “complete righteous?”

Answer: We reform desires that have gone through the breaking. A person comes face to face with his evil inclination, and he perceives it as his own; that is, he takes the blame for it. He doesn’t identify himself with the point in the heart and cannot observe his desire from aside as the material given to him for correction. So far, he doesn’t cling to the Creator, who created this evil inclination, but identifies with the evil inclination itself. The Light has not clarified his desire yet and hasn’t severed it from the person to move him to the Creator’s side. So, one thinks that it is he who is bad and not the evil inclination.

The Light has not sufficiently reformed him, hasn’t illuminated his desires, so a person doesn’t see the source of all evil and then of all good. In other words, he doesn’t consider himself subject to a singular power beyond which there is nothing else, and he doesn’t realize that he is always ruled by one source, which determines how bad the desires are and how to correct them.

He doesn’t understand yet that he must ask to have selfish desires revealed and how to correct them. After all, everything is done by the Light that Reforms, which reveals the left line first. To the extent that one strives to reach total correction, bestowal, according to how much effort he exerts, the Light comes and reveals his evil inclination to him.

He has to pray for the Creator to show him what he is lacking for perfection. The prayer is to reveal the desire to be human, to be perfect, faithful to the Creator, and to bestow. Revealing what I need for perfection is to see the deficiencies that I have to correct in order to achieve the good.

But I don’t ask for my deficiencies to be revealed; a person is unable to do so. Due to our nature, we can only ask for good conditions.

Our work is to come to this understanding that all desires, corrected and uncorrected, are in the Creator’s hands. And man is that small clever child who knows how to ask the Creator correctly. And then this whole monster will become revealed: the evil inclination, egoism, Pharaoh, which later on will change and get transformed into a good inclination, by way of restriction, the screen, and the Reflected Light.

All of this descends from above, as it is written: “I created the evil inclination and the Torah to correct it since the Light in it reforms.” So where does a person come in, if at all, since the Creator said that everything comes from Him? What a person needs is awareness, a prayer for a good state.

But he doesn’t want to ask for what is good; after all, his nature is the evil inclination. So he has to use the power of the group that will infuse him with these good values although he may not necessarily sense them. It looks as if they are playing a game; they are staging a good state and through this influence each other. Thus, a person achieves a greater and greater desire until the Light has finally reformed him.

All of this is arranged so as not to rob a person of his freewill. He has to be aware that he is merely acting, while, in reality, has no desire for any of it, and that he opposes the true, perfect state. And the closer he moves to the right state, the greater freewill he is given, the more of the sinner in him is revealed, and greater doubts in needing this path unfold in him. He has to discern these things, matching himself against the other side, comparing good and evil.

Hence, our entire work rests on our freedom of choice, and all we have to do is to offer ourselves to the influence of the group that we have built according to our understanding of the spiritual world. We should play so as to have the group affect everyone as if all of this is true. And then, everyone will come to the true prayer.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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