TESHUVA - KNOWING THE PLACE FOR THE FIRST TIME


Since it's Elul, Teshuva once again creeps back into consciousness. Our sages understood Teshuva as being a return, a coming back. In our time, Teshuva has taken on the nuance of repentence, although its original meaning was much more aligned to that of a force that cycles around, bringing about renewal, new life, growth and transformation.

In fact, our sages wrote of this in the Talmud, positing the believe that Teshuva was one of the seven things that existed before the creation of the world. The Kabbalah speaks of Teshuva as a kind of cosmic force, a process that goes well beyond the human and includes all life and beings. It might be understood as the propensity of all things to renew themselves.

As a psychologist, I have often marveled at the ability of human beings to make deep, structural change in themselves. It doesn't occur every day, and not everyone makes these profound changes deep in his or her psyche. But many do, and it is a profound and sacred phenomenon to witness.

One of the characteristics of such change is that the person seems to be in a new place, someplace that's different. And yet, without fail, someone who has undergone this type of change process will comment on how comfortable and "at home" he or she feels. It reminds me, always, of the line from T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," in which is speaks of arriving, in the end, at the beginning, and knowing the place for the first time.

And this is what Elul is for me -- a liminal time, a time of transition and potential, a time of change and transformation, a period during which I will allow myself to be actively engaged in the primordial process of Teshuva. Elul reminds us of the paradox that we must change in order to be more truly ourselves.

Tzipyo