הסימנים היותר טוביםPain as a Sign of Greatness

ha-simanim ha-yoter tovimIn Gamatria ↗

Only a lit soul can see its stains.

Chapter 8 reads the pain of return as a sign of health. The first ache comes as the soul's bad parts are cut away, like surgery removing a diseased limb, and through it a person goes free, like the slave freed for a tooth or an eye (Berakhot 5a). The world is full of harmony, and every moral break tears the soul from the order of being. The purer the soul, the more it feels the tremor. When someone sets out to return and is suddenly frightened by how many his sins seem, that is no cause for despair. The soul's light has come on and shows its stains, the surest sign of repair to come.

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