The Three Inner States of Yom HaKippurim

Yom HaKippurim is 25 hours-- and the 25th hour is the plus one- the whole. It is a tense day-not a day of relaxation. The part of us, the priest, goes into the holy of holies and does not know if he will come out alive or not. This is why it's a day of signature-- it defines the ecology that we will be in that year-- whether our spirit will be on the side of life or side of death. Between the personal prayer and written prayer, between me and my community, between who forms the letters of the prayer: my own power or allowing Him to form the prayer within me.

Repenting is going back home because it's my home-- not because I've sinned. After you've allowed an intention to be born in you, you are able to see that your intention is still not clear of the agenda of the will to receive. That lack of clarity is what we repent upon, we take it another step-- the ability of the sparks to be able to remember, or to be awakened to the fact that they need to go home. We are never clear of the will to receive, but our job is to see and further cleanse ourselves from it.

We think of a sin as something we've done wrong, but in truth, when you look at "sin" in Hebrew, it has to do with missing the target. You have dialed the wrong number, so you can't connect. You admit that perhaps the entire template was miscalculated. The value of why you were created--the reason you exist--was miscalculated. You can be very religious and still miss the point. We examine this by asking ourselves: can we hear what the Creator meant for us to hear?