Am I Really Doing TeShuva?

0:10How do you know if you're doing teshuvah? One sign, rabotai, is when you get to the point where you're disgusted with the sins you've made in the past to such a degree that it encourages you to... Now, just being disgusted and upset about your past, that could simply be just the yetzer hara. Why? He wants you to say, "Oh, you're such a sinner. You did this, you did that. Ah, there's no hope for you." You lose hope and you decide to be a rasha for the rest of your life. That's the yetzer hara. But the yetzer hatov, that wants you to do teshuvah.

1:18If you're still talking about your life before you did teshuva, oh, remember when we were with that girl and with that guy, and went here, and went there, and went for money, and went to this, and I took that guy, and I did that. Remember all that stuff? Oh, you're still celebrating it? You haven't begun teshuva. All you did is change clothing. All you did is change clothing and you became a robot that keeps Shabbat. Shuvah, Rabotai, is fixing the Amalek, the chametz inside. That's teshuvah. It takes time. It takes effort. It's not automatic. It's not like Shabbat, where you know if you sleep all day for 25 hours straight, you've technically kept Shabbat. It's not oneg Shabbat, but at least you didn't violate it. Teshuvah is not something that just happens automatically. You have to actually work here. You have to work on your middot. We have to work on our middot. So this series is one that's, Baruch Hashem, helping me at least work on my middot, and some people are telling me that it's also helping them drastically. One guy, Baruch Hashem, said he was religious. He just sent me an email recently, saying, you know, I've been religious from birth. Born with a kippah. Maybe peyot too.

2:44Religious this, that, school, yeshiva related to rabbis, to all— the whole nine. I don't know exactly how old he is, but he's not young. He's not 90, but he's not young. He says, "Until now, until I started watching your shiurim, I did not realize how significant Yirat Shamayim really is." Then actually, you know what? I wanted to double-check. I wanted to double-check because, yeah, you say some things or Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi says some things. Maybe it's just your opinion. So, I looked it up, and he said, I always thought of the Chafetz Chaim as this, you know, fluffy, nice old man. I'm sure he was a nice old man, but you know what I found when I actually read the book? I read what the Chafetz Chaim actually said, and it's much worse than you might think. I'm the nice, fluffy guy compared to the Chafetz Chaim. Everybody likes to talk about how it's not nice to say bad things, but do you know how much the Chafetz Chaim talked about Gehinnom? Do you know how much the Chafetz Chaim talked about Yirat Shamayim? Do you know what the biggest kept secret in Judaism today is?

4:05Every single major Rav that ever existed from the beginning of time until just this past generation or two—anyone that was of any significance—spent an enormous amount of their writing and their time discussing Yirat Shamayim. Why? It's more than half the Torah. Which means that only now in this dor shafel, this horrific generation that we're in and we're part of, has Yirat Shamayim gone to such a point that some people consider Yirat Shamayim something that you shouldn't even bother with. One Rav I heard recently said anyone that's scared of God is a fool. said anyone that continues to listen to you is a fool. But this is the world we live in. Unless you start looking into it yourself and you're depending on speeches, whether it's my speech or somebody else's, you're never gonna get rid of that safek, you're never gonna get rid of that doubt. Because even if you read, if you watch all my lectures, you're only getting a portion of the bigger picture.

5:26Unless you double-check everything I say, or at least a substantial amount, to the point where you know, "Whatever he says, I've already verified enough that I know by now." It's already good. If you don't start taking notice of the things I mentioned; I mentioned to you Gemarot, this, and all these different books—if you don't start checking some of these things... You're always going to have a doubt. The minute there's a problem in your life, the minute some rabbi with a longer beard than mine shows up in your life, he's this, he's that. Immediately, you forget. You watched Yirmiyahu for a year and a half. What happened? Him, yeah, yeah, I think I know who he is. I think you're on. Yeah, yeah, that, yeah. He's new, he's new. What do you mean you were listening to me for a year and a half and watching Julian? Well, no, I heard from some rabbi much older than him. He said that's not it. You got some misunderstanding. He is not like what he says. He's my family. He's a fanatic. He's like one of those Muslim terrorists trying to take over the world in a Jewish uniform.

6:33You start double-checking what I say, and if you don't, you will never get rid of that safek. Right now, you're all saying, "No, I don't have a safek. I've already been coming for a year or two years; I have no safek." You do have a safek. How do I know? I used to be like you. I used to go to lectures too until I started double-checking what the rabbis were saying. I had a safek, I had a doubt. Why? Maybe he’s just interpreting it that way. Maybe it is just that one rabbi who mentioned this opinion, but all the others may say something different. Perhaps he chose the one really strict opinion because he himself is strict. You have to double-check. And until you start double-checking, we're not going to get rid of that inclination that's inside us. We're not going to fulfill that mitzvah of teshuva.