Yetzer ha ra means evil inclination in Hebrew. It is the inclination for the bad. Yetzer tov is the inclination for the good. Inclination for the bad is the urge from within that takes you away from what you want or desire. It is the inclination within that goes against our self.
Why are people self-sabotaging?
How can we overcome the yetzer ha ra?
We are creatures of choice. We have come to this world to choose good, to choose love, to choose life. We have choice. We have free choice but not unlimited choice. Nothing forces people to be evil. We may have greater challenge, but no one is born evil.
Without the inclination that opposes good, we would not be able to choose good.
If we didn’t have choice then we would be robotic. God made us human so that we could learn to make our own responsible decisions to choose to either do good or bad.
Without the inclination, we wouldn’t have choice.
The greater the person the greater the inclination
How can we be clear about what is right or wrong? We rationalize our behaviour. The yetzer ha ra makes us believe that we are being good. Rationalization is one of the great strategies of the yetzer ha ra. We need to choose to think clearly and with integrity.
The goal is to choose the good.
The deepest, darkest truths are hidden behind the yetzer ha ra. The yetzer ha ra is darkness and it blinds us to the truth of who we really are. Wherever we have the most resistance to understand something, that is a deep, dark, hidden secret that we need to seek and find.
For us to be awake and see truth we have to be aware of the yetzer ha ra and fight it by choosing against it.
The things that challenge us the most are what makes us grow into learning who we truly are. The most empowerment we have is overcoming our self.
Fight fire with fire!
We are in a love relationship with God. What breaks the darkness, flips the switch within ourselves, and breaks the curse is when we get out of ourselves — When we disengage from our thinking mind and connect to our heart. Who we truly are is our heart.
The Leap of Faith
Next month is Sukkot (a time of harvesting God’s people). It is another 9 months until the holy day of Shavuot, which is the receiving of the Word of God.
This time is about fine-tuning ourselves to truly loving God. We completely surrender to Him and that is when we learn His divine love. His holy love is compared to a virgin.
This pure love reveals the deepest, most beautiful, divine love. Knowing God’s love is when we become love and love one another.
We make love to one another.
The curse of the yetzer ha ra is finally broken and the blessing of God is now revealed.
~ You and I birth this beautiful blessing into the world.
Notes on the yetzer ha ra are from Rabbi David Aaron’s podcast titled, How to Sabotaged Self-Sabotage
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Shannie Alvarez — A Gentile with a Jewish Heart
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Shannie Alvarez 