To DO not to BE..The great misconception...

God doesnt want us to BE..
He wants us to DO...

He doesnt want me to BE frum
He wants me to DO frum
He doesnt want me to BE righteous
he wants me to DO righteous

Such a freeing concept
People get stuck their states of being.
Instead of their state of doing..
BEING is very limiting. People get stuck in their self images.
I'm not even talking about the dangers of negative self image or the harmfulness of feeling like a BAD person.
Even when someone "becomes" a righteous person, they become stuck in their state of being. They lose their ability for total and rigorous honesty.
They start weaving a narrative about themselves and ignore the subtle things that don't fit with the story line.

The Gemara states in Brachos 33b Where the baal teshuvah (penitant) stands, even the perfectly righteous cannot stand in that place...
That's because the baal teshuvah is versatile. The baal teshuva denotes a sense of doing whereas the Tzadik is in a static sense of BEing.
One DOES while the other IS.
When one begins to think this way, it becomes difficult to get down on yourself for not being something you're not. That's not the goal.
The goal is to DO and that's something that's ALWAYS immediately at hand.


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