All of man’s challenge in life – which is man’s purpose of life and the destiny of the world – is found in today’s Lesson-in-Tanya – in it, the Alter Rebbe clarifies a fascinating subconscious psychological war that occurs:

In essence, all of us fall into one of five categories:

The first is called Tzaddik – perfectly (or almost perfectly) good.

The second is called Benoinie – a good but challenged individual.

And the third, is called rasha, either a completely deleterious (or somewhat deleterious) individual.

Now get ready to become a Chossid (see yourself in truth.)

The perfect Tzaddik is one who despises evil, the imperfect Tzaddik, is one who somewhat despises evil.

In other words, think of a person as consisting of desires and abilities:

Desires are like a gps telling a car where to go – the ability of the car to go, its wheels, steering, body etc. are the abilities.

Likewise, we follow what we desire, which manifests into thoughts (contemplating how to achieve what I want) speech (using my language to achieve what I want) and actions (using my body to get what I want.)

So all of us have two souls – gpss in us – one is for love, compassion, goodness; the other, selfish instinctual gratifications or even worse, vengeance (or in the case of jealousy, maliciousness.)

Now depending which of these desires I desire; to what extent and conversely which I abhor and to what extent, is how I set my gps which controls all of my conscious thoughts speech and actions.

The perfect Tzaddik like the Rebbe etc. not only loves goodness and kindness, truth and justice, but commensurately abhors any form of violence, evil etc.

The imperfect Tzaddik mirrors the Rebbe, but to not the same degree.

The Benoinie is one who merely acts out of self-discipline – in other words, he or she knows good from evil but hasn’t begun to despise/abhor evil, rather self-disciplines themselves to be good, not evil.

And finally the rasha is one who also knows good from evil but tragically lacks the self-discipline to stay away, like most of us..   it’s not that we want to get angry and say mean things, it’s we lack the self-discipline and hence the Rasha continuously is feeling guilty over their desires that gained control of their car (thoughts, speech or actions.)

And last and least is the complete rasha, who is so debased, that he has lost all modicum of self respect.