I need to really thank God – why – well if God could give you anything what would be the most precious gift? – Knowledge – for what is the greatest curse – doubt! – All the pleasures of the world are rendered useless if your mind is filled with confusion – So when God opens a pathway of knowledge we must be exceptionally grateful! – Today as I was studying Tanya with a good friend of mine, we were studying the eleventh chapter – In case you don’t know, the Alter Rebbe in his magnum-upos describes all people – from the highest and the lowest and the intermediary – You see he clarifies, we are not one but two drives, and to the extent one drive succeeds in overpowering the other, is the extent that we are good or evil – But something was bothering me – you see, he describes the evil drive as a person who has no remorse – which is how we define evil, a psychopath; unlike a normal person who feels at the very least (even if he cannot self-discipline) pangs of regret – which stems from his conscience – But elsewhere the Alter Rebbe describes that the only way for the psychopath to repent is first to feel demeaned (he explains a person should look at all the evil hes ever done to have some self-loathing ) but than I asked myself, how does a normal person becomes a psychopath in the first place – the answer is, that he was demeaned – he lost his self-respect and if you have no pride you have no shame – so how could shaming someone help? – wouldn’t it exacerbate not solve the problem? – and together we realized the following amazing discovery – You see there is four levels and the outer extremes is the evil soul and the inner extremes the Divine – the outer extremes would be arrogance (a strong sense of selfhood) and it’s antithesis (though often it’s genesis, for narcissism is born in narsacistic wounding, sometimes and oftentimes) self-hate – In the inner extremes lies pride and shame – Now what is the difference between arrogance and pride? – In fact, the Rebbe goes so far to say, the great joy in life which we should all have is self-pride – So the difference is as follows – arrogance is not, “the humble/nothing in my estimation (me) person being proud of something (noble I did”) rather the reverse, my starting point is “I am great” (that is why an arrogant person cannot handle any criticism for it goes against his self perception) On the flipside shame and self-hate are also very different, for shame is born from the humble but I am good person and as I did something I believe shameful therefore I feel pangs of regret stemming from my conscience – however self-hate is an entirely different phenomena – it usually is bullied into someone – so it’s not that I feel I did something wrong (in other words my conscience telling me so) rather it is my ego who is angry – for all anger stems from ego (in fact, in suicide it is the ego that kills the person – for the ego is angry at the person for its shame; just as you would be angry at someone who shame you) And the grand finale of this amazingly intricate maze, distinguishing between the Divine soul which is fundamentally the humble person with a belief in a higher way and the animal egotistical maniac which fluctuates between (and oftentimes simultaneously carries) delusions of greatness with deep self-loathing is – that ultimately as Kabbalah teaches, the correct posture is, a little bit of both – as Kabbalah says, you take the poison to poison the animal – so on one hand it is necessary to harbor a small extent of worthlessness (though not self-hate – and as mentioned, this is in distinction to the ego) on the other, we must also know that as agents of God – through God’s power, we are all powerful.