What it takes to be good

 

 

We all wish to be good.

 

But somehow we are not all good.

 

Even Hitler thought he was good as do the meshugeneh evil Muslims chopping people’s heads off so they can rape seventy virgins in Allah’s heavenly brothel.

 

Somehow being good and desiring to be good don’t match up.

 

The question of course is, why.

 

Shouldn’t it be simple – kindness is goodness.

 

Yet though we all wish for others to be kind to us, we don’t find we are always that kind to others.

 

The answer is, the very structure of the human.

 

As Kabbalah teaches, three separate primary operating systems can, do (and one can gain to the exclusion of others) control us.

 

Ideally we would be controlled by our compassionate Divine soul – selfless in nature, forgiving like God, never holding a grudge, ready to give our life for someone we never met – as many do.

 

Yet the other side to us, is what’s called the animal soul – our instinctual trends / desires / dispositions – also called our emotions, or heart in Kabbalistic literature – the heart is comprised of two selfish emotions, the first is love, the second is fear. Love is an attraction to that which is pleasurable (which may include people, but the reason I am a social creature is, I enjoy being social, not as I seek to uplift or help another) and fear of course is from that which may give me pain.

 

But to complicate things even more, we have a third drive which is the opposite of the Divine soul, a demon (satan himself) which is ego, the desire to be superior to others and certainly not inferior.

 

It is this demon which causes all human anguish, for if we were like animals, as they have done studies in which monkeys were given anxiety (by taking their mothers away from them for prolonged periods of times in childhood and they became fearful, anxious, timid, loners for the rest of their lives, which is also a human reaction to the fear of the world) however an animal will not become malicious to other animals; it won’t start becoming a bully, for it doesn’t have an ego, so its shame is not felt – you can’t offend an animal, and as it doesn’t feel shame, it doesn’t have anger that it was shamed, nor the corollary of anger, hate toward the one who shamed, and the corollary of hate, jealousy of those who live a life with love (this is the age old reason behind the insane phenomena of antisemitism which really are those whose hearts are filled with rage are jealous of those who are not, so those like the Jews who objectively do more for all than others, are simultaneously – precisely for that reason more than others.)

 

So the original question was, how can man be good? considering these conflicting desires, mutually antagonistic, and depending on which we desire most, becomes our fundamental operating system!?

 

But that itself is the answer!

 

For we have been given the ability to freely choose what we wish to desire most.