Let's reflect now on some of the things that keep us back from doing
teshuva.
We've already cited a few in passing when we focused on our personal
quirks
and on detriments to other traits we discussed, but there are more.
The first and most obvious one would be your continuing to do the thing
you
needed to repent for. After all, how could you have true remorse for
having
done something you still do! But as Ibn Pakudah quotes him, a sage once
remarked
pointedly that while "no sin is small if you persist in it",
nonetheless "no
sin is great if you ask forgiveness for it" and no longer succumb to it.
The other thing about continuing on with the sin in question is that it
starts to become all right and out-and-out justifiable in your eyes after
a while,
until it becomes just "something you happen to do". But that's even more
nettlesome and alarming, since the one sin begins to gather steam and to
sink lower
until it becomes a fixed pattern of behavior. Despite that, though, if you
reverently ask G-d to forgive you and you break the pattern, it will
indeed be
undone and you will have achieved teshuva.
You'd also have trouble doing teshuva (again) if you'd relapsed and
succumbed
to an old temptation after having already gone through all the steps of
teshuva. (You'd of course be able to start all over again, but it would be
that
much harder.)
It would also be hard to do teshuva if you kept putting it off and
assuring
yourself that you'll get to it someday, or perhaps after you'd have done
everything untoward you wanted to and "gotten it all out of your system",
as we'd
put it. But that simply wouldn't do, for we're taught that "Anyone who
says, `I
will sin then repent' will be denied the chance to repent" (Yoma 88b). And
besides, the sad, fearsome truth be known, no one knows when he'll die, so
you
might never get the opportunity.
And a sure impairment to true and full teshuva would be your repenting for
just *some* of your sins while persisting in others. For while teshuva by
degrees is still teshuva and G-d denies no one His efforts, the individual
in
pursuit of spiritual excellence would settle for nothing less than true
reconciliation with G-d after having neglected Him.
