Night comes before day, pain before pleasure, confusion before wisdom. So too, the way this world was made, there is no journey forward without first a step backward.
So it is with all creatures. But we human beings, we strive not only to move forward, but to leap beyond our own nature, beyond any nature at all.
We, too, must first step back before we can leap upward. But since our leap is beyond nature, we fall, too, beneath our nature.
That is sin—a fall beneath your own nature, as one who crouches before he leaps.
And that is the power of return
—to leap beyond any bounds at all.
We humans think we are able to control the world, and specify a seemingly perfect life as we each like it. We try hard to get power over our competition, namely other humans. We try various methods, including religious teachings, in order to force things into our mold as we see it.
But the actual problem is that we identify with the body, not the soul. This is the result of believing the lies of the serpent and being cast out of Gan Eden. However the soul is still our direct connection to the Creator, but because of the illusion of separation (bodies, not souls) He is ignored as we seek authority and follow others. If we would work to “reconnect” to the soul we can realize that the soul does not exist in the realm of time at all. At that level it is always “now”. It is the body that goes through the cycles of birth, growth, decline and death. We cannot sense past or future, just remember or imagine. We live actually in “the now”. Watch it and your life will calm.