religious blinders

In Ohr Pnei Melech Rav Steinsaltz points out that religious Jews have a strange ability to relegate entire sections of Torah Law as 'not binding to me.'

It is probably a good idea to address and reexamine (perhaps rediscover) these areas when thinking about teshuvah and the preparations of Elul. I mean this in the best way, not teshuvah out of guilt, but teshuvah out of the recognition that I wantonly abandoned HaShem's will as if He wasn't speaking to me, and yet what He wants from me is something I ordinarily take very seriously.

When I started thinking about this I was shocked at how many things, both little and big, I've seemed to evade taking responsibility for. We, as citizens of modern western culture, might have atrophied quite a few muscles, but that power of denial is toned and in olympic shape.

In my case simply learning Halachah will definitely help me to uncover plenty of things I didn't even know existed, but definitely pertain to me.

not perfect and not knowing it

Today's Tanya, as well as R'Moshe Hayyim Luzzato (in Messilat Yesharim:1, via Cosmic X) and others, mention the plight of the neshama in this world, in this body. Namely, that it suffers down here in this body, in this world, where it is far from the perfection of it's origins. These same sources talk about how the Godly soul itself has little to do with this world other than to be a shining example to the Animal soul within each of us. Our Animal soul being that which needs to be fixed and perfected. Ok, great, but still I never asked this question before today but: Why this particularly Godly soul with this particular Animal soul?

I read today that Rebbe Baruch, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov (by his daughter Adel), said that an herbal remedy not only cures the patient, but that that particular patient actually cures the herb as well, fixing the 'brokenness' that this herb has been suffering from since the orginal sin.

This is a really radical and novel point of view. Visible elsewhere in the ideas of God's supreme justice. But still, looking at things in this way opens up new possibilities. Namely, that the Godly soul you have been given is not complete, not until it refines the Animal soul within you, through which it completes and refines itself as well--even though the Godly soul was initially blind to any fault or lack in itself.