Yom Kippur and the Spiral Path of Teshuvah: A Personal Reflection

A full year may pass, yet when we look within, we’re still wrestling with the same traits, yearning for the same growth. It’s humbling.

The soul work during these days is referred to as “Teshuvah.” Rabbi Alan Lew, in his book “This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation” says Teshuvah is a “Hebrew word we struggle to translate. We call it repentence. We call it return. We call it a turning. It is all of these things and none of these things.”

As I contemplated the concept this morning, I remembered a post I wrote years ago, after listening to a meditation about Teshuvah on Insight Timer from Rabbi Jill Berkson Zimmerman.

The words felt worthy of return.

Here were my reflections, from 2018, back in the days when if you posted on IG, you needed to add dots between thoughts:

“Committed to making time for personal reflection on this Day of Atonement, I went on my favorite hike, listened to this meditation, and wrote the words from the meditation in the ground as I sat.

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It brought new meaning to the idea of setting out on a journey and returning home. Of losing our center and finding it again. On making mistakes and coming back to ourselves with humility to try again.

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The connection between our wandering mind in meditation and how we can wander from our values and best self in life also came to me so clearly.

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Just as we practice bringing our focus in meditation back to the breath, without judgement, so too can we bring ourselves back to who we are…who we strive to become, without judgement, when we become aware we have moved down the wrong path.

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Thank you Rabbi Jill Zimmerman for a meditation on Yom Kippur that spoke to me on so many levels”

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This Thursday, on Yom Kippur, I commit to listening to the meditation again, taking time to reflect on where I have wandered this year and also how I might return to more of who I am.

I am ready to let go of the idea that I may have ventured down the “wrong path” and instead remember that the journey is a spiral, one that brings me back to familiar challenging places but with new insight and deeper understanding each time. Maybe this process is not only humbling, but created this way by design.

If you’d like to join me in listening and reflecting, I’ve shared the link to the meditation in the comments. Please send me a message and let me know what it brought up for you.

Until then, may the transformative work of these days bring us clarity and compassion on the spiral path. And may they return us even closer to home within ourselves.