And we have to have what is called charatah (regret). The main part of Teshuvah (repentance) is the regret. She had to regret what she did. You did wrong. I bet a man had a guy who was drunk, or a guy was angry and, in his rage, killed his son. After he sobers up, he says, “Wow, what did I do?” And he’s so remorseful. It’s the same thing. If he were able to revive him, he’d do anything possible.
That’s why there are a lot of other things. But they’re full of regret. They do something wrong, then they say, “I shouldn’t have done it. I wish I didn’t do it,” which means they regret it. But they say it’s not so bad. It would probably have been better if we hadn’t done it, but they don’t really regret that they did it. They just say, you know, it would have been better, but they still had half of the sin because every time they commit the sin, it becomes smaller in their eyes, and therefore the regret becomes much less because they get used to the aveirah (sin). They don’t think it’s so bad. That’s talking about someone who hasn’t committed the aveirah so many times. He’s not nishka (embedded). But once he becomes a chronic offender, finished. Then the rasha (wicked person)... He doesn’t even have any regret. His heart doesn’t even hurt him. He says, “Let the sin come to me again. I’ll do it again.” But when a person gets older and realizes that he committed a sin in his childhood, he gets very scared.
When a lady gives birth, right before the baby comes out, she starts to shake. The body starts to quiver. It says that she starts to shrivel and shake; there is a bitter response to his sins, and rivers of tears come down from his eyes. There was a dead person in front of him. That’s right, somebody rebelled against his master. The more regret a person has, the more agony he feels over the sin, and the more brokenhearted he is, the more the sin gets erased. That’s the affliction of the person. “How did I do such a thing?” Something that will save him. The regret saves the person. He’ll save his crookedness. You have to make a fence so as not to commit the same sin again. The best thing is to think before you do anything, even a dvar mitzvah (mitzvah matter). Is it permissible or not permissible? Is it right or wrong? Spend a few seconds. He says like this: The consequence of mehirut, of doing things quickly, is what? Regret. You do things quickly, you make mistakes. Be patient, be patient, and you won’t sin.
I was analyzing before he does things, like it says. It says that just before they looked at something, they made a decision: “Yes, I’m going to lift my eyes,” as if they were lifting a grand piano. There’s nothing. Everything was calculated. “I’m going to lift my eyes. I’m going to look.” We clean ourselves of all the chametz (leaven) within us that causes us to make aveirot (sins), and just as with the physical chametz, it says that you have to burn the evil from within, from what is inside us.