Episode 189 - The Evil Inclination's True Goal

Understanding the Evil Inclination: A Path to Self-Improvement

Explore how awareness of our challenges can lead to growth.

It's five forty on a Wednesday afternoon, and as I record this, a storm is raging outside my window. The elements may try to distract us, but they won’t stop the message I want to share today. Even when life gets chaotic, we have the power to choose how we respond. 

The Battle Within
In today's discussion, we delve deeper into the concept of the evil inclination and how understanding it can empower us. We all face temptations—be it money, relationships, or the desire for recognition. Overcoming these challenges is a journey that requires self-awareness and a commitment to personal growth.

Jessy Revivo emphasizes that even those who have made significant strides in their personal development must remain vigilant. Just because we overcome one temptation doesn’t mean we’re free from the evil inclination’s grasp. 

“Be careful, because that’s how you get tripped up.”  

This insight is crucial. The moment we feel we have mastered our struggles, we risk falling into arrogance, which can lead to self-doubt and depression if we stumble. 

Embracing Free Choice
Understanding that we have free will is essential. Each day presents new choices, and it’s easy to forget that these choices define our paths. When we succumb to the belief that we can handle everything on our own, we isolate ourselves from the support we truly need. 

Jessy reminds us that we have a spiritual ally waiting to help us navigate these challenges. 

“Hashem is your father, and he's waiting for you to ask for his help.”  

When we invite spiritual assistance into our lives, we empower ourselves to tackle even the toughest situations. 

The True Goal of the Evil Inclination
Interestingly, Jessy highlights that the evil inclination’s ultimate aim is to induce despair and depression. It’s not just about individual sins; it’s about creating a cycle of negativity that makes us feel inadequate. 

“The evil inclination doesn’t care if he catches you on one sin or two sins here or there. He’s concerned with the war.”  

This perspective shifts our understanding of our struggles. Instead of viewing them as isolated incidents, we can see them as part of a larger battle for our emotional and spiritual well-being. 

A Simple Practice for Success
To combat this negativity, Jessy suggests a simple yet powerful practice: before embarking on any task, invite divine assistance. Whether it’s a big meeting or a small repair job, acknowledging our need for help can lead to greater success. 

“I can’t do it without you. At least I can’t do it properly and effectively as I could with you.”  

This mindset not only alleviates pressure but also reinforces our connection to the spiritual source of strength.

Conclusion
In the end, recognizing the evil inclination as a part of our human experience doesn’t have to be daunting. Instead, it can be liberating. By understanding its tactics and enlisting spiritual support, we reclaim our power. Let’s continue to learn, grow, and support each other in this journey of self-improvement.

For more insights and guidance, listen to the full episode.  

Have a wonderful evening, and may we all navigate our storms with clarity and strength.

#thetrustfactorpodcast  #JewishWisdom

Transcript

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Evil's true goal. The evil inclination doesn't care if he catches you on one sin or two sins here or there, sin here, sin there. That's a little battle. He's not concerned with the battle. He's concerned with the war. What does that mean? Sin can easily be rectified by repentance. We do it three times a day in our prayers, right? Hashem, I messed up. I made a mistake. I sinned. I need atonement. I feel bad about it. I didn't want to do it. I made a mistake. I'm human. I'm going to make sure that I make efforts to not repeat that. You just received atonement. The evil inclination knows that. He knows that you're asking for forgiveness and he knows you're going to get it. So to get you to trip up here and there, that's not the victory. The evil inclination much prefers the despair and depression that follows a sin. He wants you to be depressed and miserable.

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The trust factor is your ticket to a bad life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the night.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

And it's very likely that as I give over this episode, you're going to hear some of that smashing against the window. Hopefully not. Hopefully it's done for the day, but it was pretty brutal. And later on today, those of you who are listening or tomorrow, you'll recall what I'm talking about. But it's not going to stop us. That's the evil inclination. He's out there telling me, Jesse, it's late. It's already 5.40. Get out of there. Go home. Look, it's dark outside. The weather's terrible. There's a little lull over here in the weather. It's quiet. Get out now. Don't worry about the podcast. You've done enough. It's not going to work. Even though it's been a long day, and even though I've been inundated with a million different things, especially given all the changes going on, I'm still taking the time to put out a podcast to tell you how Hashem runs this world so that you can benefit from it. And let's not kid ourselves. I'm benefiting from it more than you are. So let's get into this and let's grow together. Yesterday we started learning about the evil inclination. Who is he? What's he all about? How does he operate? And why do I want to know that? Because I want to be able to overcome. I want to be able to outsmart him. And the only way for me to outsmart him is to first understand who he is and how he operates. So we started on that yesterday. We're going to get into nitty-gritty right now. This stuff is unbelievable, guys. Some of the things here I've learned for the first time, absolutely next level. So he says, let's suppose that there's a person that has overcome all of the above temptations that we talked about. We all have temptations. It's different for many of us, but for many of us it's the same. We're all tempted by money, we're all tempted by relations, we're all tempted by honor. Obviously, to certain degrees, some people much less, almost none, and some people that's all they can think about. It consumes them every single day. So he says, suppose somebody overcame their temptation, whatever it is, money, relations, would he still have an evil inclination? Of course he would. He might be inclined towards arrogance and smugness, thinking that he's on a higher level than he really is. If so, any small setback would trigger a process of self-persecution and depression. What's he talking about? He's talking about us. When we work on ourselves, when we learn and we grow and we try and become better people, and we identify what our challenges are, what our weaknesses are, and we put mechanisms in place to be able to overcome them so that we don't fall to them and we succeed. And suddenly we start to feel good about ourselves. Suddenly we start to say, wait a second, I'm learning multiple times a week. I never used to learn at all. Now I'm learning every day. 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour a day. I'm doing it every day or twice a day. I'm on high, I'm unstoppable. I've got all this knowledge I didn't have yesterday. Now I have insights into how God runs this world. My eyes have been open. I feel like I've I'm empowered. And that can give you a sense of superiority. He says, be careful, because that's how you get tripped up. Remember, we said that yesterday. Watch out. Don't think too much of yourself. Don't put the cart before the horse. So he says, a person has free choice, which basically means he has desires, the ability to choose. The evil inclination is always poised to pounce on a person and trip them up. There are two stages to this battle with a person. I want you to hear this. Stage one. The evil inclination does everything in its power to make a person transgress. Could be something simple, right? Anything. Chabat, I turned on a light by accident. Okay. Um, I was tempted to eat something I shouldn't have eaten. I fell to my temptation. Sin. I spoke in a derogatory manner to my parents. It's a sin. I didn't treat them properly. I didn't respect them enough. These are sins. People do these things every single day. That's what makes us human. It makes us normal. The problem is that when you've gotten to a point where you've built yourself up and you think now that you're resilient to these things, and then you fall, you get tripped up, suddenly you're beating yourself up. That's what he's going to talk about. He says a person's defense at this stage, when he's trying to get you to transgress, is what? Is to strengthen yourself in a Muna and remember that he has the power to overcome. You have a power to overcome every single one of your bad character traits. You should definitely pray and enlist Hashem's assistants, who would be more than happy to help those who seek him. We know that. Hashem is your father, and he's waiting for you to ask for his help. When you ask for help, he's there. He shows up just like you would as a father or a mother. If your child comes to you and says, Mom, dad, I'm going into a situation over here. I don't know that I can go it alone. I'm concerned that if I go it alone, I'm going to end up failing. I need help. Will you help me? The immediate answer by any parent is, I'm here. Tell me when and where. I got your back. It's the same thing. Hashem, I'm going into a situation here. I'm passing through a place that I shouldn't be passing through. I'm I've found myself in a place that I shouldn't be, and I'm tempted, and I need to do something about it, and I need your help. He steps up. If you don't pray, why should he step up? You're not calling out to him. So that's stage one. And at this stage it says, the evil inclination is still comparatively small. As long as a person composes himself and realizes that he can easily overcome, he's relatively tiny. He's not so damaging. One must be careful, for the evil inclination will then try to inject him with arrogance and prevent him from seeking the Creator's help by telling him to be independent. You got this. You don't need your parents' help. You don't need God's help. You don't need anybody's help. You've been here before. You've taken on this and more. You got this. In fact, if you don't do it on your own, then you're going to regress. You need to move forward. You need to show how capable you are. So take on these challenges. It's what builds you up. You got this. You know better. You're not going to fall. Don't worry. You got your blinders on. That's how he trips you up. At this dangerous point, a person must remind himself that he is powerless without his creator. It becomes dangerous when? When you go it alone. There's no reason to go it alone. Why? Why would you go it alone? You have the equivalent of the United States military, the strongest world superpower, at your back. A sham. He lacks nothing. He's got all the tools and resources to make you successful in any given situation. Why in the world would you not tap into that? You can go into a knife fight with an F-15 fighter jet behind you. What do you have to be worried about? Why wouldn't you enlist that? It would make life so much easier for you. The problem comes, the challenge comes when you say, I don't need that. I got this. Why would I need all that? I'm perfectly fine on my own. When you're doing that, it's either because you fooled yourself to believe that you can handle every situation, or you don't understand the gravity of the situation you're about to embark on. Because there are real repercussions to our actions. And the more we falter in those areas, the harder we become on ourselves. That's the storm I was talking about. Let's continue. It's the evil inclination. We just need to ignore them. Since the evil inclination is a spiritual force, he doesn't live in this world. He lives in the spiritual realm. He's a spiritual being. And since he is a spiritual force, we need spiritual weapons. There are no physical weapons that will overtake him. The only thing we can fight with is spirituality. You fight fire with fire. That's why in the Torah, when the Jewish nation were on our way into the land of Israel, and Moab wanted to destroy us, but they'd heard how powerful we were physically. We had Hashem on our side, and we were destroying all the nations that were standing in our way that were waging war against us. The Jewish nation with Hashem's help destroyed. And so he knew he couldn't battle them physically because they were supernatural in their abilities. They had Hashem fighting their battles for them. So what did he do? He enlisted a non-Jewish prophet. Why? Because he wanted that non-Jewish prophet to use the power of the mouth, the spirituality, the blessings and the curses to be able to come over and curse this nation and bring them down. And that's what he was doing. He was doing just this: fighting fire with fire. He wanted to fight a spiritual nation. He enlisted a spiritual powerhouse. Didn't work out for him in the end, but that's the principle. If you're going to fight a spiritual force, it needs to be done with spirituality. So how do you do that? You enlist the creator. You enlist Hashem. You ask for help. A person who forgets this begins to take action and makes decisions on his own without consulting the creator. And then he fails. His mistake began with arrogance and ended up with heresy when he forgot about the creator. You hear this? Think about this because it's a big pill to swallow. That we, no matter where you're holding in life, yeah, you could be a Torah scholar. But as soon as you forget just for a moment to enlist your creator in your life, in your challenges, in the things that you face, in the difficulties that you go up against, the moment you forget to enlist him by saying, God, I need your help, it's a form of heresy. You understand? Because you know better. You know that he exists, you know that he runs the world. You know he wants to be actively involved in your life. He's just waiting. So when you decide I'm going to go it alone, I'm not going to ask for his help. I got this. Effectively, it's a form of heresy, maybe on a very small scale, because at the end of the day, we always go back. When the time is right or when the challenge is big enough, we identify him and we ask for his help. But it shouldn't be that we wait for it to be too difficult for us to carry. It should be in every single situation. I'll let you in on a little secret. When I do things, when I take on a challenge, almost everything, I find myself saying this probably a dozen times a day. It's a very small sentence. I have a prayer that is a verse in Torah. You can choose any verse that you like that references Hashem coming to help you. Or you can make up your own. It's a quick sentence that you use to enlist his help. And I say it when I'm about to fix something, when I'm about to take on a challenge, when I'm about to go into a meeting, when I'm about to make a phone call, when I'm about to send an email, when I'm worried about the outcome, when I want it to be good. And again, it doesn't have to be a huge task. It could be something simple. I just repaired something that was broken, and I would love for it to work the first time so that I don't have to go back and keep fixing it a second and a third and a tenth time. It would be so much better for it to be fixed the first time. If I go it alone, then I know that the odds are I'm going to have to revisit it because Hashem wasn't enlisted. He wants to be enlisted. So intentionally, it's not going to work. Why? Because for me it's a reminder that I forgot about him. So now I know, and this comes after many, many years of trial and error and figuring it out, going it alone and getting burnt, going it alone and getting hurt, going it alone and coming out with the outcome that I didn't want. So now I avoid that. 90% of the time it's avoided, and all I need to do is make one simple statement, which is also a prayer, that enlists Hashem. Saying Hashem, I recognize I'm about to do A, B, and C. I can't do it without you. At least I can't do it properly and effectively as I could with you. Please help me that my handiwork should be successful. That's it. That's all. Takes a second. Okay, maybe it takes three seconds. Say it with a very low voice so that my ears can hear it. I enlist him, and boom, 90% of the time things work out. Not every single time, because then life would be perfect and we'd be turned into robots and we wouldn't have free choice anymore. But the vast majority of the time it works out because I've enlisted him and he's waiting. He's in the sidelines, he's in the wings, waiting for you to enlist him. Because we've said many times, if I want him involved, he'll be involved. If I don't want him involved, then he won't. Evil's true goal. With the above in mind, everything that we just said, we can realize that an isolated sin is not the evil inclination's main goal. Listen to this guy. The evil inclination doesn't care if he catches you on one sin or two sins here or there, sin here, sin there. That's a little battle. He's not concerned with the battle. He's concerned with the war. What does that mean? Sin can easily be rectified by repentance. We do it three times a day in our prayers, right? I messed up. I made a mistake. I sinned. I need atonement. I feel bad about it. I didn't want to do it. I made a mistake. I'm human. I'm going to make sure that I make efforts to not repeat that. You just received atonement. How long did that take? How long did it take? Ten seconds? Fifteen seconds? A minute? And you've figured out how to connect back to your creator so that he gives you atonement for the thing you feel bad about? Done. The evil inclination knows that. He knows you're banging on your chest. He knows that you're asking for forgiveness, and he knows you're going to get it. So to get you to trip up here and there, that's not the victory. What's the victory? He says, The evil inclination much prefers the despair and depression that follows a sin. He wants you to be down and out. He wants you to be depressed and miserable. He wants you to feel like you're no good. That you're not capable of rising to the occasion, that you're not capable of learning new things, that you're not capable of getting close to your creator. Because every time you take a step forward, you take a step back. Every time you take a step forward, you take two steps back. That's how we come to feel when we fail. I want to become a better person. And so I've made efforts. I've put processes in place. And sometimes I'm victorious, but it seems like every time I advance, I get pulled back. Every time I do good, it's not long before I find myself doing something to counter that good. So we end up in a state of despair and depression. That's why you see so many people medicated today, because they simply can't get things right. And if they don't have God in their life, then it's even worse. They run to the medications even faster. Even faster because they have no way to explain it, other than the fact that they're simply broken people. They're simply not capable. I'm simply a useless individual. That's what they think when they don't have a shim in their hands. And when things get bad, when they're good, yeah, no problem. That's why, by the way, there's this thing called bipolar. You know what bipolar is? It means when you're high, you're super high. Can't get you down from there. But when you're low, might as well dig a hole. You're under the ground. You're so low, you're kicking yourself when you're down. The highs are high and the lows are low. Why? Because it's all you. It's all you. It's got nothing to do with any outside force and certainly not to do with the creator. So you give yourself a big pat on the back and you're a hero and you sing your own praises all day long, and nobody's as good as you are. But when it's bad, wow, is it ever bad? You hit the depression, and good luck getting out of that depression. What a terrible place to be. So many people live like that. But then you have people who are learning Torah, who have a shem in their lives, and suddenly they fail. Suddenly they realize that they're not really all that they cracked up to be. It's okay. Yeah, I feel bad about it, but you know what? I can get atonement. That's number one. But number two, if I know what Jesse's telling me, which is what Ravshalom Arush is telling me, that the goal of the evil inclination is to get me to be depressed. That's why he trips me up here and there so that I can end up depressed and upset. So now I know it's one of his tools. I've taken the wind out of his sails. The power is back in my hands. Why? Because I have knowledge. So I am so much further ahead than the rest of humanity that doesn't have Hashem and his beautiful Torah in their lives. That, my friends, is reason enough to make sure that you learn, and even more reason to make sure that you share this podcast with people who need to hear the same things. Have an amazing day, my friends. Tomorrow, highly unlikely there's going to be an episode, but God willing, we'll have one on Friday leading into Shabbat. Also not a guarantee because there's big changes happening, but for sure, we'll be right back at it next week, my friend. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts, drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.