Teshuvah is a process. It means changing ourselves into a new creation. When one sins, it is not that he is the same person he was before - but he sinned. No. When a person sins he is a different person. Sin is like a virus. Just as a virus attacks the body in a physical sense, aveiros (sins) attack and damage the soul. If we would be able to see what we look like spiritually before we sin and compare it to after we sin, we wouldn’t even recognize that we are the same person.

     One of the very important ways of doing teshuva is by making a kabbala. When a person takes upon himself a small resolution, something that is very doable, he has really accomplished a great achievement. R’ Yisroel Salanter zt”l explains that this is crucial to the teshuva process, but it is not the goal. It is the means to an end, and a very important means, but it is by no means the actual goal of teshuva. When one buys a house, he usually puts down a deposit. This means that the house belongs to him in theory. The owner cannot sell the house to someone else because it officially belongs to the one who gave the deposit although he cannot move in and live there until he has finished with all the payments.

     The kabbalah that we make at this crucial time, whether it is not speaking lashon hara an hour a day, or saying asher yatzar standing in one place - it is our deposit. It shows Hashem that we are serious and we are making a move to improve. Of course the goal is NEVER to speak lashon hara and to make all our berachos with kavana but with this small kabbalah, we theoretically achieve the goal. After Yom Kippur we need to learn and delve into the topic of our kabbalah so that we can achieve the full goal in a practical sense. But the kabbalah is our contract with Hashem. It is our deposit and our way of Jshowing that B’ezras Hashem we plan to complete all the payments in order to arrive at a complete teshuva.