Being that we are in the month of Ellul, and right around the corner from Rosh Hashana with the Selichos prayers, one should stop and ask what the purpose of this time is. What does Hashem want us to accomplish? The purpose of selichos isn't mere lip service, but rather we admit to G-d that we have sinned and that we wholeheartedly regret it, and we ask G-d to forgive us. We are asking Him to forgive us, to cleanse us and purify us from our sins.
There is a famous question of the Arizal: how is a human being, who contains a holy soul, able to sin?
We know that we have an evil inclination, who is sharp and cunning and causes us to sin. This leads us to ask how we are able to do mitsvos at all, with such a powerful evil inclination forcing us to transgress? We don't even understand the Arizal's question. Why is that? Perhaps, we don't understand what a soul is. A soul is a portion of G-d implanted in every jew. G-d planted a portion of Himself , His essence, in man. What this means is that a Jew is the holiest entity one can come in contact with, more holy than a chumash or even a Torah scroll.
A Jew is Divine presence. We are pieces of G-d. Everyday in the morning prayer, we thank G-d for creating us with a soul. We say "you blew it into us", because this is what G-d has done -implanted us with a piece of Himself.
Harav Shach, zt"l, says that the evil inclination attacks one with the small things. The yetzer hara doesn't straight away pressure you into committing the three cardinal transgressions. It starts off bit by bit, but once it takes control, there is no knowing where one will end up!
Now we can reframe the Arizal's question in terms that we understand: How can the evil inclination get in, with the powerful soul blocking the way?
The answer the Arizal gives is unbelievable. It is true that the evil inclination can’t get in because the soul is so powerful but nevertheless, being that G-d created the world to have free will, sin must be an option. The option to fail must be equal to the option to pass. When we sin three times, the evil inclination gets in.
We recognize that this is the way Hashem runs the world. In the Selichos prayers that we say, describing the 13 attributes of Hashem, we say, "He passes the first, first." Hashem only allows the evil inclination to affect the soul after these sins. Therefore, we ask Hashem that even though we have sinned more than this number of times, and we have mutilated our soul, to forgive us, and provide attonement, and allow us to control our evil inclination and no longer to be controlled by the evil inclination. This is the importance of the Selichos prayers.
