T270 PNC - Just as One Person Arouses Another — A Person Arouses Himself From His Own Words

Just as there is hitorerut (arousal) from one person to another — when you see your friend saying selichot and crying out with broken-hearted arousal, your friend's stirring kindles your own; you start looking at yourself, and begin saying your own words with arousal of the heart — so too within a single person there is hitorerut from himself to himself, from his own words. He is saying his supplications and crying out "woe is me, woe is me," and within those very words an arousal kindles. He starts looking at himself: "Wait — where am I? Who is this person crying so? Isn't it I myself who am the woe?" And then he begins a second time, crying out "woe is me, to me precisely!" — this time meaning it. Even though at the start it seemed to him that he was already saying it sincerely, afterwards he can see the difference between before and after. "And understand."