Sometimes a person can exhibit all the outward manifestations of well-being.
But when you scratch the surface, the picture changes entirely.
Repairing the soul involves going to its very depths.
We need to reach this inner depth in order to achieve what the Alter Rebbe calls the “ultimate and supreme repair”: the repair of the soul.
For each of us, this involves thinking globally about our place in the world, to pierce our existence, to reach the depth of the depths: the inner depths.
This form of knowledge calls for understanding rather than contrition.
This is because the soul itself can never sin.
It has nothing to repair.
Sin can affect the other levels of our lives.
Our self, our nefesh, can sin; our spirit, ruah; can be impure.
But the soul is always pure.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz