The path of inner conflict is neither easy nor pleasant.
Every struggle, first of all, carries the risk of an undesirable outcome.
Every attempt to reach a higher level of existence, to break out and ascend, entails not only the possibility of failure to rise but also the possibility of falling even lower than the point where one began.
Then too, no spiritual ladder can be ascended without constant effort, tension, and anguish.
In many ways, this struggle is between different and often opposing values.
But in a much broader sense, it is an ongoing struggle between the given, present reality and that which has not yet come into existence but waits to be created.
The inertia of what already exists is always the great enemy and can never be fully overcome.
The never-ending conflict between the existent and not-yet-existent is at the root of man’s whole inner struggle.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz