Sources – Chapter C – Opening the Eyes – the Exodus from Egypt

Mesillat Yesharim – Darkness

Now the matter of watchfulness (zehirut) is that a person be watchful over his deeds and his affairs — that is, that he contemplate and supervise his deeds and his ways: are they good or not? — so as not to abandon his soul to the danger of perdition, Heaven forbid, and not to walk along in the course of his habit like a blind man in the dark. And this is something that reason certainly obligates. For since a person has understanding and intellect to save himself and to flee from the perdition of his soul, how could he possibly wish to close his eyes to his own rescue? There is surely no baseness and folly worse than this! And one who does so is lower than the beasts and the animals, whose nature is to protect themselves, and therefore they flee and run from anything that appears to them to be harmful to them. And one who goes through his world without contemplating whether his way is good or bad is like a blind man walking on the bank of a river, whose danger is certainly enormous and whose harm is closer than his rescue. For indeed, a lack of guarding because of natural blindness or because of willful blindness — that is, closing the eyes by choice and desire — is one and the same.

And Jeremiah lamented the evil of the people of his generation because they were afflicted with the plague of this trait: they closed their eyes to their deeds without paying attention to see what they were — should they be done or abandoned? And he said of them (Jeremiah 8:6): "No man repents of his evil, saying… each of them turns away in their course, like a horse rushing into battle." That is, they rushed on and went in the rush of their habit and their ways without leaving themselves time to examine their deeds and ways, and so it turns out that they fall into evil without seeing it. But in truth this is one of the stratagems of the evil inclination and its cunning: to make its labor weigh constantly upon the hearts of people until no spirit remains in them to contemplate and look at which way they are going. For it knows that were they to pay attention even a little to their ways, they would certainly at once begin to regret their deeds, and the remorse would grow ever stronger in them until they would abandon sin completely. And this is akin to the counsel of the wicked Pharaoh, who said (Exodus 5:9), "Let the labor be heavier upon the men…", for he intended not only to leave them no breathing space at all, so that they would not pay attention or take counsel against him, but he strove to divert their hearts from all contemplation by the force of continuous, unceasing labor.

So is the counsel of the evil inclination exactly regarding people. For it is a man of war, trained in cunning, and it is impossible to escape from it except with great wisdom and great perspective. This is what the prophet cries out and says (Haggai 1:5): "Set your hearts upon your ways." And Shlomo said in his wisdom (Proverbs 6:4–5): "Give no sleep to your eyes nor slumber to your eyelids; save yourself like a deer from the hand…" And our Sages, of blessed memory, said (Moed Katan 5a): "Whoever appraises his ways in this world merits to see the salvation of the Holy One, blessed be He." And it is plain that even if a person watches over himself, he does not have the power to be saved were it not that the Holy One, blessed be He, helps him (Kiddushin 30b), for the evil inclination is very powerful, as the verse says (Psalms 37:32–33): "The wicked watches the righteous and seeks to kill him; Hashem will not abandon him…" But if a person watches over himself, then the Holy One, blessed be He, helps him and he is saved from the evil inclination. But if he does not watch over himself, the Holy One, blessed be He, will certainly not watch over him, for if he has no pity on himself, who will have pity on him? And this is like what they, of blessed memory, said (Berachot 33a): "Whoever has no understanding — it is forbidden to have mercy on him." And this is what they said (Avot 1:14): "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"

Translated from the Hebrew sources page "מקורות- פרק ג’- פקיחת עיניים- יציאת מצרים" by Roni Ayalon-Hirsch.