Oros HaTeshuva 2:1

Rabbi Silber opens a new perek of Rav Kook's Oros HaTeshuva, introducing the difference between teshuva pisomis — sudden, instantaneous change — and teshuva hadragas, gradual, incremental change. He illustrates it with the two ways people quit smoking: cold turkey versus cutting back one cigarette at a time, and points to the real tension between them — sudden change can transform a person in a single moment but often doesn't last, while incremental change takes far longer yet tends to stick. He describes the internal experience of sudden teshuva as a bolt of spiritual lightning: nothing about a person's outward behavior has changed yet, but inside, he is genuinely someone new.

• Sudden, all-at-once change ("cold turkey") can transform a person instantly, but it's often harder to sustain.
• Slow, incremental change takes longer to reach the goal, but tends to last because it's built one step at a time.
• A moment of sudden inner clarity can make someone a fundamentally different person even before any outward behavior changes.
• Real growth doesn't need to look dramatic from the outside to be genuine on the inside.