Why does this constantly happen, and how are we to deal with this fragmented psyche?

"The children clashed inside her," is the way the Torah describes our matriarch Rebecca's pregnancy. Whenever Rebecca would pass a house of prayer or study, the Midrash explains, "Jacob would struggle to come out; when she passed a house of idol-worship, Esau would struggle to come out." In her womb, Rebecca was experiencing the conflict that human beings experience within their hearts on a daily basis.

When the clashes in her womb persisted, Rebecca, asking "Why is this happening to me?" went to seek an answer from G-d.

G-d told Rebecca "two nations will separate from your womb." Indeed, Jacob’s descendants became the nation of Israel, who served as the spiritual compass of the world, while Esau fathered the nation of Rome and its culture of self-aggrandizement.

When there are two distinct people living within the same brain and heart, it is hard to expect the inner workings to be an inviolable whole

The response presented by G-d to Rebecca remains the eternal response to our own search for identity and question of “who am I?”

From the moment we are born until the moment we die, we operate on two levels of consciousness. We possess not one, but two souls. The first soul, or the Esau soul, propels our physical life and focuses on the self. Its actions and desires are motivated by the quest for self-preservation and self-gratification. The second consciousness, or the Jacob soul, is drawn to its Divine source, striving to become one with the all-pervading truth of G-d.

When there are two distinct people living within the same brain and heart, it is hard to expect the inner workings to be an inviolable whole. As they both have the same body at their disposal, the perpetual struggles of life between selfishness and selflessness; idealism and self-centeredness; beastly impulses and spiritual aspirations, wages war daily.

the animal soul grants the divine soul a boundless creativity and passion that it could never attain on its own

Why is Esau more powerful than Jacob? Why are even the most spiritually refined people vulnerable to earthly, animalistic cravings? Why is it so much more difficult to talk to G-d than to gossip?

The animal soul embodies a deeper, higher G-dly energy than the divine soul. In a process known in Kabbalah as the “cosmic explosion,” an intense G-dly energy became the animal soul. Consequently, there remains within it an intense yearning to connect to G-d, disguised as a drive towards physical fulfillment.

The animal soul desperately needs the continuous guidance and discipline of its divine counterpart for cultivation and refinement, until it regains its original splendor, as it was in the pre-explosion state. But in this very process, the animal soul grants the divine soul a boundless creativity and passion that it could never attain on its own. Though uniting these two souls in a single body exposes both of them to a never-ending battle, it is only through this union that they can reach their ultimate potential. It is in the collaboration of the twin souls that man fulfills the objective for which he was created.

Yosef Y. Jacobson is the author of the widely acclaimed tape series on the Tanya entitled, “A Tale of Two Souls.”