Joy from Good Deeds

“Joy is a “reflection” of good deeds. If the deeds are of Kedusha [holiness], hence joy appears. However, we must know that there is also a discernment of a Klipa [shell]. In order to know if it is Kedusha, the scrutiny is in the reason. In Kedusha, there is reason, and in the Sitra Achra [other side] there is no reason, since another god is sterile and does not bear fruit. Hence, when gladness comes to a person, he should delve in words of Torah in order to discover the mind of the Torah.
We must also know that gladness is discerned as upper illumination that appears by MAN, which is good deeds. The Creator judges one where one is. In other words, if one takes upon himself the burden of the kingdom of heaven for eternity, there is an immediate upper illumination on this, which is considered eternity, too.
Even if one evidently sees that he will soon fall from his degree, He still judges one where one is. It means that if a person has now made up his mind to take upon himself the burden of the kingdom of heaven for eternity, it is considered wholeness.
However, if he takes upon himself the burden of the kingdom of heaven and does not want that state to remain in him forever, this thing and this deed is not considered wholeness, and naturally, the upper light cannot come and rest on it. This is because it is whole and eternal, and is not about to change. With a person, however, even if he wants, the state one is in will not be forever.”
(Baal HaSulam, Shamati 58. Joy Is a “Reflection” of Good Deeds)

Joy is not an accident; it is a footprint. It is the bright imprint left upon the heart when our deeds align with holiness, when our inner intention matches the single benevolent force that creates and governs reality. Our human purpose is practical and tangible: to reveal and attain the Creator through similarity of qualities and intentions, until “by Your actions we know You” (Baal HaSulam).

But the path opens with a paradox. To verify and justify the Creator as the single good that does good, we are born opposite to Him — armed with a will to receive for ourselves alone. We awaken in a world where we cannot sense Him precisely because we are unlike Him. Spiritual perception is not a higher floor of the same house; it is a parallel universe built on an opposite axis. If in this world our matter is an insatiable desire for self-fulfillment, in the spiritual world the axis is the intention — why I live, for whom I act.

We cannot change our matter. Desire remains desire, always hungry, always seeking. What can change is the intention that rides that desire. By default it is cancer-like, all-consuming, “for me.” To enter the spiritual, we must receive a new intention — the Creator’s godly intention of pure, selfless, unconditional love and bestowal. “Dvekut is equivalence of form” (Baal HaSulam). The form to be matched is the intention to benefit others.

Here the great ache begins. We discover that we do not truly want this. We can imitate it, speak of it, even act it out — but when the crossing comes, when we are asked to surrender everything that has ever defined “me”: my foundations, emotions, knowledge, and calculations, we freeze. We stand at the threshold and learn the hard truth: “A prisoner cannot free himself from prison” (Rabash). We cannot generate a super-natural desire from inside nature.

Everything depends on the lack. In corporeality, needs for food, sex, family, wealth, control, respect, and knowledge awaken us automatically and drive us blindly. In spirituality, the first fulfillment is not filling — it is lack itself, intolerable and irrepressible: a piercing deficiency for likeness with the Creator. Rabash teaches that the work begins with a plea for the lack itself — the “prayer before the prayer.” When that desire appears, even as a spark, “the Light in it reforms” (Baal HaSulam).

Where does this spark come from? From a special environment — a small group of like-minded friends who covenant to live for the human purpose. Together we try to behave “as if” we are already standing in love of others. We fail, again and again. We reach the border and find we cannot cross. From that shared failure, a shared cry is born — not for success, not for honor, but for a new engine, a new intention, for the operation only the Creator can perform. There is no coercion here: “There is no coercion in spirituality” (Baal HaSulam). We ask, and when the lack ripens into a true plea, He answers.

Then the miracle is modest and methodical. We are given borrowed garments — godly clothing of intention. Layer by layer, the upper light dresses our desires, not erasing them but redirecting them. New strata of egoistic will surface; new garments are given. We learn to live through “faith above reason”: to rise above what our senses and calculations dictate and practice reality through the Creator’s intention. The Kabbalist does not become naïve; on the contrary, every ascent expands reason. Yesterday’s “above reason” becomes today’s clear knowledge — only for a deeper layer of self-love to awaken, demanding a new ascent.

This is the source of an utterly different joy. In the corporeal axis, joy arrives when I fill myself. In holiness, joy descends when I am granted to act “like the Creator” — to bestow above and against my nature. Joy becomes a reflection of good deeds because good deeds are vessels for the upper illumination. The moment one takes upon oneself “the burden of the kingdom of heaven for eternity,” one is judged there and then — eternity flashing into the present as joy (Shamati 58). Even if one will fall an hour later, the present wholeness is sealed and the light rests upon it.

With each ascent we are enabled to love a little more. Then a hidden sweetness appears: only as we can love do we begin to feel the Creator’s love for us. The sensation is careful. It never crushes; it only shows the next rung, the gap we can bear. A unique spiritual shame appears — not neurotic self-loathing, but the noble shame of seeing how immeasurably He bestows while I bestow so little. “He is good and does good” (Baal HaSulam), and I long to resemble Him. This shame, paired with spiritual fear — not dread, but the trembling “lest I fail to reciprocate the love” — becomes wind in our sails. It presses us onward until love answers love in full equivalence.

And so the circle closes: joy as the reflection of good deeds. Not a mood, but a testimony. When joy visits, we do what Baal HaSulam advises — delve into words of Torah to discover the mind within them, to verify that our joy bears fruit and belongs to Kedusha, where reason flowers and deeds become eternal. Then we step again into the group, into the shared deficiency, into the prayer before the prayer. We ask not for pleasures, not even for peace, but for the one thing that births everything else: the intention to love like the Creator.

When that intention touches our deeds — even for a moment — the light touches us back. And its touch is joy.