Question: When darkness or obstacles come to me, I feel terrible, yet I am told I must rejoice. What is there to rejoice about?

Answer: If I am connected to the Creator and understand that He sends me all these states, I can rejoice. But if I feel bad, how can I simultaneously rejoice? Here, a new quality begins to develop within us. I can rejoice in the fact that I feel bad because it shows I am still tied to my egoism.

In the measure of feeling pain, I begin to realize how immersed I am in egoism and how much I wish to rise above it. This is an intermediate state between egoistic and spiritual states.

In the egoistic state, I feel pain, but in the spiritual state, I feel that I am rising above egoism. Therefore, I experience joy from the fact that even though I feel pain, I am rising above it. I already despise my egoism, I wish to detach from it, and I find myself in a state opposite to Pharaoh—I want to escape him. Thus, I rejoice at the “Egyptian plagues” that afflict him.

I recall how Rabash would point to his body and say: “Let it suffer.” But this is not about the self-inflicted suffering of ascetics who deliberately subject themselves to physical pain. It is the understanding that your egoism, in its suffering, helps you break away from it.

But this is a technique. So no matter how much I explain, only gradual practice will show you how it is done.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/3/19, Writings of Baal HaSulam “There Is None Else Besides Him”

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