Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 90

Chapter 9 The Image of the Creator

What is work and what is a reward? These questions are always perplexing. The purpose of creation is to give contentment to His created beings, and the state of completed work is one of rest, yet everything depends on the perception of the recipients. Work itself can be the reward, and work can also be experienced as rest. The concept of effort is solely determined by our  attitude to work and how we perceive it, whether we feel it as exertion and deficiency or as pleasure. After all, even now we exist in the state of the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun), and these definitions are all we have left to correct, i.e., the way we perceive work and effort, and the way we define suffering and reward.

Baal HaSulam writes in his “Letter No. 55” that all suffering originates from the delay of reward in relation to the time of performing the work. If we were to receive immediate payment for each and every action, we could be likened to a shopkeeper who sells a certain product for ten dollars, knowing that two dollars from each sale would go directly into their pocket. At every moment, with every effort, the shopkeeper immediately pockets two dollars, thereby at once covering the effort so that it no longer feels burdensome but rather like an instant reward.

This is the entire matter. Everything depends on our attitude to work. Therefore, the work concludes in the correction of our vessels, feelings, and our inner definition of what is reward, effort, and payment. This is how, ultimately, the very concept of effort disappears; payment replaces all labor, toil, and suffering, and forms a state of constant goodness and pleasure for us.

This is all due to the fact that we have corrected our vessels, which enables us to now perceive what was bestowed upon us even beforehand, but we now feel it in new vessels, in different discernments, with a new understanding.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 89
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