a body and a soul, beyond all reasons.
The tragedy of the story, and the repair that happens afterward,
show that The Creator did not choose us because of our positive qualities,
but beyond all reasons, for a life of relationship, responsibility, and revealing His goodness.
When we channel goodness, compassion, responsibility, forgiveness, and repair into the world,
we give The Creator pleasure because His desire for revealed goodness is being fulfilled.
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In Chassidus, the teachings reignited by the Baal Shem Tov in the early 1700s,
the soul is the part of your personality that allows you to feel awe and love for The Creator, and to practice compassion, giving, responsibility, and repair.
Awe is not just fear.
Awe is a blend of sadness, fear, and wonder.
Sadness because The Creator’s goodness can always be more revealed.
Fear because life is serious and our choices matter.
Wonder because existence itself is being held by The Creator at every moment.
A relationship with The Creator begins with awe.
Before awe, a person may have ideas, opinions, beliefs, or arguments about The Creator.
But a relationship is not happening yet.
With a human being, relationship begins with curiosity.
With the Infinite, relationship begins through awe.
Deeper joy is felt after awe.
A child naturally distances from a parent when there is no joy in the relationship.
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In the world of souls, there is no physical suffering/pleasure.
You are not a body anymore, but you still feel emotions and remain the same personality.
You do not become someone else.
And there, the soul can feel close to The Creator.
But that closeness has a certain feeling to it.
It can feel like a child close to a parent.
The soul knows it belongs, knows it is holy because it is a channel for giving, and feels where it came from.
That is real closeness, but it can still hide something deeper.
Because when closeness feels natural, the soul does not sense that it was chosen beyond all reasons for relationship and responsibility.
It can still feel close because it is like light of The Creator, an expression of His desire to give goodness and be perceived, and it naturally belongs in that higher world.
But in the body, that natural feeling is hidden.
The soul enters a world of darkness, numbness, jealousy, fear, pain, distraction, distance, and ego behaviors like people pleasing, avoidance, control, and abuse.
Numbness means a nervous system doesn’t feel emotions as strongly.
Adam and Eve show what happens when a person does not feel chosen.
They stopped believing they could live honestly before The Creator and still be loved.
So they hid.
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Only in a world where closeness is hidden can the soul begin to sense something deeper:
I am being held not because I feel holy, understand, deserve it, or can explain it,
but because The Creator chose me beyond reason for a life of relationship, and responsibility.
In the language of Kabbalah, The Creator is described as the Igul HaGadol, the great surrounding light outside the tzimtzum.
The tzimtzum is the concealed universe we live inside, where The Creator’s presence and goodness can feel hidden, distant, and difficult to sense,
even though His goodness is still holding everything in existence.
But hiddenness is not a mistake in the design.
Human beings cannot receive goodness with the same dignity when it feels completely unearned.
It can feel embarrassing.
If everything were simply handed to us, life would just be about receiving, not creating.
So The Creator did not only give goodness by creating the universe.
He built a world where goodness can be discovered, revealed, chosen, shared, and received with dignity.
A world that only received goodness passively would be easier.
But it would not reveal the same dignity, partnership, responsibility, or depth of connection.
When you put effort into something, you become part of making it happen.
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The Igul HaGadol surrounds that whole universe.
That means there is a level of The Creator’s relationship with us that is not measured by our understanding, feelings, worthiness, or spiritual level.
It surrounds the whole story.
It holds us even inside darkness, shame, and fear.
And specifically inside the darkness of this physical world, a person can sense:
The Igul HaGadol chose me beyond reason, not only to feel close to The Creator, but to share a life of relationship and responsibility with Him.
That is why the body is not only a fall for the soul.
The body is where the soul discovers chosenness beyond reason.
The story of Yosef and his brothers gives us a picture for this.
Yosef is like the soul.
The brothers, when they are harming him, are like the body, the animal soul, the parts of the personality that are jealous, threatened, reactive, people pleasing, avoidant, controlling, abusive, and unable to hear what the soul is asking for.
Yosef’s brothers threw him into a pit and hurt him deeply, but later they realized something deeper:
“We didn’t listen to our brother when he pleaded with us from the pit.”
That line is so important.
According to the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s explanation, the sin was not only that they threw Yosef into the pit.
The lack of mercy was even worse.
They heard him pleading from the pit and did not respond.
They saw pain and stayed closed and did not show mercy.
That is also what happens inside a person.
The soul is pleading:
Use this life for good.
Do not waste the time I came down for.
Redeem me from this exile.
Make this body, this animal soul, and this part of the world into a place for The Creator.
Practice curiosity, compassion, boundaries, and self-forgiveness so the body can become a partner to the soul instead of a place where the soul feels unheard.
And when a person does not listen, the problem is not only the wrong action.
The deeper problem is the lack of mercy toward the soul.
The person becomes numb to the part of their personality that is begging for more life.
That is why awareness, compassion, boundaries, and self-forgiveness matter.
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Awareness means noticing the pleading again.
Compassion means caring about the pain instead of ignoring it, attacking yourself, or pretending it does not matter.
It means being able to say, “I feel lonely,” or “my love of money, physical pleasure, control, people pleasing, or avoidance helped numb suffering that felt too much to manage,” without using that pain as an excuse.
Self-compassion means there was a reason I became this way, and there is also a responsibility to grow beyond it.
Boundaries mean no longer letting the body, fear, impulse, people pleasing, avoidance, control, or abuse run the whole story.
Self-forgiveness means believing the broken story can still be transformed without pretending it was fine.
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That is exactly what Yosef shows his brothers.
He does not say the harm was okay.
He does not erase responsibility.
But he reveals a deeper layer:
You meant harm, but The Creator used this story to give life and goodness to the world.
Yosef did not reveal the deeper good by staying separate from his brothers.
He revealed it by giving through the very relationship that had been broken.
He fed them, guided them, forgave them, and helped them face the truth without destroying them.
That is the deeper metaphor.
The soul does not discover chosenness beyond reason because it is spiritual, sensitive, wise, or naturally close to The Creator.
It discovers it when it teaches the body and nervous system how to stop surviving through numbness, control, people pleasing, avoidance, or abuse,
and how to become a partner in giving, responsibility, forgiveness, and repair.
That is when the soul begins to sense:
I was not chosen because of my positive qualities.
I was chosen beyond reason, and The Creator wants this physical life, this body, this pain, this repair, and this relationship to become a place where His goodness is revealed.
That is kapparah, cleansing, at its highest level.
It means the damage is not only removed, but healed.
And at the deepest level, kapparah means transformation that lets a person actually see how goodness came out of the broken story.
The broken part becomes part of the path toward revealed goodness.
In the world of souls, the soul can feel closeness, joy, and bliss with The Creator.
But in the body, the soul can discover something deeper.
It can see that The Creator chose it beyond all reasons, not only to share pleasure, but to become holy through giving,
to serve The Creator through relationship and responsibility, and to help build a world where His goodness is revealed.
Based on ideas explained through Chabad Chassidus.
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More guides:
The Creator is greater then Yosef, so we can ask Him to treat us better then Yosef treated his brothers after they harmed him.
The hard part is repairing relationships with humans, when humans do relationship work, it’s an atonement on behalf of the Creator for the suffering humanity experienced through creation – based on a talk of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Prayer is not meant to be a performance, psychology explained:
https://nextself.ai/spirituality/emotional-numbness-is-often-not-emptiness/
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CM1EUWN8U/
How to identify the leader that wil lbe the Messiah?
https://nextself.ai/spirituality/the-talmud-and-midrash/
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1aavHSe7Xs/
How to understand curses in the Hebrew Bible:
https://nextself.ai/spirituality/the-creator-is-one/
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DifwZh3aP/
How is it possible that we have free choice?
https://nextself.ai/spirituality/free-will-is-not-what-people-think/
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1KJAE1JkzN/
For hundred more posts explaining spirituality: https://www.facebook.com/binyomin.rutstein/photos
If you want to go deeper into this work, explore the NextSelf 2026 and 2025 Indexes.
It organizes the core ideas on awareness, compassion, boundaries, and how they build real relationship and responsibility with The Creator.
