The story of Yosef [Joseph] and his brothers helps explain something very deep:
The Creator did not choose a human being because of our positive qualities.
He chose us beyond any reason we can explain, for a life of relationship, responsibility, and revealing His goodness.
When we bring compassion, giving, 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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Chabad Chassidus, building on teachings brought back to life by the Baal Shem Tov in the early 1700s, explains the soul as the part of us that can know the Creator, feel awe and love for Him, and express goodness through the way we live.
A relationship with the Creator begins with awe.
Awe is the felt awareness:
“I am living before the Infinite Creator right now.”
Awe contains wonder because existence is being held by the Creator at every moment and His wisdom is far beyond what we can fully understand.
It contains humility because we are not the Source, we do not see the whole story, and reality is not under our control.
And it contains healthy fear because our choices are real and matter.
Before awe becomes felt, a person can have ideas, beliefs, opinions, and arguments about the Creator without yet feeling that they are living before Him.
With another human being, relationship often begins with curiosity.
With the Infinite Creator, relationship begins with awe.
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Then trust changes what happens next.
When you trust that the Creator is good, awe can awaken love.
Love contains joy because some of His goodness and closeness are already revealed, and love contains sadness because His goodness can always be more revealed.
That sadness becomes longing:
“I want to know You more.”
“I want to feel Your closeness more clearly.”
“I want more of Your goodness revealed.”
Sadness can also deepen awe because it makes you look more carefully at the Creator, His purpose, and what your choices can help reveal.
This is why deeper joy and sadness can exist inside the same love.
A child naturally pulls away from a parent when there is no joy in the relationship, so spiritual life also needs joy in the goodness and closeness that are already present.
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In the world of souls, there is no physical suffering or physical pleasure.
You are no longer living through a physical body, but you still have a personality and feel emotions.
The soul can experience closeness to the Creator, know that it belongs, and feel joy in where it came from.
But natural closeness can hide something deeper.
If the soul feels close because its spiritual nature naturally points toward the Creator, it does not yet fully experience something that can only become clear through hiddenness:
“I was not chosen because I feel holy.”
“I was not chosen because I understand.”
“I was not chosen because I earned the relationship.”
“I was chosen beyond any reason I can explain, for relationship and responsibility.”
That becomes possible to discover inside physical life.
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The body places the soul inside a world where its natural awareness can become hidden.
A person can experience darkness, numbness, jealousy, fear, pain, distraction, shame, and survival patterns such as people-pleasing, avoidance, control, or abuse.
Numbness means the nervous system stops feeling some emotions as strongly.
Adam and Eve show what happens when shame enters this relationship.
They stopped feeling able to live honestly before the Creator, so they hid.
That same pattern continues whenever shame tells a person:
“If the truth about me is seen, I will no longer be wanted.”
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But hiddenness creates the possibility of discovering a deeper kind of relationship.
You can learn:
“I am being held not because I feel holy, understand everything, or deserve it, but because the Creator chose me beyond any reason I can explain for relationship and responsibility.”
Kabbalah uses the word tzimtzum to describe the hiding of the Creator’s revealed presence.
Chassidus explains how that hiddenness creates room for a person to experience choice, distance, and relationship.
The Creator’s presence and goodness can feel far away inside the world we experience, even though He continues to hold everything in existence.
Hiddenness is not a mistake.
It creates room for choice.
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Human beings cannot receive goodness with the same dignity when they experience themselves as having no part in receiving or revealing it.
Goodness that feels completely unearned can create shame.
So the Creator did not only make a universe where goodness is given.
He made a world where goodness can be discovered, chosen, shared, revealed, and received with dignity.
When you work for something, choose it, and help bring it into the world, you become part of revealing it.
That creates responsibility and partnership.
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Kabbalah also describes a level called the Igul HaGadol, the great surrounding light beyond the tzimtzum.
Chassidus explains what this means for the relationship between the Infinite Creator and a finite person.
In simple language, it points to a level of the Creator’s relationship with us that does not depend on how much we understand, how spiritual we feel, or how worthy we think we are.
It surrounds the whole story.
It is there in closeness.
And it is there when closeness feels hidden.
That means physical life can teach the soul:
“The Creator chose me beyond any reason I can explain, not only to feel close to Him, but to share a life of relationship and responsibility with Him.”
The body is therefore not only a place where the soul loses some of its natural awareness.
It is where something deeper can be discovered:
Being chosen beyond reason.
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The story of Yosef and his brothers gives us a picture for this.
Yosef can be understood as a metaphor for the soul.
His brothers, while they are harming him, can represent the parts of the physical and emotional personality that become jealous, threatened, quick to react, controlling, avoidant, people-pleasing, abusive, or unable to listen.
The brothers throw Yosef into a pit.
Later they remember something even more painful:
They heard their brother pleading with them, and they did not listen.
According to the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s explanation, their failure was not only the act of putting Yosef into the pit.
There was a deeper problem in their lack of mercy.
Their brother was pleading, and they closed themselves to his pain.
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The same thing can happen inside a person.
The soul is pleading:
“Use this life for goodness.”
“Do not waste the time I came here for.”
“Bring me into your relationships.”
“Use this body and this part of the world to reveal the Creator’s goodness.”
And sometimes the nervous system does not want to listen.
It numbs, controls, avoids, people-pleases, chases physical pleasure, or chases money and approval.
Not because the person has no soul, but because survival can become louder than relationship.
The deeper problem is not only the unhealthy behavior.
The person can become numb to the part of themselves that is asking for a more meaningful 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.
You can say:
“I feel lonely.”
“I learned to use money, physical pleasure, control, people-pleasing, or avoidance to numb pain that felt too difficult to handle.”
That does not remove responsibility.
Self-compassion means:
“There is a reason I became this way, and I am still responsible for what I do next.”
Boundaries mean no longer allowing fear, impulse, people-pleasing, avoidance, control, or abuse to run the whole personality.
Self-forgiveness means believing the broken story can still be changed without pretending the harm was okay.
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This is exactly what Yosef eventually shows his brothers.
He does not tell them that what they did was okay, and he does not remove their responsibility.
He tells them that they meant to harm him, while the Creator brought goodness out of the story.
Yosef then reveals that deeper goodness through the very relationship that had been broken: he feeds his brothers, guides them, forgives them, and helps them face what happened without destroying them.
That is the deeper metaphor.
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The soul does not discover that it was chosen beyond reason only by being spiritual, sensitive, wise, or naturally close to the Creator.
It discovers that deeper choice when physical life itself becomes part of the relationship.
The body and nervous system learn to stop living mainly through numbness, control, people-pleasing, avoidance, or abuse and become partners in compassion, responsibility, forgiveness, boundaries, and repair.
Then the soul can recognize:
“I was not chosen because of my positive qualities.”
“I was chosen beyond reason.”
“And the Creator wants this physical life, this body, these choices, and even the repair of what became broken to become places where His goodness is revealed.”
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This also helps explain kapparah, cleansing and repair.
Kapparah does not mean pretending the damage never happened.
At its deepest level, the broken place itself becomes repaired and starts revealing goodness.
The harm remains wrong.
Responsibility remains real.
But the story no longer ends with the harm.
The broken part becomes part of the path toward repair.
Yosef’s story began with jealousy, betrayal, and suffering.
It eventually became a story through which people were fed, a family was repaired, and life was preserved.
The darkness did not become good.
Goodness was revealed through what people did with the darkness.
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In the world of souls, the soul can experience closeness, joy, and pleasure with the Creator.
But inside physical life, it can discover something deeper: the Creator chose it beyond any reason we can explain, not only to receive spiritual pleasure, but to give, repair, take responsibility, forgive without denying harm, practice compassion without losing boundaries, and help reveal His goodness through physical life.
That is why the body is not outside the soul’s purpose.
It is where the soul’s purpose becomes action.
Based on ideas explained through Chabad Chassidus.
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There is another powerful lesson here.
The Creator is greater than Joseph, so we can ask Him to treat us with even more goodness than Yosef showed his brothers after they harmed him.
And repairing relationships between human beings is one of the hardest parts of this work.
Based on a talk of the Lubavitcher Rebbe explaining a Midrash, when human beings do real relationship work with each other, it can be understood like bringing an atonement offering on behalf of the Creator for the suffering humanity has experienced through creation.
The pain is not the goal.
Repair is.
And the deepest repair is when a place that once contained pain, shame, distance, or betrayal becomes a place where more compassion, responsibility, relationship, and goodness are revealed.
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Related guides:
Prayer is not meant to be a performance, psychology explained: https://nextself.ai/spirituality/emotional-numbness-is-often-not-emptiness/
How to identify the leader that will be the Messiah? https://nextself.ai/spirituality/the-talmud-and-midrash/
How to understand curses in the Hebrew Bible: https://nextself.ai/spirituality/the-creator-is-one/
How is it possible that we have free choice? https://nextself.ai/spirituality/free-will-is-not-what-people-think/
For hundred more posts explaining spirituality: https://www.facebook.com/binyomin.rutstein/photos
Explore the NextSelf 2026 Index and 2025 Index. Start with this post explaining the world of souls.
They organize the core ideas on awareness, compassion, boundaries, and how they build real relationship and responsibility with The Creator.
Update: When an individual trusts the Creator is good, awe [wonder, humility and fear], which is felt after noticing patterns of infinite wisdom, causes love to be felt and that love includes sadness because His goodness can always be more revealed and joy.
All information is for educational purposes only.