“When preceding Torah to Mitzva [commandment], or wisdom to fear… likewise will be the redemption. If they are rewarded, they will come out with mercy… and if he does not precede mercy, they will come out in affliction, and it is good that he preceded affliction and judgment to extend mercy… according to the sorrow is the reward” (The Zohar, Ki Tezte, Item 52).
We should understand the following:
1) Why must there be affliction and judgment first in order to extend mercy?
2) What is the meaning of “According to the sorrow is the reward?” After all, we should work without a reward.
To understand the above, we must know what are affliction, labor, and judgment, and what is the reward that was promised, “According to the sorrow is the reward.” It is known that there is no light without a Kli [vessel]. This means that there cannot be filling if there is no place of deficiency there. Since for the creatures to receive the delight and pleasure without shame there was a correction called “Tzimtzum [restriction] and concealment,” where we do not feel the Creator, in order to be able to know the Creator we must obtain the vessels of bestowal. This takes a lot of work, sorrow, and labor, since by nature, we are born in vessels of reception. We cannot grasp with our minds that Kelim [vessels], meaning deficiencies, will work only in order to bestow and not for self-benefit.
For this reason, when we want to walk on the path of bestowal, it is called “above reason” because the mind cannot understand this. When a person wants to purify himself from vessels of reception, this is called “purity.”
The question is, Who gives man the thought and desire to want to purify himself from vessels of reception? It comes to him through books and authors, when he hears and sees what they are telling him, that the life he yearns for according to the desire of his body is called “death” and not “life.”