It is written in the poem “Anyone Who Sanctifies,” “His reward is great, according to his work.” There is a famous question about saying, “His reward is great,” and then contradicting himself saying “according to his work,” meaning specifically according to his work and not more.
To understand the above, we must first know what is the reward. It is known that our sages said, “Be as slaves serving the rav not in order to receive reward.” Rather, we must work Lishma [for Her sake].
Concerning reward, we say that a reward comes after labor, when one exerts oneself to find something that cannot be found without labor. But with things that are already present, we cannot speak of labor.
Likewise, it is impossible to say that a person is laboring to find a tiny stone the size of one centimeter by one centimeter, since for this he can walk into any construction site and find gravel stones that are larger than one centimeter by one centimeter. Therefore, it cannot be said that he received the reward of several gravel stones, since there is no labor for something that is abundant. Hence, when we obtain it, it cannot be considered a reward for something that is prevalent.
However, in order to obtain a one centimeter by one centimeter diamond, which is very hard to find, for this a person must make great efforts to obtain the diamond. When he obtains it, it is regarded as having received his reward for the effort.
Now, we must believe that “The whole earth is full of His glory,” as it is written, “I fill the heaven and the earth,” and as it is written in The Zohar and the writings of the ARI that all the pleasure we feel in corporeal pleasures are but a tiny light of the light of the Creator.
Naturally, where the light of the Creator is revealed, there is no end to the pleasure. It follows that when we believe that the whole earth is full of His glory, the pleasure fills the entire world.
In something that fills the whole world, it means that we do not need to look for the pleasure, since there is no place in the world that is not filled with pleasure. Clearly, it is irrelevant to speak of laboring for the pleasure, and it is irrelevant to say when we receive the pleasure that we received a reward, since receiving something for which there is no labor cannot be regarded as reward.
Hence, the question is, What is the reward that we receive in return for our labor?
Regarding what we said, that the world is filled with pleasures, as in “The whole earth is full of His glory,” the question is why we do not feel the light of the Creator filling the world. The answer to this is that the Creator made a Tzimtzum [restriction] and concealment not to feel the light of the Creator so there will not be bread of shame (as it is written in “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” 4,1).
But when one comes to a degree where he wants to bestow upon the Creator, meaning give contentment to his Maker, he begins to contemplate what the Creator needs so he can give it to Him, since all his concerns are to please the Creator. At that time, he realizes that the only reason He created the world was to receive pleasures from Him, and that more than this, the Creator does not need. Hence, he follows the Creator’s will and receives the pleasures.
At that time, there is no issue of bread of shame because he is not receiving the pleasures because he wants to enjoy, but because he wants to bestow upon the Creator, for when one achieves the degree of wanting only to bestow upon the Creator, the Tzimtzum is lifted from him and he sees the world as full of His glory.
Then he sees that all this was revealed to him so he would enjoy it. Hence, once he has obtained the degree of bestowal, meaning obtained the degree where all he wants is only to bestow contentment upon the Creator, he fills himself with all the pleasures that his eyes see, as in the explanation, “The whole earth is full of His glory.”
It follows that all that one needs to obtain that he can define as a reward after he has toiled several years is only one thing: the desire to bestow, meaning the degree of wanting to serve the rav not in order to receive reward.
All the labor where one needs to exert himself in Torah and Mitzvot [commandments] is only to obtain this. This is called “fear of heaven,” as it is written, “What does the Lord your God ask of you? Only to fear Me.”
This is so because fear is expressed as our sages said, “In return for ‘and Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look,’ he was rewarded with ‘The image of the Lord does he behold’” (Berachot 7a).
The matter of fear is clarified in that since man has to approach the Creator, meaning adhere to him, as it is written, “And to cling unto Him,” and as our sages explained, “Cling unto His attributes, as He is merciful, so you are merciful” (Sotah 14a), meaning equivalence of form, and one must be afraid that he will be far from the Creator in that he cannot emerge from self-love, which is reception, called “will to receive,” for this reason, the only reward that one should hope for is to obtain the power of bestowal.
This is the meaning of “His reward is great, according to his work.” If one exerts oneself in Torah and Mitzvot, he will get his reward, which is the power of bestowal. At that time, the power of bestowal, called “His reward is great,” that reward will increase the “very,” as it is written in The Zohar, “Good” is the angel of life, “very” is the angel of death, for he is an excess (Trumah, Item 433).
In other words, this is the abundance that pertains to the original will to receive, which is Behina Dalet [Fourth Phase], on which there was the Tzimtzum, and one who goes into the will to receive dies because the light of life departs from him.
However, by obtaining the Kli [vessel] for bestowal, we receive parts of the pleasure that pertains to Behina Dalet until the final correction, when he receives all the pleasure attributed to Behina Dalet in order to bestow, and this will be called “the end of correction.”