At a beginning-of-the-month festive meal, 1 Adar, Tav-Shin-Lamed-Bet, February 15, 1972
“You have not a blade of grass below that does not have an angel that strikes and tells it, ‘Grow!’”
We should ask why it needs to strike it or it does not want to grow. After all, we see that in nature, each and every one wants to grow and not be small.
To understand this, we need to interpret this in the work. By nature, as long as one is immersed in the earth, he relinquishes any kind of Gadlut [greatness/adulthood] and wants to remain in earthliness. However, there is a force from above called an “angel,” and an angel is a force that bestows and strikes him and tells him, “Grow!” In other words, it strikes him with its power of bestowal and tells him, “Grow! Come out of your earthliness,” although one is born with a desire to receive called “earthliness.”
As far as the will to receive is concerned, a person would remain in the earth and would never be able to emerge from earthliness. But the power of bestowal that exists in the world, called “angel,” afflicts him by not satisfying the will to receive. Thus, the afflictions he feels push him out of earthliness.
This is as it is written, “Happy is the man whom You afflict, Lord,” for by the Creator sending afflictions into the earthliness, he has no satisfaction with earthliness, which pushes him to grow and emerge from the earth.
It therefore follows that to the extent that one feels the beating, so he begins to grow and emerge from the earth. Otherwise, he would remain submerged in the earth.