“Happy is the man whom the Lord afflicts.” We should ask, but is the purpose of creation not to do good to His creations? Thus, this is the opposite of the goal.
We can interpret that it is known that every branch wants to resemble its root, as it is written in the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” that the whole world loves rest. However, this is like a person holding a stick in his hand and beating everyone to make them work. Hence, each one must relinquish his rest in order to be saved from the afflictions of being beaten with a stick.
The stick is the afflictions when a person feels that he is lacking something. Therefore, when a person has a deficiency of having nothing to eat, he must labor in order to quiet the suffering of hunger. The bigger the lack, the more he must exert until he is compelled to obtain the object of his yearning.
Hence, if the Creator afflicts when he has no spirituality, the suffering compels a person to make great efforts until he must obtain the spirituality that he feels he lacks. Then, through the suffering, he will try to achieve spirituality, where he will receive the purpose of creation, which is to do good to His creations.
At that time, he will see what spirituality means, since prior to that, he is suffering only from not having, but he still does not know what is spirituality. But once he obtains it, he sees the purpose of creation.
This is as Baal HaSulam said about the difference between corporeality and spirituality. Corporeality is that when he does not have, he suffers, and when he has all the corporeal things, he still does not feel satisfied with corporeality. But in spirituality, a person does not suffer when he does not have, and when he does have, he has satisfaction in life. Hence, when he feels suffering from not having spirituality, this is the reason that he wants spirituality.