We have learned that a person is meant to rejoice even in suffering. But to arrive at such joy on one's own strength alone is extremely difficult. A well known story in the Gemara in Moed Katan shows us how it can in fact be done.
The story in the Gemara, Moed Katan:
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai sent his son, Rabbi Elazar, to receive a blessing from a certain man. The son came back and said to his father: "Father, he cursed me," and he did not even want to repeat what had been said. Rabbi Shimon pressed him to tell him the words, and the son listed them one by one. Among them: any merchandise you bring into your house will stay with you and you will not manage to sell a thing of it, and any merchandise you take out will bring you back no profit at all.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai then revealed to his son the secret behind the words: every single phrase that was said is such an enormous blessing that, precisely because of its greatness, you did not understand it and took it for a curse. "You will take out and not bring in" means that your daughters will marry and leave the house to live with their husbands and will not come back to you, that is, they will live in peace. "You will bring in and not take out" is also a blessing: your sons will marry, and their wives will come into the house and will not leave it. And so he explained to him every item for the good.
What does this story teach us? That when a person goes with the strength of a Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, with the strength of the leader of the generation, who knows how to translate the bad into good, he does not have to wait until the future in order to merit "the sun coming out in its full strength." Already now everything can turn over into good, and he sees good in everything.
In the words of the Alter Rebbe:
A person who understands and recognizes that closeness to G-d is more precious to him than all the life of this world rejoices in suffering. On this the Alter Rebbe brings a series of phrases:
"כי טוב חסדך מחיים" ("For Your kindness is better than life"): the kindness through which the Holy One draws a person close by means of suffering is better and more precious to him than life in this world.
"וקרבת ה' היא ביתר שאת ומעלה אין קץ" ("and closeness to G-d is with infinitely greater loftiness and elevation"): the higher divine closeness is specifically in alma de'iskasya, the concealed world, which is above alma de'isgalya, the revealed world. It follows that someone who received from the Creator a treatment coming from alma de'iskasya received a greater measure of closeness.
"כי שם חביון עוזו" ("for there is the hiding place of His might"): there, in alma de'iskasya, the strength and power of the Creator are concealed.
"ויושב בסתר עליון" ("and He dwells in the hidden place of the Most High"): a familiar verse in Tehillim, which has two ways of being explained.
The simple explanation, about the Jew: this is the one who sits and hides in the shelter of the wings of the Shechinah (as Rashi explains), and as the verse continues, "בצל שדי יתלונן" ("he lodges in the shadow of the Almighty"), that the Holy One protects him and spreads His cover over him.
The explanation here, about the Holy One: "the Most High," where does He sit? Specifically in concealment. He is found in alma de'iskasya more than in alma de'isgalya. Therefore someone who received his flow from alma de'iskasya received from the innermost dimension of the Creator.
And this is why the person who rejoices in his suffering merits "the sun coming out in its full strength" in the future to come: when the divine revelation will be at its full power and we will be vessels able to receive it, the Holy One will raise all of us up to alma de'iskasya, and then these very things will no longer be experienced as suffering but will be revealed openly. This flow is destined to be given in the future to the person who rejoiced in his suffering in this world.
The idea of "the sun coming out of its sheath": in this world the sun is covered by its sheath, and the divine revelation is in concealment. In the future it will emerge from its covering and the revelation will be complete, meaning that what we today call alma de'iskasya will itself be revealed, "and it will shine and illuminate with great and powerful revelation" for all those who took shelter in Him in this world. Whoever takes shelter in this world in the shade of concealment, and does not kick against it but rejoices, makes himself into a vessel to receive that revelation, not out of a feeling of pain, but out of closeness.
"ומסתופפים בצלו" ("and those who shelter in His shadow"): shade is seemingly darkness as opposed to light, yet in its inner dimension it is the level of chochmah, which is called "shade." One who shelters in His shadow is in the state of "בצל שדי יתלונן": he is in shade and in concealment, and he does not complain about it but accepts it with joy, and by doing so makes himself into a vessel. And as we saw, there is no need to wait until the future: when one connects to the masters of the secret, like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in his time, one can merit already now that the concealment turn over into good, "and this is enough for one who understands."
Sadness from spiritual matters (milei deshmaya):
In the last part of the chapter the Alter Rebbe moves to a different kind of sadness. Until now we spoke about a person whose sadness comes from milei de'alma, worldly matters: something not good in his life, pains, suffering, difficulties with parnassah. For that the Alter Rebbe gave him a different way of looking at it: do not fall into sadness over this, but go on serving G-d with joy, since sadness is exactly what drops a person into cravings. Now we are speaking about spiritual sadness: a person who is sad not because his business is failing or because his head and teeth hurt, but because he feels that he has sinned and transgressed.
At first glance this looks like a positive sadness, and we cannot tell him what we told him about suffering, "it is not terrible, it is actually good." On the other hand, we have learned that it is the yetzer hara that drops a person into sadness, so how would the yetzer hara bring a person to feel sad about his sins, which seems to be the opposite of what the yetzer wants? Evidently, then, sadness over sin is not always a greeting from the yetzer tov; sometimes it is the yetzer hara itself that pushes a person into sadness over his transgressions. For this the Alter Rebbe will give several solutions here, and in the next chapter as well: first, to identify where the thing is coming from, "know your enemy"; and second, how to deal with it when a person does nevertheless fall into this sadness.
And so he says: when the sadness comes "ממילי דשמיא" and not from milei de'alma, that is, not from physical problems but specifically from spiritual ones, "צריך לשית עצות בנפשו להיפטר ממנה" ("he must devise strategies within his soul to be rid of it"). With worldly matters he did not say that one must search for strategies; he stated flatly that the thing is not bad at all. But with spiritual matters we do not tell a person that it is not bad, since sin is an evil illness and is not good, and therefore one must look for strategies to get rid of the sadness itself.
Let us preface an important point for understanding the problem with sadness, on the psychological level: every person has energies inside him, and they have to be released, and they will be released. The only question is where. A sad person is turned in on himself and depressed, he is in laziness and heaviness, and he has no outlet to release those energies. This is one of the yetzer hara's tricks: let the person be sad, and it makes no difference to him about what, even about spirituality, as long as he is sad.
And then, when the person comes to a test and a temptation to sin, the yetzer hara will say to him: "Nu, release the pressure, you feel you need to let it out, here, let it out!" And the person will let it out, because there is a need in him to let it out. The yetzer hara catches him at his weak point: like a pressure cooker, which has to discharge somewhere, and in the end it discharges in the places that are not good. By contrast, a person who is in joy releases his energy all the time in a controlled and proper way, and the yetzer hara cannot push him into a bad place. From here we see that sadness is not good, and that even with sadness that comes from spirituality one has to be careful.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "אין צריך לומר בשעת עבודה" ("needless to say during the time of divine service"). If in the middle of serving G-d, in the middle of davening or in the middle of learning Torah, memories come up of the sins he did yesterday, the day before, last week or two months ago, and he starts thinking about himself, "how am I not ashamed, how could I have done such a thing?" and he falls into worry, then certainly this has no place at all, since serving G-d must be with joy and gladness of heart, and a thought that brings sadness in the middle of avodah must be pushed away immediately.
And not only that, but "אפילו מי שהוא בעל עסקים ודרך ארץ" ("even one who is a businessman engaged in worldly occupation"). Even a person who does not sit and learn Torah and is not a talmid chacham, but a businessman who spends most of the hours of his day at work, and in the middle of his business a thought falls into him, "how did I stumble in that sin? What an unsettled person I am," and he falls into sadness, he must know that all of this is from the counsel of the yetzer.
In summary: in this section we learned from the story in the Gemara in Moed Katan, where Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai explained the curses to his son as blessings, that the masters of the secret have the power to turn the bad into good already in this world. We went through the Alter Rebbe's phrases: "כי טוב חסדך מחיים," "וקרבת ה' היא ביתר שאת," "כי שם חביון עוזו" and "ויושב בסתר עליון," and we saw that the closeness found in alma de'iskasya is loftier than the revelation of alma de'isgalya, and that one who accepts the concealment with joy becomes a vessel for "the sun coming out in its full strength" in the future to come. Afterward we moved to a different kind of sadness, sadness "ממילי דשמיא," sadness over transgressions, where a person is required to devise strategies within his soul to be rid of it, both during his service of G-d and during his business affairs.
In the next section we will take up the strategies the Alter Rebbe gives to a person who has fallen into sadness over his transgressions: how to identify where this sadness is coming from and how to deal with it, a subject that will continue into the next chapter as well.