Chasidut zu Schemot 10:26

Chapter 9⁵²²In Chapter 9, R. Shapiro articulates the nature of the hasidic path, which meets the need to transform the entire person – intentions, desires, and actions alike –and directs them all towards holiness. This is a high rung on the ladder of divine service and hasidism (again, the student has progressed since prior works), and requires training. It is such training that is the goal of the intended work which Mevo haShearim introduces.
And now we come to our primary intent in this work which we desire to compose, should the good and forgiving God merit us. Behold, as we have said, hasidism constitutes a drawing forth, which reveals light in even the vessels themselves, even in this world--”and the whole earth is full of His glory” —, even in earthiness and in the physicality of the vessels. Therefore, [hasidic] avodah is not only performed via rejection of the physical but rather also with the physical, serving God and raising up physical traits, to love God and fear Him with them. Further, we do so not only with the faculties deriving from the spirit [ruakh], but also with the soul [nefesh] and indeed with one’s physical force. These too, we need not afflict and cast aside but rather incorporate them in holiness and service of God. In the holy books, this notion is sourced in a scriptural hint⁵²³Remez, or allegorical interpretations; one of the four traditional levels of interpretation. found in the verse ‘for from these we shall take to serve God,’⁵²⁴Exodus 10:26.which Moses our Rabbi said to Pharaoh regarding the animals, indicating that these too would come with them [i.e. the Israelites, when they left Egypt]. This means that they would ‘take from them as well,’ that is, from their own animalistic natures, to serve God.

It is not only the second variety of hisragshus (where nothing external sets off this emotion, it is just a feeling that has not yet dressed in anything physical) that you can use for avodas Hashem, to intensify your feelings for Hashem, but even the hisragshus of the third variety (where you already feel desire and hisragshus for something physical) can be used to augment your love and fear of God. We have already quoted holy sefarim that tell us how for the Israelite, even the animal soul, the source of all worldly desires, is a holy entity, as it is rooted in the face of the ox on God’s chariot. It is only that it is dressed in low garments, and thus desires low things. Man’s job is to remove it from its evil garment and dress it in a garment of kedushah. When a man is aroused to such desires, it contains two elements. The first element is the hisragshus of the nefesh that we search after with so much effort. And the second element is the evil garment that covers the illumination of the nefesh and its feelings. If only man felt it as two distinct elements, that which was being dressed, and the garment dressing it; the hisragshus by itself, and also the vile, polluted rubbish by itself. If so we would not need to be so wary of dangers in the course of our avodah. The trouble is precisely that we feel them together as one, as if they were not two things but one thing - one low feeling for something or other. The masters of Chassidus have taught us that it is not enough for man to refrain from his evil lusts, but he is under obligation to transform every desire for evil into a desire for kedushah. The purpose of avodah is to reach the point where that very same animal desire that seeks evil has now been transformed and now only seeks the good and the holy. As was mentioned earlier, the Torah hints at this when Moshe tells Pharaoh that he will be taking even the animals of the Egyptians in order to sacrifice them in the desert. “We must take it to serve God,”¹⁹²Shemos, 10:26 which tells us, we will also transform the evil portion of the animal soul and use it to serve God.