Whether a person’s action will ascend to the higher world or will remain below inthis world is determined by the person’s intent in committing the action.
This is true not only of physical deeds.
Even spiritual creations can remain in this world and be irrelevant to the world of holiness.
The opposite can also happen, that thoughts of issues of this world are pulled into a structure of holiness.
A story is told of a great hasid who was a successful merchant, and he was seen once sitting and summarizing the transactions of that year.
Suddenly, they saw that he was deep in thought, and when he completed the summaries of his activity with each batch of inventory, he would write, “There is no other besides Him.”
He would begin with calculations of his trading, how much he purchased and how much he profited, but when he would reach the line marked “total,” something within his soul would awaken and say that he could not just write a number of rubles.
Therefore, he would finish the calculation and summarize it in a way that would rise above this world to a completely different one.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz