This recent post of wisdom from the Hasidic tradition paints an image of a father who disguises himself in order to frighten his son; when the son sees through the disguise, the father takes it off and compassionately embraces the child. The fright, or the unhappiness, we should understand, comes from having lost sight of the father, and if, when we are ‘beset with suffering’ we can only penetrate the veils of illusion, and remember that the Father is the source of the pain, we will find healing.

No image is without its limitations. of course; we could wonder why the father wanted to frighten the child in the first place, if he was full of love for his son.  But all of life is a dance of concealment and disclosure, of appearance and disappearance, of attainment and loss.  We play peekaboo with babies, and when we grow older, there is the game of hide and seek.  We fall in love and then our hearts are broken if the relationship fails.  If it endures, then one or the other will someday suffer the grief of mourning.   And so on, through the whole creation.

In the world of manifestation, the pleasure is always accompanied by pain, and so long as we seek one and flee from the other, we are lost in illusion.  It is only when we truly recognise that all experiences conceal the Father that we can slip out of the net and be free.  But there are two important points to keep in mind.  One is that we do not arrive at this freedom by a mental exercise; it is not enough to say that, yes, according to logic God gives all to us, so He must be the source of both the bitter and the sweet.  We have to see the Divine Hand with the eye of the heart in all that comes to us, and to accomplish that, the heart must be open and washed clean, as Hazrat Inayat Khan says, ‘by the constant running of the love stream.’

And the second point to remember is that the recognition of Unity will not bring an end to the pain of this world; the wind will still be cold and fire will still burn us, and illness will still be uncomfortable, for example.  But having penetrated the disguise, we will have a different understanding of what is happening to us, and we will feel the comfort of a Friend through all difficulties.