This passage from the Hasidic text, Tanya, points to a single possibility: that human beings can awaken from the trance of the “ordinary” and behold the miracle of Being Itself in all Its transcendent incomprehensibility. This is the meaning behind all of these prophetic descriptions of the Messianic Era – “Your eyes shall see your Teacher,” “they shall see eye to eye,” and “Hashem shall be your everlasting light.” These are not merely predictions about distant future events; they are descriptions of a transformation that is possible now. The text says that the Divine is ordinarily concealed behind “robe and garment,” as though reality itself is veiled behind layers of covering. The ordinary mind imagines this concealment as if God were some hidden object somewhere “out there,” blocked from our perception by a cosmic curtain. But from the perspective of meditation practice, the “concealment” is not something external – it is our own conditioning. Our thoughts, habits, assumptions, emotional reactions, and endless mental preoccupations create the “veil.” We have become so accustomed to life that we are unable to actually behold it; but there is Way out of this conditioning, to realization, to a profound awakening to What is right in front of (and within) us. Awakening in the spiritual sense does not mean seeing a different world; it means seeing this world differently. The trees, the sky, the faces around us – we have seen them all uncountable times, yet everything becomes luminous with Presence when we let go of time. The ordinary moment reveals itself as Extraordinary. The familiar becomes the miraculous. One wakes in the morning not merely into another day of burdens and routines, but into a living reality shimmering with wonder. This, says the Tanya, is the essence of the Messianic vision. These “days of Moshiach,” to which time moves us, represents the fulfillment of creation itself. Why does the world exist? Why has consciousness evolved through countless forms of life until human beings emerged with the capacity for self-awareness and awe?

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