“… [the] experience of living beneath the skhokh for seven days (with its leaky roof and peep holes to heaven) is supposed to bring us to sukka consciousness.

…what exactly is sukkah consciousness? According to Rav Dessler it’s the awareness that we live in an upside down world. That what seems solid is actually certain to fail, and what seems nebulous and flaky is actually a solid, unshakable foundation stone. Meaning that the physical world seems solid, but actually, eventually, it crumbles, its structures break, its loyalties fade, its certainties collapse… The physical world will inevitably betray our trust, not because it is bad but because it is impermanent. Change is an inescapable feature of our physical plane… that awareness of impermanence becomes our zman simchataynu—our period of greatest joy. But why? How does that work?

The idea (as we know) is that the skhokh [with its peepholes to shamayim] reminds us that the Primal-Will-to-Good (aka HaShem) is behind all this and if we are patient and we adjust our focus (like in those figure ground images) we can get a glimpse of the purposefulness of our ordeals, the hidden good buried inside our disappointments, the blessings in disguise.”