unless they had made this journey ~

There is a story of a mother and child living together. And the child asks the mother, "Where is my father?" And the mother says, "He is a wonderful person, but you cannot find him." The child gets very curious about his father and the mother keeps telling him stories about how wonderful his father is. The child's expectations get more and more built up until finally the situation reaches a point where the mother has actually to take him to see the father. So the mother takes her son out the front door of the house and the two go up into the mountains. They climb steep slopes and cross streams and labor over all kinds of obstacles. Finally they reach a ridge from where they can look down. They look down and see a valley with a house in it. The mother says, "That house down there is where your father lives." Then they climb down to the house and enter at the back door. In the room, they find a man and the mother tells her son, "This is your father." After the tremendous effort of the journey, climbing and walking a long the way, the child is tremendously excited and very pleased to find his wonderful father. Then the child discovers a door on the other side of the room that leads into the very same house where he had always lived with his mother. The mother could have taken her son directly through the door to see the father, but the child would not have appreciated him unless they had made this journey. If the mother just took the child from one room to the other, it would not have been anything. 

Chogyam Trungpa ~ Glimpses of Abhidharma