hide and seek

We are all playing hide and seek

I guess you know this simple children's game. One person closes her eyes and counts to ten or twenty whilst the others go and hide. When the counting is finished, she opens her eyes and goes in search of the others. Such a simple game and yet children the world over love it.

And it strikes me that even as adults we like to play this game, in another way. We hide from one another and see if the other person can find out who we really are. On the one hand, we pretend to be something that we are not. We hide emotions that we feel are unacceptable, and we exaggerate others that we think are needed in order for us to be accepted. All this because we want to belong. We want to feel accepted and seen, appreciated, loved. But the difficulty is that deep down we really want to be seen, seen for who we really are, not for the mask, not for the pretension, but for who we truly are. And so there is the game of hide and seek. We hide, but secretly we want to be found. And similarly when we meet someone, we see the mask, but to feel connected, to feel that there is something real and valuable in the connection, we need to find that person's authentic self, which is not usually what they are showing us.

If that were the totality of the game of hide and seek, as we play it as adults, things would not be too bad, but it is much worse than that. We also hide from ourself. There are shadow elements to our psychology that we don't want to even admit to ourself. Those elements get pushed into our unconscious, from where they wreck havoc upon the world and upon our own life. Again a part of us would love those things to be brought into the light, but we are too fearful to allow it. And beneath that even, beneath the shadow, beneath that dark side of who we are, there is that precious diamond, our essential being, the core of who we are, our buddha nature. But most of us have long forgotten that. And until we can face everything within us, we will not find that well hidden gem: our true self, our divinity, the buddha within.

And so our spiritual journey is really a game of hide and seek. Those parts of us that we are seeking have been hidden for a long time, well hidden away. But they are there, and if we seek diligently, we will come upon them, and once more know ourself for who we really are.