On Being Seen

To be seen. That's really what I want, isn't it? To be seen, to be felt. I have spent too many years living on the circumference of life, being busy. Or being seen as being busy, therefore important. Nonsense. This busyness is  a disguise to keep people from looking deeper. I cover up what I do not know, because I myself do not know. I have been afraid to look, for fear that I won't see anything worthwhile.

Now I see dimly. I'm beginning to see more fully. I see that I camouflage myself so that my true, transendent spirit does not come to light. Those in my circles would not approve of my true spirit thoughts and dreams. So I disguise them, and myself.


I do this by numbing my emotions, self-sabotage and self-hatred.  It's a decoy, so you don't see what I know about myself. Perhaps it's a decoy so I don't see myself also. If you don't see, you can't disapprove, and I don't feel rejection.

I suffocate myself. I have withered and smoldered for years. Now, I am lifting the mask and breathing, not caring any more about expectations or opinions. Or, at least, I'm in that process now, of trying not to care.

"The path of prayer and love and the  path of suffering seem to be the two Great Paths of transformation. Suffering seems to get our attention; love and prayer seem to get our heart and our passion...The ordinary path is a gradual awakening and an occasional quieting, a passion for and a surrendering to..both centre and circumference and I am finally not in control of ether one."

"The reality, felt and not denied, suffered and enjoyed, becomes the royal road to the centre. reality itself, our reality, still becomes the revelatory place for God. For some reason we seem to prefer fabricated realities to the strong and sensitising face of what is." -Richard Rohr Everything Belongs

Perhaps in numbing the reality, I've numbed everything else, pain, joy, etc. This fabricated reality confines and artificially represents me.

"Too often religion wants to clip the highs and lows of our human experience. On the one hand, religion shames us from some of our most deeply felt desires, pleasures, and passions. And then on the other hand, rushes in with its tidy theological explanations in hopes of protecting us from the ache and agony that is an inevitable part of the human experience. In an effort to glorify his divinity, religion cheapened Jesus's humanity. They could not imagine the two being compatible and integrated as one. But Jesus proved them wrong. This was the whole point of Jesus. Jesus said, "I am the truth" and that truth is God and humankind united as one without the least contradiction."

- Jim Palmer

"The hint half guessed, the gift half understood." TS Eliot