On Remaining Invisible

I knew a woman several years ago named Miranda, who had many acquaintances but few friends. Few, if any, that is, who knew the darker side of what she faced within herself each day. This darker side was filled with fears, and not only fears, but terrors. These terrors were not phobias related to such things as crowds or heights. Rather, they were terrors related to being seen for who she was.

Being seen seemed to involve something for Miranda that made her want to run in the opposite direction. Being pleasant and coongenial were easy for her, but these aspects of her persona did not touch her depth. Indeed, they required her to leave her depth where fear and trembling were her own inner experience.

Many people are afraid to be seen. Often it is because they secretly feel that they are hiding something bad or unforgiveable within themselves. This something is protected, the ego-self imagines, by striving to remain invisible.

Invisibility, however, is a lonely place. In addition, in order to truly remain invisible, one must also not have strong emotions, for strong emotions definitely allow others to see past the surface to the depths. And so invisibility also requires an emotional cut-off - a large price to pay for a human being.

To penetrate these difficulties, as I explained to her, two things were needed: first, a willingness to turn toward Divine love and light in order to deal with fear and raise all hidden issues into consciousness, and second, a desire to live as a whole being.

While God takes care of the first part - the healing offering of Divine light and love, the desire to live as a whole being is up to each individual soul. For it is the embodied soul that must want to reclaim its own wholeness, and it is the embodied soul that must pay the price of living without the full measure of life.