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Inside Out Spiritual Practices: Hiding and Seeking

Inside Out Spiritual Practices: Hiding and Seeking

Last updated on: March 25, 2017 at 3:52 am by Greg Richardson

Inside Out Spiritual Practices: Hiding and Seeking 2017-03-25T03:52:42-08:00 Greg Richardson

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Hiding and Seeking

The games we play as children shape our expectations and understanding later in life. I remember playing unforgettable marathon games of hide and seek. You have not really learned the lessons of hide and seek until you play at night in a dark church.

Hide and seek taught me about when to hide and how to seek.

We believe, deep within ourselves, in the power of hiding. It is as if it were possible for us to camouflage ourselves out of taking responsibility. Like with an invisibility cloak, we cover ourselves to avoid the consequences of our actions.

We want to get away without getting caught. We do not want to be found out.

Keeping our private lives private is important to us. We get annoyed when people get their noses all up into our business.

All is discovered. Flee at once.

There is a story that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once played a practical joke on twelve prominent men. He sent anonymous messages to each of them saying, “All is discovered. Flee at once.” The story is that eight of the twelve left town immediately.

We tend to experience being discovered as a crisis, and respond by wanting to run away. Getting caught is embarrassing. We may feel ashamed, particularly when our actions appear not to reflect our values and beliefs.

Why are we hiding?

When I want to hide, it is usually because I want to avoid detection. I may not want to answer difficult questions, or face challenging situations. Often my desire to hide grows out of my, or someone else’s, expectation for me to be perfect.

There are people who assume spiritual life comes with requirements of perfection. They see the role of the Sacred as weighing the good against the bad in a giant set of scales. Some people feel inadequate or insecure and depend on living without making any mistakes. They work hard to hide their imperfections.

We are afraid we will not meet people’s expectations if they see us as we really are, so we hide.

Where do we hide?

Some people hide behind degrees and qualifications, titles and experience. Others hide behind what they own, cars and real estate. There are people who hide in having the perfect relationship or the perfect job.

Not only do we hide from other people, but also from ourselves.

We hide our true selves behind layer after layer of false masks. Our hiding is often unconscious, beginning before we realize it. We have constructed labyrinthine hiding places, protecting us from knowing ourselves well.

If we are hiding even from ourselves, how can the Sacred truth find us to weigh our imperfections?

We believe in the power of hiding.

The Power of Seeking

Our hiding demonstrates the fear and insecurity we feel. The hope within us inspires us to seek.

When we hide from spiritual life, we cut ourselves off from its power in us. The choice of how we will live belongs to us until we allow our fear to take it from us.

Our assumption about spiritual life coming with expectations we cannot meet grows from our fear. We feel we are being punished for not being perfect. Our perceptions erect barriers we need to overcome.

At the same time we are hiding, we are seeking. We may not know what we are desperate to find, or where we will find it. It is clear, though, we are looking for something. We are convinced there must be more than we have found so far.

Even in our fear of being found out, we seek the deep truths all around us. At the same time we hide ourselves from ourselves, we seek to know true ourselves honestly.

Seeking and Being Sought

We are caught up in hiding and seeking, working hard not to be caught and not to be lost. The tension and anxiety of hiding and seeking distracts us. It is a challenge for us to recognize in all our hiding and seeking, we are also sought.

Our assumptions and perceptions persuade us we are being pursued because we have broken the rules. We fail to appreciate spiritual life is not about rules, but about our relationship to the Sacred.

Sacred truth, the deep truth all around us, does not seek to evaluate and judge us. It draws us in, closer and closer, seeking to know us more intimately.

We are not being punished, even though we have lessons to learn.

Seeking Deeper Truths

Spiritual life is not something from which we need to hide, as our fears convince us it is. We recognize spiritual life is what we seek, what we hope to find. Spiritual life seeks us.

It is easy for us to fall into the habit of labeling some things as spiritual and some as not. We sort the ways we spend our time, the ways we think about our lives into categories. Some are spiritual and some are not. We make arbitrary decisions about what is spiritual and what is not.

The deeper truth is it is difficult to separate which parts of our lives are spiritual and which are not. What is spiritual and what is physical? Is spiritual life separate from financial life, or emotional life? Where do we draw the lines?

Our lives do not fit neatly into orderly, separate compartments. Spiritual life sloshes into all the various categories. At our healthiest, our lives are integrated and whole. We transcend the frameworks we use to sort and understand.

The neatly divided categories are just another way our true selves try to hide from us.

Spiritual Hide and Seek

Spiritual life is not a game of hide and seek. Real life is neither our anxious scrambling for a good hiding place nor our desperate trying to find others.

Spiritual life is when we emerge from our hiding places and reveal our true selves.

What are you hiding from today? What are you seeking?

Where have you found your deepest self hiding?

[Image by Lance Neilson]

Greg Richardson is a spiritual life mentor and leadership coach in Southern California. He is a recovering attorney and university professor, and a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is StrategicMonk.com, and his email address is [email protected].

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