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Book Draft: Remembering Who we really are

May 29, 2002

c. rllr All rights reserved

CHAPTER 2

THE GREAT GODLY GAME OF HIDE & SEEK

(Excerpts)

Why is it we all seem to struggle so? Why so much dissatisfaction? We never seem quite satisfied with who we are, with what life brings, with where we are in ourselves. It's almost as if, were we satisfied, we fear there'd be no more reason for us to live. As if life might descend on some big burst of light and pluck us straight away: "This one's done! Beam him up Scotty.

I’ve had that bizarre fear myself: the fear that if I allow myself to feel satisfied, happy even, well then, the (presupposed) fall will be so much worse. Safer to stay slightly “under”, slightly under-fulfilled. That way I can protect myself from some lurking devastation. Slip in under the radar. As if, by giving myself an intermittent fix of unease, I’ll never have to suffer one of the “really big ones” …Stay closer to down and the bottom won’t hurt so bad (…Something like that.) Stupid of course. Still many of us do this through much of our lives, I’ve noticed.

Do we all live with some inherent fear of "unworthiness'? Is there something in the process of birth and the slow differentiation of self that leaves us each carrying a basic wound no matter how loving and nurturing the home?

Is there something in the Fall from Grace itself that is forever imprinted on each soul? Something in being cast from the Garden that jump-starts the inner yearning for our slow return?

Is this internal stir of dissatisfaction Life's built in wake up call?

I think this is so.

**

God (Creation, or if you prefer, the Ground of Being) wanting to know and experience itself requires reflection -that is, it requires the Fall into differentiation and form in order to have reference to itself. Without this separation into differentiated form, there is no discernment - no "knowing" - and therefore no dynamic of "the observer observing the observed." Without this dynamic, all would remain formless undifferentiated consciousness. God, the Ground of Being could not step out of itself, to see and know itself.

And so, here we are, in a ceaseless dynamic interplay of "Allness" and differentiation - a great breathing of re-membering Unity, and the Falling back into duality and the time line of subject/object reference.

What frolic, this never-ending yearning to separate and to unite! I call it the Great Godly Game of Hide & Seek. And we're each of us, an integral part of this Godly Frolic.

Dissatisfaction was built into the equation (hard-wired into our very cells) if only to perpetuate the movement to hide and to seek: Life itself, stirred by its own aliveness:

"Move!" Life continually calls out! (..."This isn't it", the psyche hears.)

This is one oddly conceived game! The One hiding is seeking. The One seeking is in hiding -- in a game that never finishes. No winners. No losers (though we keep believing ourselves one or the other in alternating fame). No pushing the clock forward to hurry things along (though we pretend that we can, are and have. Ahh to feel as one of the Enlightened few…)


Somewhere out there the referee must have thrown up his hands; …Somewhere right here too!

I want to say here: “So lets all just loosen up. Let’s be good sports...

In the game of hide and seek, at some point in the game, the seeker yells out:

"Ally ally in free. Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

and all those who are hidden, come join around the tree of Life…

**

Most of us don’t think we’re lost from ourselves. Oh we may feel that inner stir of “dissatisfaction” – that itching sense of never quite feeling at peace, never being quite whole – a sense that something is missing. And we seek all sorts of ways from comic to tragic to scratch the itch of dissatisfaction. Most often we seek to pinpoint the cause of these feelings of dissatisfaction in the circumstances of our present life (a wrong partner, the wrong career, definitely the wrong body) or we find the cause in our past (an abusive or neglectful parent, hurtful past relationships, wounds of all sorts). We spend countless hours pouring over these various causes to which we've attributed our feelings of dissatisfaction. We spend thousands of dollars on therapies, groups, pills and countless other modalities that promise to heal the causes of our dissatisfactions and dis-ease.

We try new partners, new jobs, jazzercise, cosmetic surgery, psychic readings, Stairmaster, church groups, pot, parties, books, a new SUV, yoga, yell therapy, wardrobe consultants, meditation, affairs and fantasies - an endless array best I can see, hoping to fix ourselves of this nagging inner feeling of dissatisfaction. It seems we're ever in a state of "not quite right". In fact most of us have many "not quite rights" going on all the time. Interesting, don't you think? This basic dissatisfaction - and the constant efforting to fix it?

It seems quite clear to me that we live in a continual circular ness: trying to fix “not quite right”. But none of these fix its stop the itch. It may solve one problem. We just go on the next one stacked up in a line – and then another and another. Why is that, do you suppose?

I wonder if another perspective is required. I wonder if we’re looking at “the problem” from too close in. I wonder if we’re looking inside of the box for troubles and not realizing the box itself as "the trouble"…

"Ok", I hear you say. "So we're stuck with dissatisfaction. What do I do with that?"

(End Excerpt)