Out of hiding

As we are nearing closure on the topic "the inner self" and we have discussed the popular hidings we use followed by soul-searching (scouting oneself), now we have reached the point when we should talk about moving out of the hidings. I will begin with this quote that pierced my heart:

"We only see what we want to see.

and

hear what we want to hear.

We don’t perceive things the way they are. 

We have the habit of dreaming without any basis in reality. 

We literally dream things up in our imaginations. 

Because we don’t understand something, 

We make an assumption. 

about the meaning, 

and 

When the truth comes out, 

The bubble of our dream pops 

and 

We find out it was not what we thought it was at all.”

― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

We all live our lives like this. None of us can deny this. I still remember when we sisters have arguments, I will cut the phone if the argument is not according to me. Even in the class lectures, we hear only what we want to hear; rest all is no where in our lives. 

The best example I can quote here is of 'Peter Parker.' Do you know who he is? NO. Okay, let me present it in the way you want to hear it: "SPIDERMAN." The real man here is Peter Parker, whom we don't know or don't want to hear about because he is weak, he is full of fear, and he himself thinks he can do nothing. On the other hand,sSpider-ManAN has the power to deverything,ng and we all love to see him. 

When this Spider-Man meets Peter Parker, he fails to do things that he was able to do. Like Peter, we all live in a dissonance between our deepest (private) selves and our social (public) selves. This brings us to one of the most important questions:

"What if my real self is dark or ugly?"

Yes, your fears are right. We are all made of good and bad. While I was searching for this topic, I landed on the page about angels and demons. It is here that I came to know that every demon has an associated angel, and our demons are just the opposite of our best qualities. Let me simplify this. When we go to buy potatoes, we buy them. We get potatoes along with their peels. We don't cook potatoes with peels; rather, we remove them. Similar is our life, in which we have our darker side, called the demon, along with the better half, the angels. Now we cannot ignore one and cherish the other. That will only make my demon worse, more furious, and more dangerous. What I need to do here is acknowledge that yes, I have a demon inside me. Once you know about your demon, you will know how to activate your angel over the demon (with practice).  See, we know what a saltless food is only because we have tasted a salty food. We know about our best qualities because of our darker, ugly side. So, let us embrace the existence of the darker side and not fight with it, but rather acknowledge and find its angel to get it operational. 

Knowing yourself doesn't mean it's only about me. As I start to discover myself and develop the qualities of authenticity, fidelity, and integrity, I also nurture the characteristics of interdependence that create me. We are all social beings and are interdependent. We express this through our authenticity, fidelity, and integrity. When we accept ourselves, we also become more receptive to others. When we know our own failings and frailty, we understand and accept others failures and brokenness too. On the other hand, when we acknowledge our own dark selves, we accommodate others dark selves too. 

All of these things are possible only when we develop and start loving. We are able to be authentic because we love ourselves, so we fear not showing who we really are. It also helps us develop fidelity because if you love someone, you want to be faithful to them. Above all, we develop integrity because love is never mean. Here I will quote Osho's view:

"Love can never possess. Love is giving freedom to the other."

Indeed, true love is this. We care for ourselves first, and then we attend to others needs. What we have, we believe in sharing rather than hoarding. All these interdependencies and syncronizations happen because of love. David Viscott puts it like this:

"To love and to be loved is to feel the sun from both sides."

 I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z and hyperlink https://www.theblogchatter.com  

Find my blogchatter A2Z 2024 series:

A- Arms of addiction

B- Babbling busyness

C- Cunning complacency and craving certaininty

D- Daring dreams(ambition)

E- Erratic ilk of arrogance

F- Fraudulent Forgetting

G- Gullible guilt and shame

H-Hankering Happiness pursuit

I- Infringes of information technology

J- Jarring Fatalism

K- Kraken-like projective defence

L- Lucrative masks and labels

M- Mesmerizing Materialism

N- Nostalgia-the niche to ditch the inner self

O- Out of hiding

P- Pedantic Perfectionism

Q- Qualities of inner self

R- Religion and science camouflage

S- Scouting oneself

T- Tyranny of Fantasy

U- 

V- Vacuous Victimhood

W- Wheel horse in order to hide what rocks

X- Xynolith in me-The anxiety

Y- 

Z- Zest O! Zest! why do you fade in discovering you inner self