ON BECOMING TRANSPARENT

Wafa Faith Hallam

July 23, 2012

Painting by local Moroccan artist in Essaouira, Morocco

On Becoming Transparent

Memoir writing is one of the writing genres that have exploded in recent years as more and more people are putting pen to paper and writing their biographies. Like so many others, I wrote mine out of an unflinching desire to sort out my past and make sense of my life. As a result, I confronted issues of identity and came to accept the multi-layered construct that it was, until finally I made peace with myself.

Today, as I delve deeper into the meaning of spiritual growth, I understand that the same guiding hand that led me to reveal the hidden demons of my past is also behind the desire to go on with the seeking I had begun. I stripped myself naked not for any exhibitionist urging as one may think but because without that I wouldn’t have been able to progress on the road to consciousness. 

Our memories and past stories, all our egotistical manifestations and attachments only clog our channels to and from the one source that’s the universe.  They distract us from connecting with the whole and keep us separate and isolated.  When, often from the depth of despair, we seek salvation, we slowly come to see past the smokescreens and begin to sense the truth. The more we reveal and share of ourselves the more we realize we are all made of the same cloth. We are one and the same.  But that sense of oneness is entirely lost, hidden by all the roles we play, all the masks we wear, all the things we own, and all the beliefs we hold.

I’m continually humbled by the response I get from my readers. Suddenly, people I don't know anything about are ready to open up to me, talk about their own experiences, and reveal all their secrets. I now believe, all such hidden demons are only dark shadows which we need to shed light on if we are to awaken to our true self. It does not matter that we come from different backgrounds, cultures, races, or religious upbringings.  At the heart of it, all that matters is our emotional similitude. If the writer is honest and writes from her heart, her emotions will be her readers’ emotions as well. 

If you can feel what I feel, what does it mean? If watching someone else’s joy or suffering on a screen, reading it in a book, sensing it on canvas, hearing it in a song or experiencing it in a dance movement turns into our own joy or suffering, what does that tell us? It screams: We are ONE… You are a mirror image of me and I am a mirror image of you.  Why is that such a difficult concept to comprehend still? Love and compassion are not mere words; they encompass what it means to be part of a whole. When I love myself, I cannot help but loving others. It’s that simple. 

Most of the fear and hate experienced by human beings towards other human beings come from their own lack of self-love. Deep within, they hold an ocean of fear and mistrust of themselves, of their natural tendencies and repressed yearnings. The more we hide from ourselves the more we want to repress others. The more we hurt inside, the more we want to punish others. “Unless you learn to face your own shadows, you will continue to see them in others, because the world outside you is only a reflection of the world inside you,” I read somewhere.

We can speak of love in so many words but we cannot hide from our actions.  And when it comes to love, action is compassion! It’s the opposite of judgment and therefore love is also acceptance, tolerance and forgiveness. There is no escaping this truth.

Shambhala teachings insist that the true warrior is one who makes himself utterly vulnerable by opening his heart to others and being genuine all the time. They also maintain that the first step toward that goal begins with oneself. That’s an absolute prerequisite.  In other words, we must learn not to hide; first from ourselves and then from others. To become transparent and open up ourselves to introspection, acceptance and forgiveness means we’re ready to step into the light and awaken. To know oneself leads to changing oneself and that in turn shows the way for others to change until the entire world is transformed. Nothing more needs to be done but taking that first step and beginning the work of knowing thyself.

There are all kinds of social and cultural norms that bend us into a rigid conformity. And herein lays a paradox. We are coaxed into behaving within the boundaries of proper rules of conduct so that we can fit neatly into a particular group even as we are groomed to develop our own individuality and stand out from the crowd. To achieve such a feast, we’re forever hiding facets of ourselves that are not deemed acceptable by the group. And so under the guise of privacy, our lives are filled with pretenses and disguises, but let not that come in the way of our “success.” Is it any wonder there is so much deep-seated unhappiness in our world?

As denial becomes second-nature, we go on perpetrating darkness and falsehood. The ego, speaking through the monkey mind, has the upper hand. If we’re doing everything we’re supposed to and are still miserable it must be something or someone else is responsible for our discontent: we don’t have the things we desire, people are not behaving the way we want them to, and our circumstances are to blame.  The finger is always pointing outward. With all those fingers pointing at each other, our world is mired in conflict. 

Hence again as we seek peace and enlightenment, the most important thing to learn is to turn that finger towards oneself, inward.  In many traditions, including Kabbalah, Sufism, and Buddhism, it is stipulated without equivocation that we must never blame external events or other people for our suffering, never. We must learn to take full responsibility for our lives and stop the blame game.

From a spiritual viewpoint, oneness implies we’re all part of a whole.  Yet oneness does not exclude uniqueness and authenticity. In contrast to our materialistic realm where the paradox is profound and deeply dissonant, the contradiction on a spiritual plane is only superficial. In reality, the universe is created in one harmonious duality: male and female, good and evil, giving and receiving, effort and ease, love and hate, one cannot exist without the other, they are part of the same coin. Because the universe is also within us, that duality is also deep inside each of us.

Otherwise, how could it be that the most monstrous murderer can also be a loving father and husband? How can we explain that a caring priest can also be a child molester? That well-known Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome is far from being an aberration or an exception. It is present in each one of us, only to a lesser or greater degree. Ask any couple, mother and daughter, father and son who have had vicious fights or horrible arguments, prompting acts of hate and violence. The very same person we loved passionately one moment, we’re able to hate violently the next. The only way to understand this is to recognize the presence of our inner duality.

Recognition and then acceptance, that’s how we begin to make peace within. That’s what our primary purpose on this earth is all about: to stop the war inside, to just BE, and accept what is, without judgment. And then as we learn to forgive ourselves, we’re able to work toward our self-betterment. Thus compassion toward the self will inevitably lead to compassion toward the other. That’s how we heal the world, that’s also how we bring about peace on Earth.

We are one, and not just us human beings, but also animals and plants, mountains and oceans; all living breathing organisms are therefore part of an infinite unified soul. Our differences are only a reflection of our level of consciousness. Those who are aware are the enlightened ones who have become transparent, shedding their darkest secrets. Those who are still living in darkness hiding behind their dogmatic and condemnatory minds are not only inflicting pain on others, they’re also destroying their souls and condemning themselves to a vicious cycle of rebirth until they learn their karmic lessons.

The whole universal design is thence made up of many unique parts. It’s something like a gigantic puzzle made up of billions and billions of different parts where each one of us, within every species, is at once distinct and indispensable for the completion of the full picture. Not two organisms are identical in every way. And that individuality is precious, divine, God-like. Therefore, our differences are to be celebrated and not shunned, even as we ARE ONE!!!

Copyright © 2012 by Wafa Faith Hallam