Coming Out of Hiding

Some time ago I was introduced to a book entitled, The End of Your World: Uncensored Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment by Adyashanti. It's an interesting book that has the potential for changing one's perspective pretty radically. The following passage struck me as one of the things I want most in a relationship but have a great deal of difficulty achieving.  I guess that's why it takes so much work to achieve enlightenment.

"What would it be like if we didn't avoid anything we knew to be true? What if we came out of hiding in all areas of our life? What if we completely stopped avoiding ourselves, because that literally is the awakened life?

The next day there was a meeting with a question and answer session. An older gentleman raised his hand and said something really beautiful. He said, 'I was listening to the talk last night about truthfulness, about being honest, about having a willingness to face one's self as one is and not hide in some past realization.'

'My wife and I have been on the edge of a divorce for quite some time now. When we went home after we heard the talk, we just sat down and started to tell each other the truth. We started to tell each other what was true for ourselves.'

He went on to say that it wasn't like when they used to tell each other the truth, which was more like trying to convince each other of the truth. It wasn't about one of them being right and the other being wrong. It was just telling the truth, very simply. It was confessing exactly what they had been experiencing for a long time, confessing the fact that they felt separate and distant from each other, confessing the very secrets that were causing them to feel separate and isolated. 'We actually just sat there and told each other the truth,' he said. 'I would tell the truth and then allow her to tell the truth.'

He said it wasn't that they were working anything out or trying to come to conclusions; they were simply coming out of hiding. He finished by saying that it was the most extraordinary evening of his entire life: just that evening of truth telling. Not asserting truth and not denying truth--just simply telling it in a very sincere way, coming completely out of hiding."

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