In politics now a word that has become popular in usage is transparency. Everyone claims that their motives are transparent and their tax returns are transparent and their objectives are transparent, but their opposition is hiding everything. And they’re not transparent at all. And they call and bang the table and ask for transparency in all things the other one does. And they will then say that their lack of transparency is obviously intentional. And the intention behind it is that they’re hiding something. They’re hiding something from you the population because they have secretive motives, and that’s why they’re not transparent.
Well, a common phrase within understanding in spirituality is that we are covered by veils, that we are veiled from certain understandings, that we are veiled from seeing certain things, and that these veils need to be removed in order for us to get closer to reality, closer to serenity, closer to peace, closer to the truth because all of these veils keep us from being close to that truth because they hide the core of things from us along with hiding who we are from us.
It’s been said you can’t handle transparency. Why? Because if you were shown the degree, if we were shown the degree of the hypocrisy within our being, the degree of the faults within our being, the degree of the incorrect motives within our being; we would collapse in shame. We would collapse in a real understanding of what we are and what’s going on.
So, things are hidden from us. And one of the things that’s hidden from us is our self. But part of the traverse towards the truth is being able to handle the truth and being able to atone for that which we see, leave that space, and go to a new space which is free; where it’s free of our motives, free of our inclinations, free of the way we have constructed our world and reduced to the point-of-view that is His and His alone. And in being able to do that, we begin to become transparent.
But the first one we have to become transparent to is ourselves. As long as we are hidden from ourselves, and our true motives are hidden from ourselves; they sneak up behind us and all of a sudden, we’re in the midst of things we know we shouldn’t be doing, maybe don’t even want to do, but we’re doing them because we’re habitually doing them.
The alcoholic will regularly say he’s not going to have a drink tomorrow until he has a drink tomorrow. The abuser apologizes every time he’s abusive, and then it turns and it happens again. How does it happen again? Why does it happen again? Well, for some there’s actually physical pulls, physical inclinations that they can’t overcome. For others there are mental pulls and mental inclinations that they can’t overcome. And when they’re not under the throes of those inclinations or pulls, it’s as if they don’t exist. So, the vigilance is dropped. If the abuser felt the remorse he felt after the abuse before the abuse, what would be the chances of him being an abuser again? But he doesn’t because he’s hidden from himself. And he’s hidden from the obvious circle that he’s spinning in. He’s hidden from the next phase of it even though he’s seen that phase ten times, twenty times, a hundred times. The alcoholic sees that circle everyday, but prior to going into it, he’s hidden from the effects of it.
We all have different things that we’re hidden from. We have to discover what they are because if we don’t discover our repetitive faults, if we don’t discover our repetitive wrong inclinations, we are going to repeat them. And the point is, and this is the hard one, that we have to be aware of them, cognizant of them while they don’t have a pull on us, while they aren’t affecting us, while they aren’t pushing us to do certain things; so that we can prepare for the onslaught and we can become transparent to ourselves.
