Hiding, Seeking, Letting Go

Most of us are either hiding or seeking or a little of both.

We hide from fear, sadness, guilt, longing, and grief. We hide by watching TV, scrolling social media, drinking, drugs, movies, entertainment, and other distracting mediums. These are not to be confused with good old-fashioned vices. We escape from our thoughts and feelings by constantly engaging our brains in stimuli that allow little time to think and just be.  There are hundreds of ways to hide, but these are just temporary solutions to mask the feelings. Hiding is not a long-term fix.

And, then there are those who seek. One could argue that even when we are seeking, we are also hiding. Many of us seek endlessly for answers to life and to happiness.

“You meditate, chant a mantra, drink green tea, try the Pentecostals, breathe in fire, and speak in tongues. You get centered, learn NLP, try actualizations, work on visualizations, study psychology, join a Jungian group. You get Rolfed, try psychedelics, get a psychic reading, jog, jazzercise, have colonics, get into nutrition and aerobics, hang upside down, wear psychic jewelry. Get more insight, biofeedback, Gestalt therapy.

You see your homeopath, chiropractor, naturopath. You try kinesiology, discover your Enneagram type, get your meridians balanced, join a consciousness-raising group, take tranquilizers. You get some hormone shots, try cell salts, have your minerals balanced, pray, implore, and beseech. You learn astral projection. Become vegetarian. Eat only cabbage. Try macrobiotics, go organic, eat no GMO. Meet up with Native American medicine men, do a sweat lodge. Try Chinese herbs, moxi-combustion, shiatsu, acupressure, feng shui. You go to India. Find a new guru. Take off your clothes. Swim in the Ganges. Stare at the sun. Shave your head. Eat with your fingers, get really messy, shower in cold water.

Sing tribal chants. Relive past lives. Try hypnotic regression. Scream a primal scream. Punch pillows. Get Feldenkraised. Join a marriage encounter group. Go to Unity. Write affirmations. Make a vision board. Get re-birthed. Cast the I Ching. Do the tarot cards. Study Zen. Take more courses and workshops. Read lots of books. Do transactional analysis. Get yoga lessons. Get into the occult. Study magic. Work with a kahuna. Take a shamanic journey. Sit under a pyramid. Read Nostradamus. Prepare for the worst.

Go on a retreat. Try fasting. Take amino acids. Get a negative ion generator. Join a mystery school. Learn a secret handshake. Try toning. Try color therapy. Try subliminal tapes. Take brain enzymes, anti-depressants, flower remedies. Go to health spas. Cook with exotic ingredients. Look into strange, fermented oddities from faraway places. Go to Tibet. Hunt up holy men. Hold hands in a circle and get high. Renounce sex and going to the moves. Wear some yellow robes. Join a cult.

Try the endless varieties of psychotherapy. Take wonder drugs. Subscribe to lots of journals. Try the Pritikin diet. Eat just grapefruit. Get your palm read. Think New Agent thought. Improve the ecology. Save the planet. Get an aura reading. Carry a crystal. Get a Hindu sidereal astrological interpretation. Visit a trans-medium. Get blessed by Baba Somebody. Join an anonymous group. Travel to Lourdes. Soak in the hot springs. Join Arica. Wear therapeutic sandals. Get grounded. Get more prana and breathe out that stale black negativity. Try golden needle acupuncture. Check out snake gallbladders. Try chakra breathing. Get your aura cleansed. Meditate in Cheops, the great pyramid in Egypt.” – David Hawkins PhD from his book Letting Go.

Like hiding, seeking is a path, but not the answer, to life’s questions that you may not even be aware that you have been asking. This is evidenced by the countless ways to seek.

If the answers to our questions or the alleviation of our pain, unhappiness, or discontent cannot be found through hiding, and they cannot be revealed by seeking or by trying to find purpose, then what other alternative might there be?

The opposite of hiding is not hiding.

The opposite of seeking is not seeking.

The opposite of both hiding and seeking is to stop resisting.

The answer is in letting go.

Can it truly be that the answer is not in what you do, but in what you are not doing?

Rather than hide, feel. Rather than seek, surrender.

Let go and let in the happiness, the love, and the joy.