No Preferred Role

There is a quiet arrogance that can creep into anyone who has had a spiritual awakening. I have felt it in myself. Having seen something, we start to look down on those who have not. We call them asleep. We pity them. We think of ourselves as further along a path they have not yet found.

That arrogance is a misunderstanding of the game.

Both roles are the game

In hide-and-seek, as we said, there is no preferred role. No one gets a medal for seeking. No one is shamed for hiding. The game requires both, and without both there is no game at all.

The cosmic game is the same. Within the divine dance there is no higher value placed on the seeker than on the hider. Being tagged and becoming a seeker is not a promotion. It is a change of role in the same game. Realization might carry you from hiding to seeking, but that movement is not a progression in worth.

Nothing is wrong with you

If you are a hider, if you have never had the kind of realization this book describes, or if you had one and it faded and you are back in the familiar, I want to say something to you plainly.

There is nothing wrong with you.

You are not lost. You do not need fixing. You are not behind. The Reality you are experiencing right now, whatever it is, is a full part of the game, not a mistake in it. You are fulfilling your role in the game by playing it.

And if you are a seeker

If you are a seeker, I want to say something to you too.

You are not better than the people around you who are still hiding. You are not more loved. You are not closer to her or more favored by him. You are playing the other half of the same game, and the game needs them as much as it needs you. Without hiders, what would you be seeking?

Hold your seeking with humility. It is not an achievement. It is a role that was handed to you by a tag you did not arrange.

Separation is the price of seeing

The first edition of this book said that from the moment of your birth, the very first cry, you have been threaded out of the oneness into a distinct and discernible you. That separation can feel strange, even painful, because it is foreign. You were part of the oneness for longer than time, and now, for a short while, you are a particular someone.

I still believe that. And I want to add one thing to it.

The separation is not a punishment. It is the condition for the game. You cannot hide without being apart. You cannot seek without being apart. You cannot witness anything at all without standing at some distance from it. To be apart is the price of seeing.

So whatever role you are in, the ache of separation is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is a sign that you are in the game.

The game is love

What holds both roles together is the same thing that holds everything together. Hide-and-seek is a game played by those who love each other. Children do not play it with strangers. They play it with siblings, parents, friends, the people they most want to be found by.

The cosmic game is like that. In the old image, it is love playing at separation for the joy of finding; in the plainer language of this book, it is the structure in which the finding can be felt at all. The hider is loved. The seeker is loved. The game itself is love in motion. And when, at the end, everyone comes out of hiding and the game is over, no one asks who won.