If we were to summarize the human condition in one word, it might be "hiding." For it's the unknown parts of ourselves that have brought us here to this dualistic sphere.

They are the reason we must do this work of healing, if we want to return to God.

We were, once upon a time, in union with God and all that is. But during the Fall, we turned away from God and from the truth of who we are. Now, it's a long uphill battle to get all the way back.

Our destiny? To fully know ourselves again. To know our true selves.

But we cannot get all the way there in one lifetime.

For self-transformation is a long, narrow road that involves working our way out of our self-created darkness. This is not an easy task, nor a pleasant one.

But would we be inspired to tackle such a tough job if the alternative—continuing to avoid it—isn't worse?

If we're not deeply affected by our difficulties, we'll continue to sweep them under the rug.

We secretly hope we can avoid our own inner darkness forever.

Where shame comes in

When we arrive here, on planet Earth, we hold our life's task in one hand. This is work we hope to take on in this lifetime. In our other hand we hold the wand of forgetting. We no longer remember that this isn't all of who we are.

For not all of our Higher Self incarnates, in its full intensity. If it did, it would so outshine our Lower-Self aspects that we could easily continue to avoid them.

As we've already discussed, our parents and life situation have teed up our challenges for us. By now, we have packed away all these troubles into our unconscious.

This is the time for the unpacking.

We must slowly and meticulously bring out of hiding all the parts of ourselves we deliberately turn away from. When we do, the first thing we'll encounter is the outermost layer of our mask, which is shame.

Shame is that crushing and convincing feeling that we must hide the "truth of our badness." For we mistake the worst of us as being our essence. We fear it's true that we are worthless—we're not worth loving—making us feel ashamed of ourselves.

Shame, then, acts like a cloaking device designed to keep others from seeing past our mask. As such, it keeps us in the dark.

For shame makes us want to hide and cover up.

Growing past our shame

According to the Pathwork Guide, beings in the Spirit World have a name for planet Earth. It roughly translates to Land of Lack of Awareness.

For our dark layers of Lower Self work to lower our awareness. If this wasn't the case, darkness could indeed overcome the light.

We think we save ourselves from struggle by avoiding our inner darkness. Yet in reality, it's our resistance to seeing our shadow side that makes us to suffer. Once we start to reveal what we've been hiding, our shame will lift off.

Of course, we must use discernment to reveal ourselves in an appropriate way. A good choice is others doing this transformative work.

When we take such a risk, we will glimpse the meaning of "all is one." For when we open up to others also consciously walking a spiritual path, we discover we don't need to walk alone.

In this way, we can step out of our illusion of separation. We start to taste the oneness that's already here.

Through the Law of Brotherhood and Sisterhood, we discover we are not alone in our hurting. And we don't need to remain alone in our healing.

In fact, none of us can do this healing work alone.

If we ask for help, we will receive it. When we pray for guidance, we will have it. Whenever we knock, the door opens.

In Jill's Experience

When my book Spilling the Script was translated into Portuguese, and then into Spanish, I was struck by the word these languages used for "mask": máscara.

I recall a day in college when I was walking to school and had the frightening realization I had forgotten to put on mascara. My next thought: People won't be able to see me!

All these years later, I am struck by this out-picturing of my inner dilemma: I hide behind a mask—my mascara—so I can be seen.

Another time, after the birth of my first son, I wanted to take off the baby-weight I had gained. I was working in a new job where I didn't really fit in. One afternoon, I was eating a piece of cake in the break room.

Across my mind flew this thought: If I lose this weight, they won't be able to see me. Yet this extra weight was really bothering me.

For much of my life, I have wanted so much to be seen for my accomplishments. At the same time, I hide.

It was helpful to hear my first Helper say that it's natural and normal to want recognition for our accomplishments at work. The problem is, we mistakenly believe that's a place to get love.

In Scott's Experience

If someone had asked me about "hiding" during college and grad school, or my early work life, or my triathlon years, I wouldn't have believed it. Of course I'm not hiding!

I covered up my hiding pretty well, including from myself.

I even drew a picture of this many years ago as part of a homework assignment for a Pathwork transformation program weekend. There was a bed with a body-shaped bulge in the blankets and two eyes peering out from the shadow of the covers.

At the time, I hadn't gone far enough to describe who was hiding and what that part of me was hiding from. It was just eyes, with the fearful thing not shown in the drawing. That was a hard stage, because fear of the unknown has a way of being unbounded.

In my experience, the hiding peels off in layers and in stages, until eventually you're free. In one of the latter stages, I realized part of me was hiding in plain sight. A young part of me could just freeze, like an animal in the yard, thinking, "If I stay still, nobody will see me."

As I worked with this with my Helper, I remembered myself sitting in a particular chair in the lower-level family room of a house I grew up in. My mom was ill with leukemia for many years, but I wasn't told about her illness.

I knew but I didn't know. Something terrible was hiding in plain sight.

On the surface, everything was suburbia. Yet I was keenly aware something unspoken was very wrong in the house. I had the thought, all those years ago, that "if I just stay still, everything will be ok."

I had unconsciously carried that thought for years. And of course, it doesn't work very well.

In the end, it was never about what my parents did or didn't do. My parents were doing the best they could with a very difficult situation. They didn't cause this original wound in me, but rather they brought it to the surface.

It is only through hindsight that I can see how my inner work was out-pictured in what I experienced as a child.

The real gift of this work is completing the process of growing up and finding freedom, in the truest sense. As a result, I can now hold my parents with more compassion, too.