Engagement with life is a tricky thing. On a certain level it may seem that it is obvious and never-ending. How can I possibly be not engaged? No matter what, I wake up and am thrust into dealing. On the most immediate level I wake and I have to deal with my body. The aches and pains and morning breath of waking all come immediately to awareness. I must deal with that and feed and dress myself and begin interacting with others (if living with others).
Then there is the larger world. It comes in through electronic devices if I choose to turn something on. Suddenly I am engaged on a certain level with the strangeness of the larger world. I then venture out into the strangeness and have to deal with it face to face.
But is this true engagement? If like most people, I am wrapped up in my internal defense mechanisms - the old patterns of behavior I’ve developed over years to protect myself - then I’m not truly engaged with the world. I am hiding in plain sight.
Rather than engaging in the moment as it is - feeling, experiencing and responding accordingly to what is - I react. The reactions are guided by my internal defense mechanisms, which are triggered by whatever event is taking place in front of me. It seems as if I’m engaged but really I’m reacting. Engagement means connection. Reaction is disconnection because it is not based in what is but in what was.
I am not engaged in the world as it is presenting itself in the moment, I am triggered by the world into reacting to an event long past. Carrying my old patterns and defense mechanisms everywhere I go I can never truly engage with my self or the world. It seems like I am present and connecting to the moment but in reality I am somewhere else, long past.
This is the hiding in plain sight. I am right there but shrouded. I cannot show my real self because it is in fact hidden even from me. My real self can only shine through when I am able to experience the moment purely for the moment. Whenever I am reacting to a moment based on an old pattern formed from a past experience, I am in fact not present.
This is the sad state in which most of the people on the planet act from. Why is it all so messed up? Nobody is home. Most people most of the time are reacting to things long past and missing the moment. Instead of feeling and being with what is, we are reacting to what was, even though that’s not what’s happening right now. So instead of an open-hearted connection to the moment, we are hiding behind the fears and insecurities we have been schlepping around for years.
The only way to stop the hiding is to engage first with the past. That can be through writing, talking, exploring in some form to “figure it out”, or it can be through feeling. Paying attention to what is truly happening within the body and letting it be will allow it to come up and be expressed instead of reacted to. When it is not given its voice or allowed its expression, it is just carried around and triggered over and over in the new moments which get lost as the old feelings dominate. Only through honest engagement with the internal process can one begin to come out of hiding into the moment that is.