I was sitting in a group meeting recently, about to reveal a little ‘truth’ about myself, when I had what I can only describe as a ‘visitation’. I was suddenly ‘transported’ back in time to a place and situation I had completely forgotten. All my feelings were there, all the sounds and smells, and some of the faces.
I was thirteen or fourteen years old, in my first term at boarding school. I was delighted to be there, so great was my need to ‘rejoin the human race’. Immediately, I realised that I was not properly equipped to do so. Yes, I had learned to ‘get on with people’, perhaps better than most, but in this institution, as in others like it, there seemed to be a culture I could not penetrate. There was a special language, social norms, and even physical postures to be learned if I wished to be part of the game.
All my life until that moment, I had felt that my ‘behaviour’ was somehow fraudulent. It wasn’t me, whatever that means.... This feeling was with me in every situation, difficult for the confidence of a growing boy. And there was no one to turn to, no one to ask.
I studied those around me, such was my need. Questions I would ask later, but certainly not then. I learned fast, and one day, in the midst of a noisy conversation, I realised I was ‘in’. Yes, I was a fraud, exactly as before, but now I was a successful, happy fraud, keen even to be fraud Numero Uno.
And here I was, in a group, experiencing the same thing, but standing back a bit, digesting it, accepting it, knowing more. I could see the quiet part of myself wishing to be honest. The surface layers of dishonesty and lies had been penetrated. As I sat there, I sensed the layers of lies below. Out on the periphery of my awareness was my oldest fear, that I would be discovered in this fraud. It was the old ego-fear. So I hovered between fear and freedom, aware that I was in a refining process, the ‘wish to be’ helping me to stay. I decided not to speak, but to do everything I could to help this process. The observing part felt the pull of that fear from time to time in the following hours, separating from it, rising above it towards a wonderful clarity and freedom.
It was no longer the anguished question ‘What am I?’ in front of a clanging, noisy mechanism, but a very quiet question, ‘Who am I?’, with all its mystery.
John Killeen