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Seen at the Glistening Core
Accepting & Working with the Insatiable, Divine Longing to Be Seen
To be seen is to exist.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately and feeling the truth of it in my body. When I feel seen, I come alive.
I have an insatiable craving to truly be seen, and I have spent much time feeling like I am not. This doesn’t have to do with the people in my life not seeing me. They do. In fact, they often see me more clearly than I see myself. And yet, this feeling persists. Why?
Some of it comes from being the child of an absent father and a single, overworked, chronically ill mother who was away from home most of the time working or in the hospital. But that’s not all of it. Perhaps, as John O’Donohue said, “true vitality is hidden within longing…one of the deepest longings of the human soul is the longing to be seen.” Perhaps this unfulfilled longing to be seen is the very foundation of being alive. The notion that life, our very existence, is God, the Divine, Universal Consciousness, whatever you call it, needing and wanting to see and experience itself, comes to mind. Do we exist within and because of the Divine longing to see itself?
Is being seen important to everyone fundamentally or just some? I certainly see and hear this desire expressed among…
