Twelve years ago I went to visit my homoeopathist, and during the hour-long interview, I mentioned that while teaching computer applications to a room full of engineers—mostly male—I had become aware of hiding aspects of my true self in order to feel professional, and even to feel safe. “Oh,” my doctor responded, “Cloaking. Are you aware of just how much vital energy cloaking consumes? Wouldn’t a healthier way be to never cloak at all? To remove the guards from around your heart, and be fully vulnerable?”

At that moment, I had the stunning realization that I had been guarding my heart my whole life—not only from my parents, from teachers, but even in my own private journal—in essence, cloaking from myself. And I knew that my doctor was both wise and correct. Cloaking eats large amounts of energy.

This opened a paradoxical question that I lived with for many years. What is the root of cloaking? How does it manifest, exactly? How could I unlearn the habit? So I had to search—rather like an archeological dig, with precision and careful dusting—to discover the nature of the habitual pattern. I have come to understand that cloaking begins, and is maintained with thoughts and feelings—they are both equally ephemeral and unreliable—that are rooted in beliefs of being separate. This pattern served me in the beginning—or seemed to—in my childhood home. All interactions in that home were built on the sturdy foundation of separateness, even though the paradigm was one of a loving family.

The pattern of separateness no longer serves me—so like an outgrown coat, I let it slide from my shoulders, give it a loving pat for its service, and set it aside. Now unburdened of the large weight of cloaking, interactions with everyone I meet are lighter. There is nothing to hide.

Image Credit & Copyright: Lori Allen, Xavier Koenig (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) et al., JPL-Caltech, NASA

© Skye Blaine, 2011