Why Are We Afraid of Being Exposed?
What motivates us to hide our flaws and emotional vulnerabilities from others?
The following is a transcript of Younus AlGohar’s reply to a question from a viewer on YouTube. Watch him live every day on AlRa TV’s YouTube channel starting at 10:00 PM UK Time.
We live in a society where every single person wants every other person to be perfect. The mentality is, ‘We do not want to see any flaw in you, but we are not bothered about ourselves.’
When we want to others to be flawless and we impose restrictions upon them, then when we happen to see flaws in ourselves, we don’t want them to be known.
We don’t want to expose ourselves to others because we have fear — we have set a standard of perfection and we want to keep a perfect image in public.
We think, ‘I have asked everybody else to be perfect. I know I am not perfect but if I am exposed to the public, my good image will be destroyed. I will lose my calibre and people will think lowly of me.’
These are the things which actually create a hypocritical image of ourselves in our own hearts. We should forget about what people will think of us. We should be really honest with ourselves, our fellowmen and God. If we want to show ourselves as flawless, we should be doing it to show it to God; we shouldn’t be bothered to show it to the public.
When you know you are accountable to God, not to a man, then you will lose this fear.
Deep down in my heart, I believe that I am accountable to my Lord and my Lord is somebody that I cannot hide anything from. You follow a black letter law in order to maintain your good image [in front of people], that is why you begin to have double standards in life.
God is the only person who would be and should be interested in seeing you as a flawless person. Even if you have flaws, God will be patient with you and God will help you to remove flaws from your personality.
God won’t just do it by magic; he will direct you towards the knowledge [that will remove your flaws]. He will direct you towards a man who will fix your heart, your personality and your inner and outer person with the help of the inner knowledge.
According to a saying of the Prophet Mohammed, there is a means of cleansing everything and in order to cleanse your heart, invocation of God’s name is highly recommended.
Emotions are not always right and they are not always wrong. Emotions come from your breast.
Your breast has five souls in it and if they are not enlightened, [your emotions are] controlled by the Devil. When they are enlightened, [your emotions are] controlled by God.
Once the heart and other souls are enlightened, you will only have pure emotions. When you have pure emotions, you don’t need to hide them.
Younus AlGohar is the CEO of Messiah Foundation International. Read more of his work on his website.
