Why can’t I just relax? Just be myself? Can I ever be comfortable with the way I am without flinching, wishing that I would have been different, that I wouldn’t be the way I am?

I know that at my core, in my “self,” I am whole, complete, Divinely inspired and my life is a gift. I also “know” that if others could only know the real me, what some would call the authentic me, then I’d know who I can really trust and I’d be able to relax and just be comfortable with what ever I was made me to be. 

Of course no one can see the real me. I can’t even see the real me. It is, by definition, beyond perception. The self perceives but it can’t be perceived. I can only live from it and not even all of the time but at least part-time.

If I could only appreciate the persona I’ve been given. But I fight it. It’s not that I fight being what ever it is I am, it’s that I fight that I am what I appear to be. Too often it’s not to my liking.

Yet there’s a part of me that I “know” and it is beyond all perception and any circumstance and has been with me in every situation from the beginning of time. What is this? That’s “me.” That part of my experience of life, when I can embrace it, is peaceful, even joyful at times. 

The Hobbit calls this the Intimate Stranger. He says this experience of your “self” has been with you always. Everything you’ve ever experienced whether physical, emotional, cognitive or behavioral has been witnessed by the Intimate Stranger.

He encourages me to consider that there is an experience of my “self” that has been the same when I was five, fifteen or twenty-five, is the same now and will be the same when I’m seventy-five years old. Regardless of circumstance or age this part of me is always the same, never changing. 

Obviously this is why the Hobbit calls this part of me the Intimate Stranger. It’s intimate but it’s a stranger to me. It’s always with me, closer than a best friend, yet less familiar than some one I’ve never met.

This must be the soul. When we experience the Intimate Stranger we’re living from the soul and in the spirit. We “awaken” to this experience of spirit. Eastern faiths call this enlightenment. Here in the West it’s called being “born again.” We are born of the spirit, never to be the same. Our souls are saved from the darkness of material existence that is exclusive of the inward light of spirit.   

The Hobbit says, “don’t get captivated by circumstance.” I didn’t understand this for a long time. But now I think may be I’m beginning to. As I’m more familiar with the Intimate Stranger my life circumstance is something I observe rather than own.

The Intimate Stranger has to be the “real me” and what I’m observing has to be experience that I’m having. To believe that I’m doing it, that I’m in control, is preposterous and impossible. It appears that I am but I’m actually always the same “me” despite the situation or circumstances or regardless of my actions, thought, feelings or any other aspect of life experience that I’m having.  

Jesus came to show me how to live from the Intimate Stranger. He came to show us how to live from the spirit rather than from circumstance. He was the example of reconciliation with Creator. He was the one and only Divine messenger, the only living being ever who never lost sight of at-one-ment with All-in-allness. He brought the vision of atonement with God. And Jesus came to save “me.”