I Was A Hidden Treasure

Let me share a creation story with you... In the lore of the Sufis there is a mystical saying:

"I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so out of love I created the world that I might be known."

The “Hidden Treasure” is the Divine Reality awakened to its unlimited potentiality; but in this state, it was still an undifferentiated unity that could not see itself, and so it wondered: "How can I know what I am?" And then it knew! "In order to know myself I have to veil myself", to separate myself from myself!

Now this does not seem to make a lot of sense... that to know oneself one has to veil oneself - really? And indeed this raised yet another question… so again the Totality asked itself: "how can I do this, how do I veil myself?" And of course, being the Totality it immediately knew that it must manifest itself as “others”.

So, using the power of Ishq (love), it drew upon itself a veil, as the brides of old, whereupon immediately there arose the deepest longing and desire to reunite with itself!

And it is this very desire, this nostalgia, this seeking of the Totality to know what it is and where it came from, that manifested as the Universe and along with it the desire to be known; and within this great Universe, the ‘crown of its creation’ is the Human which is an embodied mirror of the Totality, a complete microcosm of that great Macrocosm.

And so it is  that we ourselves are a ‘Hidden Treasure that longs to be known’.  Everything we do is a progressive unveiling of this fundamental Truth of Creation, it cannot be otherwise as everything in existence is nothing but that Totality playing hide and seek with itself.