The Light Hidden in Your Pretending
The photo on the screen feels like a stranger, a fraud you are certain everyone else saw through. You recoil from the eyes staring back, convinced they were hollow, a mask slipping even then.
But the light was not absent in that moment of your greatest pretending. It was hidden in plain sight, waiting for you to split the wood and find it there.
You did not have to be real to be held; the love was already working beneath the performance. The person in the picture was not a fake; they were a seed, growing in the dark before the sprout ever broke the soil.
You are not who you were then, but the light that lived in them is the same light breathing in you now.
Drawing from
Gospel of Thomas, John
Carry this guide with you
Phaino is a private, on-device spiritual guide. Your conversations never leave your phone.
Download on the App StoreA reflection in your inbox every morning
Start your day with words that meet you where you are.
Subscribe on Substack