Oscar Wilde

The Way as hidden treasure is rather nicely illustrated by this story about a pious Rabbi Eisik from Cracow in Poland, who after dreaming several nights running about a treasure to be found under the castle bridge in Prague, made the long journey to check this out. The place was closely guarded, so he kept returning day after day to check on the situation until one of the guards asked the rabbi whether he had lost something. The rabbi told him about the dream, at which the guard laughed and responded that he too had once had a similar dream where a voice commanded him to go to Cracow and search the home of a rabbi called Eisik where the guard would find a great treasure hidden in a dirty corner behind the rabbi’s stove. The rabbi thanked the guard and hurried back home, where he found the treasure behind the stove, and so put an end to his poverty, building a house of prayer, called ‘The Treasure’.

In this story we are reminded that the real treasure that will end our misery is never far away. Rather:

‘… it lies buried in the innermost recess of our own home, that is to say, our own being. And it lies behind the stove, the life-and-warmth-giving centre of the structure of our existence, our heart of hearts – if we could only dig. But there is the odd and persistent fact that it is only after a faithful journey to a distant region, a foreign country, a strange land, that the meaning of the inner voice that is to guide our quest can be revealed to us.’

When Oscar Wilde was stripped of everything losing his name, position, possessions, and then his children and put in prison, he wrote of his spiritual journey and going to the depths.

‘I saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything. Since then – curious as it will no doubt sound – I have been happier. It was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached. In many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as a friend.

Now I find hidden, somewhere away in my nature, something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility.

It’s the last thing left in me, and the best … the starting point for a fresh development … the elements of life … One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has.’

This self-acceptance and letting go leads in the experience of many and in many spiritual practices to knowledge of God. ‘Being true to oneself is the law of God.’