Interesting that Gibran doesn’t say, “what he DOES not reveal,” but rather, “what he CANnot reveal.” I understand that to mean that one’s reality is in his or her roots, not in the tree that is above ground, and that each person is unaware of what may lie in their Shadow or dark side.

My first experience with this was a real turning point for me. There was the girl, C. No one liked her. She was uppity, arrogant, had to be the smartest and best at everything. Very unpleasant to be around. Well, turned out C. had a brain tumor. Could’ve been the tumor itself that made her act as she did; could’ve been the chemotherapy or radiation; could’ve been the havoc played on her emotions knowing she would die before she left her teens. We didn’t know this until after she’d died.

I heard only her words, in which she tried to show how much better she was than anyone. I was deaf to what was behind her words and actions, deaf to the profound and secret pain that I never gave her a chance to speak.

What a person says reveals what that person knows about himself. By observing the person, you may learn something about the person he himself is not aware of.

One obvious example may be so-called body language. For instance, how a speaker holds his hands might reveal a side of the speaker that he is not aware of.

Gibran however has a philosophical writer. His concerns can be with the divine. And he sees this aspect of a person as reality. Thus a person and what he overtly talks about isn’t reality. What he cannot reveal–his divine nature–IS a reality to Gibran.

To complicate matters, introverts tend to reveal less of their true selves than do extroverts, those who are more neurotic (feelings oriented) cannot help but reveal their feelings and keep little hidden . . .