SPIRITUALLY FEARFUL: A SHORT STORY

He was spiritually fearful.  He feared becoming too intimate, too familiar with God, or, more correctly, of God becoming too intimate, too familiar with him, not that he had anything to hide. 

What this was really about was a trait or condition that he picked up from his parents.  His parents kept everything and everyone at arms length, so that they were never in any way vulnerable.

Being vulnerable, though, was what being with God, what he really wanted, was all about.

His solution was self-surrender, called saranagati or prapatti in Vedanta.  He surrendered his learned at-arms-length self to God in an act of purification, what proved for him an act of liberation.