I don’t want to be awake. But at 3:11 a.m., it opens. And I think, perhaps this is the best, realest thing, the thing that’s worth the most. So after an hour or so, I get up.
Can I afford to be this real here? Can I afford not to? Is there really anything else?
It’s like a can opener’s ripped open my chest and all of the pain there is exposed. Raw. Opening to this pain, a pain I think lies under there, somewhere (by definition), in everyone, is The Thing. At the end of the day, I want to expose it all.
This is worth everything.
This “I” understands itself as a shell. A solid shell that with a touch, disintegrates into thin air. The illusion of everything and yet, a nothing. And still, this shell seems to run the show—and is held responsible. This is the ghost, but only a Wizard of Oz who operates, and how (if that makes sense) operates. An apparition creating an illusion. Words fail, but not quite yet. Not here. I’m not trying to be poetic.
S(hell).
The human pain underneath everything is shame. The shame of operating via this shell of imposed inadequacy. Of not being the TRUTH of Who We Are. There is nothing, yet everything, to say here. We as the shell cannot escape the pain of this—because we are not the shell. That’s not entirely true: as the shell we can appear to escape, at least for a time. But only in the concept of time. The escape is a house of mirrors. Is worth nothing. The escape of I’ll be a better person (a better shell)…it’s not there.
The quality of this shell is only a result, a symptom, of the amount of this human pain we’ve shut out.
And “The World” Out There:
The pain of the worst heist possible being perpetrated in front of our very eyes. What kind of world does this?
The world of escaping pain.
The world of the shell, operating, operating. Infiltrating the Real of the body. The pain under all this. The escaped pain, creating disaster beyond most of our wildest imaginations. This is not the world I want for myself, much less my daughter.
But the escape is the poison.
A better world. A better me. It’s the same. The yearning for better. The escape of the shell. How can they do this??… no different than How can I do this??? It’s the pain of the shell. Operating, operating.
The destroyer, just as Mr. Green, in Revolver discovers: What’s in it for me??
This isn’t the Truth and we know it. So it hurts.
And so here is the can opener, opening, opening. This access point where the core pain and shame and awfulness lies. Open. Exposed.
It’s in the absorption of this pain into the Love of Everything (ah!) wherein lies the Real, Real Thing. Escaping is closing. Feeling it is opening.
There is no How to escape the pain of this shell, of this world. How to say any of this? Yet, it must be said. This pain must be revealed. It’s the pain that’s running the destruction. This is getting close. It occurs to me that maybe all of this sounds crazy, when in fact, nothing saner or more real has every come out of me. Because at the core of all of the destruction, the fear, the regret, the sadness, the anger…in me…in you…in the world…is this pain.
How can they do this?
How can I do this?
HOW DO I ESCAPE THE LIMITATION OF THE S(HELL)??
But here’s what I see and why I roll out of bed and write: the fear, out in the open, rather than inspiring escape, can inspire compassion. A willingness to be with. The disintegration of the shell.
To simply experience this fear. To stop “operating”. To cease fantasizing and living in the dream of improvement. Observing. It seems, somehow, that the cure is in the raw experiencing of the pain of the appearance of being human: in the human awareness of the hell of human limitation. To exist as a form aware of its capacity to harm, to not BE the Glory of what we know we Are, to live in a world where others—unaware of their own pain—lash out and hurt. To be “someone” who has the potential to lash out and hurt—unaware. To reveal vulnerability and become subject to another’s unawareness. To become subject to our own unawareness. Fear. Inadequacy. Never fulfilling what we are Meant to Be.
This is the pain.
It is in our truest, rawest moments, our least defended moments, out of our shell, unmasked, that we may access this pain that cannot truly be escaped—and this is where It— what we think we’ve been looking for, there all along, is revealed.
Perhaps it is in the openness to this human pain, in the willingness not to close down, in simply being in This That Is, in no more dreams of “future”…where the peace occurs. The shell finds this complex, impenetrable. But here the True Self finds, in real time, in no-time, itself—free. Perhaps, just perhaps, this is where the shell no longer operates and the Truth of Who We Are glows and shines, always present here: the medicine and the cure.