I am ashamed. Out of context. A discord in a harmony. A misfit in a world of perfect order. The hot sensation of pain rises to the chest as if the collar bone would burn to a cinder. The nerves quicken, the eyes twitch, lips tremble, fingers shaking. Run to China – away from these eyes that see this worsening phenomena – the shame of shame, the shame of being ashamed. Don’t read more – it could make it worse.
Is there a reality in shame? Is shame, even a bad thing at core? Like guilt, when you grasp for its form, it becomes amorphous. Yet shame is a pervasive part of our collective state – and the avoidance of it a prime motivator of our collective direction.
“Shame is a mother of rage, destruction and a range of psycho-spiritual disorders. Yet the mother of shame is the belief in absolute separation between our individual self and the other. The illusion of rejection.” ~ Georgi
How to antidote the shame that we don’t want to feel? Many spiral into disgust – so that the shame should never be their’s. We throw it around from sister to brother, family to family, or nation to nation. Yet disgust is shame and shame is disgust. There are plenty of forms in the human dimension that have the effect of the feeling of shame. We can be disgusted at “the world” and ashamed to be human. Presently, these are not unnatural responses.
Yet spiritually seen, there is no “other” that can alleviate this affliction of shame: the only way to realize the impermanence of shame is through the allowance of the inherent and absolute purity which is always, anyway here, regardless of experience, underlying all happening, and unconditional to all situations and consequence.
Putting the light of conscious attention on the shame can be counterintuitive. Consciousness tends to affirm form. Its light exposes an energy block that is formed by a freeze under the misconceived threat of exposure. To consciously point at shame could create a thousand masks. It can be like trying to persuade someone to give up smoking. The craving sky-rockets. We are often so ashamed at the shame, that we would rather move with disgust.
What is needed is an affirmation of that which is lost in the spiral of shame and disgust – the inherent purity which exists through all layers of form and perception. The energy of purity is best channelled through the pure listening witness of consciousness, and the finer vibrations of the unconditional love emerging through all-allowing awareness. To allow these perceptive channels to be open, there is also a need for stability in perception through emptiness – where all illusion of division and all agenda is released.
Shame is not a small energetic barrier. It is the emotion that in Genesis, led Adam and Eve to hide in the bushes from God. They were ashamed of the consciousness of exposure. Yet even here, the purity is never lost. The fault was in the belief behind the deception of Adam and Eve, which led them to “hide” from the source of all they are. Their nakedness never lost its purity.
There is a simple, nondual logic in it. Purity is deeper than shame. Purity is existential – it is here, irrespective of time, space and form. We are born pure. Our body is pure. Every electron and proton of every thought and twitch is pure. We are pure above and pure below. Even in lies, entanglements, sexual outrage, disgrace and cut-throat war, the purity is never lost. It is our rejection of inherent purity that means we lose connection, not the other way around.
“The opposite of shame is disgust. Purity has no opposite. Purity is always, already here.” ~ Georgi
One of the first reactions to the experience of shame is to slam shut the windows of perception. We cover our eyes, we lower our head and hide our face, we cover our lips, we put a bag on the head.
At the same time, on the level of awareness, there is a reaction of closing the heart. It is too painful to feel – the rejection and separation embedded in this shame. So we short-circuit the heart, shut down our sentient awareness, and speed into the head or loins – at some stage spiralling into a habit which alleviates the shame. This could be slagging off the neighbours, it could be a bottle of gin, it could be the needle. Anything to heal the whole.
Shame is most sensitized when there has been trauma – either through the anchor of an event or repeated trauma from repeated messages. More often than not, it shows up in the fault lines of the “other”, rejection, separation, loss. All those spaces in which our experience has been impossible to integrate with the collective human whole – so the experience gets thrown out into the emptiness (where it stays and grows waiting for reintegration, but threatening the surviving form with the possibility of its exposure at any moment into the social field).
When exposure occurs, and the shame (or disgust) or both reach critical limits, the form collapses. The psychological form breaks down, the mental form is scattered and the heart cracks open. This can be a healing crisis of incredible agony – throwing us directly into perception through emptiness (the hard way). Nothing matters. Nothing is real. Nothing is true. Nothing can be believed.
This position, known to many addicts, is the horror that the bottle or substance attempts to antidote. Yet if this agonized form of cynicism is allowed therapeutically to be truly as it is, and to expand, the inquiry after the ‘nothing’ can lead to an expansion and liberation.
If nothing matters at all, and there is no truth, then what power does this shame have over you, or anyone else?
If matter doesn’t matter, then allow yourself to allow matter – to truly accept the physical body, the breathing, the movement, the flesh and the blood of it, without dosing it back onto a state.
Are you able to find the purity within each particle and expression of shame?
For some, this is a life-time journey towards liberation through the realization of inherent, existential purity. Sometimes it ends in death. Yet what is clear, that the only one who can allow this inherent purity is the one that is caught in shame. Without purity, neither shame or disgust can exist at all.
