At the Feet of the Infinite

Tushar Khandelwal

 

At the feet of the Infinite,

lay down the burden of becoming.

Let the restless mind loosen its knots,

let the heart unclench its hidden grief,

let the soul remember what it was

before name,

before wound,

before longing,

before time.

Breathe—

Sweet morning rose.

Let us release this play of life.

Live, and let go.

Scatter the rosary in the pouring rain.

Perhaps I win the lover

and mourn the friend.

The stars are within reach,

a breath of heaven in thy heart,

a raft of light on a storm-tossed sea.

The ocean is not outside thee;

it rises and falls in the chamber of thy chest.

Every sorrow, 

every love, 

every farewell

is a wave returning to the boundless sea.

Breathe—

Sit like Siddhartha under the bodhi tree,

where time kneels before eternity,

where desire becomes prayer,

where the self dissolves like mist

beneath the first gold of dawn.

At the feet of the Infinite,

nothing is lost.

The beloved, 

the raven hair silvered in the wind,

the weeping in the dark,

the vanished years,

the unfinished song—

all are gathered into one endless light.

Be still.

Breathe—

and the universe breathes with thee.

Omniverse Traveler

The ego is not the enemy

seedream, pond5

The ego has a bad rap — it has become the villain of self-help. We associate it to being entitled or arrogant. That’s why we want to get rid of this enemy.

However, the ego is not the issue; the illusion of self is.

According to psychologists, if we don’t have an ego, we would become mentally ill. 

We need it to mediate between the unconscious and the conscious. 

Your relationship with your ego can turn into either an enemy or an ally.

The ego causes most of your suffering, but it can also save you from further pain.

The Ego Is a Fraud

“The ego is the worst confidence trickster we could ever imagine.” 

— Dr. Yoav Dattilo

Our ego is a curious beast — most of us don’t realize its existence, yet we are under its mercy.

We usually associate the word ‘ego’ with being arrogant, proud, or selfish. 

However, our ego is a different thing — it magnifies either our best or worst side. 

That’s why the ego is the worst confidence trickster: we end buying the exaggerated version of ourselves.

The illusory self is a seductive fantasy — that’s why we succumb to our ego. 

We let it hold the reins of our lives without any resistance.

The ego hides in the last place you will ever look: within itself. Disguised as thoughts or feelings, your ego tricks you. When you believe you are your ego, you’ll do anything to keep that illusion alive.

When you desire to be perceived as the smartest boss, the beloved mom, the best negotiator, the kindest woman, the funniest guy, the most creative writer — fill in the blanks — you allow your ego to take over. You self-identify with a single aspect of yourself — preserving that perfect image becomes a life-or-death matter.

By wanting to keep our illusory-self happy, not only we place hope on an impossible goal but also harm ourselves and others. People are willing to lie, kill, cheat, hide, or steal to protect their ego boundaries. 

If someone criticizes that ‘perfect side,’ they take it personally — they feel their entire identity is at risk.

Why is this happening to me? Everyone wants to be with me. 

Why is this person attacking me? Nobody listens to me!

• We are self-absorbed — we make everything about “me-me-me!” 
• We believe that everything revolves around us. 
• We judge what happens through a self-centered filter.

The paradox of the unhealthy ego is that, though it seems like a confidence-booster, it creates more harm. By comparing ourselves to others, we create self-doubt. And feel disappointed pursuing endless ambitions, we end disappointed. 

By pretending things always to go our way, we become bitter and frustrated.

The unhealthy ego is a fraud — don’t believe your illusory-self is true.

We Don’t Need Another Ego

“The bigger a man’s head gets, the easier it is to fill his shoes.”

 — Henry A. Courtney

Most people believe they know themselves, but less than 15% are genuinely self-aware. 

Being self-centered or having a distortion of who we are, turns us into a victim of the illusory-self.

The ego is you ‘I-ness’ — it captures your thoughts, beliefs, memories, and emotions regardless if they are good or bad. However, the problem is not the beast itself, but the role it plays.

Having no ego would be a disaster — we need something to mediate between our desires and our beliefs and values. Without it, we would become helpless or mentally ill.

The ego’s relentless pursuit of attention and power undermines the goal we want to achieve.

Dealing with an unhealthy ego is exhausting.

As we aspire to become richer, smarter, better, stronger, or more attractive than others, we are shadowed by a persistent sense of weariness and self-doubt. You don’t need another ego; you just need to be you.

Our ego likes security, certainty, and repetition. It makes us feel comfortable by reinforcing an idealized version of ourselves. If people threaten that illusion, we turn them into an enemy. 

That’s why ego-driven people engage in constant battles — they want to protect the fragile fantasy of who they are.

The funny part is that we fight to keep an image of ourselves that no one buys into, except us.

Your greatest enemy is your inner perception, not your ego.

An Ego Is Born

“The ego is a way of organizing oneself; it comes from the intellect as the mind starts to click in.” 

— Mark Epstein

You exist; therefore, I exist — that’s how the ego is born.

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan developed the concept of the ‘Mirror Stage’ to describe the phenomenon when a child begins to distinguish the ‘self’ and others — encountering one’s image in the mirror makes us realize we are autonomous.

The ego is born out of fear and isolation. It creates our identity and separates us from those around us when we were a child.

The birth of ego, according to Chögyam Trungpa, is the process of identifying the self in term of opposing ourselves to others. Before we recognize our own existence, we begin to see others strongly. We want to conquer others, creating a snowballing effect that feeds passion, aggression, and ignorance.

• Our ego not only blinds us but also makes others blind. 
• We want to impose our possibilities over other people — whatever we see; we want others to see too. 
• We believe our vision of the world is the world.

The illusion of self goes beyond having an unrealistic vision of who we are. 

We want to stick to that image forever.

We want to hold to the illusion that our self is permanent, but life is fluid, not rigid. 

We are continually changing — our sense of existence is not permanent. 

We can’t carry our personality to the next life.

Many people believe that the ego is just a source of trouble. 

American Buddhist author Thanissaro Bhikkhu teaches that a healthy, functioning ego is a crucial tool on the path to awakening.

Western psychology and Buddhism agree that the ego is as a creation — we must get it out our head and learn to tame our mind.

The Illusion of Being Yourself

"You are who you are when nobody's watching."

― Stephen Fry

The illusion of self is like a mask — we wear an identity that’s not real.

When we feel under attack or panic, we create a world of duality — Chögyam Trungpa refers to it as ‘the world of ego.’ This duplicitous and unnecessary invention doesn’t allow us to see our true-self clearly.

Buddhists recommend egolessness as the antidote to deal with the illusion of self.

Most people associate egolessness with getting rid of the ego. 

However, that’s a misconception — the ego is essential to guide our decisions and behavior. 

“Spiritual Bypassing” is a term coined to describe those who use spiritual ideas and practices to avoid facing unresolved emotional issues. We must confront our ego instead of running away from it.

You must get rid of 

the illusion of who you are, 

not of the ego.

Let go of the constructed ideas of who you are. 

Most of them were created when you were a kid. 

You turned something very good or bad about you into your identity — balancing your ego is accepting all your sides, rather than exaggerating one.

Egolessness is a healthy state of mind.

The ideas that we’ve constructed about our self are fixed. 

Most people overreact to criticism because they’ve built their ‘reputation’ on one idealized trait — if people dislike it, they feel their whole identity would collapse.

Most of us will do whatever to protect our illusion of self. 

When we experience something unpleasant that might hurt our idealized identity, we fight back.

Becoming more mindful is essential. 

Mindfulness helps us neither to cling to what’s pleasant nor to condemn what’s unpleasant. 

We don’t buy into the illusion of the ego — we are more than that. 

You can separate the stimulus from your emotional reaction — you choose how to react, not your ego. 

Turn the Ego from Enemy to Friend

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” 

― Rumi

Most elements that define our identity were inherited — we can’t do much about them. But, we can change how we deal with them — just like with our ego.

To stop being at war with reality, we must flex our ego.

When we let go of our idealized-self, we become free. 

Conversely, when the ego runs our lives, we suffer. 

The “me-me-me” approach is draining — forcing the world to revolve around us is mission impossible.

Psychologists recommend empowering the observing “I” — make room for self-reflection and watch yourself from a distance. Confront all aspects of who you are — especially the uncomfortable ones. Make room for yourself. Observe your thoughts rather than buying into them; let go of perfectionism.

Buddhists invite us to watch our mind — to observe our thoughts without judging. 

Mindfulness is the ability to be present, to be with what happens in the here and now. 

It’s a journey to abandon the illusion of self for the sake of well-being and happiness.

Egolessness doesn’t mean to get rid of the ego, but of the illusion self. We must undo habitual patterns that we’ve developed for years.

Egolessness means freedom — we liberate ourselves from the anxiety to defend the illusion of who we are.

The Antidote: Stop Seeing the Ego As Enemy

"You yourself, as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." 

— Buddha

Your self is fluid, not fixed.

Our natural tendency is to view, not just ourselves but also others as permanent things. 

Understanding that everything is interdependent and everything is impermanent is essential.

The illusion of the ego means thinking that our identity is a finished product rather than a work in progress.

Grab some pictures of yourself from different moments. 

You probably look different now, right? 

Look at how your personality or lifestyle has changed through those years. 

Are you still the same? Or have you changed? 

Fluidity means integrating both that we are different and the same.

Everything changes and nothing stands still. 

As Heraclitus said, 

“No person ever steps into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and one is not the same person.”

That’s the paradox of understanding impermanence. 

We, the same people, are not the ones we were in the past — yet, we are still ourselves. 

The antidote to the illusion is facing your true-self.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. 

The world doesn’t revolve around you. 

Don’t be attached to the illusion of self. 

Embrace well-being and happiness.

You are fluid, not fixed. 

Don’t stick to an illusionary self — one aspect of you is not you. 

Avoid being defensive when someone hurts one side of who you are.

People are not your enemies. 

When you are at peace with who you are, you don’t feel the need to fight others.

Increase self-consciousness. 

Egolessness is insight gained from meditation — we dive deep into the emptiness or illusoriness of self and habitual patterns.

Love yourself, not your image. 

Accept your wholeness — both the good and bad. True self-love is appreciating that others feel self-love too.

Stop trying to be perfect. 

I’m not suggesting you lower your bar — realize you are not a finished person, but a work in progress.

Being vulnerable is being strong. 

You don’t need to sustain an idealized version of yourself to be accepted by others. Masks are fragile, but nothing can beat your authentic self.

The ego is not the enemy — the idealized image of yourself is. 

Defending an illusion is a draining and useless battle. 

Stop pretending and start accepting. 

Rather than just reflecting on your achievements, spend some time reflecting on who you are.

Get rid of the illusion of the perfect self.

Gustavo Razzetti

Not as You Imagined

Lane Dorsey

My life,

my thoughts

are clouds crossing

the sky of consciousness.

Who am I?

Am I my thoughts,

my emotions,

my name,

my hunger to be seen?

The world teaches me

to add to myself.

I become a storehouse of things:

a title here,

a skill there,

another possession,

more riches,

more praise.

Yet, who am I?

I labor, I gain, I lose;

still I ask—

is it enough?

am I enough?

O my soul,

never let me go,

whispers the small self,

afraid to disappear.

Was joy in yesterday?

Shall I chase tomorrow?

What will they say?

What mask do I prepare

to meet the world?

Then, from the silence,

a voice said:

what you seek

lies behind the noise.

But still I cry,

I am special,

I am meaning,

I am the world—

until the sky answers:

yes,

but not as you imagined.

Omniverse Traveler

A Man’s Ego

Dmytro Tokar

 

Mwita: “That’s because he’s a sorcerer like you! Onye”

Mwita: “How is it that I can tell and you can’t? How is it that…”

Onyesonwu: “Mwita! Finish your thoughts.”

Mwita: “I should be the sorcerer, You should be the healer. That’s how it’s always been between a man and a woman”

Onyesonwu: “Well, it’s not YOU!”

This heated exchange between Mwita and Onyesonwu in Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor reveals the tension that often exists between traditional gender expectations and individual identity. 

It also exposes how easily a man’s sense of authority can feel threatened when traditional norms are disrupted.

A Brief Backstory

Onyesonwu is a young woman with extraordinary powers who lives in a harsh, divided world where women are expected to fit into certain roles. But Onyesonwu’s strength and magical powers disrupt these norms and it challenges the people closest to her, especially Mwita, her love interest and a healer. Mwita, while compassionate and loyal, struggles with the idea that Onyesonwu’s magical gifts and role as a sorcerer are stronger and more prominent than his own. 

For him, it doesn’t feel “right” that she should possess such power while he takes a more supportive role, a reaction fueled not by logic but by his expectations of what men and women are “supposed” to be.

1. It’s no secret that men and ego often go hand in hand, but what exactly is ego? 
2. And maybe even more intriguing, what isn’t it? 
3. What fuels a man’s ego and what does it mean when we say it’s “fragile”?

What is Ego, Really?

Ego, put quite simply is basically self-image or inner belief. 

It is the way we see ourselves or what we think about who we are. 

From this, we can agree that it is not inherently negative; in fact, it’s an essential part of being human. So when we talk about “a man’s ego”, we’re basically talking about how he views himself, what he believes he’s capable of, and how he sees his role in the world. 

This sense of self and personal worth is often heavily influenced by societal expectations.

For men, ego often ties closely to cultural ideas about strength, authority, and leadership. 

Society conditions men to see themselves as providers, protectors, and decision-makers. 

This isn’t all bad, it’s been a survival mechanism for centuries. 

But it does create a kind of fragility. 

A man’s ego can feel easily shaken when his identity doesn’t match these expectations, or when someone challenges his sense of what it means to “be a man.”

Take Mwita as an example. 

He doesn’t dislike Onyesonwu’s powers, but her extraordinary powers make him question his own. 

And that’s where the discomfort comes from.

Why Do Men Feel This Pressure?

For many men, the roots of this pressure start early. 

As boys, they hear phrases like “man up,” “don’t cry,” or “be a man.” 

Words like these teach boys that vulnerability equals weakness and that a man’s worth is tied to his ability to handle things on his own.

These lessons stick. 

Over time, they build a rigid framework for what masculinity “should” look like. 

As men grow older, society reinforces these ideas. 

It praises assertiveness, strength, and emotional control while discouraging behaviors that seem too “soft” or vulnerable.

But what happens when reality doesn’t match these ideals? 

What happens when a man finds himself in a situation that challenges this framework? 

That’s when the ego feels threatened.

Mwita’s reaction to Onyesonwu reflects this. 

Her power disrupts his understanding of masculinity, and he struggles to reconcile his admiration for her with his discomfort over what it says about him.

The Trap of Double Standards

Adding to this complexity is the double standard men often face in today’s world. 

While society encourages men to feel vulnerable, empathetic, and emotional, the other side of this coin is a double standard for many people including women who want men with traditionally masculine attributes such as strength, assertiveness, and dominance. 

This disconnect creates a double standard that makes it even more challenging. 

Men are advised to “open up” and “be real,” but also expected to adhere to the strong, stoic imagery that has been the traditional view of masculinity.

There are several reasons for this double standard. 

One of them is the cultural conditioning which has already been discussed earlier, and another is that in romantic relationships, strength and dominance are often associated with attractiveness. 

These qualities appear desirable to many women because they conform to traditional ideas about security and leadership (not all women, but enough to influence societal norms). 

It’s not necessarily intentional or malicious, it’s just a byproduct of deeply rooted cultural norms.

For example, Mwita feels a deep sense of inadequacy because of Onyesonwu’s role as a sorcerer and the power that comes with it, challenges his belief that a man should naturally hold the more dominant position in their relationship. 

Onyesonwu fiercely defends her right to lead and break away from traditional female roles, but dismisses Mwita’s emotional struggles, labeling them as nothing more than his ego getting in the way. This creates a bit of a double standard. While Onyesonwu demands for understanding and acceptance as she deviates from societal norms, she struggles to extend the same empathy to Mwita as he tries to make sense of his own identity in a world that imposes limits on him, too.

The conflict: 

1. If men show vulnerability and emotional openness, they’ll be considered weak, indecisive, or not “manly”. 
2. If they embrace traditional qualities such as strength and dominance, they risk being accused of toxic masculinity or being emotionally unavailable.

This double standard is for lack of a better word, a trap for men: 

They must show enough vulnerability to come across as approachable and emotionally intelligent but not so much that they come across as weak. 

And be strong and assertive enough to help them maintain respect and desirability but not so much that they’re a toxic turn-off or controlling.

There’s no place for these emotions to live which heaps on the very problems that we’re trying to fix as a society such as men’s struggles with mental health or emotional disconnection.

Is it Justified?

Historically, the male ego has driven men to achieve, to lead, to fulfill societal roles. 

But as expectations evolve, maybe it’s time for the male ego to evolve too, into something healthier and more adaptable.

Is it fair to ask men to balance these conflicting ideals, or is the male ego an outdated reflection of traditional norms? 

Perhaps the real question isn’t whether it’s justified, but whether it can evolve into something healthier and more authentic for men today.

The concept of a “man’s ego,” with all its complexities and contradictions might be a valid product of societal norms, but it also raises the question of whether it’s time to redefine those norms.

Mohammed Elelu

Ego

 

SetareRzb/Pexels

 I just didn’t get it—

even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand

and a lemon (the moon) in the other,

her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight.

I just couldn’t grasp it—

this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly

no one could even see themselves moving.

I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough

I could be the one person to feel what no one else could,

sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears.

Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck,

even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange,

I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive.

I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap,

“The world doesn’t revolve around you!”

The earth was fragile and mostly water,

just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it,

just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.

Looking back on that third grade science demonstration,

I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or cures—

especially people who have an understanding

of the excruciating crawl of the world,

who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoning

and the tininess that it is to be one of us.

But not me—even now I wouldn’t mind being god, the force

who spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a yoyo.

I wouldn’t mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit,

or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.     

Denise Duhamel

in, Queen for a Day

Ego Edits Reality Before You See It

Drew Hays, Unsplash

 

Why guarding your self-image 

blinds you to the reality 

you need to succeed

Two people are told the same true thing about themselves. 

The same sentence, more or less, delivered without malice by someone in a position to know. 

It lands on a real flaw, the kind you would want named if you could get past how it feels to hear it.

One of them goes quiet, takes it in, and is different within a month. 

The other spends the next year explaining why the person who said it was wrong, or biased, or projecting.

They are not separated by intelligence. 

They could be equally sharp, equally experienced, equally able to understand the words. 

What separates them sits upstream of all that. 

It is what each has staked their sense of self on, and whether the true thing threatens that stake or simply informs it.

 

For one of them, the information is just information. 

For the other, it is an attack, and it gets treated the way attacks get treated.

This is what ego does, and it is not what we usually think ego does.

The familiar complaint is behavioral. 

The egotist is arrogant, talks over people, can’t take feedback, rests on past success until it rots. 

All true, and all beside the point, because it locates the damage in how the person acts. 

The deeper damage happens earlier, in perception. 

Before you can decide what to do about a fact, you have to see the fact, and ego gets in there first.

It works as a filter. 

Every piece of incoming information passes through one question before you are aware of evaluating anything. What does this say about me. By the time the fact reaches you it has already been sorted, flattering things absorbed, threatening things flagged for rejection, and the part you actually needed, the signal about reality the fact was carrying, is gone. 

You evaluated what it implied about you, and you responded to that.

So when you fail, you fail not because you behaved badly. 

You fail because you were working from bad data, making a sound decision on a picture of reality that had been edited, before you ever saw it, to protect something.

You can watch the filter run if you know what to look for.

There is an argument you could not concede. 

It had nothing to do with being sure you were right. 

Somewhere in the middle, winning stopped being about the question and became about you, and backing down would have felt less like changing your mind than like a small death. 

So you kept going, defending a position you might not even have held anymore, because the position and your standing had fused and you could no longer pull them apart from the inside.

Or someone said something plain to you, something with no edge in it, and you felt the floor tilt. 

They were describing a fact and you received a verdict. 

The filter had turned information into a statement about your worth, you answered the statement instead of the information, and the person across from you had no idea what just happened.

Then there is the skill you stopped improving at. 

You got good. Good enough that being good became part of who you were, and the better you got, the more it cost to notice your own mistakes, because each one was now a threat to the identity you had built on being competent. So at some point, without deciding to, you stopped seeing them. The plateau you blamed on talent or time was often this. 

A person who could no longer afford to see the flaws that getting better requires you to see.

And there is the thing you will not start. 

The language, the instrument, the discipline you have wanted for years and keep not beginning, because beginning means being visibly bad at it in front of other people, and the part of you organized around being capable cannot stand that exposure. 

Ego did not cost you a little progress there. 

It cost you the whole skill, traded away to avoid a few weeks of looking like a beginner.

The same machine runs in all of them. 

A fact arrives that could help, the filter asks what it means about you, the answer feels like a threat, and the help inside the fact is lost in handling the threat.

The question is why a mind would build a thing whose whole function is to keep it from seeing what it most needs to see.

in, Stoic Wisdom

Bone

Tinnakorn

From One

who says, "Don't cry.

You'll like it after a while."

and Two who tells you thank-you

after the fact and can't look at your face.

To Three who pays for your breakfast

and a cab home

and your mother's rent.

To Four

who says,

"But you felt so good

I didn't know how to stop."

To Five who says giving your body

is tough

but something you do very well.

To Six

Who smells of tobacco

and says "Come on, I can feel that

you love this."

To those who feel bad in the morning yes,

some feel bad in the morning

and sometimes they tell you

you want it

and sometimes you think that you do.

Thank heavens you're resetting

ever

setting and

Resetting

How else do you sew up the tears?

How else can the body survive?

Yrsa Daley-Ward

in, Bone

What sexual abuse looks like

When Yrsa Daley-Ward wrote the poem "bone" years ago, it came to her as many of her poems do: in the morning, just after waking up, and she wrote what hit her, in an attempt to tell the truth about something not often said.

The result is a poem that speaks plainly of sexual abuse through a series of numbered but unnamed aggressors who get away with what they do in different ways: 

"From One / who says, 'Don't cry. You'll like it after a while,'" she writes. "And Two who tells you thank you / after the fact and can't look at your face."

Daley-Ward has been reading the poem aloud for years on tour for her poetry collection, also called "bone," which first came out in 2014 and was just expanded and reissued. But she said that in the last few weeks, after revelations that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed or abused dozens of women, she's felt a different energy in the room.

"I have a lot of poems that are loud and energetic. But this one, it's palpable what comes over the room when I read that. Because the poem doesn't hold back… Because it's become a thing we need to talk about right now, at this moment… Because it's nearly every woman's experience."

Daley-Ward, whose poetry has spread widely over the past few years on social media, particularly Instagram, and whose book has sold so many copies it's now available in places like Target and Urban Outfitters, said it's encouraging to see the poetry reach across age, class and gender.

But women in particular have connected with her poetry, she said, because her poetry addresses issues that affect women - issues that aren't always openly talked about.

"It's sexism, it's misogyny, it's violence. But it's beautiful things also, it's pleasure, it's sex, it's falling in love," she said. "And these issues affect everyone as well."

In the poem "bone," she said, she chose to use numbers for each of the aggressors because that's how people like Weinstein view women, "as one after the next after the next."

As of Monday, 38 women had come forward to accuse the Hollywood producer of sexual misconduct, which was followed by accusations against Amazon Studios head Roy Price and the video game developer Naughty Dog. 

At least two male actors also came forward to talk about sexual harassment they'd faced in their career.

But "bone" ends in perhaps an unexpected place, not with anger but with an expression of gratitude, for how the body puts itself back together.

"Thank heavens you're resetting," she writes, "ever / setting and / resetting… How else can the body survive?"

Elizabeth Flock

in, PBS News

'The Lordly Rape'

Farah Siddiquie

And then I was raped…

Trust is where it all started,

Giving way to his rains of emotions.

Drinking a glass of entertainment;

He promised me ‘love’.

Barely being the medicine to overcome all my pains,

He intrigued.

Just as the distance between glowing coals.

Closest when he came, I sensed the uncertainty was about to happen.

He smelled me, the animal in him was very new.

I reacted to his abnormality.

He shut my lips kissing me hard.

That’s not how the first kiss should be.

With his hands behind my head and corpulent body pushed against me.

Dry lips, chapped skin, bruised kiss, dry love

He was so sure, so confident and so distinct.

That his loathing eyes discovered me in full.

His tampering hands pounced my bust harder than ever,

His claws were like birds of prey

As if I was the last piece of his bread, and he didn’t want to delay.

The perpetrator parted my legs and came in

Cold blood ran through my spine

Mourning with élan,

I was unable to protest against ‘the animal’ in him.

While he was busy taking the flavour of my cream

It was my first time and he dug me deep

Wondering how rigorous lethal uncouth one could be

Forgetting his ambit.

I wished I could give a loud scream

But my hands were tied,

Honestly, I couldn’t move my legs.

Only I was able to feel the blood clots

And him kissing me tip to toe, licking me everywhere,

Without missing the opportunity he wrapped me like a silk cover,

Played me like a toy;

Ignoring the convoluted look on my face, he went on exploring me

Enjoying every push in between my legs

The need of his body seemed to reach the aisle.

I squirmed against the hegemonic animal

He knew not what ‘love’ was all about,

By then he was all a pernicious lynch.

Mastering the flame of hope I wished to tame the world, ‘the beauty of love’;

So that they would not have despoiled to gain

But sure enough, I never wanted to be loved like this.

Neither the pleasure could defeat the pain.

All I was left with was a sore breast, an eaten clitoris.

And myself in the bed lain.

That night, I looked up to the sky

With sad eyes,

The sky seemed so tragically beautiful.

Quilted memories, half-swallowed truth, prolonged journey, sullen songs

Some bitter, corroded, tasteless stories

Plunged into my head.

I talked to myself, “I must learn to live without tears.

I must not complain.

I must find my own strength to bear this alone.

We are cultured and civilised.”

I smiled at the moon and murmured, “Life is beautiful”. 

Nibedita Sen

Sugar coated words

Aung Myo

Some days I welcome the frost in the mirror,

too unbreakable to reflect crystal thoughts,

Stones rattling for each word thrown in discarded arrogance,

Barely skimming the surface as I casually toss them aside.

Some days I am on the run,

A fake criminal with no record, only the sentence has already been given,

Judge and jury lining up one by one

Ready to hurtle sugar coated undertones of narrative, silent accusations.

However far away I am sent,

Through the raging underbelly of a swirling mist or banished to the darkest corners,

I still exist                                                                                

I am ready.

I have survived!

Elizabeth Shane

in, Behind the Mask

How Predators Misplace Shame After Sexual Violenc

The Shame He Put 

Under My Skin

Author’s Note

This essay contains explicit descriptions of sexual violence and degrading language used by a perpetrator. I include those words because they are part of the violence. Predators count on the closed room staying closed, on the survivor being too ashamed to repeat the words that were said, and on the world preferring a cleaner version of the story.

I am not writing this to display pain. I am writing it to return shame to its source.

There are sentences that do not end when the person finishes speaking. They remain in the body for years, not as memory alone, but as something foreign the nervous system keeps trying to metabolize and cannot. Some sentences are not only spoken. They are implanted. They continue to live inside the person long after the room is gone, long after the man is gone, long after the visible life has resumed.

One of those sentences was said to me after rape.

“You made me a bad man from the good man I really am.”

I carried that sentence for many years. From the outside, life kept moving. I defended my dissertation, crossed an ocean, became a psychiatrist, wrote, taught, and helped others carry pain I had not yet fully named in myself. But the sentence stayed somewhere under the skin, not because it was true, but because it had been placed there at the exact moment when my body was too shattered to reject it.

This was not spoken after seduction, a mutual affair between equals, a shared mistake, or a complicated adult situation later softened by language because the truth would require too much courage. It was said after the second rape. He was twice my age, married, professionally established, protected by title and reputation. I was twenty-four years old, his PhD student, and he had authority over my academic life and over the future I was trying to build.

Before he left that room, he left something else behind. He handed me the moral weight of what he had done and asked me to carry it for him.

That is the horror of shame reversal. The perpetrator does not only violate the body. He leaves his shame inside the person he harmed and walks out wanting to remain good.

The Scene of Degradation

The scene I need to write about did not begin in that room. The day before, I had given a lecture at a major conference in neuropathic pain, in front of almost a thousand physicians and scientists. I spoke about work I had taken seriously. I did well, and people supported me.

He had brought me there as my mentor. In public, he stood beside me as someone who was supposed to guide my formation. The next day, in private, he used that place in my life against me.

He interrupted the silence and said, “I was observing how you did the lecture yesterday; you did a great job. However, you should learn how to use your mouth and tongue in different circumstances, please proceed.”

He took the dignity I had been allowed to feel and brought it into the humiliation of that room. After that, even the part of me that had stood before others as a mind no longer felt untouched by what he did to my body.

I said no, and he slapped me.

I started crying.

I remember feeling that something in me dropped very far down, below the person I had been when I stood in front of that audience and believed my work and effort meant something. There was no confusion in him, and no tenderness I could reach. Because he was my mentor, his cruelty carried the weight of recognition I had once needed from him.

“You Don’t Deserve to Be Kissed”

When it was over, I was still crying. The tears were not a performance or an appeal. They were there because the body had understood humiliation faster than the mind could name it.

He saw me crying, and for one brief second there appeared to be something almost like a response, but even that response became another injury. 

He said, 

“Don’t cry. I don’t want you to cry. I should kiss you probably, if you cry, but you are not the kind of woman who will be kissed. You don’t deserve to be kissed.”

There are sentences that do not need physical force to continue the violence. 

He had already used my body, and then he stood over the emotional wreckage of what he had done and decided what kind of woman I was allowed to be. Not a woman to be comforted or met with tenderness, but a woman who could be used and then placed below tenderness. That was a different cruelty, not the cruelty of desire but the cruelty of contempt.

I did not have the language for that then. I only felt myself fall, as if my worth had dropped below the floor, below the ground, below the place where a woman can still imagine herself returning intact to her own body. 

There is a particular humiliation in being denied tenderness by the same person who has just taken access to the most vulnerable parts of you. It teaches the body that being touched does not mean being seen, that being wanted does not mean being valued, and that the moment after male gratification may be the moment when the woman learns how little she mattered.

That sentence joined sexuality to exclusion from tenderness. 

It did not only say, I will not kiss you. 

It said that I was not the kind of woman to whom tenderness belonged. 

It said that my tears did not restore my humanity, that my pain did not require his care, that what he had done to me had somehow lowered the category of woman I was allowed to be. 

Spoken after violation, while my nervous system was already shattered, it entered me with the force of a verdict.

This is one of the ways shame becomes sexualized after rape. 

The wound is not only the act itself, but the moment after the act, when the perpetrator reveals what the body meant to him. I was not treated as beloved, protected, respected, or even pitied in a clean way. 

He used me, then ranked me, then denied me tenderness, as if even comfort would have been too generous for the kind of woman he had decided I was.

I carried that sentence for years in the body’s hesitation around tenderness, in the difficulty of receiving desire as something clean, and in the inability to believe that male closeness would protect me from male contempt. Somewhere inside, the body had learned that a man could create the degradation and then leave the woman feeling degraded by it.

The Shame Reversal

And then he gave me the sentence that would outlive the room.

“You know I am in a relationship. The things I did to you, you forced me to do. You made me a bad man from the good man I really am. This is all your fault.”

I did not understand, in that exact moment, the full violence of what he had just done with language. 

I understood only that something had been taken from me and then something else had been placed inside me before I could even name the first injury. 

He had used power, degraded me, heard my no, answered it with physical violence, and watched me cry. Then, before leaving, he gave me an explanation for his violence that made me responsible for it.

That is where sexual violence became moral violence. 

He did not merely say that he was in a relationship. 

He made his relationship my burden. 

He did not merely say that he had done things to me. 

He made those things my responsibility. 

 

His betrayal became my guilt, his desire became my contamination, his violence became my moral debt, and his shame became the object he placed inside me before leaving the room. It was as if he could not walk out carrying the truth of himself, so he left the truth with me.

This is shame reversal. 

It is not ordinary blame and not simple denial, because it does not only protect the perpetrator from consequence. It rearranges reality around his need to remain innocent. 

He could not tolerate the sentence “I violated her,” so he created another sentence and placed it over me: “She made me do it.” In order for him to remain the good man in his own mind, I had to become the woman who corrupted him.

What made the sentence so poisonous was that it entered me at the exact point where trauma had already broken the self’s capacity to protect its own borders. 

I was not standing there as a calm adult with a strong internal boundary, able to separate his shame from mine. I was young, terrified, humiliated, dependent, and already split from myself by what had happened. The body after rape is not a courtroom where evidence can be calmly arranged. It is a flooded place, searching for meaning because the human mind cannot tolerate meaninglessness around violation for very long. Into that flooded place, he inserted an explanation. The explanation was false, but it arrived when my nervous system was most vulnerable to receiving it.

For years, I did not fully understand that I was carrying his self-protection as if it were my own shame. 

• Because the violence had happened through my body, the shame felt bodily. 
• Because my womanhood had been attacked, the shame felt feminine. 
• Because sexuality had become the place where fear and humiliation entered me, the shame felt sexual. 

I mistook the location of the wound for the source of the wound, and that is one of the cruelest effects of this kind of violation. What felt intimate did not belong to me simply because it had been placed in an intimate place. 

The feeling of contamination was not evidence of my corruption. 

It was evidence of his displacement.

Why Predators Misplace Shame

Some predatory men want access to the woman and innocence afterward. 

They want the body, the control, the gratification, the ego repair, the feeling of power, but they do not want the moral meaning of what they have done. 

They want the act without the knowledge of themselves as the person who chose the act, and that split is where the shame begins to move.

I did not understand then that narcissistic and malignant personalities do not only attack what is weak. Often they attack what feels too alive in another person, too visible, too difficult to make smaller by the usual methods of charm, dismissal, correction, or quiet contempt. 

They may never name it as envy or injury. 

They may not even know what has been touched in them. 

They only feel the person in front of them as an intolerable size, and the attack becomes the way they try to restore proportion inside themselves. This is one of the hidden logics of narcissistic injury. The woman they degrade is not always the woman who meant little. Sometimes she is the woman who meant too much, the woman whose existence made them feel smaller than they could bear.

Months later, we were sitting in his office finalizing research statistics when he looked at me and suddenly asked, “What did you find in me as a man?” I remember the question stopping somewhere in me, because the honest answer was so far from what he wanted that I could not say it. As a man, he had already destroyed whatever he was asking me to confirm. I did not feel admiration or desire. I felt disgust, and I felt trapped by the grotesque intimacy of his need to be reassured by the woman he had violated.

At the time, I heard only the insecurity in the question. 

Now I hear something more exposed. 

He wanted to know whether some part of him still existed in my eyes as desirable, masculine, powerful in the way he needed to imagine himself. After taking from me, degrading me, and making me carry his shame, he still wanted me to repair the image of him as a man.

I think this is why his violence toward me was not random. 

He could not tolerate the size of me in relation to the size of himself. 

He could not receive my attachment without feeling exposed by it, and he could not tolerate my professional promise, my youth, my mind, or even my need for him without turning that need into something he could dominate. 

So he tried to reduce me with the same force with which my existence had unsettled him. He needed me lowered because something about me had made him feel small.

Clinically, this is a defense, but the word can sound too clean for the injury it creates. 

When a man cannot tolerate his own shame, he may try to survive it by moving it into the woman he harmed. He begins to need a story in which her body, her silence, her fear, or even her inability to fight him in the way the world imagines resistance should look becomes proof that he was not the one who chose. The details may change, but the function does not. His shame leaves him and finds a place to live in her.

This is not only a psychological maneuver. It is moral violence. It protects the perpetrator’s self-image by damaging the survivor’s selfhood. What looks like his private defense becomes her long-term injury, because he remains clean in his own story while she is left feeling contaminated by what he did.

Understanding this mechanism does not soften the act. 

It makes it clearer. 

I am not interested in explaining predatory psychology in order to excuse it, or in turning cruelty into complexity for the comfort of the cruel. The point is not that he had shame. The point is that he refused to carry it, and solved his internal conflict by placing it inside the woman he harmed.

Power Gives Him Control Over Meaning

Power changes what the world is prepared to believe. 

A man with a title does not enter the story as a neutral person. 

He enters with reputation, age, professional language, institutional relationships, and the assumption of seriousness already arranged around him. Before the woman says a word, the room has often begun leaning in his direction.

That is what people miss when they ask why a student did not simply leave or report him when the first line was crossed. Professional sexual violence is never only about the body, because the body is attached to a life the perpetrator still has power to damage. 

A student is not only afraid of what happened in the room. She is afraid of what he can do afterward, quietly, professionally, without ever needing to raise his voice. He can delay her work, damage her name, make her future harder to enter, and trust that the world around him will find his version more reasonable than hers.

Years later, when I tried to name the ethical reality of this history in a professional context, I received a response from the President of the International Association for the Study of Pain that showed me how calmly this protection can operate. The language was careful and procedural, but inside it was the old structure of disbelief. One sentence stayed with me because it said so much without intending to say it:

 “Prof. X, whom I have known for over 20 years, has always had a very cordial, kind and respectful attitude towards me. Therefore, even on a personal level, I would not be able to judge whether or not he would be capable of very serious acts…”

That is how reputation protects private violence. 

A man’s kindness to another respected professional becomes part of the reason his brutality toward a young woman is treated as difficult to imagine.

This is the captivity of meaning. 

The predator with power does not only control what he can do. 

He influences what others are willing to call it afterward. 

He can make violence look like ambiguity, dependency look like consent, silence look like cooperation, and trauma look like instability, while everything around him continues to say that he is respectable, believable, accomplished, and necessary. 

That is why shame reversal is especially destructive when it comes from a man with authority. 

He does not only put shame into her. 

He has a whole world ready to help keep it there.

Returning the Shame

The shame stayed because it entered me at the moment when I had no clean way to refuse it. 

He gave me his explanation while I was still inside the damage. 

I did not yet have distance from him, or from the future he still had power to touch. 

So the sentence went in.

Later, the world made that sentence easier to believe. 

It did what the world often does with violated women. 

It looked too long at what I did after, and not long enough at what he did first. 

It treated the fact that I kept working and continued with my life as if survival could be used against the person who had to survive.

After a history like this, trust in men does not remain simple. 

I know this in a way I would rather not know. 

A woman may keep living, working, loving people, even appearing strong, while something in her body no longer believes that male closeness is safe. 

She may not hate men. 

She may understand them, respect them, care about them, even see their pain clearly. 

But trust is different. 

Trust asks the body to lower its guard near the very thing that once became dangerous, and there are men who know exactly what they are damaging when they make a woman afraid of tenderness for the rest of her life.

Sometimes that trust never fully returns. 

Sometimes it returns slowly, almost against the woman’s own fear, and if it does, it should not be mistaken for naivety. It is not a woman forgetting what happened. It is a woman discovering, at great cost, that the past may not have the right to own every doorway to tenderness.

What I know now is that the shame was never mine. 

The loss of trust was not a failure of love, womanhood, or perception. 

It was the cost of surviving a man who made praise and degradation impossible to separate, and then asked me to carry the moral consequence of his violence. 

For years, his shame lived in me as if it were evidence about who I was. 

It was not. 

It was evidence of who he was.

I am returning it now.

Vera Hart