Our Mutual Nakedness

Whenever you’re being emotionally dishonest with someone, whenever you’re hiding how you really feel in the moment, whenever you’re trying to hide a part of your experience in order to hold up an image, whenever you’re playing a role with someone rather than being honest about what’s really happening for you right now, the likelihood is that you’re seeking something from them. You want them to see you in a certain way. You are trying to manipulate their image of you (which is actually your image of their image of you). And in their presence you want to see yourself in a certain way. And what else could be the reason for this but fear?

We try to protect ourselves from life and from each other because we are afraid, and what the seeker fears more than anything is being exposed. Exposure of the seeker is like death. To put this in simple language, if you saw me for who I really am, in all my weakness, failure, insecurities, incompleteness, you would reject me. If you saw me in all my rawness, in all my nakedness and humanness, without the masks I wear, stripped of my façade, without defenses, without the games I play—if you saw what’s really here, if you saw beyond the image—you’d reject me. If you saw my fear, my frustrations, my doubts, my sadness, my feelings of failure, ugliness, incompetence, helplessness, you would not love me. Or, if you loved me before, when the image is gone you would soon lose that love for me. I fear that in the light of truth, in the light of life, all the little games I play would be exposed, and I would be left standing there, naked and ashamed, unloved and abandoned, an outcast, far from home.

The fear of being an outcast seems to go very deep in the human psyche. An outcast is literally someone who is cast out of a tribe, expelled from a social group or community, sent away from their village, their home, to die in the forest, in the wilderness, with nobody to protect them. The fear of being an outcast is the fear of being cold and alone, unprotected, forgotten, vulnerable, and near to death. 

Although we may no longer fear being torn apart by wild animals in the forest, we still somehow unconsciously associate social rejection with a kind of death. If I expose myself to you, I might die. That’s how it feels. Being an outcast is a deeply not-okay wave in the human ocean. And so we spend much of our lives avoiding intimacy—and instead pursuing more superficial goals such as popularity, fame, or just fitting into the crowd. 

You can be surrounded by people and still be lonely. Your life can be full of dinner parties, family get-togethers, social occasions, nights out, conferences, retreats, meetings, workshops, and festivals, and you can still feel totally disconnected. You can find your perfect partner and the two of you can be the perfect couple, the couple who everyone thinks will live happily ever after, and you can feel more isolated and lonely, and probably more confused, than you ever were before. No matter how many relationships we have, no matter how full our lives are with people and possessions, if there is no deep connection, no real honesty, no intimacy in the true sense of the word, you simply will not feel fulfilled. There will still be something missing. There will still be emptiness and a sense of lack.

And then, even with all the promises in the world, you will always be haunted by the risk of losing love. Even with all the external security in the world, even with all the vows and commitments and the most seemingly solid future plans, you will feel insecure in your relationships. The only true security is radical honesty in the here and now, which means risking the loss of your self-image and fearlessly meeting the other as yourself, undefended and unprotected.
-Jeff Foster