I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived (...) I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...
Henry David Thoreau ~ Walden. Life in the Woods.

Self-realization

One of the most valuable advices I have found in my whole life, came from some primitivist text in some forgotten website. I don't remember if it was Zerzan or Hakim Bey ("ideological father" of the hacker culture and precursor of the cypherpunk), and I haven't been successful in finding it again, now that I've grown up; but for my mind as a child hungry for answers, this was an advice to remember for life:

When dealing with people, you must remember that everyone's heart is broken.

Even as a child I could see the naked truth of that statement, and through my many experiences I could only confirm it at every moment.

I observed the development of individuals and events, and saw how people's true motivations hid —like the head of a cartoon ostrich— more and more as they grew older.

...you must remember that everyone's heart is broken.

Worst of all, as I could understand, it's not only that we humans hide our true reasons from others, but that we do so from ourselves.

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It begins as a slight nervous reaction to a world that is not interested in our truth nor in the truth of things. A spontaneous performance, the representation of a theatrical role: "Now I am more acceptable. Maybe now they will be able to love me."

Then the disease spreads throughout the whole extension of our humanity, wanting to control every minimum gesture, every tone and cadence, every expression of being; until the being turns to a whole appearance, a whole mask, a whole lie.

"I don't suffer from that," some say. How fortunate they are... but I will keep watching:

...remember that everyone's heart is broken.

Perhaps you have heard about this on infinite occasions. It is what some people call ego, the archetypal enemy of raw vegans and hippies, mentors drowned in their makeup and voluptuous gurus. Judging by appearances, it is the enemy of the whole society. However, it is that same society which has never been interested in the truth that you are hiding... and it won't, because its bases so determine it.

When an individual observes this phenomenon too far, he gradually becomes a kind of impaired person in the face of worldly demands. Because, yes, the world is mad, but we also go crazy to adapt ourselves to it. Jiddu Krishnamurti dedicated all his philosophical work to explain this:

It's not a measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society

Spinoza also understood, long before the development of psychoanalysis, how determined we are by our own unconsciousness.

"I don't suffer from that," some people say. Fortunate... Then it means that they have kept their eyes fixed on the falsehood of the world, and that it has decomposed them a thousand times. It means that they have died a thousandfold. A thousand times their faulty mansions of ideals and dreams fell. A thousand times their myriad of characters accused them of their painful inability to live a "normal" life.

For me it is important to clarify that the ego phenomenon is, in its essence, simply the need that all individuals have to handle the realities of their world, to live, to survive, to realize themselves outside.

To undertake the construction of a coherent "Me" is a necessity, and thus our nature understands it, with the greatest clarity. For this reason, the war against ego is a senseless war against our own needs, as well as a noisy incoherence from neurotypical characters who build their own egos by using every day discourses against the ego.

However, the construction of a coherent self does not necessarily mean the practice of self-deception, and this is something that very few people understand well. There is the possibility of a fair game in this life, in which we can build our egos as adequate vehicles to relate to our world, according to the things we have to face at each moment.

Journey to the Underworld: to the rescue of the wild child

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However, the most sublime possibilities of our lives are stored in those forgotten feelings that were buried when we decided that the world should be more important than our own selves.

Our true priorities exist beneath those layers of discourses we have held for years, to forget how broken our hearts have become.

If you want to reach the marrow of life, you must navigate to the hidden and forgotten realms of your psyche. You have to rescue your true feelings, for they are, in truth, the very marrow of life.