Layers of Man- Part One
/William Paul Young, author of The Shack, has pointed out that what most of us present to the world is nothing more than a façade, a carefully-constructed window dressing that shows us how we want to be seen, but which is far removed from who we actually are inside. John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart, similarly described a false, outer self called the “poser,” and explained that its primary function is to protect an inner wound that we received in our past.
As I have examined my own life, I have found that this notion of multiple layers is certainly true of me. I became curious about this, and spent some time trying to identify and separate all the different parts within. It took some time to sort out, but when all was said and done, I had discovered four distinct layers:
Façade
Shame
Wound
Divine
What I found is that each of these layers is distinct from the others, yet there are through-lines that connect them all. Let us examine each in turn, considering the form that they took for me, and the story that binds them all together.
Façade)
For the longest time, I never allowed anyone to interact with the real me. They only ever knew a surface-level, carefully-doctored, phony personality that I made a conscious effort to maintain at all times. Like Adam and Eve, I was hiding who I was behind a fig leaf. A fig leaf that I hoped would make me likable to the people I wanted to like me.
There were two main components to my personal façade of choice: I went to great lengths to make myself appear extremely intelligent and incredibly nice. I wanted people to know that I knew things, and I would absolutely pretend to know more than I actually did. I would also defer my own opinions and feelings, keeping everyone else in a perpetual state of happiness and contentment no matter the personal cost.
Why did I fabricate these two qualities specifically? Because they were masking how woefully deficient I was in them naturally. Beneath my phony exterior, my greatest shames were how I cheated in school and selfishly used others to satisfy my lust. I pretended to be smart and considerate, because in reality I was a fraud and incredibly selfish. The more secret shame I had, the more I had to stretch the façade to cover it.
Shame)
When a person makes a decision to start living an authentic life, the first thing they typically bring to light is the naked shame that hides beneath the façade. That was certainly the case for me. If the façade was intended to attract the people that I wanted to like me, then the inner shame was all of the qualities that I felt would repulse those same people. As I mentioned, those qualities were cheating and selfishness.
For the cheating, I spent most of my school career cheating in every way that I could. Secret notes and abuses of teachers’ trust were my lifelines, and I used them even when they put me at great risk. I was caught a few times, but it all came to head when I was found out a couple years into college. An exam proctor had seen me using secret notes in the testing center and they gave me a zero on the test, messaged my professor, and made an appointment for me with a school counselor. I genuinely thought that I would try to lie my way out of it, try to explain how the proctor had made a mistake, or how I had innocently misunderstood the rules. I thought I would fight the accusation all the way up to the point that I sat down in front of the counselor, opened my mouth…and spoke my shame instead. There, for the first time, I peeled back the façade and admitted that the accusations were completely true. I said that I had cheated, and had done so for quite some time. That I had been cheating all the way. Shockingly, it was the most relief I had ever felt.
For selfishness, I have my addictions. Self-serving, compulsive behaviors based on getting instantaneous pleasure. Of all my addictions, lust has certainly brought me the most shame. I have been disgusted in how I use women for my own gratification, viewing pornography and typing away in chat rooms, taking all that they would give me until I was finally satisfied. Unlike the cheating, though, I was very good at covering my tracks in this area and was never caught. I maintained my double life without a hitch and never let the mask slip.
Until, one day, I did.
That day, I had had enough of the lies, and I wrote my wife a letter and left it on our doorstep. It disclosed exactly what was going on beneath the surface, and as soon as she read it my whole life fractured in a million ways. And yet, just as when I had disclosed my cheating, I was amazed to find myself filled with incredible peace. I had just revealed the worst things, and yet I had never felt so good.
***
After I had disclosed all of my shame I thought I had reached the true me, but in reality I was only halfway there. In this post, I covered my layers of façade and shame, next time I will delve still deeper into my wounds and the divine.
By Abe, Writing Team