The Black Wall 1 of 11

What follows is a great little article by Shawn Nevins on the black wall inside each one of us. This article in its entirety can be read at: http://tatfoundation.org/forum2004-10.htm#2 Here we’ll look at one paragraph at a time. Might make sense to read his article or paragraph, make up your own mind, then read my follow-up.

The Black Wall
by Shawn Nevins

Death is inside each of us. I don’t mean that we will all die one day. I mean that if we peer inside, down the mazy layers of noise that pass for a mind, we discover a black wall of the unknown. Behind this, inside us, is death.

• When I first read this, in 2004, I knew he described something true about my insides. Poetic maybe, but pointing at something true.
• Something in me is still, as still as death.
• Something fears that stillness. And this creates a sort of dichotomy of what I am – a fearful active mind which fears looking at something squarely, and a still, undead, potentially-untouchable-by-the-world mind.
• If death is inside me, what is there to fear?
• Is death more my friend than life? Not in any emo/depressed way, but rather deeply, on a level of soul?
• What is looking out at the world now?
• Death of what?
• Is unfriendliness towards death only a “layer of noise” of what “passes for a mind”?
• Is my emptiness also only a layer of noise? Not a factor of facts.
• What is greater, this darkness, or this experience?
• Is identity also only a layer of noise?
• Did death choose me?