Go pull a few condoms over your head and see what you see; maybe something, but probably not much. That simulates the protective juvenile sheath in which most of us live our entire lives and accept as normal. Three seems too many and one seems not enough, so let’s say two. You know how, when you’re watching a wildlife program or visiting a zoo, and you see all the animals and fish and birds walking, swimming and flying around with two condoms on their heads? That’s right, you don’t, because we’re the only ones who go through life that way. 

A society full of condom-heads would develop along different lines. Everyone, being equally isolated from their environment, would navigate off of everyone else to know what to do, how to think and feel, what to believe, how to behave. There would be no individuals per se, just smaller parts of a larger whole. That’s fine, it can be done and everyone does it, but you’re here, reading this, which suggests that you’re not into the whole condom-head vibe.

The real problem is not that one’s head is wrapped in condoms, but that one is pretty sure that one’s head is not wrapped in condoms. Real change must begin with the realization that there is, or at least, might be, a greater world out there than meets the double-condomed eye. That’s the realization – or, at least, the actionable suspicion – that sets events in motion.

The next step, obviously, is to remove the condoms, but not so fast. Your head has been condom-clad since birth. Those condoms are a part of you, like layers of your skin. Removing them would be like ripping off your face, which sounds like a really bad idea and one you can’t come back from. No one gets into spiritual growth or personal development because they want to slice off their face or skin their head, they do it because they want to have bliss and the respect of the valley people and to live forever in Happy Land, none of which seems to call for a lot of face removal.

Now imagine some weirdo arises from the condom-clad ranks who does want to skin their own head. What does a society of condom-heads make of such a person? Freak? Heretic? Batshit crazy? The collective has no solutions for condom removal the same way it has no solution for self-gutting; there’s just not a lot of demand. Why would anyone want to tear their face off? It’s more suggestive of mental defect than pioneer spirit, and what’s worse, it might be infectious. What if all the impressionable youth got caught up in head-peeling the way they got caught up in hula-hoops and coonskin caps? Egads!

Peeling off one’s head condoms (by now petrified, and a defining feature of selfhood) is not for the faint of heart. It’s not the kind of thing you do with friends and family, it’s the kind of thing you go off and do on your own because friends can’t help and, frankly, you’re not that sure about the whole thing and if you’re gonna die screaming, you’d rather do it alone. Tearing off one’s head condoms makes sense in theory but, as Mike Tyson teaches us, everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. It’s one thing to imagine a brighter future, it’s another thing to pick up a scalpel and start scalping yourself.

This self-mutilation event cannot be pulled by attraction, only driven by repulsion. ‘Tis not a thing to be wanted. The whole enterprise is fuel-dependent, and the only fuel comes from dark emotional energy; rage, hatred, contempt, loathing. You must come to hate your situation so much that skinning yourself is preferable to remaining in the condom-clad state. Your attempt will probably end in a messy death, so it’s only if you consider death better than life in prophylactic isolation that such an act is even possible. (Ah, but look who I’m talking to. I’m sure your gurus and teachers and self-proclaimed experts have been over this a thousand times.)

But, let’s say you do have the drive and the fuel and the rationale to go forward (a matter of insanity or radical sanity – depending on how it turns out, I suppose). Imagine you proceed and succeed. Imagine finally peeling those condoms off and discovering the world you’ve spent your life stumbling blindly through and, at the same time, your authentic human self. The world is totally different than you thought. You are totally different than you thought. You have finally sloughed off the egoic coil and embarked on your rightful human adventure.

When the hard part is over and you’ve experienced the big reveal, you go back to your former fellow condom-heads, only to find that you’re no longer welcome in their society. You’re not one of them anymore. You don’t fit in. You’re an alien lifeform now, one for which they have no name. You are forever set apart, and that chasm will only widen with time. They don’t understand that you’ve removed your head condoms, only that you’re a mad cow who might be contagious. Being fully sighted, you can wander in and amongst them as you please, but you can never again be one of them, and any attempt to help them skin their own heads will likely end badly. 

The big reveal marks the end of one thing and the start of another. From here, you grow into your new life just as you grew into this one, culminating in the merging of self and other as you and your universe – your you-niverse – become one. That’s where your real life begins and that’s what you’ve been searching for all along.