An intruder implies a boundary.

One can only be called a trespasser if there is private property to be trespassed upon.

Thus, intrusive thoughts necessarily require a wall we’d prefer to keep ourselves behind, with unwanted visitors out.

What is the name of that wall?

The name of that wall is shame. It is our own personal judge, the decider of right and wrong. The keeper of taboos, the sole enforcing power it has being fear.

I’d argue that the function of the wall — though it appears to be in keeping things OUT — is actually to keep us IN. To contain us, cage us, imprison us.

The whole of the psyche contains the entirety of human experience. It is the nature of the ego to only identify, however, with that which is deemed “good,” and to disembody and project elsewhere that which is “bad.”

This duality is the creation of that very wall. The more concerned we are with being “good,” the stronger that wall becomes. However, so, too, do the visitors from beyond it grow in power.

I’ll say it again: that wall is the boundary of “good” and “bad.” Inside the wall, where we prefer to reside, is where we keep the “good” that we prefer to identify with. Outside, beyond the boundary, is the “bad” we fear.

Again, though, the entirety of the psyche, and the whole and total self, contains light and dark alike. I believe the goal must be to integrate these two forces into one and love the whole of the self.

These thoughts only become powerful, scary, and menacing if we fear them and keep them out; if we allow them into the wall, however, and welcome them as honored house guests, offering our warmth, hospitality, and comfort, they transmute themselves suddenly from the dark, deathly lead they appeared as, and become precious metal as gold and silver.

You give the monster a hug, and suddenly it’s no longer a monster, but a teddy bear. I think a practical way to give the monster a hug is to adapt it safely into art…

The function of that wall changes over time and is decided entirely by social indoctrination. Note that in different cultural contexts, that which is deemed a welcome visitor from beyond the wall will change. A closeted homosexual may be taught that his same-sex desires need to be kept from beyond the wall. A gay man who accepts himself welcomes him as a guest.

Impulses to murder would be accepted in ancient cultures that honored the glory of the warrior; now, however, with the “civilization” of society (a fancy name for the heightening of that wall), those impulses must be kept tightly behind that wall.

Literal external representations of what we keep behind that wall are what we sentence prisoners for. That which we deem worthy of being jailed are literal representations of that which society deems must be kept as an unwelcome visitor. Excommunicated.

This idea is explored in The Secret History, by character Julian Morrow. The liberation from the “self” described by the professor is the destruction of that wall, and complete, often raucous, communion with all beings beyond the wall — indiscriminate as can be.