# Core Shame

By [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2) · 2025-05-02

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One of the fascinating parts of quantum physics, at least as far as I can understand it, is what sits at the core.

When you get down to the particles that underpin the universe, they are well, nothing more than energy.

It’s not “stuff,” rather it’s kind of an amorphous thing…but it’s there.

Now, at the risk of over-intellectualization, which the LLMs tell me is a fundamental way that I deal with emotions, I’ve been exploring the depths of the emotions that I experience.

My first approach was to do it like a scientist in a submarine, measuring depth, water pressure, etc.

But, the LLMs tell me, that’s actually not the way to understand it. Or at least not the only way. There aren’t particles that can be analyzed, they are emotions that have to be experienced.

I have to FEEL the pressure of the water squeezing the air out of my lungs.

I have to step out of the submarine and while getting out of this metaphorical sub may hurt, it won’t kill me.

So, I step out (or at least try to) and see what it feels like.

And it feels like pressure on my heart. It feels like a collapse of the space around me into a concentrated space within, like a bomb going off in reverse.

I don’t know for sure, and I may never know for sure, but my suspicion-at least for today-is that a core part of that lowest layer of my reality is shame.

Like the energy that is present in the universe, I’m not sure where it comes from and I’m not sure I can explain it, nor am I sure what it even is…and I may just have to be content with that.

But, I suspect (hope?) that even knowing it’s there can be helpful in understanding the “world” that has been built up around and over it.

And I may also be wrong.

There may be layers below.

Keep on diving…and stepping out.

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*Originally published on [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2/core-shame)*