Frankly Speaking
A Key to Unlock the World
As a kid, I liked to read the novels of Robert W. Service. He wasn’t much of a writer, but he wrote something called The Roughneck which enthralled me so much I stretched the reading of it over an entire summer. The one thing I remember about the book is that the main character became a locksmith. No lock could hold him back. I’ve been fascinated with keys and locks ever since. And in some way, that’s the great metaphor. We all need the key to the lock; the world is the lock and we are the key.
Now picture the world that way, as a barrel with grooves and tumblers, and the only way to open this world is to fit something that meshes exactly with these grooves. So that wherever you go, essentially what you’re looking at is the lock with all these barrels in it. When you step into a situation, you have to be the key to match it. You have to fit into it. That’s the only way to relate to it. You must be meshed with it for the world to unlock. If you walk in blank, it can’t work. The key gets jammed in the lock.
When we’re blank, we can’t open the world. So we need to have the right relationship—those cuts and teeth and grooves—we have to be cut in a certain way to mesh with the world, so we can unlock it.
The only way to do that is not to be blank, and the only way not to be a blank is to be totally connected to your senses. It’s that connection that enables you to be the unique key in relation to the unique world. If you’re not doing that, you can’t open it; you have to be there with your senses, connected to them. You have to see what’s in front of you, hear what’s around you, taste and smell and touch. You have to do that or else nothing will open, nothing at all, you’ll be facing a blank wall all the time. It will be blank and you will be blank. A frozen state.
The only one who can open the world is the individual, each individual. There isn’t just one lock; it’s a multitude of locks in the universe. And the only one who can open it is each person, for herself. So that the master key is not what to do—the master key is to come to your senses, stop being blank, and relate to the world with the totality of your senses. Then you will see it will open for you.
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