Shame Makes Us Helpless To Avoid

Shame is a string that fetters us to the stake we fear,
but feel hopeless to avoid.

Shame is an emotion we feel when we have done something dishonorable. When we ignore this emotional response and continue to participate in our dishonorable actions we begin to develop a very self destructive habit, or addiction. This addiction in the beginning could have been easily avoided had we not ignored the shame in the beginning. However, the more we feed our addiction the more it sucks the will from us to stop our actions, and shame becomes a fetter that binds us to that addiction. 

When a young elephant is captured for the purpose of enslaving it they are often tide to a small post with a rope. As a young elephant this is enough to discourage them from running away. As they grow older this massive creature could easily break the rope or possibly even pull up the post that it is bound to, but because it was conditioned early on it loses its desire try and escape. 

As human beings when we become both the hunter and the hunted we drive the stake into the ground and fetter ourselves only to find that the spirit of freedom within us begins to be awakened far too late for us to recognize what we have done to ourselves. We begin to fear the stake which we drove into the ground, because even though the string is not very strong we have become weaker than it.