Insanity

[michael heany]

It seems to me now that the current dichotomy of Sanity/Insanity that prevails in the culture is a false one. Insanity-Sanity is a continuum, and most of the world is huddled towards the left end of the spectrum.

Insanity is essentially Isolation. Those who are greviously insane are those who are the most isolated: from even their closest relatives. They can't communicate even with one other person. They're completely Locked In. The voices in their head have walled them in.

But the clinically insane are not the only insane ones. We have a voice in our heads: the Ego. We are Insane, to the degree that we are isolated. Sure, we can have our conversations with our families, with our friends; but there are large groups we feel we don't connect with, and make no effort to communicate with.

Everything that's wrong with the world comes down to this: people are insane. They see their isolated self and look for a group to reflect and help protect that false self. And of course this creates conflict with others groups.

I've come to believe that the Dimensional Shift means work towards Sanity. Dropping one's fears based on the illusion of the isolated self.

For example, earlier tonight I was sitting on a bench in my hometown. A couple were walking past, I overheard them wondering where a bar was. Now a year ago I would have let it pass, my ego-mind would have said "Don't intrude, they might think it's weird". But I defied that. I told them about a bar nearby. And you could see something was communicated. Consciousness is contagious.

Another simple thing: if you're walking down a street and one other person is coming the other way, look at them. When they look up, look in their eyes, smile, nod, say "Hey". It brings both of you out of your shells. A moment of shared Being.

Then work at more extensive extroversion. Just remember: the isolated self is an illusion. Treat other people, no matter who they are, as if they are connected to you. Because they are, more deeply than you can know. You will become more Conscious, and so will those who share that light.

[michael heany]

Also,

Listening is an important part of Sanity.

A couple of months ago I was in a bar and was approached by a guy who was probably "clinically insane". He had some kind of theories of racial injustice, combined with some other kind of hang-ups I couldn't pin. Not suprisingly, it didn't quite make sense. But the more I listened, the more I became aware that there was a Self underneath all those confused thought waves.

I would try to talk to him about other things, something to get him to break his thought patterns. I'd say "Listen to this soung on the jukebox". But he would keep coming back to his spiel. He wouldn't Listen.

We all have a spiel, plenty of them, some kind of mental construct we feel we have to defend or impose on others. That's part of the ego mind. That's how it perpetuates itself: by getting us to identify with it.

We begin to become Conscious when we find ourselves Listening more. And it's something you have to practice.

These days, when I'm in a conversation, I find myself catching myself: "I need to jump in here, to get my point across, to say something clever, etc.". And I let the feeling pass, more and more. If we listen, and not worry about how we are going to get our own thoughts across, something happens: we find that those who are talking have something to say that we need to hear, right at the moment they're saying it.

That's why Rilke, in his sonnets about Creativity (among other things), "The Sonnets to Orpheus", has the first few lines of the first sonnet read "A tree ascended there. Oh tall tree in the ear!" [paraphrase].

True Creativity comes out of the still space of Listening. Stillness = Listening.

And this Listening is not just in conversation. It can be done anytime. And the more you Listen, the more you See: I've started to notice butterflies more, all kinds of them. How could I have missed them? I lacked the requisite level of Sanity.

[Lowlight]

actually i think it is being itself that is insane. existence is insane. It is an insane option. It comes before reason and so is irrational. Im not saying it is a bad thing, just that being in an insane proposition.

[jezebelle]

The sanity returns because we recognize our unity. And being a player in this insane cycle will be easier. The vibe of unity grows through adversity and fun.

I imagine it will be more than the feeling we had in the grocery store after 9/11. People everywhere just looked into each other eyes, nothing need be said. We were considerate. The compelling need to be a better person.

The listening example is very pertinent. Healers, often give an indivdual a safe harbor to vent and purge. Experiences often burn deeper so the we may recieve more,like the love vibe from venus. (just to throw in a little astrology)
Certainly though, for everyone shifting their own habit-assemblege-point is difficult, more for others. Think of it, god knows WHAT is intersecting from WHERE in the universe and how hard it is to move.
A noble quest nevertheless, and it could be as simple as telling the group of young scary kids in a gang, approaching you, that they look cute tonight with their hair. The polarity was dissolved and everyone behaved as a positive human.
Having said that; it is important to remain centered in your power too. If I had met the situation with weakness, I might have not been able to meet the moment with the correct strength to balance my fear.
lowlightoracle I agree, there is a sort of senselessness in life, I feel this everytime I claim my house back against the insects. It just is.

[michael heany]

The notion of the "mad scientist" is very pertinent here. Both concepts have overlap, there is redundancy in the phrase (is there an opposite of "oxymoron"?)

The reason Madness and Science get conflated is that Science as a quest for Ultimate Truth leads down to path to Madness. On a global scale, surely. But we also see this in individuals.

Take two examples; Nietzche and John Nash, the mathematician. With Nietzche we have a man who thought so incessantly, so compulsively, he wandered Europe basically alone. His quest for Truth through Knowledge isolated him. And increased isolation through Identification with Thought can lead individuals and civilization to the edge of a black hole, and then over. Nietzche went mad, just as our civilization appears to be doing.

John Nash is another example. He let his mind lead him deeper and deeper down the wormhole. Ob jective Knowledge as Truth: if you follow that path, don't be surprised that the Voices start to get more and more sinister. You have completely identified with your Mind.

But there's a way out. Stop listening to the voice in your head so much. Don't take it so seriously. That is how John Nash began to recover. He realized he was addicted to thinking, and to break the cycle would take an act of Will.

So it is with us. We've isolated and fragmented ourselves, to varying degrees. We're not all Neitzches or John Nash's yet, but that's the way it will end up if we don't tune into Consciousness.

It's important to remember here that Hell has a bottom. (see Dante's Inferno) If you keep identifying with your mind, you (and the World)will hit your bottom, sooner of later. And yes, after you hit bottom there's no way but Up. But do you want to wait for that? Latch onto your Sanity. Start the upward journey now. Communicate with others more, every chance you get. Communicate with Nature, if others aren't around. You won't immediately loose all your hang-ups. But you will feel yourself opening up more. You'll be on the Path.

[jezebelle]

michael well said

"Communicate with others more, every chance you get. Communicate with Nature . . . you will feel yourself opening up more. You'll be on the Path."
*
Very practical advice that could be used daily. A way to feel that you are doing something active in changing the world. Even with all regular stuff going on.
and . . . sometimes a daily miracle, even pops in.
thanks, jez

[Lowlight]

well i dont know about john nash as i only really know his name, not mush else. I think it is a bit of a romantic picture to suggest that Nietzsche went mad because of his thought. it was more than likely syphillis. Also by the end of his sane life he had reject and rejoiced in the reality of no objective truth. being lost on the ocean without possibility of land is terrifying but also joyous. this freedom from absolute truth is something like what i imagine the next aeon to be like.

[michael heany]

Thanks for that information. A lot of it spoke to my recent experiences.

Simone Weil wrote that "Affliction is a gift", and the more intense the insanity, the closer one is to a breakthrough.

The week before my breakthrough trip, I was at a personal low; not "clinically insane", but definitely farther out to the left side of the Sanity spectrum than I had ever been. I won't go into details, but let's just say I had almost completely bought into all the negative garbage the ego had been selling me for years.

During the trip itself, all my hangups that were in me were externalized as it were. I basically had a schizophrenic episode: voices in the music saying things TO ME, clear as a bell; having encounters with people who proceed to have conversations about my thoughts; and not just the usual wild associations you might have on a trip. No, they were actually talking about my thoughts!

It's interesting, the section about going from insistance on a Supreme Being to a deeper concern with relationships. I've been having a transition like this myself. At first I was fixated on how The Message came to me; it had a "The Matrix" flavor, for want of a better term: I was convinced that the world was like that, and that I had to look for that in everyday life. But now I'm understanding that to fixate on the Form which the Message took, and not on the Message itself, is to miss the Message and so to stray.

The Message is essentially Love.

And that's why the transformation didn't happen last time: people who got the message didn't stay on message. They got caught up in the Form (it's about this guy named Jesus; it's about these words he said; it's about these thoughts I have when I think about the Message).

If you add complexity to something that is really simple, you loose the simplicity, and hence the Message.

[michael heany]

Thanks for the info. This is been very clarifying for me.

There's that line in the Bible "Judge not lest ye be judged". This is the difficulty, as I'm finding it: trying not to graft my experience onto others, understanding that everyone has his or her own Path. Helping others on their own path means first and foremost letting them be as they are. It's almost paradoxical.

I do feel hopeful though.

I've been thinking about Dante's Divine Comedy, and more and more that picture of the Creation speaks to me. The idea that the soul (here in the guise of Dante) has to go all the way to the bottom of Hell before it can travel up again. Once it starts to travel up, it has Purgatory: it knows Heaven is the destination, but it has to do "soul work" (for lack of a less New Age-y phrase).

It feels like we are finally poised to enter into Heaven; meaning... what? I'm not sure; but I think Dante is probably on to something when he indictates it keeps getting more and more beautiful as we go up. And as the last Canto suggests, it never ends... it goes on and on. There's no end to that blissful Depth.

[nanouk]

"It feels like we are finally poised to enter into Heaven; meaning... what? I'm not sure; but I think Dante is probably on to something when he indictates it keeps getting more and more beautiful as we go up. And as the last Canto suggests, it never ends... it goes on and on. There's no end to that blissful Depth. "

....and it gets easier to recognize and maintain that "higher" level of consciousness once we know the way, although i still believe some of us are here in our community to react and connect to what other's fail to recognize, and the battle to keep oneself to vibrate on this "hummingbird" frequency is fiercely conscious, (shamanic sickness?).

i found my way here through searching for other's than michael harner's, terrence mackenna's and aleister crowley's accounts of the "spirit fire" burning within them (and my self) and the "voices/guides" shouting louder than ever in childhood, symbols imprinting themselves everywhere, like the crop circles, in the sky, in plants, objects and person's crossing one's path, etc, it is about "seeing the faeries" i believe...in the right place at the right time, or rather in the right mind at the right time, seeing the light that surrounds every being...following the guides that will lead you there not asking why but how...perfect...must a being be...to create such beauty? beauty in chaos...and beauty in form...and how wonderfully creative isn't the mind, the way it is playing tricks on us, like the coyote biting his tail!

respect,