A New Madness - CG Jung

The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are
not elemental happenings of a physical and biological
order, but psychic events.  To a quite terrifying degree
we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are
nothing other than psychic epidemics.
[relating to the soul or mind.]

At any moment several millions of human beings may
be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have
another world war or devastating revolution.  Instead of
being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides,
and inundation, modern man is battered by the elemental
forces of his own psyche.

C.G. Jung

with thanks to Love Is A Place

Vortex Art Mystic Meandering
"The Matrix"

~

Did you take the Red pill today?
Or will you take the Blue pill and
 continue to hide in "The Matrix"? 

Now is an opportunity to change our
perspective, and change our way of 
being in the world - to meet the madness
and stand up to it.

 

Facing Into the Light...

Facing into the Sun for my daily
dose of warmth and light,
weeks of information overload
and overwhelm regarding
"the pandemic" has taken its toll
on my psyche...

Waking each morning
wondering - am I going to "catch it"?
watching for the signs;
wondering - will there be enough food
in the stores to last the *months* they
say it will take for the virus to dissipate?
What would be the "best" day to go
foraging for food in our big box
grocery stores, where food once
filled the shelves and cases, but
which has become sparse in the
panic of the pandemic?
What day would the shelves be
stocked the most - with the least
people to navigate?
One doesn't know these things now...

Who would have thought we would
become hunters and gatherers again,
searching for our daily bread...

Ominous...

But...

Today is not a day for mental discursions
of what I cannot control;
nor for fear of the unknown.
I must turn, instead, within
to the Sanity of my Inner Being,
and *stay* there, shelter there;
"stay home" in the Core of my Being,
if I can find "Her" again;
feel "Her" Presence, "Her" Light.

But it was not "She" who wandered off,
or was deluged with the collective fear
of the pandemic.
It was only my mind that fell into
the scare...

The Beauty of the World still exists.
The Earth is still suspended - stable - in space;
rotating around the warmth of the Sun
that lights us daily.
The Universe still sings its song
- uncalamitous -

ever-present in its
*essential* movement.

So I thank the Luminous Universe for being
- for perspective.

For I am not "earthbound" in this madness,
but am part of a celestial movement of stars and
planets dancing together, where the Hush of The
Mystery was once experienced viscerally in a moment
of Pure Silence...

I remember...

It fills my being and warms me to the core,
quelling the fear all the way to the heart,
piercing the veils of ignorance that covered
my mind.

Facing into the Sun, absorbing its warmth,
begins to ignite the Light within.

Facing into the Light within, I am prepared to
move through the day - unfettered by the
unessentials of the madness around me.

At peace in the Celestial Movement of Life...

Mystic Meandering
March 29, 2020

10:10 am

~

Thank you to Alain Joly at The Dawn Within
for the spark of inspiration that ignited this poem...

~

Photo - the Flammarion Engraving
from the Internet

The Madman - Kahlil Gibran & Balthazar

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a
house-top cried, "He is a madman."  I looked up to behold
him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.
For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my
soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my
masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried,"Blessed,
blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

Kahlil Gibran

~

In an insane world you must be mad to be sane.  In an
upside down world true sanity appears as strange and
dangerous.  Things are so backwards that it seems impossible
to be happy, that it seems dangerous to love, that it seems as
madness to be honest and authentic.

In this absurd world the only thing that makes any sense is to
be radically authentic to ones self - even if it is the opposite
of society.

The Madman

The one who unquestioningly follows their heart is a madman.
The one who unfailing listens to the soul and heeds its urgings
is the madman.

The madman is dangerous - not that he will physically hurt you,
but he will shatter your illusions.  He is unpredictable, wild and
untamed.  You will feel uneasy around him because he does not
prop up your house of lies.

She cannot be contained or influenced.  You cannot bribe her
with money or status.  You cannot control her through fear or
desire.

The madman loves his madness, he does not reject it.  For he
knows that his madness is his treasure, is his very life-force
itself.  Only the twinkle in his eye betrays the chaotic
kosmos within.

He is mad precisely because he is not mad.
She is utterly natural, spontaneous, unburdened, innocent.

The mind is insane.  Society is insane.  And the mind is
society's conditioning in you.

"Normal" is to be profoundly inwardly sick.  Beneath nearly
everyone's smiley mask is a mount of pain, fear, sorrow anger,
anxiety, neuroticism, and insanity.  Everyone you see is a
dormant walking volcano that only doesn't erupt because
they have learned to suppress their inner energies.

It is the mind which is truly insane - the mind acting without
the lead of the heart and soul.

The Freedom of Madness

A man needs a healthy dose of madness, else he will never
do anything.....real.  If you want to be truly alive and truly
free you must be mad.

Mad to be oneself,
And mad enough to lose oneself.

Mad enough to risk everything for freedom, for truth,
for the heart, for love.

Mad enough to lose all respectability if it means staying
true to life and oneself.

Learn to love your madness, your primordial chaos.
Dare to be ecstatic, dare to be untamed.

Dare to be the Madman.

Excerpts from "The Madman"
Seth Balthazar

via - No Mind's Land

~

Art - "The Mask"
Mystic Meandering
Craypas oils
2009

When a madman smiles at you - Rumi

Galen, the great physician, asked one of his assistants
to give him a certain medicine.

"Master, that medicine is for crazy people!
You're far from needing that!"

Galen: Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,
did his eyebrows up and down, and touched my sleeve.
He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized
in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,
for however short a time, to anyone else,
those two share a common consciousness.

Rumi
From Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter

version by Coleman Barks

~

I had an experience last year similar to this.
I encountered a black man who came up quickly
behind me in his wheelchair while I was shopping
at the local Walmart.  I laughed and quickly got out of
his way because he startled me.  He engaged with me
in my startledness with a grin and some banter. I bantered
back, feeling awkward yet relieved by the humor.  There
was a connection there that was lighthearted, yet strange.
 But I just went with it.  He had one leg in a boot cast,
so I assumed he had  been injured - thus the wheelchair. 
We continued our banter in the middle of the grocery aisle.
I was feeling a bit captured, and am sure we appeared crazy
to those around us...  as they slowly maneuvered past us... :)

A few weeks later I saw him again from a distance, although
 he didn't see me. He was still in his wheelchair, with the boot
cast on - just sitting in an open spot in the store.  He suddenly
turned his head and said something over his shoulder -
 to no one there!

I realize now that he was my "madman" in a wheelchair who
recognized something "congenial" in me for a short time
through our smiles and banter...

The "medicine" it seems is to see that we are alike,
that we all share a common consciousness,
even in our "madness" sometimes...
and in that we can find compassion for each other.

Namaste
_/\_