"To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence."
Eckhart Tolle
I'm taking a little break from raking leaves while mentally dangling my feet off a slowly swaying porch swing in my mind.
Our experiences help us reflect on ourselves and our journeys. Today, I had an experience where I had to face who I have been and the mistakes I've made. So many times I sought outside myself for answers. So many times I took action outside myself when, I am fairly certain, I should have simply observed and taken action only internally.
Hindsight is 20/20, right?
Funny how this is the year 2020 and it is a clusterfuck of a year that is forcing us to go within whether we like it or not. It can be said that it is the year for gaining clarity, should we take the challenges as opportunities.
I was guided to specific people on my journey who I should have simply observed to find the similarities and the patterns to myself. If only I had known I didn't really need to charge and take action in such a way that made me look completely insane. If only I hadn't taken action in a way that stepped on toes and infringed upon others boundaries and what was fair. In my over-zealousness, I charged like Don Quixote full steam ahead into a windmill that had each person who had the misfortune of experiencing my temporary spiritual insanity tied to a blade.
In my desire to follow the guidance in an askew sort of way, I identified people thinking "We're supposed to connect! I'm supposed to work with you." I pushed myself on people who probably would have rather not have me there...but I couldn't see from that perspective. I was doing what I thought spirit was asking of me, after all. Interpretations of information isn't always easy and sometimes we get it wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I learned SO much along the way... mistakes and all...but I do wish someone could have explained to me what I know now. I wish someone could have told me what I am about to explain here.
Knowing what I know now, I now understand that each person, living or dead, who I have been guided to is a valuable ingredient for the recipe that is me. Each person I encounter has something to teach me about me in order to heal... something I want to change. And each person also contains something I want to emulate and put into my mixing bowl. We could see them as wheat in its raw form and needing to process it before the part we want to mix in can be added.
When we recognize a similar pattern and problem in another or we see in them what we no longer want to be, we are rolling the wheat and separating the wheat berries from the chaff of ourselves. My mistake was trying to rip the chaff from another with my words. It isn't my place to do that for another, only for myself. Once we have the wheat berries, which are the aspects we admire in another that we know we need more of in the recipe that is us, we have to process it and grind it in order to add the highest version of it and have it blend into the mix more easily. The grinding it into flour is us trying to practice what we want to emulate.
I didn't actually need to have interaction with the living ones to get to the parts I wanted to keep and take with me. I didn't have to try to bend them to my way of thinking. I simply needed to observe and then look inward to understand what I needed to learn so that I could become a higher version of myself.
Going forward, I now see everyone as an energetic ingredient with their own very unique flavor. We can add these ingredients to our recipe to change the flavor of us. Of course, we can choose to interact with those we are guided to, but we can be less temporarily insane and more conscious in our interactions with others while we enthusiastically develop our individual flavor. We don't have to infringe upon someone else's boundaries and try to change them. We only have to change ourselves until we reach a flavor we like.
No one can heal us but ourselves.
Healer, heal thyself.
Everything that is outside of us, first starts within us.
Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.
C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition
***Image credit: Art by Chie Yoshii
