Accepting My Own Madness

 

“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

 

When I was much younger, I realized how out of step I seemed to be with the world at large and questioned my sanity. As I grow older, I realize that most if not all of the people I know have their own flavours of insanity. We all have windmills that we tilt at and believe they are dragons. Many of us repeat our actions and methods endlessly expecting different results each time. I no longer question my sanity or lack thereof as much as embrace it. How I differ from each person brings an endless flood of self-knowledge and confusion. Now my main concerns tend to be around how much my words and my behaviour reflect my authentic self and with time even that concern fades for it seems more and more to be something that can’t be done and worried at at the same time.
Blessings, G

 

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