The Mad Parts of Sane People

The Mad Parts of Sane People — learning to embody ourselves — to visit the depths of ourselves, and then to incorporate and share what we find — is the ultimate mark of courage

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There’s a book called The Mystery of Human Relationship, by Nathan Schwartz-Salant. The book is extremely dense with Jungian archetypes, Freudian ego definitions and alchemical references. 

The trans­for­ma­tive (alchem­i­cal) process described in the book is best described, I think, by the recog­ni­tion of how close we are to chaos — to mad­ness — to what Schwartz-Salant calls “the mad parts of same peo­ple.” It’s the sen­sa­tion of some­thing that is “of” me, but “not me”—a part of me that lurks around the edges of my consciousness. 

We do all that we can to avoid hav­ing to con­front,
let alone reveal to oth­ers, this “mad part.”

Yet, wholeness and presence requires confronting, owning and letting others see who we are—even the parts we are reluctant to show.

Here’s today’s quote:

“Gen­er­al­ly, one expe­ri­ences con­sid­er­able dis­tur­bance when a con­scious­ness emerges that con­flicts with one’s estab­lished per­son­al­i­ty. The stronger this aware­ness, the stronger the con­flict. On the one hand, the real­iza­tion or embod­i­ment of this con­scious­ness requires that old struc­tures, which once defend­ed against the new aware­ness, dis­solve. On the oth­er hand, the affir­ma­tion of the new aware­ness requires that one be will­ing to be led fur­ther in ways that are not nec­es­sar­i­ly pre­dictable.”
~~ (pg. 100)

Schwartz-Salant writes that we must have the courage to see all of our­selves, that we need to learn to dance with, and incor­po­rate all of our “selves” into a whole. We then must risk shar­ing our­selves by pas­sion­ate engage­ment with anoth­er, or sev­er­al “oth­ers.”

The result of such mad dancing is transformative wholeness.

In one pas­sage mak­ing this point, Schwartz-Salant writes:

“Who sees the oth­er half of Self, sees Truth… when he sees his face, his own oth­er face, when he has looked into his own eyes, he has found Truth.”
~~ (pg. 107)

And then,

“But one can learn to stand firm and fight one’s ter­ror while still hold­ing on to one’s humil­i­ty at being over­whelmed — not by anoth­er per­son, but by a phe­nom­e­non, by two talk­ing heads and by the ter­ror they engen­der.”
~~ (pg. 107)

OK, so where is Uncle Wayne off to today, you may wonder? Told you the writing (his, not mine 😉 ) was dense. However, dense or not, the guy makes sense.

Famous Zen monk 😉 Leonard Cohen said,

“These prob­lems exist pri­or to us, and we gath­er our­selves, almost mol­e­c­u­lar­ly, we gath­er our­selves around these per­plex­i­ties. And that’s what a human is: a gath­er­ing around a per­plex­i­ty.” Leonard Cohen in Shamb­ha­la Sun

What both are describing is a decent, by centimetres, from the head into the body.

Emphat­i­cal­ly, Schwartz-Salant equates the aris­ing of a “high­er” con­scious­ness with a will­ing­ness to be in the body. It’s almost as if, in our will­ing­ness to accept our “in-the-body-ness,” we some­how, para­dox­i­cal­ly, embrace our essence.

The Ego Project (For more on this, read my book, This Endless Moment)

Our process, from age 0 to 16, is to cre­ate both walls (which, with pres­ence and effort, can be con­vert­ed into flex­i­ble bound­aries) and an ego iden­ti­ty. Most peo­ple don’t move past the ego project, so the walls keep feel­ings trapped in our bod­ies. Our fear of threats, how­ev­er, keep oth­ers out.

My “stuck” ego identity tells me it is “me” who is building and maintaining the walls, but it’s not. It’s maintained by the “socially acceptable me.”

This is the per­plex­i­ty Cohen speaks of—it is our sense of self that keeps one trapped—trapped in a sense of self that is unprov­able, and trapped behind walls that keep oth­ers at a dis­tance. And as you “sit” (med­i­tate) you become aware of this “oth­er-than-this-sto­ry-ness.”

I am not this, I am all of this, I am everything. While being no-thing.
See? It’s crazy, and well worth running from hiding from.
Unless you hate the games and seek another path.

The ego project is like build­ing a cas­tle. Up go the rocks, the walls. I stand in the mid­dle of my walled fortress, seem­ing­ly imper­vi­ous to the slings and arrows lobbed from the outside. 

Even­tu­al­ly, I sup­pose, siege weapons will be trained against my walls — and even­tu­al­ly some­one stronger always comes along and knocks a hole in the walls.

Now, the wise per­son might think,
“Hmm. Maybe a mov­ing tar­get is hard­er to hit.”

Most peo­ple, how­ev­er, decide that the archi­tect was at fault — and that thick­er walls are need­ed. They erect anoth­er edi­fice, more mas­sive than the first.

Think about peo­ple you know, or you, and how most con­front, say, a divorce. Haven’t you heard some­one say, “I’ll nev­er make myself that vul­ner­a­ble again!” Because we were taught to erect defences and hide as part of build­ing our egos, we can almost be for­giv­en for doing exact­ly the same thing, as an adult, when we are hurt.

We wanna run, we wanna hide.

Back to the wise per­son. They decide that liv­ing behind walls is stu­pid. Sound is mut­ed, light is flick­er­ing, and you’re in there—alone. Life, real life, they real­ize, is lived out­side the walls. So the wise per­son steps out and starts walk­ing, lis­ten­ing, see­ing, relating.

It would make little sense for that person, just in case, to drag along the castle. Or several bags of concrete. No, if you’re walking, you’d better travel light.

It is scary out there, being exposed to all sorts of new, unfa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tions and dan­gers. And thus it is with self-exploration. 

We move from the safe­ty of the head, with all of its rules and reg­u­la­tions, judge­ments and resis­tance, down into the body, into a ter­ri­to­ry we nor­mal­ly only vis­it when emo­tions arise or when we want to have sex. Down, down, into the realm of dark­ness and empti­ness, full­ness and light. And decid­ed­ly, into connection.

Schwartz-Salant, again:

“… one has a par­tic­u­lar expe­ri­ence of liv­ing in it, which is to say, one feels con­fined in the space of the body. This state requires a free flow of breath­ing that is felt as a wave mov­ing up and down the body; then, one begins to feel that one inhab­its the body. And inhab­it it we do, with all of the atten­dant feel­ings, pas­sions and dynam­ics.”
~~ (pg. 72–73)

Once you get in there, into the depths of you, you notice, almost imme­di­ate­ly, the chaos.

Thoughts seem to emerge, not from the head, but from the heart.

Think of it this way — if the ego project is to build walls and to scare us into stay­ing firm­ly in our heads, from the per­spec­tive of our heads, we will have a quite restrict­ed view of things. Sort of like see­ing life out of the slots in the tow­er wall, if you will. Now, to the ego, the tow­er, the cas­tle, is the world. All that exists is con­tained with­in the walls — all beliefs, all under­stand­ings, all self-knowl­edge is knowl­edge from with­in the ego struc­ture itself.

It’s like Aris­totle’s cave—the shad­ows on the wall are per­ceived as real and real­i­ty. The report from the guy who goes out­side and sees the “real” world is dis­missed as describ­ing a fantasy.

Thus it is with us, until we choose to leave the safety and predictability of the castle walls.

Allow­ing your­self to ful­ly feel your feel­ings and ful­ly inhab­it your body is a scary thing. Not because the con­tents or feel­ings are bad, or scary per se, but because they are dif­fer­ent. Intense. Hot. Strange. 

Our ten­den­cy is to fly away, back to the safe­ty of the walls. Bet­ter, we think, pre­dictable and lousy, than unknown and scary.

Many peo­ple stop their self-explo­ration just at the point when they real­ize how ill-serv­ing their rules and walls are. They get a taste of the free­dom, but fear the out­come of con­fronting the “mad­ness,” the pas­sion, the unbound­ed­ness of the parts of them­selves they’ve resist­ed knowing.

It is a normal reaction to flee the exploration for safer climes, and one that needs to be resisted.

Courage is required for this explo­ration, and courage comes from the will­ing­ness to go deeply inside, to see what’s hap­pen­ing and then to report it. It’s all about stay­ing awake, stay­ing alive, and not run­ning when things get intense, mad, heated.

It’s not about under­stand­ing it, ana­lyz­ing it, fig­ur­ing it out. There is no “it.” There is just your will­ing­ness to final­ly expe­ri­ence all of you, and to give your head a holiday.

This process involves the will­ing­ness to be total­ly hon­est and open about the feel­ings that you con­front. It’s about reveal­ing attrac­tions and repul­sions, and emphat­i­cal­ly it’s about being will­ing to risk end­less exper­i­men­ta­tion and test­ing of the arti­fi­cial­ly imposed lim­its soci­ety would tell us are “for our own good.”

AND, it is only by risk­ing shar­ing our selves that we can know if the per­son we are with is, in fact, capa­ble of stand­ing with us. As Schwartz-Salant writes:

“Only the per­son who accepts entrance into one’s world of mad­ness is wor­thy enough to see one’s soul. Only then may he or she be trust­ed enough to prove that he or she will not be anoth­er vio­la­tor.”
~~ (pg. 109)

Seeing your own face, standing firm, refusing to run, being honest, and communicating from the dark and scary place—leads to Truth—leads to expansiveness. And the walls come tumbling down.

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