We’re all mad here
In November of 2021, I sat my first ten day meditation course. I meditated for 8-10 hours a day and arrived at three profound insights regarding the true nature of the mind:
all is impermanent
all is impersonal
all is insanity
Arriving at these insights unlocked a new way of perceiving the interconnectedness of all things. I always knew that the mind is the creator of reality but now I could deeply observe the evidence of this. I could see the way the undisciplined mind unconsciously projects whatever has been rejected within the individual. I could see how the undisciplined mind is insatiably hungry for attention and will create fantasies of intensity to hook emotional attention (the most powerful type of attention). The undisciplined mind thrives on and creates from reactivity. The less we react, the more we can observe and move beyond our self-reinforced patterns.
Even though I had been meditating daily prior to the course, the meditations on site were initially excruciating. I experienced constant sensations of burning, aching, sharpness, needles, bone pain, tearing, stabbing sensations, stomach pains, weeping sensations, profuse itching - it was all happening in my mind. The more I sat with it and disciplined my mind, the more I could see truly how much of my reality was simply a product of mind, and I was simply reacting to it. It could not have been more clear. What we do not allow to pass through us, stays within us because we unconsciously hold onto it and it festers- and during the meditations, I was burning it up. Often, these things will try to leave our bodies of their own accord, they bubble up to the surface but if we are not courageous enough to let them go, we continue to suffer unconsciously because our sense of identity is too deeply entangled with the essence of these narratives.
Clinging is the root cause of all suffering; clinging to ideas, to the idea of ‘me’ and ‘my’, clinging to relationships and possessions, clinging to identity narratives which no longer serve, etc. The more we hold on to things, the heavier we become energetically and the more illness and dis-ease we create within ourselves as a means of getting ourselves to listen.
People are often quite challenged by the idea that something could just be happening in the mind and as a result, mental phenomena are overlooked and demonised. The psyche is self healing, and some ways that it can self-heal are through hallucinations, hearing voices, psychotic episodes, hyperactivity, mood swings, chronic pain, depressive states, hysteria and anxious states. These phenomena are perceived as ‘bad’ in a dualistic system and in many instances are medicated because we accept the conditioning of reaching for perceived bandaid solutions without considering the effects this will have on our physical vessel (it is important to note that psychotropic medications suppress neural pathways and atrophy the brain). In a world where personal responsibility is absent/lacking, we externalise responsibility and in turn, we externalise our solutions. Notice if when you read this, you rapidly jumped to defend a narrative- observe any reactivity arising. I am simply drawing awareness toward the desire to constantly externalise personal responsibility- also notice if you are beginning to create a narrative about how what I write may be ‘damaging’ or ‘dangerous’ to people with mental health issues. The only thing it is dangerous to is the ego because it deconstructs tightly bound narratives. I am not responsible for how this is received. Each reader is responsible for themselves and their own interpretation. If you are creating a narrative about me that I could never possibly understand someone who is existing within those stories, think again. Also, I am highlighting this specific and common mental pattern of defensiveness to reinforce the underlying message of this piece of writing.
We attach ourselves to the stories of our labels and become self-fulfilling prophecies; returning back to my earlier statement that clinging is the root cause of all suffering.
When we are in unconscious/unaware states, we are most susceptible to projecting/being projected upon as a means of the psyche attempting to create opportunities to identify overlooked patterns and heal itself through ‘other’, as a continuation of our preference of externalisation.
For example: imagine you are working in a kitchen environment and that your employer walks in whilst you are on shift. All of a sudden you start doing something you wouldn’t normally do, you stumble and drop a knife on the ground and your employer becomes reactive and enraged. That strange situation occurred because a) you had slipped into an unconscious state and in stumbling and dropping the knife, you offered yourself an opportunity to come back into awareness, b) you have an unhealed wound about feeling inadequate/incompetent and c) your employer was projecting a self-affirmation of their power status.
We are all able to fall into unconsciously projecting our little psychodramas onto the people around us, and we frequently do. Whether we like it or not, we are all incredibly manipulative control freaks with a bias for ourselves, and to reject that rather than accepting that only creates further unconscious projections that ultimately reaffirm control. Until we integrate and dissolve the barriers between internal and external world, and we take full responsibility for our existence, these unconscious episodes will continually play out. Can you see how the whole of society is based upon layers and layers of delusion? Hence why all is insanity, regardless of psychological states.
When one becomes aware and can observe these ongoings and gain an accurate sense for projections, one can begin to play with them. One can utilise projections as a tool for solving puzzles and uncovering/rippling truth.
