We're All Completely Crazy
It's what makes you ordinary
NOTE: This is a 37 minute read: get a drink, settle in your comfy corner or chair and relax.
Table of Contents
Introduction
You’re not normal and I’m going to prove it. In fact, I’m going to show you that you don’t actually want to be normal. You probably even abhor being normal and meeting the norm is only something you’re doing because it kept you safe. But secretly, you are craving to be crazy: you just think it’s “wrong”.
Allow me to qualify myself as an ‘authority’ on this subject: I received my degree for being crazy 14 years ago when I was committed to an insane asylum. Not only did I get locked up against my will multiple times, I also had several years of therapy forced on me as a requirement for receiving the basic necessities to survive. By all the standards of the society that I was raised in: I was crazy. Science declared me to have a “bipolar disorder” after I went through a mania induced “psychosis”, which afterwards led to a “depression”.
After I was freed from this prison and the mandatory weekly brainwashing that came with it, I’ve proven the definition of the labels wrong. I supported a family for a decade as the sole breadwinner, emigrated twice, worked my way up in a career at the cutting edge of finance, technology, and security; and started building an off grid homestead. All without using the medication that was prescribed for my ‘condition’.
I’ve shown that I’ve been able to follow “reason” and remain balanced – and once I proved my point: I gave up on the lunacy and returned to being an actual human being. It resulted in me losing my mind again and this time I absolutely loved the experience, because I wasn’t forced to conform; only the trees were my witness.
My aim with this essay is that by the end of it, you’ll question everything you were ever taught. I want to give you the gift of losing your mind so you can remain openminded. I desire to open up the path for you to express your heart again. But most of all, I want you to realize that you deeply crave losing your mind. After all: what happens when you have an orgasm?
Reality?
Let’s start with the primary system that tells us that reality exists in today’s society: science.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality - Albert Einstein
I love science! It’s a very useful system to interact with certain parts of the world around me. It’s also just as much a religion as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Science’s claim is that it can explain the reason for our existence by examining the physical world, while ignoring that it cannot explain that our natural bodies are receiving information from non-physical worlds. Meanwhile spirituality has made that exact claim and has existed longer than civilization, longer than any religion, and most certainly longer than science has. In other words, one of the most common denominators across the experience of the physical species that is humanity: is spirituality.
Yet science discounts this widely held observation, because its focus is on proving the world it investigates through “empirical evidence”. Evidence gained from “information gathered directly or indirectly through observation or experimentation”. Meanwhile anecdotal evidence is seen as inferior, because the experience of an individual cannot be reproduced reliably. And all this shows is that modern science has been influenced to focus on production rather than creation. Modern science focuses on centralizing findings to find what can be repeated, in order for it to be manufactured. A lingering influence of the industrial revolution.
Let me be clear here: anecdotal evidence originates from the observation of the natural body that examines empirical evidence: a person. The main instrument that we use to interpret the world around us is the human body; yet we barely understand the body because we try to find a standard solution, while every human body functions in a unique way. Meanwhile every scientist is projecting their truth onto the world through the use of a human body, which evidently makes all science anecdotal. Peer review does improve this somewhat, but in the world of modern science scrutiny can only be given by other academia – which makes it an echo chamber of limited perspectives. In other words: every scientific finding is conjecture. Objectivity doesn’t exist – it’s a delusion.
But the point of this essay isn’t to discount the benefits of modern science altogether – it has a purpose in our society. Unlike modern science I don’t see the world through a polarized lens that can only hold one truth (fact), while discounting all other interpretations of our shared reality. Modern science advanced humanity in several ways, in the same way that other religions have. But it’s also not the absolute answer to life that it claims to be currently. In fact (pun intended): I see the effects that this mindset has on the mental health of society and it’s causing quite some harm; which needs to stop.
Facts are just broadly carried opinions and true scientists know that the scientific method demands that everything should be questioned. So why wouldn’t we question science itself?
Belief systems
Before science there was the study of alchemy and before alchemy there was philosophy that was guided by mysticism. That single sentence holds more than two millennia of the Western world’s development within it. Years that have held multiple iterations of society, and a multitude of generations where humans have tried to understand what the fuck we’re doing here. Why do we care so much and so consistently?
My hypothesis is that it all has to do with motivation, because there are specific moments in a person’s life where they start with questioning the world around them. These rites of passage lead into new levels of maturity and they change a person’s perspective on life itself: their reality. In the language of science this is referred to as an “existential crisis”, in the language of spirituality it’s referred to as an “awakening”. Note the difference in tone between these two terms and imagine which you’d prefer to experience. Both speak about a way of interacting with realities.
Modern science believes that the world around us is a problem that needs to be solved through investigation. But the field of study that science is, originated from examining what peaked our curiosity. It’s this curiosity that continues to bring people into the fold, because the natural world is a marvel that deserves exploration. Originally science was a celebration of the wonder that we live in.
Now, most scientific findings reflect on nature purely in a way that the mind interprets life: obstacles require solutions. So when someone starts interpreting life in a different way than they used to and is distraught about this change: modern science determines this to be an obstacle; a problem.
The thing is, science was never intended to be a core system for beliefs in a society. It was intended to be a supporting structure that held the specific understanding of one part of a shared reality: the physical experience – physics. Science was part of a system itself, where it received guidance through philosophy which represented the mind, and where philosophy was given direction by mysticism which represented the heart. Over time, these connections were cut and the influence that drove science became politics. Eventually politicians were bought and now science is for sale because of its fragmentation: the limbs no longer communicate as a holistic body. One of the reasons for which, is that it has no value system to rely on. Even the field of medicine no longer is consistent in honoring the Hippocratic Oath.
To revert these effects, we need to re-establish the role science has in our society and give it the guidance it needs. But before we can setup philosophies that science as a whole can follow, it’s critical that we address that philosophy is directed by the input of mystics; the interpreters of the unknown.
Currently, philosophy is the core for determining reason in the modern world, but that wasn’t always the case. Reason used to be determined by a religion, whether that was Christianity or the temple of Apollo is inconsequential. What is of consequence, is that we used to be led by the heart rather than the mind. We used to have a foundation in empathy, before we would apply rationale. We used to feel, before we thought. Until this approach started getting ridiculed for a variety of reasons and feelings were minimized to emotions.
Over time, a belief has been built up across society that if you cannot explain something logically, that it’s invalid. But logic doesn’t equate to rationality: logic is a judgment. Judgments are based on values, where values are an expression of importance. Values used to be set by religions, but you don’t require a religion to understand what is important. Your heart knows what is truly important. This is where we derive our purpose from. It’s the pathway to the soul and it’s what gives the intrinsic motivation that one needs to recover from an “existential crisis”.
Perspective
Consider for a moment that reality is more than just what our physical senses can perceive. How would you prove this? The answer: exploration and experimentation. You would need to try something that made “no sense”, which others would consider “nonsense”, because you wouldn’t be acting “sensibly”. All of which is based on using the senses that we can communicate with in our physical reality. But again: we have senses that tell us there’s more to reality than the physical realm. Why else would spirituality have existed across tribes around the world that never had contact with each other?
When you act sensibly, you commit to a norm and this makes others feel safe around you. It’s a way for people to know that they can depend on you, because they can predict with their mind what you will do. The other approach for people to know they can depend on you, is if they would follow their intuition. Intuition is an expression of the heart. It’s when we speak of having “a gut feeling” or “goosebumps” or when we say that someone “lights us up”. It could be a reason for why you’ve been reading this far, you may have felt “a pull” where you feel that what I’m saying “makes sense”. But which sense are you speaking of exactly?
This is where people tend to run into the same conflict as I have. It’s the kind of stuff that can make you depressed, because you think you “can’t make sense of it”. It’s a fallacy of the mind, that is using words that have no clear structure anymore to fall back on. It’s at this point that it helps me to remember that language is just an experiment of humanity to communicate with each other. It holds no value other than the value we collectively decided on.
That’s one of the ways in which beliefs are formed too. We collectively decide that the way we see the sky is called “blue”, unless there’s a different object that interferes with it, in which case we call those either “clouds”, “sun” or “bird”. But metaphysical philosophers will know of Plato’s allegory of the cave and understand that when someone breaks from a shared reality and returns with knowledge of their new reality, that this will be rejected by those who they shared a reality with before.
The new reality that someone speaks of will look like magick to those who they used to share a reality with. In modern spirituality, this is called “breaking free from the matrix”. In more conventional terms it’s like going on holiday to a country none of your friends have ever been to, and then explaining without photos or internet what a particular animal that is native to that country looks like.
Your creative abilities, will represent how well others will perceive this new reality of yours when all you have to go on is your memory. This can make the reality seem even more absurd than you experienced it and make it less believable to others. This has historically invited the scorn and ridicule of people and caused visionaries and mystics to be cast out of society. After all, who will believe that metal birds exist until they see it with their own eyes? And once they do see an airplane, they’ll probably scoff and say they remain right, because it wasn’t a bird but a machine. Which is an attitude of those who aren’t willing to take risks and face their fears. Those who shame and blame others are always the ones who wouldn’t dare place themselves in the position of someone who attempts something novel. Which is the frustration that they project onto the world around them.
This is also the reason why spirituality across the world has a recurring theme of solitude that comes with it. Our shared reality isn’t the only reality that exists and your belief is valid, even if someone else doesn’t understand it. Even if it doesn’t fit the norm in the present moment.
For me it helps to understand that the greatest inventions were created by people that were “ahead of their time”, which just means that they were willing to stand separate from the herd and explore their interpretation of reality independently. And before you think that these people were special, I want you to think back to when you were a child.
Did you ever do something “weird” that nobody understood?
Was there a moment in your life where you weren’t ordinary?
A moment where you felt great and extra-ordinary?
Moments where life just seemed to flow?
Have you ever dreamed?
Or had visions of a future that inspired you?
Were those motivational even though they might have seemed irrational?
With this information and with these ideas, it’s useful to contemplate on the current definition of reality: “the state of things as they are, rather than as they are imagined to be”. This definition leaves no space for dreams, visions, or imagination; which is where all progress stems from. And it can be argued that those are also a part of reality. Perhaps the better version of what we currently call reality is “physicality”.
With a broader understanding of what reality is now. It’s useful to understand that mysticism speaks in metaphors and uses symbology rather than exact language in order for you to step into your reality. It tries to help you step out of the realities of society, communities, family, and friends. It accepts that in a forest all the trees grow towards the sun, where each tree is shaped uniquely based on the circumstances it encounters.
Anarchy!
By now you’re probably experiencing resistance, your mind will have come up with a variety of arguments to counter my claims. Which is exactly what it should do: it needs to protect you from threats. It’s there to keep you centered in your world view, which helps you to operate in this shared reality.
You need your mind in order to maintain your perspective. And if you feel insecure about your perspective, you’ll probably want other people to validate your experience. You might enjoy having someone tell you how to perceive life, because you fear your environment will hurt you. You might even control the experience of the people in your life, to prevent yourself from being hurt.
Both of these attitudes stem from the idea that you need others in order to survive. Which automatically gives them power over you. But have you ever truly tried living on your own power?
I have.
As I write this I live by myself in a forest and haven’t had physical contact in the past 10 months with anyone except for some business interactions. I’m quite close to the stereotype of a hermit, but I still go to the supermarket and explore the country side. The lifestyle is more that of a vagabond, except that I do have a small renovated goat shed and an army tent that I use for shelter.
This lack of social contact would’ve been a nightmare come true for my mother. Had I still been in contact with her, she would’ve tried to “help” me out of this situation because she “cares”; while completely ignoring my reality in the process. Just like she did 14 years ago when she betrayed my trust and tricked me into an asylum that I couldn’t leave anymore afterwards. And in the more susceptible moments of my most recent healing journey, I would have let her “help” me like that again. But by now I accept that the reality I live in is just too crazy for her to comprehend.
I used to keep her reality in mind to keep her comfortable. It’s something that I used to do for my father as well. He strongly believed that because I was his son, that it was my duty to do unpaid work for him, because of the Catholic values that he was raised with. That was his reality.
But I don’t care for either of these approaches to life anymore. They limited my life: my reality.
Safety
It’s an interesting word “asylum”, the word is used to describe a “protected and safe place” and although I know it’s an outdated word for a mental hospital; it’s still a relevant term for the practices it upholds. From a different perspective, it could be described as “a situation from which it is difficult to escape” – which is the literal definition of a prison.
The analogy between an asylum and a prison can be used in many ways to describe the human experience. We build shelters that secure our belongings and provide us with a place where we can feel safe. Our shelters can also feel like prisons in the midst of winter if what happens in the shelter makes us feel unsafe. And if you imagine that you’re stuck in your shelter together with a furious bear, while there’s no exit – then that would equal the inner world of someone who feels depressed. Constantly running from your problems leaves you exhausted.
It might get so bad, that you decide to leave the shelter, even though it has no escape – at which point something interesting happens. You either translate it to the physical reality: suicide. Or you translate it to an inner reality: psychosis. Either way: you die.
Psychosis is an escape deeper into yourself, where you release the reality that was imposed on you. You let go of what you were told was a safe place to be and instead choose to explore beyond the confines of your mind.
However, other people will only see your behavior in the physical world. Behavior that’s suddenly no longer coherent with their reality – and how they knew you. Your behavior can best be described as that of a child that’s acting out, because those are most likely the wounds that you’re processing. I say most likely, because trauma can be induced at various stages of life and result in the deep desire to escape.
For me, my childhood experience was that I was neglected from the age of 8, after having emigrated to a new country with my family. I had no stability: my home situation was filled with rage between my parents, I was relentlessly bullied at school for being different, and the injustice of this situation caused me to protect myself through blind rage. Following the example I was given at home.
The way my family and community managed these events caused me to incorporate 2 rules to survive:
1. Getting noticed equals pain.
2. You can only rely on yourself.
I had no framework for trusting anyone and at the age of 12 my entire existence revolved around escaping the country that was causing me pain. At the age of 16, I saw a glimmer of hope when I engaged in my first romantic connection, but was left broken hearted after 3 months which was when my suicidal thoughts started. But I had attached myself to the idea that there was a better world once I would leave the country, so I kept going. It was only when I turned 18 and went to college, that I ran out of energy. College didn’t turn out to be what I thought it would be and with that being my only plan of getting out of my situation, I became depressed for the first time. However, it was still not recognized as such by my environment, because I had taught myself to mask emotions because of rule 1.
Then after a lot of conflict between my mother and me – where I was trying to stay alive, and she was trying to make me fit into the mould of society. I eventually went to college again, because it would get her off my back. But because I hadn’t been given the space to heal, I crashed out after a year into a full blown depression where I needed professional help. By now I had been fighting suicidal tendencies for 4 years and I simply didn’t have the energy anymore to continue. The bear was winning.
On the upside, I was finally in a relatively safe space because I wasn’t living at my mothers house anymore; I had a place to recover without interference.
But it took a while to find the right therapist and my mother with her incessant need to “care” for me, was still preventing me from my deep desire to simply heal in solitude. The depression got worse, until I finally spoke with a therapist that realized that I needed a creative outlet, rather than a structured one. With her guidance, I suddenly started finding joy in life again because I wasn’t forced to stick to a single method of analyzing my thoughts. It was unconventional, but she dared to try a different method – and that’s probably what saved my life back then. I was shown a way to be free from analyzing and investigating and was exploring instead. But I was still deeply masking my internal experience.
Without knowing it back then, I was finally tapping into my true power by accessing my heart and I wasn’t prepared for that. It had been suppressed in a variety of ways since I was 8, so I rose rapidly in my emotions. Nobody – not even my therapist – knew I was in a manic state until it turned into a psychosis a few months later.
The thing is: you can only suppress your heart for a limited time. And the moment you release control, you remove a dam that held back all the emotions you didn’t allow yourself to express. In my case, I hadn’t lived authentically for over 14 years and I had no reason to align with society again, because I saw the world through the eyes of a desperate kid.
But I didn’t become a danger to society, until after I was forced into the asylum, against my will. Up until that point, I had been preaching love and harmony – because I had found my connection with a nurturing energy outside of me: divinity. And when the true and wild expression of my reality was rejected, like it had been in my youth: it brought up the rage that my community hadn’t taken responsibility for when I was a child. But now I was in an adult body.
That time made me see an asylum for what it actually is: a prison. A place to keep society safe, from the people it hasn’t taken responsibility for. While claiming it’s taking care of them.
Later I found out that asylums have always been used to suppress those who have a differing reality from the status quo. Stubborn wives, people with autism like Darius (help him out), rebels against the crown – the asylum is there to force the mindset of the empire on you. They’ll administer toxins into your body, until you can’t think freely anymore. After which they will relentlessly tell you how to think. None of it is about exploring – it’s about structuring what is “out of order” so you can be a ‘productive’ member of society again. It’s the creed of modern Western medicine: fix – don’t heal. After all: if you would heal them, who will pay your bills?
Chaos & Order
Civilization supposedly has evolved beyond the times where rape and plunder were the norm. Yet we still see a rapist lead one of the largest countries in the world, while plundering one of its greatest resources: human beings. Personally, I’d call that crazy as it seems like behavior of someone who isn’t in command of his emotions. I should know, I’ve been there. Only a crazy person can recognize when someone’s acting in a wild and frenzied way. It’s as if this leader was elected in an impulsive way, because people were tired of being controlled and no longer cared about the consequences.
Their behavior is akin to that of a group of wounded animals trying to escape their cage: a prison riot. It’s like people are exhausted from behaving in a way that’s not natural to them. It’s like they’re tired of being told what to do and want to fight against what doesn’t make sense. But… they don’t know anymore how to make sense of their own reality: they’ve become dependent on narratives provided by others. While being numbed by addictive substances and a living environment that keeps them anxious but docile...
They’re in a prison of their own making, where certain rules are applied to keep them in the illusion that they cannot escape. Perhaps all they need is to remember that they’re allowed to care, in exactly the way they desire. That their interpretation of our shared reality does matter, even if that makes them enraged. Perhaps they just need to express their heart, rather than analyze the situation. Maybe it’s just that simple…
But that would be crazy right? That’s the kind of talk that causes aggression and incites war. We don’t want that, we don’t want destruction and death… we don’t want things to end. We want to just keep on growing, even if that growth destabilizes everything that was built, because the foundation is rotten. Even if we continuously hurt in our attempts to reach for the stars, we must keep going. Right? Or… is that the pattern of cancerous growth? Growth that will kill an organism? Collective suicide…
So what would happen if we slow down instead and lick our wounds?
It’s a sad time, when people believe that anger and rage are emotions that have no purpose and that they cannot be expressed in a healthy way. Meanwhile, it’s a wild game to play with the heart, when it has no clear framework to play in. It might just cause… excessive controlling behavior where you shame and blame the “them”, because you don’t feel safe inside your-self.
Which brings us to transmutation: the transformation of emotions into safe acts of expression. It’s where heavy elements of your life (lead) get changed into an expression of beauty (gold). It’s being in command of your feelings and channeling the energy of those feelings, into structured emotions and thoughts. It’s the interplay between your feminine side who explores everything that exists within you – your reality. And your masculine side, who observes and investigates this fluttering energy and funnels it into a physical expression – our shared reality.
For the record, some would call the feminine the subconscious mind; I do not. To me the mind and mental energy are purely masculine. The mind’s purpose is to translate what it receives and materialize it, but without a healthy feminine counterpart it won’t know where it receives from. For this same reason philosophy needs mysticism. Without it: it just creates pointless questions. Deep dives into eternal rabbit holes, without bringing back anything of substance.
Femininity
So what does a healthy feminine expression look like?
To start, we need to understand that the mind craves stability, because every outside input requires its response. It’s easy for the mind to be overstimulated and within an overstimulated state, the mind will become focussed to resolve the issue at hand. Imagine it as though you’re walking through a forest and are having a good time. Suddenly you hear the sound of crunching leaves and the snort of an animal behind you. Your mind will at this moment, fire up all resources to protect you from a potential danger.
A healthy mind will turn the body to face the potential threat, investigate the source, while being prepared to adapt to the circumstances. It’s in command of its reaction to the situation and is still open to receiving input. This could result in the discovery of a deer rather than a terrifying monster.
An exhausted mind, will prompt you to run away in panic, because your emotions get the better of you. In other words: the mind controls your actions – you’ve become its puppet. Afterwards the mind will need to justify its behavior, at which point it will say something akin to: “the situation wasn’t safe”. Which can create the story from that point forward that you aren’t safe in the forest.
This is an overly simplified way to highlight that the masculine will try to overpower the feminine, when it feels its environment isn’t safe. After all, that’s its role. But where it went wrong somewhere in history, is that the mind interpreted its role as the manifester of thoughts as well. Because threats don’t only exist outside of the body, they exist inside the body too. Which is a place where the mind cannot create stability. It’s why some people get really concerned about being ill – they don’t trust their body, thinking that they need to think up a solution. But that’s not what thoughts are for. Thoughts are there to manage reactions to situations, not responses. The body will indicate what it needs if you listen: which is often just that you need to rest.
Interestingly, what goes on in our heads isn’t just the mind controlling everything; that’s what the mind wants you to believe. But you’re able to believe something different than what the mind thinks. You might even feel a gentle pull towards something, which is your femininity speaking.
The first expression of your femininity will be your subconscious. Your subconscious is the storage of all past and unprocessed thoughts and emotions combined. It’s the archive where feelings were placed on hold, pending the mind’s investigation of the environment. This isn’t your heart yet. It’s simply a backlog of experiences and if it doesn’t get addressed, new experiences will not just be added, but linked to a variety of experiences that already exist there. It’s a place where stories get created by your feminine, in order to process the world around you. And the mind listens to these stories. The stories can go far back into childhood, when the mind was first activated to protect and serve. And the mind can also start believing that these stories are the only way to see the world, because certain events may have caused so much damage that the mind became resolute to prevent that from happening ever again.
But the feminine knows, that the mind cannot predict the future. This knowing comes from your heart. It’s the true expression of your spirit and soul. This expression can be very distorted due to your subconscious though. If you don’t address your subconscious experiences properly, they will weigh down your existence in the present. It will tire out the mind, before you even have outside input to deal with. These are the kind of thoughts that will circle endlessly through your head, until you finally address them. And when you do, you’ll often run into the emotions of the moment that you didn’t process that thought, because you didn’t feel safe.
If you actively sit with your subconscious experiences though, you’ll be clearing out the layers that prevent you from hearing your heart. This process is often referred to as shadow work and some parts of that work can be experienced as a ‘dark night of the soul’.
When you’ve finally cleared all the excess baggage that you’re carrying around in your subconscious, you’ll start hearing your heart more clearly. It will make you feel creative and ‘light’, you’ll remember again what made you feel joy and you’ll start exploring more. It’s a wonderful experience, and completely unpredictable. Imagining the feminine is akin to seeing the movement of a butterfly: erratic.
So if you’re in an environment with people with wounded masculine expressions: they will try to contain this erratic behavior. They will believe that they are taking care of you, because you have ‘lost your mind’. To them, you’re acting ‘crazy’. And this is the reason why we speak of chaos as though it’s a bad thing. But in reality, everyone enjoys the unexpected. The way that you eye catches the iridescent sky, or how the sun shines brightly when you were expecting a cloudy day; these are surprises that have inspired people across time to create art. And while art comes in many forms, it has always been one of the healthy expressions of the feminine.
Order
By now you may wonder why the expression of the feminine is so limited in today’s society.
Or you may be more “pragmatic” and say something like: “It’s nice to dream, but who has time for all of this?” Which is the other side to the coin and the reason why I believe we live in a world that’s predominantly masculine led. Because it’s not just fear that leads the masculine to contain a situation. It’s security as well.
Where safety is a feeling, security is the interaction with our physical environment. It’s an important part of our experience on this planet and in this body. There are real threats out there if we’re not full of care – careful. That care must first come from within us, but there are times that situations require us to act first, and feel later. The subconscious mind exists for a reason, it’s the buffer we’ve needed to interact with our environment.
But a healthy masculine expression is one of calm; not discipline. Order isn’t about exact systems, but rather about allowing the flow of creativity to occur unhindered through a structure that doesn’t allow it to scatter. This is why natural forms are curved: they follow the flow of their inner and outer environment. Masculinity is about having proper boundaries and borders in place, so all forms of your expression in the material realm are managed.
We’re all creative beings, which just means that we all receive inspiration and act on that in different ways. Some of us are good at creating poems, others are good at constructing buildings – the method in which we express ourselves is what matters. This is what brings us joy. And just to be clear: we all have multiple expressions. Nobody spends their time on a single thing, we all have hobbies and relationships next to our passion projects.
The ‘problem’ we often see though, is how we can express ourselves freely when we’re surrounded by others. Because others may not enjoy our expression and we do live in a society together. Which just highlights that as human beings we grow and change. And our environment may not reflect this, which sometimes just means that we need to move to a different environment. However most of the time, we can adapt while retaining our individuality. Changing our perspective on the situation helps a lot.
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For example:
I tried for months to get myself to make videos on TikTok to share my story and while I got better at it, the process didn’t come natural to me. So I switched my approach and because of that: my platform. Now I’m on Substack, knowing that I can make videos if I want, but that it’s significantly easier for me and more helpful for others when I write. Does that mean I’ll always stick to this medium? No. But I’ll use it for the time being, because that gives me a sense of safety and ensures I build up security too. However, I still allow my feminine to flutter around on Substack and explore within it. I just don’t post on TikTok anymore, because that would spread my energy too much in the present.
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Operating in the present is truly something that our society isn’t built for. Which is understandable if you understand that it’s essentially built on insecurity – a fear of the mind that things won’t work out. It’s the reason we consume too much, build too fast, talk too loud, etc. We’re pooling all of our resources in an extremely limited amount of projects, because we fear they otherwise won’t get addressed; simply because we can’t think of how things could work out if we can’t imagine them in the present.
But the opposite is true as well, we can get lost in dreaming too much with the feminine and imagining things that we cannot materialize by ourselves, within our lifetime, or within the confines of the material realm. As such, we need to balance out both energies within us. Which is why we do want to follow some rules, but only when they truly make sense to us.
This means that they intuitively need to align within us and with the communities that we’re part of.
It’s why I don’t think it’s crazy to drive on the correct side of the road. While at the same time I do think it’s crazy that we have national governments - organizations that I refuse to support as they’re currently organized.
I recognize with my feminine side that roads aren’t built by national governments, but by (primarily local) people and regional organizations. And I recognize with my masculine side that I would be a danger to my community if I would go against the convention of driving on the wrong side of the road.
These types of nuances can seem tough to hold, until you realize that you have much more capacity to comprehend the world around you, once your subconscious is cleared. It creates a harmony within you, that allows you to function significantly more efficient. And the best way to shift into this state currently? Rest and solitude.
Nature is Your Guide and Teacher
Learning about balancing the feminine and masculine energies is best done by observing nature. It allows you to get a neutral reflection of the interaction between the two expressions of these energies. It can inspire you on how to take action without force: like the stream follows the path of least resistance as it listens to gravity’s call. But it can also show you the benefit of speed and power: like a cheetah that hunts its prey.
Nature will show you that neither and both are absolutely fine expressions and that every expression is accepted, as long as it acts in harmony with its ecosystem. If it doesn’t – the ecosystem will reject the expression. It’s why you don’t see polar bears in the desert – they most likely won’t survive.
But it would take a while before a polar bear would reach the desert, the animal would need to cross multiple boundaries (climate zones) and pass through multiple borders (oceans, mountains, etc.) before it would actually reach this point. Their body would give them multiple indications in that journey to reflect on if they should continue doing what they’re doing.
This is how nature organically slows its citizens down to reflect on their placement. Not with brute force, but with persistent grit. Nature understands that there’s no rush to perform - that time is on your side if you simply listen to the energies around you. Yet it also doesn’t just wait around: it makes the most of the energy it receives from the sun and moon.
Nature as a whole is the best example of how we can manage diversity, while still collaborating with each other. It shows us how we can be separate, while remaining interconnected. It shows us that conflict is inevitable, but also short lived. Nature doesn’t hold grudges, it keeps balances. If one expression dominates the other, nature will adapt and cause the dominant party to lose resources. This is why our ridiculous monoculture approach to farming is destroying the top soil we have – we’re not collaborating but dominating instead. At some point, the arable soil will be gone and our influence on this planet will be rectified through the eradication of humanity. After which nature will change its approach and continue on with different species.
There was a time that I was worried about the climate and our planet, until I realized that this was just the hubris of the mind of humanity. Our planet has nothing to worry about, it has wiped out species before and went through ice ages that killed off nearly everything. Only to then start hosting us. That’s pretty deranged if you ask me…
So I’m no longer advocating for the planet: she can handle herself. The question is: can we follow her example? Because we’re being quite manic when it comes to using up resources that we don’t know how to replenish. And most of those resources are being managed by a group of 30 centibillionaires, while 746000000 people are starving even though we have an abundance of food. The project of humanity has become very one-sided and I’m not so sure it will survive if we don’t start acting in line with nature again. It’s time to balance things out in our society.
It’s truly the only narrative that I think matters in the present, not because I don’t care about the people that are suffering in the wars that are being waged. But rather because those wars seem to occur because we’ve forgotten the basics of life.
I’m aware that these topics can all seem rather big for a single person. Thankfully, nature shows us as well how to appreciate the small things in life. It’s why we should plant more flowers for the bees, because those little creatures play a much more important role than we have given them credit for.
Similarly, you are a critical part of the complex ecosystem that makes up planet Earth. Nature needs you to express yourself as you are, rather than how you’ve been taught to behave. Nature doesn’t copy itself – no single tree, rock, or wave is the same. What it asks is that you experiment with your unique expression: it asks you to be crazy. It asks you to stand out from the crowd, in order to find your group. And that journey requires that you know what it’s like to be solitary. Without solitude, you cannot find your true self. And without your true self, you will feel lonely. Regardless of the amount of people around you.
Loneliness is the sign that you’ve removed yourself too much from nature. It’s the sign that you believe you’re no longer interconnected, while you live on a planet where everything is interconnected. Even if you live in the penthouse of a skyscraper and never meet another person: you still breathe air, drink water, eat earth, and radiate fire. You are one with the elements around you.
The World of Tomorrow
Being a lunatic is quite fun once you understand that acting ‘normal’ is the true delusion. None of us have the answers to everything and claiming that others should behave a particular way, is simply reducing their authentic expression. Shame, blame, and guilt limit the diversity within our society and cause the cohesion of our social structures to weaken. It’s how predators separate a herd: divide & conquer.
People no longer feel safe in communities, because there are no standards and values. It’s not because we differ from each other, but rather because we can’t rely on each other. The main reason for which is that we’re not being honest under perceived group pressure. But honesty starts with honoring your-self. It starts with reflecting on why you feel unsafe and insecure, without blaming your outside circumstances. It doesn’t help to shout at the storm; a wise person chooses to collect rainwater instead. The pain you experienced is valid: try to imagine how the lessons you gained from that pain can benefit our communities. Imagine the pain you can prevent and then start showing compassion towards the version of you that went through the pain. Grieve over the support you didn’t receive and then give that to yourself in the present. Just watch and see how it changes your view on the world.
As someone who has been suicidal for 20 years, I feel deeply for those who are struggling and suffering under the influence of their mind. I feel terrible for the amount of people that are taking their lives, remembering what it was like when I regularly imagined a variety of ways in which I could escape this life. Eventually I started realizing that I had been using my creativity for the wrong purpose. That I was dreaming of terror, rather than beauty. And that it was my choice to continue or stop with this behavior. This led to me recognizing that my environment wasn’t conducive to my true expression and I started cutting people out from my life. I even emigrated because the Dutch culture was too rigid and critical for me to feel safe in; I wasn’t in the right ecosystem.
None of it came easy, I had to let go of a lot of ideas along the way. But now I’m writing these words with a soft smile on my face… I’m finally ok with being crazy. I celebrate being weird. I flourish in the volatile. I express the wilderness within. And I do so responsibly, because I know the values that I operate on. Values that are recognized already by people that run parallel to my reality.
Simply by me expressing myself authentically now, I’m finding my new ecosystem. As I have done time and time again. And I wonder what the world would look like if I was surrounded by people who did the same, but in their own way. We don’t all have to move countries or cut everyone out of our lives. There are infinite ways to change and choose yourself, but if you’ve read this far we’re probably quite similar. Because that’s what expressing your madness is all about in the end: clarity.
Without showing what lies deep within you, you won’t ever find the people that truly recognize themselves in you. And without recognition, there’s no community. Without communities there is no society. And without order in society, there’s no civilization. So what would a global civilization look like, rather than an international one?
Everything has its place, but it all starts with being clear. A clear expression of your-self is so crazy that it will feel to you like the most simple thing you’ve ever done, while only some people around you will understand.
With that said, I want to credit the Toad Mountain Mystic for inspiring me to create this essay, so people feel less absurd as they’re going through a spiritual journey. I know I benefited a lot from hearing people tell me that I’m “not crazy”. Until I realized that… I don’t actually want to be normal.
So for my next clear expression, I’m either going to be sharing some of my most grandiose dreams for humanity or some of the insights I gained from the most terrible things I’ve done in my past. I may also sprinkle in some poetry before I do that though… Let me know what you would be interested in and I may just be swayed in that particular direction.
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Freedom does come at a cost. These words are formed by an organic being that needs fuel, shelter and maintenance to operate. If you gained insights from my words and are financially capable to show your respect for my efforts, I would appreciate a donation.
Don’t worry if you cannot support me financially! You can help me out as well by just sharing this post with some people you know :) I’d much rather help more people with my words, it’s the reason I write: to help.
Finally, thank you for your time!
Now go wild!
Based on what I read from you, I do think that this essay will benefit you. So just reminding you of it ;)
We are from which we're made :) Perhaps the chaos and order we express is exactly what we're intended to do. I find myself to simply focus on alignment with my own essence is enough.