Define sanity
Psychologists explain encounters where the wordless potential breaks through with rational constructs. They use archetypes, disorders and syndromes to understand how folks do or don’t fit the sane frameworks of a given society. We put them away to reconfigure their filter and maintain our created order. Oddly enough, larger societal constructs can add stressors to what causes the labelled disorders or emotional turmoil in the first place.
Denying our natures and forcing folks into limited behavior models that feel wrong to them create many deviations from our definition of sanity. Theology, philosophy, and the occult apply hierarchies and create elaborate structures to define the insane and unexplainable. All of this is Conscious Mind at work, trying to place things not understood into controllable, word-filled, well-defined boxes.
A well-argued point can shake a person’s ordered foundation, but it is a two-way street. Each person’s opinion is an attempt to sort and justify their own beliefs. If, in someone’s attempt to find their truth, they completely accept another’s opinion or belief as true, they open the door to confusion for both. If the seeker believes your opinion, your conscious mind sees that as validation. Unfortunately, believing an opinion doesn’t determine its trueness or its plausibility. Our conscious minds incorrectly equate acceptance and rightness with safe and true.
Awareness and acceptance by the person whose foundation is being shaken is vital, if psychological damage is to be avoided. Defensive and even violent reactions take place when someone isn’t ready to have their structured perception of reality challenged. After all, that is how they understand and interact with the things of their world.
The Transition Cocoon
Shaking or rebuilding a foundation should be done carefully. Questioning what you know is a good start. Kindness from a best friend, a therapist, or even a stranger, can be helpful, if they don’t download their own belief structure. Instead, they should give their answers to your questions as they come up. When you’re ready to accept a reexamination of your beliefs with conscious understanding, you are very vulnerable and need different points of view.
You know the structure you have is no longer a good fit for continued interpretation of your reality. However, it’s usually better to replace your foundation by doubting a piece at a time, rather than taking someone else’s pre-assembled structure as gospel. We do this a lot because it’s easier, but the neat orderly package hides our discoveries of personal truth. We can only find our truth by putting in the work of questioning everything.
This processing and transition phase can cause the illusion to fall apart or change with the right word or phrase. The changes can be fast or slow, but this cocoon phase is essential and scary. To experience growth, we have to let go and work without a net. We must drop all the constructs that our mind has built, all the ideas of who we are, but we don’t have to do it all at once.
Better to read poetry and appreciate art to find the wordless known. What we seldom allow ourselves is the luxury of wordless knowing. The answer it feels right, or the intuition of a hunch, is frowned upon and must be layered with proofs and structure. This is not to argue the answer that feels right is correct.
The Created Filter
Wait…what? Just as art, literature, or poetry is subjective, so is personal truth. The answer feels right for the filter you are personally using at that moment in time. That filter has been created by everyone or everything (including TV, music, etc.) you have ever accepted an opinion from and is unique to you. You have to be ready to clean your own filter. Make your adjustments based on changes you experience as you let go of beliefs and opinions. As you apply the scalpel of doubt, the blinders fall apart, and the scary void is exposed.
It’s perfectly acceptable to not have an ordered explanation for the how or why of a thing. The question is; Does the story I tell myself express the knowing I feel? Understanding or even relatability are requirements for scientific proof, but not requirements for your personal truth.
Unless, of course, you ask the conscious mind, which demands you show your work and prove your case. The army of opinions you have accepted must have a defensible position established. The conscious mind must maintain the righteous illusion of correctness, whether what it defends is true or not. Does it truly matter if someone thinks you’re wrong? Should you waste your time trying to convince them you’re right? The answer is…maybe.
Who Are You Convincing?
Wait…what? A couple of questions should be considered. Are other people in need of convincing? Will a discussion that fleshes out your view be helpful to others with decisions in their personal reality? If so, allowing the words to rise from potential, to be heard, may be wise. However, this approach can lead to cofrontations from those whose foundational beliefs are challenged.
The conclusions we’ve drawn from experience and stories can be traced back to wise words rising from potential. The word-of-mouth wisdom expressed and passed down, elder to tot, originates from the void.
The problem is a lot of these stories have been honed over generations for control, instead of clarity and understanding. They focus intent or structure behavior that benefits society and domesticates each of us. In some cases this is a good thing, but we all have a storehouse of these understandings, and they need to be examined through the lens of doubt. Are they helping clear a part of your filter or are they applying limits to your potential? Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s right.
Everyone is Your Teacher
Everyone has puzzle pieces or tidbits that will help open your knowing. You have to try each one and see which pieces fit your puzzle. We are all dipping into the same wordless pool of potential to create, and the words that rise from focusing our attention have power. If a saying or someone’s comment rattles your structure, stop and look at it. Rough the edges up and examine it closely to see why it rattled you, and whether it will clarify your view.
Begin to consciously question everything, especially what you believe you know. Not the nuts-and-bolts questions, which will only get you caught in the study of detail, the judging and ordering of things, and the winning of arguments. Questioning beliefs refers more to the asking of the big questions, where there’s not a right answer, understanding becomes a personal essay, and we transcend day-to-day detail. You must look at the themes you are positive of, and even further down the rabbit hole, realize most of what you know to be true is at least partially, if not completely, wrong.
Attention Determines Discovery
The truths we seek, while they may be universal, are sought because they apply to our personal filters. All the universal truths can be seen clearly once the visor you view the illusion through is completely clean. This is seldom accomplished by those who walk with us. When it is accomplished, we usually silence them, or deify them, or both. Their insights threaten our societal constructs, and those with material power cannot tolerate an uncontrolled populace of seekers.
The problem comes with where our attention is focused. Children are sponges, absorbing cues from before they’re born (a fetus begins to hear at eighteen weeks), retaining information, and filing stuff away. Part of what we learn very early is others know things we don’t. We are not taught to look within for answers, but to pursue and accept the stories others have heard, accepted, and passed along to us.
During our life, we reach points in our search where we have a saturation of conflicting information. We temporarily stop this overload by shutting off the flow of ideas, so we can sort. This happens at different points for different people, and doesn’t have to be permanent.
However, most of us know an individual that believed, at some point, they knew all they needed and stopped considering different notions. They could be very intelligent, but once you stop accepting new information, that intelligence turns to defending your opinions. Each of us can quit learning things new to us, but that doesn’t mean you know all you need, just that you hit a saturation point.
When we reach that saturation point, the war of internal conflicting opinions takes over and we flounder. We begin to search for someone to tell us what to do, to give us the secret. We find a person who says they know how to sort the world of things effectively. This happens because growing up you were taught by word and example that you should listen to everyone but yourself, and you must be able to justify your opinion. Everyone knows better than you and they must have the answers. Just look how confident they are and how doubt-filled you are. This is more confusion, because doubt is a key to growth.
