The exiled scapegoat, the black sheep, the nonconformists and creative maladjusted…

The scapegoat is an active archetypal force in many people’s lives. Reading insight from others who are also intimately familiar with such energetics can be very healing. I’m sure many of my readers are resonant with it too.

Exiled scapegoats can, thus, return to serve the collective as agents of its deepest and most difficult needs…. But they are also a community unto themselves.

They form a loose society of nonconformists. It is one devoted to transpersonal processes underlying the individuality and secular collectives.

Those in this society listen for the guidance that comes from the intersection of life and death, joy and pain, love and wounding. They are more or less willing to feel its paradoxical and raw nature. Since they struggle to continually accept that intersection in their own hearts, they can work with inevitable shadow projections, not as a prelude to scapegoating and splitting in order to attack, but as a means of life long personal growth and ethical actions.  ~ Sylvia Brinton Perera from Scapegoat Complex: Toward a Mythology of Shadow and Guilt

The above quote also made me think of this quote by MLK which I’ve shared before:

This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

And then:

Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say a nonconformist is a blight on society.

But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, means one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture.

When seeking guidance, don’t ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessings, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.

If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious, you’re on the right track.

Wild Woman is close by.

If you have never been called these things, there is yet time. Practice your Wild Woman. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Another one-liner that I’ve put on this site many times before because it can never be said enough:

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

A new addition: 2025

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh…” ~~ Jack Kerouac

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more on the scapegoat etc:

wisdom and foolishness

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