being gravely uncomfortable in the face of what is happening all over the planet is a sign of deep knowing, not illness

Good advice from Erich Fromm:

If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being “asocial” or “irrational” in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to “explain,” which usually implies that the explanation be “understood,” i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation. — Erich Fromm, from

Another short excerpt from Erich Fromm that was very popular: Here we see that normal isn’t something to aim for…

You are your own teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your own doubts. Investigate yourself to find the truth – inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important. ~ Ajahn Chah

I often write about how what works for me may not be appropriate for anyone else when I talk about healing. Well this extends out to our entire lives and spiritual pursuits too. This is the fundamental reason that coercion in psychiatry is wrong too. People all have their own way to find. And we know this deep within ourselves. This is why our idiosyncratic experience is only that. To generalize it to others is arrogant and misguided (it is sometimes also, violent and dangerous). Just as the psychiatrist didn’t know what was right for many of the readers of this blog, we too do not know what is right for anyone other than ourselves. We would be much better served if we were told by mental health professionals from the very beginning to trust ourselves rather than anyone telling us what to do. Instead, the entire system is fraught with the infantilization of the client…this is (in general) true of both psychology and psychiatry as currently practiced.

Our government now, too, as it turns to dark and ugly fascism imagines that it can do no wrong and that it can impose it’s ugly will upon innocents. Our government on some level is me and you, too. This stuff is killing our species and is in every one of us. As we come into deeply being ourselves we can hope to heal some of the profound sickness of our times. A tiny little bit of it, as we heal ourselves and respond with integrity to stop what is happening in our country and all over the world.

Because remember our being gravely uncomfortable in the face of what is happening all over the planet is a sign of deep knowing, not illness:

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

I don’t feel I’ve chosen anything about my healing journey…I’ve only moved along as I’ve felt led…and in that way I can only trust that others are doing the same on some level and it’s none of my business whether or not what I’m doing makes any sense to them (and vice versa) as well as whether they’re interested or not…we all do as we do and something in us knows. My guiding principal, too, is to not harm others as I come into myself. That’s it. The rest is all winging it and sometimes we are not graceful and we make mistakes and inadvertently hurt people we care about too. I watch, learn, grow and hope that the harm I cause continues to minimize.

Related from Beyond Meds:

May we all honor the mystery of our individual paths.

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