Let the light of your sensitivity shine

Let the light of your sensitivity shine. — The word mad triggers some folks. The above title is a rewrite of the language Carl Jung uses in a quote I am sharing and then writing about. I see the word madness as a reappropriation that I can celebrate. Like queer. I can easily use other words and hence I changed the language in the title. I try to read and listen past the words these days. We all use different words that carry different connotations from person to person. To really hear someone means being able to hear more than just the words. Sensitivity and madness is the same in my experience. The sensitive can open to that which is considered mad with some ease. When one stops being afraid it becomes easy to communicate with those labeled “mad.”

Madness remains an important concept in the literature. People who study Jung have a very difficult time with the Red Book. The thought that Jung might have been psychotic is triggering.

My experience has shown that when Madness is embraced and supported it is a rich and healing ground that needs nurturing and tending. For now society continue to murder our prophets by drugging and isolation.

The post:

“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too.

Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature…Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”

C.G. Jung, The Red Book

 The Red Book only recently published long after the death of Jung shows a man whose journey included what is too often dismissed as “psychosis.”

Madness and sensitivity is a gift. We throw it away when we don’t take care of our people. We’re killing our prophets without ever knowing them.

Those considered mad have always been the sensitives who cannot stand by and watch the vast deceit among humanity without becoming ill. They are the shadow of humanity in motion to remind us…to beckon us back. Start listening to the mad ones.

Childhood neglect and abuse of all kinds change the body. In order to heal the human family we must appreciate this. Those experiencing homelessness, the incarcerated, the “mentally ill”, so-called addicts etc. are all traumatized and have injured nervous systems. We’re participating in murder when we ignore this.

The biology of great sensitivity isn’t understood yet. We have bodies that experience everything we do.

When we can’t process what comes in because of overwhelm the microbiome and nervous systems develop issues that are correlate to the emotional impacts of our lives. These injuries can be very complex. Recovery isn’t always possible in the current climate because ordinary (also traumatized, but less so) people are cruel to those they don’t understand. The most vulnerable are routinely thrown away and frankly, murdered with society’s blessing. Our blessing.

Pharmaceutical drugs do not heal these injuries-they actually compound them.

A system that drugs people instead of listening to them and nurturing the body also further traumatizes. Our system of “care” is a system of eugenics. Death by neglect…we learn it in the home first…and all it’s ugly manifestations.

More posts on Carl Jung and the The Red Book on Beyond Meds:

• Not insane and not unique
• Red Book Dialogue: Carl Jung himself thought he was psychotic
• Talk To Me: Loving Your Evil Side
• Carl Jung, another drug-free recovery from psychosis

The Red Book

and the readers edition (without the artwork)

The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition

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