In the sixty-odd years I have been on this planet, and I do mean odd, I don’t think I have ever really felt normal.  And I think you know what I mean.  I have tried like ‘crazy’ to fit in with my family, school, friends, jobs, marriages.  And yet, I have also rebelled every chance I got.

There was a part of me that desperately wanted to be accepted as ‘normal’, and there was my soul, who didn’t give a damn.

Fortunately I have been a highly creative person, always expressing through writing, art and music.  And because I have been made to feel crazy because of that creativity, I am more tough skinned than others about being the odd one.  Amazingly, even in graduate school, where I was working toward a master of fine art degree, one of my professors stood there in front of us and said that he hoped we had a back up plan.

In other words, not to expect a creative life to necessarily pay the bills.

And that’s because to a large degree the arts are still not taken seriously, at least not in the United States.  They have been considered a nice frivolity by most left brained.  And while things may have progressed, it continues to amaze me that the first thing that gets cut in school budgets are the arts.

The arts are not seen by many beyond the decorative or as entertainment.  And that is largely due to the fact that most people are not accepting their own soul as real.

The same can be said for true spirituality.  Most people are not truly spiritual.  I really don’t even like that word, spiritual, because of its association with religion.  Let’s call it Consciousness.  But they associate the idea of a soul with being ‘out there.’  Eternal life, that’s pretty woo woo to them.  They may subscribe to an abstract concept of god as some force ‘out there’ and even worship  Jesus Christ as their savior.  But a soul that exists within THEM?  That’s the definition of crazy.

One of the biggest challenges of allowing our soul more intimately into our lives and bodies is the notion that we will appear crazy (or for some of us, even more crazy) to others.

It took me years to extricate myself from obligatory family gatherings without the guilt trail.  That was for me a huge hurdle.  But it’s nothing compared to showing up as a woman who has the fire of spirit in her eyes.

It’s  a piece of cake compared to walking around as someone who has fallen so deeply in love with themselves that they are ok with their human self, and all its so-called imperfections.  And they are ok with forgetting people’s names, or not wanting to celebrate anyone’s birthday.  Maybe not even their own, because to them, their real birthday was when they chose to awaken.

They are ok with not being the care-taker for the planet or for anyone on it.  It’s a choice that will have us looking pretty selfish, and pretty crazy.

WHO’S CRAZY NOW?

So now here we are, doing god knows what, according to others.  They may see us as eccentric, off in our own world, in denial, in a cult, or just getting old.

Or as just plain crazy.

Yet their own lives aren’t working very well, and they do see something in our eyes they haven’t seen before.  In spite of some apparent issues, they see a sense of peace.   A balance.  They can’t reconcile the two disparities….how can someone who is facing some real human issues and challenges seem so at peace?  Without self-medicating??

And it’s because we are getting closer to being our normal selves…our soul-selves.

And they are further than ever from their normal selves, so they are beginning to feel crazy.  Which they should.  It’s a freaking side-show out there.  People running around doing god knows what for a modicum of security, sacrificing their integrity and their joy daily for a paycheck.

Enduring life, but not truly living it.  Believing that everyone else comes first.  That they are not worthy.  Believing they are just a singular being, and that they alone as the singular human must hold it all together.  They are born, they go to school, they get married, have a career, make money, retire at sixty or seventy, and shortly after that, they croak.  The end.

But at least they are heavily medicated.  Whatever drug of choice works for them….including the drug of work, work, work.  Or losing themselves in sex or a really bad relationship.  Or a myriad of mind numbing drugs to help them to continue enduring a colorless existence.

And of course society supports their choices because it all falls under the umbrella of acceptable, as normal.

That, my friends, is not crazy, that’s psychotic.

But we all know at this point that the world is not anywhere near ready to acknowledge their soul to the degree we have.  And that too is ok.  But there are enough who are ready and more are coming.  So the more we begin to say with confidence that we are in balance. That we are much more than the human we see as we look in the mirror, the easier it becomes for those who follow.