Do you ever ask yourself, what the hell is going on here? Or, do you ever ask, has the world gone mad? I certainly had these thoughts during the horrible events of 9/11. And think what people must have thought during WW 2. We could go on and on about current events.....attempts to blow up airplanes, murder or abuse of children and what of the craziness displayed in the recent political events? I said to a friend recently that it seemed to me we are living in an insane asylum and the only thing we can do is to not contribute to the insanity.
After some reflection I realized there is more we can be and do. We can contribute to sanity. That is what Jon Stewart was attempting to do with his Sanity rally. Agree or disagree with him politically, he was simply asking, “why can’t we disagree without demonizing and hating those we disagree with?” More specifically he was asking the media, aren’t we contributing to the insanity? I couldn’t help but notice that pundits on both the left and right did not get it. Instead they attacked the messenger.
What’s my point? We can contribute to sanity by examining ourselves, by observing our own thinking and emotions and asking, is our thinking true and accurate on whatever issue we have a charge around? Am I more committed to being right than to sanity? Who am I being? Am I being a person who is adding to the insanity or am I adding to sanity?
I recently began to question who I was being regarding politics and discovered I was contributing to the insanity of politics by often demonizing people I disagreed with. I have recently been questioning my political identity and discovered that I could back off and hear valid points on both sides of the debate. I could hear beyond the crazy talk and see fear and concern or commitments people were underneath the charged emotions.
Does that now make me a political independent? No, that is not what I am pointing to. I am pointing to our ability to recognize, that contrary to what we may have been culturally taught, we are not our thoughts and emotions. And we access that recognition by discovering and developing our inherent ability to observe our thoughts and feelings. So that begs the question.....if we are not our thoughts and feelings, what are we?
Now that is the big, big question that is probably beyond the scope of words and more on that later. But I do say that observing and questioning of our thinking can lead to dis-identifying with thinking and emotions that add to the insanity. More on identity later.
Jimmy Wilson
Jim, I share with you the sense that the state of our political conversations have become insane, both at the citizen level as well as among our "leaders." People are afraid to even voice an opinion for fear of being verbally or actually attacked for expressing themselves. Friendships have been strained over differences in our political perspectives. I have tried to step back and examine my tendency to assume that I am right, more compassionate, more knowledgeable than they. I would love to see more forums for people to discuss a specific issue facing our society from all perspectives with the intent to listen and move toward a wider wisdom. aw
ReplyDeleteI think the key point in your comment is "a wider wisdom".
ReplyDeleteI am all for more forums, more compassionate, etc. and what I see about the "wider wisdom" is maybe a starting place for each of us personally is to start with focusing on "waking up to to our true nature" and when we do maybe we can begin to get a glimpse that we all are of the same nature even those who speak crazy stuff or act out the crazy stuff. Those who do "crazy" just happen to be identified or stuck with believing that is who they are. Maybe they are just more asleep than most in which case maybe we can have compassion. By the way, I am not saying that we shouldn't take action with the "crazies", e.g., those who threaten to kill the President.