Striving for Insanity

Striving_For_Insanity.mp3
5 Minutes 9 Seconds. Read by my UK robot friend Elizabeth.

by Aaron Matlen

Unfortunately in this world, striving to be insane is the only way to meet one's full potential. For what does it mean to be insane, except to be regarded as such? Galileo, Copernicus, Jesus, any person who seriously challenged the status quo has been considered insane.

What does the majority think? All over, from all people, I meet unrelenting negativity of the heart, a social acceptance of mediocre at best, an expectation of failure at worst. Yet we want to hope. We want real change, we just want someone else to do it for us. In the end, no politician can save the world, only inspire. Inspiration in its raw form is simply passion, energy to be molded for the greater good.

The negativity of this world: ideological murder, sectarian bloodshed, civil rights abuses, preventable starvation, poverty, and disease, all caused by our lust for money and power, belief in ignorance as a virtue, misplaced hate, repressed anger and fear, separation and discrimination between races, nations, religions, creeds, and ultimately the acceptance of all this, is to me, unacceptable!

There is no societal option to follow the higher path in life. "What an optimistic fool." "That's not going to make you any money!" are these your best responses? Go ahead call me insane, but I do not want a decent life if this world and humanity pays the price. The world in its current state of affairs is a tragedy! It NEEDS US. It needs everyone, and I'd rather have a difficult, challenging life devoted to a worthy cause than materialistic sleep walking and self-centered paradise.

The rejection, negativity, and numbness to do anything slowly takes over ones mind, over years of constant practice... soon ones optimism, limits of potential, and striving for a better world becomes a faint echo in a past self, forgotten... but not lost. Do we lose all faith after youth? I accept that it becomes harder to remain positive and "youthful" in the face of life, its currents and its struggles. But I refuse to accept it is impossible, necessary, or any force that should get in MY way. We burn more passionately than oil and fire, we are the center of stars, the heart of consciousness.

I understand what happens to MOST people... we get caught up in life, inevitably swept along the currents of the river of life. Our job, rent, food, kids, their eduction, family, friends, material wants, our home, and what we call our future, retirement, back up fund, medical, car, personal care products, entertainment... these things are not a choice, but a condition we find ourselves trapped in.

In most people's lifetimes they never look outside of the box they were born into. Our society, the ideals that sculpted you, these are self-imposed limits, ones you most likely believe. You believe this is the only way we should live, the only way you can make it. This is not true.

There is nothing logically BINDING about our situation. This is a statistic, a probability, which means room for error, room for outliers -- and I for one am that outlier! I for one believe we all will be outliers compared to the median of current society.

To be happy and fulfilled all the time, to give everything you are to others, to be unrelentingly positive, dynamic, intelligent, awesome -- to be your super hero self - to cultivate the raw passionate fire of life that burns inside you -- you call this impossible? You call this insanity!? I call the world INSANE! Anything logically possible, I can and will do! So many forget our limits... our limits are far-reaching, nearly infinite in potential. If not alone, by amassing others of infinite worth, ANYTHING TRULY IS POSSIBLE. The power of this world is yet untapped.

For this new bar, this different level of being rarely attained... this is our destiny, our future, inevitable. I'd rather be a pre-born, insane in this world, than to negate that this is possible. I'd rather face being insane to all, just to try. The gravity is too serious to ignore, technology is sweeping us forward at exponential rates, and consciousness must keep up, even stay ahead.

If my level of happiness will typically level out... why do I strive to be happy above all else? Why not struggle for that which is worthy? Deeper satisfaction replaces jubilation. Peace and bliss in action is nonattached attachment in everything you do.

The end goal is not idleness. The path to higher levels of peace and awareness come not from idle meditation, but nonattachment in action. To feel and yet be above the feeling, To know and yet be above the knowing, To experience yet be beyond the experience, what State of Consciousness is this? It is the universal consciousness, beyond individual self, to whom you sacrifice all action for. It leads to thinking about everyone, always. Compassionate, always. To be nonattached and attached, feeling and thinking, and yet feeling each feeling and each thought on another, wider perspective, a wider scope. The one continuous, never ending, universal awareness -- almost... nothingness to all others who are stuck within ego and self... almost... insane to all those caught in the web of the status quo. This is what I will not yield. This is what I will become.