Going Sane

Going crazy is more obvi­ous than going sane. Gen­er­ally, the sec­ond takes longer than the first. Trauma only takes a sec­ond; heal­ing from it may take a life­time. The insanity/sanity cycle is actu­ally con­stant. We go a lit­tle crazy then a lit­tle sane all of the time. It makes life inter­est­ing and is the spi­ral path to greater wisdom.

There was a pat­tern to the way God dealt with the Jews in the Old Tes­ta­ment. He would dis­ori­ent them then reori­ent them. Res­cu­ing them out of Egypt was dis­ori­ent­ing. Get­ting them to a home­land was reori­ent­ing them at a higher level. The process in between was chaotic. Edu­ca­tion does the same thing. Our sim­ple worlds are shat­tered by greater par­a­digms. In time, we see life through the bet­ter mod­els. About the time we get com­fort­able, the whole process begins again.

Some­thing eter­nal is being made in the process. Souls are more grown than merely cre­ated. The great heal­ing sto­ries of Jesus included insights as well as bod­ies that were once again free from dis­ease. Going sane affects the entire mind, body, and soul. Peo­ple with­draw when they notice some­one “slid­ing down­hill” or “going off the edge” of their nor­mal exis­tence. We are afraid it is contagious.

It takes a lot of dis­cern­ment to know where you are in the cycle. Cult depro­gram­mers say that there is a sense of eupho­ria when peo­ple go into and then back out of cults. Los­ing the mind then regain­ing it often car­ries the same sen­sa­tion. Appar­ently the door in and out of san­ity trig­gers cer­tain endor­phins. For that rea­son, good feel­ings alone are not the mea­sure. (Just because the vil­lage idiot smiles does not mean he or she is okay.)

San­ity is some­times more painful than insan­ity. It is more aware. Some­times it is less painful. San­ity knows that too much aware­ness can be over­whelm­ing. A sane per­son knows how to go in and out of sweet obliv­ion. I have found that the key is know­ing the dif­fer­ence between my jour­ney and that of oth­ers. My ner­vous sys­tem holds the capac­ity for one. Assum­ing the illu­sion of a sec­ond or third is to step off the cliff. Going sane gen­er­ally means sim­ply tak­ing a step or two back.