This very apt painting was created and presented to me by a lovely gifted soul and friend (Vicki R). Little did she know the impact it would continue to have on my life.
Every time I look at this painting I discover new lines and dots and squiggles, but also a deeper meaning in the words “We’re all mad here!!). So follow me down this rabbit hole if you will.
Here on this field of consciousness, each human is playing out a storyline. Sometime we aware of our existence in this field, and sometimes we are fully oblivious, and completely subscribed to the human ego-story.
I am conditioned with an internal pattern, a right-wrong for everything, just as you are. We learnt these pattern, beliefs, theories growing up. They gave us that solid foundation to stand on, to hold onto. A foundation of certainty.
Somehow, no one person’s foundation resembles that of another, even if they grew up in the same house at the same time! bizarre I know! This is most likely because each of us has our own perception process of what was right-wrong, good-bad, allowed-not allowed. A certainty equation if you will. Anything that sits outside of this equation makes us uncomfortable and so must be challenged, fixed or rejected.
So, when I behave in a way that doesn’t fit your internal pattern I appear MAD to you. When you live your life in a way that doesn’t fit my belief of right-good-allowed, I deem you, mad.
Thus, “We’re all mad here!!” I am mad to you, and you are mad to me. I judge your behavior, reject you as a person, just as you hate and repel me and my way of doing and being. Thus the ego stories between us spiral, as hatred and distance, between us, our friends, families, countries. etc. continues to grow.
There are times, when we are accepting of our individual “madness” and compassionately observe our differences in behavior and patterning, no matter how uncertain and bizarre they appear compared to our own. Its at these times, we can find humor and love in how “We’re all mad here!!” and continue to grow closer and more loving to ourselves and each other.
Very well put by Martha Beck– “There are many paths as there are people, and the only one I can chart is my own. I have no idea, for example, where your true path may lie. But you do” -Finding Your Own True North Star.