The Madman

The Madman is one of my favorite poems from Khalil Gibran.... As I have been shifting so much the last couple of weeks (As I know many of you have been too...) this Madman poem becomes all too real. When you are shifting you will find that your mind will go and go and go - talk and talk and talk - all kind of crazy and conflicting thoughts and emotions come up and if you aren't careful you can get really caught up in them. They are only coming up to be healed of course. The proper and most healing thing to do is just to accept, observe and release them but sometimes they become incessant. That is the time of your greatest growth though... at that moment when you feel as if you can't go for one more minute. When you feel as if you can't handle letting go of one more emotion or thought. When you feel emotionally, spiritually, mentally drained... but you choose to let go and surrender again anyway. That is when the healing takes place. That is when you begin to reveal and step into your mastery. We have all seen with what happened with Robin Williams how real all this can seem. I think if we are all honest with ourselves - no matter how you feel about suicide - we can step into his shoes and understand and have compassion for his decision. Remember there IS a light at the end of the tunnel.... and truly when you reach a certain amount of awareness and awakening you also remember that there IS no tunnel and the light was there all along... <3 Loving you <3 THE MADMAN "In the stillest hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whisper: First Self: Here, in this madman, I have dwelt all these years, with naught to do but renew his pain by day and recreate his sorrow by night. I can bear my fate no longer, and now I rebel. Second Self: Yours is a better lot than mine, brother, for it is given to me to be this madman's joyous self. I laugh his laughter and sing his happy hours, and with thrice winged feet I dance his brighter thoughts. It is I that would rebel against my weary existence. Third Self: And what of me, the love-ridden self, the flaming brand of wild passion and fantastic desires? It is I the love-sick self who would rebel against this madman. Fourth Self: I, amongst you all, am the most miserable, for naught was given me but odious hatred and destructive loathing. It is I, the tempest-like self, the one born in the black caves of Hell, who would protest against serving this madman. Fifth Self: Nay, it is I, the thinking self, the fanciful self, the self of hunger and thirst, the one doomed to wander without rest in search of unknown things and things not yet created; it is I, not you, who would rebel. Sixth Self: And I, the working self, the pitiful labourer, who, with patient hands, and longing eyes, fashion the days into images and give the formless elements new and eternal forms-it is I, the solitary one, who would rebel against this restless madman. Seventh Self: How strange that you all would rebel against this man, because each and every one of you has a preordained fate to fulfil. Ah! could I but be like one of you, a self with a determined lot! But I have none, I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and nowhen, while you are busy re-creating life. Is it you or I, neighbours, who should rebel? When the seventh self thus spake the other six selves looked with pity upon him but said nothing more; and as the night grew deeper one after the other went to sleep enfolded with a new and happy submission. But the seventh self remained watching and gazing at nothingness, which is behind all things." ~~Khalil Gibran