Medicine or Madness? The Space Between Normal and True

“Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace. Nowhere else is there such intimate and frightening access to the mysterium.”

— John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (xvi)

When we partake in Medicine, we see and un-see, know and un-know, name and un-name. Self and world reorganize.

Many times, this rearrangement is subtle. Many times, subtle is what we select. The hand of Inheritance pulling us back. The impulse towards tethering powerful.

To go further is to risk. To go far enough is to chance no return. Dissolution is in the agreement. Dismemberment, in the details. Didn’t read closely? Missed the fine print? No matter. We all sign off eventually.

Weightlessness wrecks our form, they say. Space madness they say is made up. For anomalies, there’s a protocol. For situations, an enforceable fix.

Here too, I think, on terrestrial grounds. Find ourselves in the wrong place, wrong time, weightless enough…and our world runs out of options.

But not necessarily. Most especially, if we go quietly.

Existing at the edges. Slipping past unseen.

Weightless…but with the wherewithal.

This post is for those ones. This post is for us.

It says: I don’t know you, but I know you. Don’t think you are alone here. Don’t think you’re making this up.

Madness can mean many things. Here, we’ll focus on what follows Medicine.

Not medicine in the sense of swallowing pills. Nor in the sense of fast-food spirituality or clickable psychology.

You’ll not reach this place that way — meandering quick fixes forever, medicated with double-blind solutions, disconnected from most…everything.

The flesh of your body.

The Source of your soul.

Keep pace with the narrative, eyes trained on screens, and you’ll be, as they say, just fine. Insta approved. GenZ guaranteed.

Unless Medicine becomes a tearing away, an unveiling, Communion. Daring that sort of Medicine, who you were no longer will be.

Untethered now,

floating.

Somewhere,

in the gap.

For many, this gap is narrow, discreet — a mere crack in the pavement of All Is Well. For others, solid ground gives way and pavement falls through. The gap, now a chasm.

The more one wakes up, comes to, and comes home to a more complete, more connected expression, the wider the divide. The wider the divide, the more normal no longer makes sense.

I know how to talk about this fracturing in two ways, broadly. In the constructs and confines of my mind of the moment, the imperfect model looks thusly:

In the first ring, drifting away from what we once knew, words and ideas are still native, natural. There’s a gap…but also, we can make our case:

We live in a mad, mad world. It’s the arrangement, not us, that’s broken.

In the second ring, further out, words and ideas don’t work anymore. Oh, we grasp at them still — trying to translate, eager to capture what we can’t quite conceive.

Just there. Just out of reach. Beneath. Behind. Always present. In the dark. In the silence.

You’ll find both in my writings. First, the gap between what passes as normal in today’s human landscape and what I’ve come to know as true.

You may share these places of knowing…or disagree…or see others I miss or omit.

I centre myself with intention here, acknowledging that we all offer but a single, slanted perspective. To pretend that the observer doesn’t exist is ridiculous. To assume that any one of us possesses The Truth is absurdity, hubris, and violence.

This carries into the second ring. The place where all human construct falls away. The place where we know absolutely nothing, nothing at all.

Here too, all sketches are my own. Field notes through a clouded lens. Seeking Homeland yet feeling a stranger.

Many others describe this place — alternate visions are plentiful. All of us reaching back, back through the unknown. Hungry for something intelligible.

Both terrains are worth exploring, I think. The exploring itself may be the whole point.

So, we’ll start easy — in the first gap, indulging in concept. Then we’ll venture further. Deconstructing self. Braving the chasm of concept-less.

The First Gap

When you partake fully in Medicine whatever its form — when you show up, most of all, in a way that’s more mindful, more honest, and more complete — your way of seeing and experiencing changes.

Does this mean you are any better or worse than before? Or any better or worse than anyone else?

I don’t think so. I hold us all pretty much equal in the most essential of ways.

But what you once took as normal will no longer ring true. Old stories, beliefs, and ways of being won’t line up.

This includes the way the self works. This includes the way the world works.

Anyone who really looks around and within will see this. Once seen, it’s unseeable. The absurdities we care about and dumfoundment in what’s ignored. The insistence on centring our species, our people, and most of all ourselves.

The busyness and importance and rush and destruction. The lack of listening. The lack of care. The lack of…contact.

Our species as a whole is drugged and numbed. Our species, over a shockingly short span, has lost and ravaged impossibly much.

Even as we cling to the myth of Progress. Even as we make religion of Science and gods of the Self. It’s technology! It’s evolution! We’re better and better!

I don’t think so.

Ask the elders.

Ask the oceans.

That’s the first ring. Here, already, complicated and confronting. Here, already, we’re bound for debate. Why risk it?

To do less harm.

To be closer to Truth.

Further Out

But wait, there’s more. Because we’ll also drift into the second ring. Concept and construct falling away. Intellectualizing no longer sufficient.

More outer or inner — who’s to say? Directions don’t matter…nor time…nor place.

All that we take as known is unknown here. Even the word “here” is a stand-in. Something to name. Something to anchor. A translation of everything after the lexicon. A hopeful nod past curation of self.

Is this further frontier connected to the first ring? To the gap between “normal” and what we now know as true? Could be. Depends.

Any space defined by concept and construct holds temptation for the same tired games. For declaring my truth is The Truth. For saying this narrative is sacrosanct.

The Holiest of Holies confirming nuance is dead. Demanding we get on board across the board or get in line for exile…or exorcism.

That’s one way the first ring can go. That’s the way, most unfortunately, it’s been going lately.

Woke victims bludgeoning loved ones and strangers. Enlightened activists sowing division and hate. In making meaning, making ourselves better than. In demanding change, demarcating the Other.

Violence in the name of activism is still violence. Violence in the name of being right and forcing change is more of the same.

We become the exact thing we fear. We become the worst of us.

Moving from that place, the answer to whether the first ring of knowing connects to realms further afar is always No.

Lost in concept, tangled in righteousness, we recreate the very world we’re railing against. Passage beyond…unreachable.

But it doesn’t have to go that way.

Not if we hold all that we “now know” lightly — everything encompassed by an unknown whole.

All concept and construct. All this and all that. All us. All them. Both true. Both immediate. Either/or sharing an unknowable landscape. Either/or staking nothing more.

This is the way we connect our first ring to what’s further out.

This is intimacy and the fount of creation.

Mostly, others won’t get it just yet. Mostly, both sides will blame you for daring nuance and hurting the cause. Why? Egos feel threatened. Why risk it?

To do less harm.

To be closer to God.

Thank you for reading. I’m a doctor of Chinese Medicine and write about sobriety and soulful living. Find all my links here: