15: On Lanterns and Insanity

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I see you.  You spelunkers who wonder and play at the entrance to caves.  You cave explorers who find yourselves among dripping rocks and wet walls only to realize, all at once, that the sun is gone, left outside: “I'm going crazy!” you declare to yourself.

True, these caves and cave climbing is not for all�"they often swallow up and digest. The lost climber finds himself deep beneath the surface and cannot retrace steps, cannot see or feel around to do so: their very depths are so far hidden from anything they could communicate to anyone�"clumps of dirt and stone and solid ground separate.  All screaming is internal and in a language only the lost one knows.  Common people have no ability to understand or comfort the lost.  Insane, schizophrenic, crazy, they say, and fill them with lithium.

But for you with lanterns, you born cave explorers, your sense of direction gives you the strength to dig and bring back to the light of day.  You natural explorers would rather suffer the fate of that poor lost one than never enter those caves.  You would sooner die than extinguish your lantern and call it craziness.  And that is well.  

Those at the surface will often doubt and even despise your personal lantern, they will say it is nothing compared to the sun.  But the sun does not follow into deep caves�"of that they are unaware.  They will call you lost, invent terms of insanity for you�"often subliminally�"and when you call yourself “crazy,” you have made their terms your own.  Some actually believe these terms to the point of subconsciously embodying them.  The crazy are those who do not call themselves crazy, who are unaware of their insanity, who’s guiding light has extinguished.  But you born climbers know when your lantern runs dim, when you need to retreat for its fuel: you do not allow yourself to become lost.

Do not listen to those who call out insanity.  Who dress up insanity in medical terms.  They are despisers of all who dig of their own light.  Of all the eras and peoples I have seen, this is one of the first to define and despise ‘insanity’: until recently�"until the crowd mastered thought�"insanity was a virtue among men, a striving for.  The crowd used to praise the ‘insane’ for their insight.  But now, this gift they make into a danger.

If you call yourself insane before seeing the cave’s hotbed of life�"its brisk flowing streams and glowing nightcrawlers and colorful geodes�"you are not insane, you are echoing the voice of the crowd.  If you call yourself insane when some original and frightening thought takes hold in you, you are not insane, you are eating the crowd’s deterrent.  Regarding cave explorers and depth seekers, the crowd likes to make norms of the exceptions.  Easier to call all deviance ‘insanity’ than to confront all cases of deviance.  You natural spelunkers know better.

So dig deep, deeper!  Unearth and bring to the light of day what the crowd cannot.  Be warned, not all are born to explore: caves are too small and narrow to house many, too labyrinthine for many to find their way.