Insanity and the Spiritual Path

[rva_jeremy]

what do you think creates 'insanity'?

I'm not sure there is such a thing.  I think insanity is what we call problems with balance when they manifest in ways the society cannot integrate.  But there are lots of things society can integrate that I think are utterly insane (like prisons or nuclear weapons).  Therefore, I find insanity a very subjective thing, generally.

I like the way Timothy Leary talks about reality tunnels -- the way our minds filter and distort the infinite amount of incoming signals to create a narrative that orients us and afford us meaning.  People who we call "insane" typically don't see something we clearly see, or see something we simply don't, because they're piecing together their reality differently.  Their patterns of thought are not in the same "key" as the chord created by society at large.

Debilitating insanity seems to me like some sort of desperate clinging to patterns of thought that, while unpleasant, are deemed to protect the entity from some even less pleasant pattern of thought or unacceptable aspect of reality.  Insanity, in other words, seems driven by a fear that arrests the natural ability to let unneeded patterns fall away.