Balthazar - The Madman

by Kahlil Gibran First Illustration from The madman, his parables and poems

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”
Thus I became a madman.

– Khalil Gibran

by Kahlil Gibran Second Illustration

In an insane world you must be mad to be sane.

In an upside down world true sanity appears as strange and dangerous.

Things are so backwards that it seems impossible to be happy, that it is seen as dangerous to love, that it is seen as madness to be honest and authentic.
In this absurd world the only thing that makes any sense is to be radically authentic to ones self – even if it is the opposite of society

A person needs to discover their own innate insanity.
Madness, a divine madness that knows nothing of the conditioned and calculating head.  That mind which is borrowed from and implanted by society.

 The Madman

The one who unquestioningly follows their heart is a madman.
The one who unfailing listens to the soul and heeds it’s urgings is the madman.

The madman is dangerous – not that he will physically hurt you, but he will shatter your illusions. He is unpredictable, wild, and untamed.
You will feel uneasy around him because he does not prop up your house of lies.

She cannot be contained or influenced. You cannot bribe her with money or status. You cannot control her through fear or desire.

The madman loves his madness, he does not reject it. For he knows that his madness is his treasure, is his very life-force itself.

He sees animals and small children in their natural madness and knows his madness to be alike there’s, but more – more mature, more balanced, more conscious. And also sly, for he can conceal his madness if necessary. Only the twinkle in his eye betrays the chaotic kosmos within.

The madman is a drunkard, and a hopeless lover
She owns nothing, wants nothing, lacks nothing.

He is mad precisely because he is not mad.
She is utterly natural, spontaneous, unburdened, innocent.

The mind is insane. Society is insane. And the mind is societies conditioning in you.

“Normal” is to be profoundly inwardly sick. Beneath nearly everyone’s smiley mask is a mountain of pain, fear, sorrow, anger, anxiety, neuroticism, and insanity. Everyone you see is a dormant walking volcano that only doesn’t erupt because they have learned to suppress their inner energies.

And psychologists beleive themselves to be the caretakers of the inmates, when they are actually the most serious cases!

It is the mind which is truly insane – the mind acting without the lead of the heart and soul.

So you take up the title of a “madman” to console the sane ones. So that they wont be too upset and bothered by you.
When you are in an insane asylum, what else can you do but tell the inmates not to worry?   That “I am insane, don’t be upset by me. Don’t take me seriously.”

You have to be sly. Even though you know that it is really they who are mad and you who are sane.  That is the only way to get out of the madhouse without being stoned…
or crucified.

The freedom of madness

A man needs a healthy dose of madness, else he will never do anything great, anything new, anything real.
If you want to be truly alive and truly free you must be mad.

It is the mad ones who find the treasure.
It is only the mad ones who are daring enough to break free.
It is the mad ones who have all the fun.

You must be utterly mad
Mad to dance, laugh, and cry
Mad to live and mad to die

Mad to be oneself,
And mad enough to lose oneself.

Mad enough to risk everything for freedom, for truth, for the heart, for love.
Mad enough to lose all respectability if it means staying true to life and to oneself.
Mad enough to go to the depths of Hell and find therein Heaven.
Mad enough to go into insanity if need be to discover true sanity.

Be totally MAD!
Let people feel that you are dangerous, crazy, and weird. Let them fear you and admire you even as they fear you.
You madness will protect you from being chained and also from the chains of being understood.
Let them be afraid to get too close – lest their excuses and illusions are destroyed by your fire.
Lest the fire spreads to them and they catch your madness also.

Revel in your madness
Run naked through the streets shouting wildy
Learn to love your madness, your primordial chaos.
Dare to be ecstatic, dare to be untamed.

Go crazy, and not just a little. Go all the way.
Be The Madman 

https://sethbalthazar.com/