being normal

Being normal. Sometimes I have to laugh at human psychology. We human beings, we are all running around feeling ourselves to be abnormal. I am the odd one out, I am different, everyone else fits somehow in society, in the groups, and I am the odd one out. I don’t fit. I am abnormal. This is the basic feeling – sometimes conscious, sometimes not so conscious – the basic feeling that almost everyone has about themselves. And we tend to feel uncomfortable with being abnormal, because one of the great comfort blankets is to be normal, the norm. What do we mean by that? The average, just like everyone else. And this is how we tend to validate ourselves as if we need validating. And this is why I say I laugh at the psychology. It’s absurd that we should feel that we need to prove that we are fit to be here. We have to assert to ourselves that we are okay the way we are.

Deep down we have somehow got that belief that there’s something wrong with us, and this is where that deep feeling of abnormality comes from. There’s something wrong in me, just me, nobody else, just me. Everyone else is normal. Everyone else is okay. And there’s something deeply wrong in me. That’s the underlying psychology, and there’s a huge gulf of separation that comes from it. But over the top of that we paste this layer: the normal feeling. I want to be part of the group, I want to be in, I want to be likeable, I want to be part of the herd, I want to follow the fashion. All of these are aspects of being normal. That way perhaps I will feel like I belong here.

Can you see how messed up we are psychologically? And it’s not just you. Almost everyone has this. It’s absurd isn’t it? Each of us is a unique being. The norm doesn’t exist. What is it, some sort of average? How can you have an average of blue eyes and brown eyes? It doesn’t make sense. How can you have an average of a man and a woman? It’s meaningless. There’s no such thing as the norm. And yet, a part of us wants to be normal. It’s a great reflection of our deep crisis, concerning who we are as an individual.

And of course one way of defining the spiritual journey is as the search to find out who I am. And of course, to find out who I am, I have to set aside all the erroneous ideas about who I am. These comfort blankets constitute those erroneous ideas. And we cling to the comfort blankets. We cling to the ideas of who I am. That’s why these ideas become an obstacle to our spiritual growth. And if we have managed to reach a point where we are feeling ourselves to be normal – we fit into society, we play by the rules, we don’t stand out in the crowd, we have friends, we have little social circles – It’s all a front isn’t it? It’s all a game we play so that we can feel normal. We feel that we belong through these superficial adjustments of our personality, putting on masks, playing roles that are defined by others, defined by society. These are ill-fitting clothes that we force ourselves into, day after day, because we want to feel that we are normal.

It’s very difficult to let go of this comfort blanket. What would it mean to accept I am not normal, and I have no interest in being normal. My interest is to be who I am, authentically. If that’s in the middle of the crowd, so be it, if that’s way out somewhere on the fringe or beyond, so be it. To be oneself is not to compare oneself with others. There is this feeling of standing alone, even when surrounded by people. It’s a deep sense of aloneness. But with that aloneness there is the chance of authenticity, the chance to be oneself as one is, no longer worrying about what other people may think of one. There’s a great freedom in it, a great liberation.

But whilst we are struggling to value ourself, whilst we have doubts about whether we belong here in this existence, then our mind will keep reaching for this comfort blanket of being normal, of fitting in. So can we just trust: that our existence alone is the only justification needed for being who we are, the way we are.

We all belong. If we did not belong in existence, we would never have come into being. And we are individuals, we are unique, we differ from one another in so many ways, and that variety is what makes life worth living. If we were all normal, there would be just one big boring soup. Everything would be predictable. There would be no point in meeting another human being, for they too would be normal, exactly the same as ourself. And all of this variety is seen as so beautiful, when one has grounded oneself once more in one’s essence.

At our core, we have a root that runs to the centre of existence, and when we feel that to be who we really are, everything else becomes superficial. It becomes rather unimportant, not something to feel serious about. But at the same time, all that superficial personality becomes beautiful, something to play with, something to allow and enjoy, both in oneself and in others. The dance of the manifest world comes from these differences between us. If we were all normal, there would be no dance. So let’s drop this feeling, this urge to be normal. Let’s let go of that comfort blanket and enjoy the dance.