Recently while listening to the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” we came across the term malignant normality. Some psychologists and psychiatrists have defined this as arrangements put forward as being normal when in fact they are dangerous and destructive.
Regardless of an individual’s view towards the current administration, they are irrelevant to this post. Political figures come and go. Instead, we would like to apply this term to “everyday life.” The life where we accept identification with a personal body, suffering, fear, etc., as normal.
This is the life most of us live. We have accepted this malignant normality as the truth of our being. To paraphrase Nisargadatta Maharaj, we are not experiencing malignant normality, we are living malignant normality as our experience. We have mistaken external circumstances as existential reality.
To break from this delusion of living malignant normality, we must first recognize what we essentially are. From this state as Isness, the delusion of identification with life as a malignant normality is seen through.
It has been said, “Become the change you wish to see in the world.” It is even easier than that. You already are boundless Isness before even the concept of boundless Isness. You do not need to become something new, you merely need to stop identifying as what you are not.
Let’s ask ourselves right now, without going to mind for the answer, “Who or What am I?” This direct experience of stillness, of nothingness crackling with all potentiality, is what we fundamentally are. Directly experience life from here. No stories, no judgments, no analysis, just pure, open awareness from moment to moment. With Isness as the forefront of our living, malignant normality can neither thrive nor birth.
“The Invitation,” currently offered by Mooji, is a simple step-by-step approach to drop what you are not so you may notice what you have always been, eternal Isness. “Be still,” is another equally efficacious approach. When you are truly still, you have dropped the changing and are left face-to-face as the eternal Isness. As St. Francis of Assisi stated, “What you are looking for is what is looking.”
Once we have directly experienced life as Life, we are free from identification with the malignant normality. From this point on, if we find we have reverted to identification with malignant normality, we have an apparent choice. We can view life from the perspective of the malignant normality or view life as Life. Life lived as Life still sees the malignant normality, but is no longer bound by identification with delusion.
Be still and . . . Be.
Shalom, Steve and Bec