As children we may have been told, “Don’t be silly!” At the moment, we were being spontaneous, imaginative and at least to our own minds, humorous. So maybe we learned to tone down our rambunctious imagination. We adopted a more proper air. We learned to over-value decorum and logic. We became conventional.
The word silly is used as an opposite for wise. It is foolish, trifling, irresponsible and lacking good sense. But if you look at the etymology of the word silly, it is related to soul. It comes from the Old English sǣliġ, meaning blessed. The German cognate selig can mean blessed, happy, blissful, or soul, among other things.
It is blessed to be free to enter into states other than those bounded by the linear and logical. To be playful and humorous may be silly, but it is also childlike and god-like. It is unlikely that one can be truly enlightened without a sense of humor. To overcome suffering, one must get the cosmic joke. To be truly happy, one must be able to step outside of convention at least some of the time.
Our minds have the capacity to create order, and when they do that, they select out the parts of consciousness that make sense to us. They throw away the mind stuff that doesn’t help us connect the dots. It may be that it is out of that collection of junk that we construct humor and art. Comedy is often silly, but it may tickle us, because of the truth it reveals beyond conventional thinking and behavior.
Intelligent and logical does not always correlate with wisdom. The Taoist sages of old, may have been wise, but they also embodied the fool archetype. Out of simplicity and originality comes an appearance of foolishness. When one sees beyond conventional thinking, one may appear to be a fool. In fact, one may take on the persona of a fool in order to speak the truth. Court jesters and some modern comics are examples of this. When a comic says something silly that reveals the truth, we laugh, but we also gain a glimpse of the reality behind the curtain of our culture.
When we are silly, in the sense of unpredictable and outside the bounds of the ordinary, we may attract people’s attention. Great teachers may have the skill of being silly when it is called for, because not only can they attract and hold attention, they can teach both hemispheres of the brain, both the logical/linear and the creative/non-linear sides. Truth does not always fit into nice boxes and neat categories.
Our minds are in many ways wild, but have been tamed by acculturation and habit. As we develop our ego, we may lose our wildness, our sense of fun and spontaneity. As we grow in wisdom, we see the ego for what it is, a construction of our mind. When we pry back the grip the ego has on our real self, we may find ourselves more often in that silly, blessed, soulful space unafraid to look the fool.
Ask yourself:
How afraid am I of looking foolish?
What is the harm of appearing silly from time to time?
Am I willing to do something silly when the moment calls for it?
Practice observing your own thoughts and dreams without trying to make it all seem logical. When you think of images from your dreams or reveries, rather than trying to figure out what an image represents, let it talk to you. What does it have to tell you? What other imagery does it lead you to? Or, rather than trying to do anything with it, just notice it. Accept that some of the thoughts you have will be crazy and some of the dreams will be twisted. There is no need to attach to them and no need to push them away. Allow the field of your consciousness to expand.
© 2009 Tom Barrett