Article by Stuart Wilde

I talked last time about the term claridad, the Shaman's joke that describes a student's lack of clarity—his or her stupidity.

Claridad is a dysfunction, an anomaly, that comes about when people on an Aya' journey say, experience the vastness of the Primal Source in all things. At first they are over awed, then they believe themselves to be the Primal Source, or at the very least the embodiment of it, or they see themselves as the Chosen One, the message bringer. He or she that has been especially selected from six billion souls to carry back the energy or the power from its celestial resting place to enlighten and heal humanity. Of course, the shamans fall about laughing at all this but claridad is serious as some people go round the bend on it.

The process is more or less the same for each person depending on the degree of foolishness they need to expose from within themselves.

The first step is the Self-Anointing process:

This is when the fool decides he is the One. It can be triggered by any small thing, not just an Ayahuasca journey. A stain appears on the fridge door that looks like Jesus, and a mental voice tells him that he is special among men, and that all his hopes and dreams of becoming rich and famous are about to be made manifest. He has been chosen by a Higher Authority. The Self-Anointing is the mental process of buying the story—believing in it because the claridad sufferer so desperately wants to believe it. It's a narcissistic psychosis that plays to his arrogance.

The second step involves an appeal for Ratification:

Now he quickly needs the dove to appear and a voice from heaven to say "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." In the absence of that he will seek out his master or a guru or some person he considers spiritually elevated to ratify him. In the same way as the Christian kings of old traveled to Rome to be ratified by the Pope.

There is an inverted power-play in the ratification because what the claridad sufferer actually wants to say to the master is, "You thought I was a nobody, an ordinary student, just a back-seat member of the congregation, but I was in hiding. In fact, I am very special—the Anointed One. And by the way master, you are a fool and a nobody because you didn't see it. I am better than you."

The third step involves Debasing Others:

This step follows naturally from step two. The Anointed One has to trash, and get rid of and make wrong all the other shamans, teachers and masters, in order to establish the reality of his authority. So the claridad sufferer fights with others and causes trouble. It's a combative step. But the shaman knows what's happening and he or she won't play ball. They walk away and leave the fool to his madness.

The fourth step involves Soliciting Observers:

How things become 'real' is for the claridad to be observed as the One. So if you are channeling a message from the Higher Powers you need an audience to observe that. If you become President, people observe you in the pomp and pageantry of the presidency, and that is how you are made real. There is never a time when you are not just an ordinary Joe acting out the presidency, but it is in people observing that that the idea of your elevated status becomes real. That is why people buy red sports cars. Red is the easiest color to see and a sports car makes a lot of noise, who will miss noticing the very special person going past? The one that is so very different to all the others.

Sometimes the solicitation for observers is inverted, so the claridad will say, "Please don't tell anyone who I am, I don't want any followers. I don't want to be treated as special." You see pop stars do this in interviews all the time. They love to say, "I am just ordinary," meaning, I am very far from ordinary. The inversion is a marketing tool for in fact, the claridad wants all the things he says he doesn't want. He wants people to adore him and fall upon him in reverence. He wants to be recognized and admired and worshiped. So by asking people to keep his specialness a secret he promotes the story. If you want an idea to enter the mind of humanity as an established fact, you only have to surround it with a bit of mystery and make it into a hush-hush conspiracy and everyone will believe it.

Going into Jerusalem Jesus said, "Who do they say I am?" That is a classic claridad statement. If any one of his disciples had had his wits about him he could have saved Jesus. He could have replied, "They say you're a work-shy, rather ordinary carpenter from Nazareth, now stop mucking about JC, and pretending, and let's have a beer or two and then go home."

Step Five involves Anger:

This comes about when others don't see the claridad as special or chosen or anything but ordinary. Now the claridad gets furious as his dream and his arrogance has been challenged. He needs to cause a scene and take on the established authority to prove himself. So he throws the money changers out of the temple, because he is so special and they are not special. They have established separateness from others by being rich and handling money; he is probably piss poor but he is above money, better than money. His separateness comes from his divinity. In his mind he is pure gold, for the raiment of the Chosen One must be pure gold, mustn't it?

Step Six is the Crucifixion

If very few or none at all, observe the Chosen One as chosen, and if he has the dysfunction of claridad in its extreme form then the only way to prove his divinity it is to have a self-arranged crucifixion. Here the man's shadow works out a way to sacrifice him. It may not be actual death but a form of simulated death. The guy gets sick or goes bankrupt and/or his whole life falls apart.

It's the idea that says, if I go over the cliff in my red Ferrari will you love me, will you remember me as special and different, will you feel sorry you didn't acknowledge my divinity in time?"

The alternative Step Six:

The alternative step six is when the fool is rescued by someone, his spouse say, and brought back to earth. He hits the ground with a terrible clunk, and for a while he bares the bruises of the fallen angel Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and burnt his wings and fell to earth.

He has the option to go back and make good on the trouble he caused and apologize to all those that he hurt but he is usually either too embarrassed, or too arrogant to do so, and so he doesn't bother. And then there is always a small part of the narcissistic psychosis that stays with him. He can never forget the time when it was almost true—a time when he was God for a short while. It's an infection that never leaves, a wound that is so deep that it cannot ever be completely healed.

© Stuart Wilde 2004
www.stuartwilde.com