Khalil Gibran's The Madman 1: A Reading For Reflection

This is the Prologue from Khalil Gibran’s work The Madman. I invite you to take a moment to relax, listen to the short reading and allow the words simply to fall into your awareness without intellectual grasping. Perhaps pause for a moment afterwards and notice how you feel.

Transcript

A reading for reflection from Khalil Gibran's work,

The Madman,

His parables and poems.

You ask me how I became a madman.

It happened thus.

One day,

Long before many gods were born,

I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen.

The seven masks are fashioned and worn in seven lives.

I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting,

Thieves,

Thieves,

The cursed thieves.

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the marketplace,

A youth standing on a housetop cried,

He is a madman.

I looked up to behold him.

The son kissed my own naked face for the first time.

For the first time,

The son kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the son 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.

And I found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety.

Even a thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

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