What Spiritually Awake People Feel in Crowds — Unknown

You know, there's a very peculiar thing that happens to people who have undergone what we might call a spiritual awakening. They find that crowds, gatherings of people, what we would ordinarily think of as perfectly normal social situations, become extraordinarily difficult to navigate.  I don't mean difficult in the sense of social anxiety or shyness, though it might appear that way from the outside. I mean something far more subtle and far more profound. When you wake up, when you see through the game that most people are playing, when you recognize that the emperor has no clothes, you begin to experience crowds in an entirely different way. It’s rather like being the only sober person at a party where everyone else is intoxicated. You can see what’s happening with a clarity that's almost painful, while everyone around you is completely absorbed in the drama, completely identified with the performance.