In the extraordinary experiences that people have in altered states, or with other phenomena that seems to be otherwordly, there is an element of absurdity that can be upsetting, humorous, and frightening in turns or all at the same time. When you have temporarily lost your grounding in your regular life, the Cosmic Clown can come on strong! It might not look like a classical circus clown. It might by a Gray or a ghost or a gargoyle or a blob or part of a face, or something weirder. Funny or scary, it is often perplexing.
The Cosmic Clown is a disrupter. It is there to make serious things hilarious, and awe-inspiring things creepy. It changes things up, offers a fresh point of view, and distracts from things good and bad. It makes you question.
If you re-focus your lens to a big picture of the human condition, you can see how clown elements have come and gone over the course of history. Some have been destructive, some instructive, and others inspirational.
On my first big intentional psychedelic journey, I was reminded of a phrase I had read in a post by Whitley Strieber which refers to Meister Eckhart: “God laughs and plays”. I kept saying it over and over during that journey. Whether we feel happy and hopeful or beaten up and stressed, God just keeps laughing and playing. Our response is ours, not imposed from God*.
God seems to keep sending us clowns to remind us that nothing is what it first seems to be.
*By God, I mean the big source of all that is that goes by a thousand names.