About Mind
“New world is here. Life opportunities are only how uniqueness opens a space for invitations for us to graduate from being good. Beyond uniqueness is the opportunity called originality in relationship, which redesigns what can be”. Said Brooks.
Funny he should say that, I thought just now as I read it. I thought about this just last night. I stood in the kitchen last night, cooking. I thought about many things. I just finished going through lines and lines of code, adjusting and tweaking web pages. My mind was very busy, I realized, and so I begun to feel instead.
I felt myself, I felt my body, I felt my house and the mountains beyond it, and gradually I shifted. My mind was still there, chatting away, but I wasn’t it anymore. I let it go, I opened my head, I allowed it to leave.
“I need my mind though” a thought came. “I need mind to work, to function, to make money, to organize life”. I looked at this thought and recognized it. I thought it many times before, said it many times before, and believed it. Yesterday I looked at this thought and realized that I don’t believe it anymore. I don’t need the mind to function, I don’t need the mind to work, to organize my life.
I don’t need my mind to help me fit into reality, to function inside of reality, as it is – instead I can change reality to fit me.
“This is just how it is” I heard millions of times before, we all did. “This is how it works”, “this is how life is”, “yes, we are God, we are Buddha, we are all already enlightened but we also have mind, we are humans and this is just how humans are”, “this is just our human nature”.
All those statements might be true, might be correct, but I believe they are still incomplete. A complete statement would say: “this is just how it is, for now”. This is just how humans are, for now, at this moment.
This is just how it is, I thought yesterday, because this is just how we’ve chosen it to be, this is how we have chosen to relate. If we have reality organized by mind and for mind, it is because we have chosen to organize it in such a way. If we have a set, defined “human nature”, it is because we have chosen to organize it as such. We have chosen, we organized it, we chose how to relate, we chose how to be.
And so I can continue to choose how to relate, how to organize. I can say: this way of relating doesn’t work for me anymore, I am going to relate like this now. I don’t need my mind anymore, I am going to be my body now, be myself now, and this is how I am going to relate with the world.
I don’t have to shift, change, adjust to accommodate reality, because reality will shift, change and adjust to reflect me. Because it is by how we relate that we create reality.
“I don’t care about people” I realized a while ago. we were walking dogs at night, my husband and I. We talked about something relationship-related. There was trouble in our relationship for a while, we talked a lot about it, and I was pondering and considering. And I realized that I don’t care about people.
I do care about them with my mind, I am interested in their affairs, I like talking about what happens in their life, having conversations about them … but I don’t care with my heart.
I don’t open and allow myself to be with people, I realized. I don’t allow the space, the connection, where there is no “me”. I don’t allow my mind to go away and simply be with another human, as fully and completely as I am with myself or with trees. Be present with them, feel with them, sense with them, relate with them.
“I” am always in the relationship. There is always “me” that observes, calculates, thinks, decides, acts … there never is a simple experience of another person. Well, maybe not never, but very, very rarely.
And so I decided to “practice” on my husband. I thought that it would be a good way to learn to allow myself to open to being with people, relate with people. I decided to be with my husband without putting myself in the way. To experience him. After few hours, after a day, the feeling begun to emerge, very slowly but unmistakably, the feeling of an absolute contentment. A feeling of being whole, complete in a very normal, very ordinary way. A feeling of being perfectly happy, perfectly at peace with my life, perfectly satisfied with myself, even though “myself” was not there.
“I” was gone, fear was gone, need was gone. My husband seemed to enjoy the results of my experiment, of my letting go of me, and I … I was perfect. I was complete, whole … perfect … once I let go of “myself”, as my mind would have it.
I heard the “All you need is love” song on a radio today and thought that it is true. All we need is love, but not the sort of love that we are used to. Not the love that provides support, safety, care, admiration, company. Not the love that fulfills needs, that solves problems, that remedies loneliness. Not the love that fills holes and gives what is missing.
All we need is love that is present when we are with another so fully and completely, that there is nothing but the experience of them. There is no thinking, no wanting, no needing, but simply relating, simply being. All we need is love that is a complete opening, that is in the space where mind is gone.
In this love, in this space, where there is no mind, where there is no needs, wants or lack, we are truly ourselves. In this love, in this space, there is no fear, no need to fight or defend, no need to do anything at all. In this love, in this space, we can relate with everyone, with everything – humans, animals, plants, trees, rivers and rocks. In this love, in this space, we are who we are, and so is everyone and everything we relate with.
Last night I walked down the street by my house. The moon is half full now and the black trees stand out distinctly against the luminous night sky. I stopped by a tall eucalyptus tree for a moment. I stood looking, opening, feeling, and then I sung. It came to me that I could hold a certain sound, a certain note, that the tree would respond to. We could talk to each other.
I opened my mouth and the sound came out and the tree responded. I could feel the tree’s awareness so much clearer, so much stronger. I could feel the tree relating with me as I spoke to it with the sound I made. There was nothing there but the sound, and the feelings it carried, and the presence and experience of another life, of another awareness, of another being. Presence growing stronger and more distinct.
I was not there, I only experienced, as I was experienced.
Have you seen the movie “Avatar” yet? Do you think that we need fiber optics cables that blend with trees and animals to be able to be with them, relate with them, communicate with them? Or to communicate, to be, to relate with each other?
Well, think again.
All we need is love.
I saw the movie “2012″ few days ago. It was a story about fear, desperation and survival. A story about how very rich people got to buy themselves a way out of the end of the earth, while everyone else dies. It wasn’t portrayed as a bad thing, it was simply what’s so. “And it is what’s so”, I thought afterwards. “It is a picture of reality, but oh, what a reality that is! What a world to live in! ”
“This is not my reality”, I thought in self defense, and then I read an article about a certain painkiller that was sold on Ukraine. It was an over the counter medicine, cheap and available to everyone. After taking about 5 pills the drug acted like heroin, and was just as addictive. It was called “the kid’s drug” because it was so cheap that everyone could afford it. The story was about kids who started taking it when they were 6, 7 years old. As their bodies adjusted to the drug they needed more and more pills, they would take 20, 30 at a time, few times a day. At some point someone realized what the painkiller really is and it was discontinued. There were no more pills in stores, the factories producing it have been closed, but hundreds of thousands of addicted children remained.
Having no other choice they turned to heroine. The 6 year old boy grew up to be 19, his body completely devastated, in constant pain. He walked on crutches. His blood vessels are destroyed by years of being pierced with needles, several times every single day. There are blood clots in his veins that could kill him at any time.
This young man has been under the influence of some drug or another since he was 6. Out of fear, out of pain, he has chosen to intoxicate himself nearly every day of his life. There was not a day in his life, except in early childhood, when he was present, when he was real, when he was here. This is a reality, I know, but oh, what a reality this is! What a way to live! What a world to live in!
“This is not my reality”, I thought in self defense, and then I saw a movie on youtube about how albinos are persecuted in some African countries. They are considered evil, broken, they will not be employed, they will not be send to school as it’s considered a waist of money to educate an albino, everybody knows that they are retarder, too stupid to learn. At the same time their body parts are supposed to have magical powers so they are hounted, their legs and arms are cut off and sold on a black market.
“So what do I do?” I wondered when I walked my dog tonight, “what do I do about that?” As I recalled all the stories of fear, survival, pain, disaster, I thought: “how do we know what reality is?” How do we know what is real, and what is not? How do we know “how life is”? How do we know “how it is done”? We are told, I realized. By parents, by teacher, by priests, by TV, by movies, by books, by reporters. We are told by all the stories being told. There are some of us who will go and look for their own answers, for their own ways and for their own truths but, for the most part, we are told.
I myself am working on a story right now. It is about a girl who stumbles into a magical realm and is presented with a quest. It is a dangerous quest, it may claim her life … it may not … no one really knows. No one can tell her what will happen when she enters the magical forest, no one can tell her if she’ll return or not. No one can tell her how she will change, no one can tell her what to do or how to do it.
I gave the outline of my story to a couple of friends and asked for their opinion. They both said, more or less, the same thing: there needs to be a villain we will have to confront. There needs to be danger, there needs to be fear, there needs to be a disaster that will motivate her, otherwise why would a girl undertake the quest? Why would she go one the journey? Why would she take the risk, rather than simply go back home to her parents?
I thought about what they said and the more I thought, the more I begun to realize that if there was a villain who would force the girl to act, if there was a disaster that the girl could not escape other than by confronting it, if there was so much fear that she could not refuse the journey, then this story would be no different than the other stories I heard lately. It would be no different than a story of terrified people forgetting everything and everyone just to survive. It would be no different than the story of a young boy so afraid of life that he chose to be permanently unconscious. It would be the same story as that of african people fearing the albinos and attacking, to destroy what they fear. It would be the same story, a story of people acting out of fear, out of pain, to survive, to overcome a disaster.
And even if my story ended with success, even if the girl overcame the evil and saved the world, even if the girl turned out to be a hero in the end, she would still do it because she had to. Because there was evil, because there was a disaster, because there was fear. Because she had no choice.
So if we know what is real, “how people are”, “how things work” by being told, then I am going to tell a different story.
From this way forward, here is a story I am going to tell, over and over again: there once was a girl who found herself in a world of magic and embarked upon a quest. She didn’t have to do it. There was no disaster to avert, there was no danger, there was no evil to deal with. Nothing would happen if she refused, she could simply go back home. But she didn’t.
She chose to go on a journey not because she was forced or manipulated, but because she wanted to. She chose to go on the journey because the world was full of magic, full of wonderful mysteries waiting to be uncovered, filled untold miracles waiting to be experienced. A world where anything could happen. She chose to go on the journey for the love of adventure.
This is my story, and if what is reality is what we are being told, then this is what I am telling you: there doesn’t need to be fear, there doesn’t need to be pain and there doesn’t need to be a disaster. We all can have a life full of adventure, we all can become heros and change reality into a magical realm not because we have to, but because we want to. For the love of adventure.
“Imagine that a mountain is not a mountain. Not what we see as a mountain, what we call a mountain. Imagine that a mountain is a spirit being, without physical form. Imagine that this being is bigger than the mountain you see, bigger than the Earth, bigger than the Universe. Imagine that this being is boundless, endless. Now imagine that this endless being chose to manifest itself as a mountain here, on Earth.
The being is not a mountain, it simply chooses to manifest a shape of the mountain as a way of relating, as a way of being present here, on Earth. This is how mountains are, this is how we are” , I said to my husband yesterday, as I was trying to explain to him how mountains teach me about being human.
“The mountain relates to me the way it relates to itself, as who I really am. It holds space for me to be the being that I am, manifesting itself as a human woman. The mountain shows me how to be present this way, just like Brooks does.”
I’ve needed the mountain’s teachings lately. After my family’s visit, which was long, heavy and intense, all the stress and reaction begun to surface and I found it hard to be here, to be in relationship with my husband, as stressed out as I was, to hold space for someone when I needed someone to hold space for me. I wanted to leave. I wanted to go deep into the mountains and stay there, I wanted to be alone.
There is such peace when I wander up and down the mountain trails, there is such space and such presence when I sit on boulders, looking over the distant ocean. Late in the evening, after the sun sets and there is only enough light to see the trail, there is silence in the mountains. Human minds withdraw into homes, into brightly lit spaces, and the mountains become wild. It never takes long for my mind to choke on it’s own rapid thoughts and become silent. It never takes long for me to come back to myself, to be myself. It never takes long for me to see that all the problems, all the drama, all the feelings, emotions, pain, confusion, frustration, are only trauma. Trauma from my childhood, from when I was growing up, from where I wasn’t present, from where I got lost.
It all comes up and my mind grabs onto it and starts spinning, and twirling, and twisting, faster and faster, to create more pain, more fear, more confusion. Spinning stories, constructing solutions and explanations, moving this pain here, explaining this fear there as this or that, taking an old story to create a whole new one … my mind calls it “solving the problem”.
In the mountains there is no space for “solving problems”. There is no space for mind’s antics. There is only me, who I am, what I am. My mind is only a story. It has nothing to do with me.
But then I have to go back. Back to where the darkness is chased away by lights.
Back at home, late at night, Christopher and I sat in bed, talking. We haven’t said much to each other for the last few days … I didn’t say much. I didn’t see any point in having a conversation. We could have talked about what happened, analyze it, spin stories, construct solutions and come up with explanations. Move this pain here, explain this fear as this or that, take an old story to create a whole new one … it seemed pointless to me. “What will change?” I asked myself. ” I can take the pieces of my life and rearrange them, I can move somewhere else, do something else, with someone else, but what will change? Will I change? Will I be any different?”.
There was nothing I could think of doing that would change anything, nothing that would make any difference at all, and yet something had to be done. We were tense, angry, resentful, and something had to be done.
As I sat on the bed, saying little, looking inside, it came to me. It took me a moment to acknowledge what I saw because it was not the answer I would prefer, and yet I could not deny it. It came to me that there is nothing to do, to solve, to fix or to change. I don’t need to move, divorce, change my profession, read relationship books, attend workshops. All I need to do is relax and step into the situation. I need to come back to myself, be myself right in the middle of the anger, the frustration, right in a center of the trauma. And it will heal, open, transform, by itself, spontaneously.
Right there, in my bedroom, it came to me that I can become as wild and present as I am in the mountains, and there will be no space for my mind’s antics.
“I have learned to create a space for myself to be who I am by separating from other people” it occurred to me at the very last day of my family visiting me. They came here for three weeks, all the way from Poland. It was the first time I spent three weeks with my family since 2000, since I moved to USA.
I never considered my move to America to be an escape. It was a great opportunity at first, then I was in love. I didn’t really want to move here all that much, I did not come here for the sake of the place itself. It was to be with a great Zen master, then to be with my husband. And yet I had nightmares, for years I would wake up terrified from the same dream of being stuck in Poland, unable to leave, unable to come back here. I would sit in bed, cold with sweat, and I would repeat to myself that I’m here, that I’m safe, that I’m here.
I did not feel that I was escaping my family when I moved here. There was nothing to escape. Technically I lived with those people in the same apartment but there was no relationship, I thought. I always had my life and they had no place in it, they had nothing to do with me. Once I moved here a phone call, or an email, once every half a year, or once a year, seemed perfectly sufficient to “keep up the appearances” of being connected, and to keep them at a comfortable distance. And yet I remember the first time I went back to Poland after coming to America. I only spent one night in my old home, in my old room. I was pacing the room back and forth like a tiger in a cage. I felt trapped, snared, terrified that something could happen, that I would have to stay there, that I would not be able to leave.
It took me 6 years to screw up my courage and go back to visit again.
There was really nothing to be afraid of. My family has plenty of issues, God knows, but I wasn’t terribly abused. I was not tortured, raped, starved, locked in dark cupboards, I did not have to live on bread and water. My parents are not evil monsters nor heartless psychopaths. And yet I could not be there, I could not be with them.
And then they came, my mother, my sister and her son. They came to stay with Chris and me for three weeks. They brought Poland with them, they brought my childhood back, threw it in my face and I realized that I have to look at it, face it this time, or those three weeks will be a torture indeed. So I looked.
As I watched my mother, as I interacted with her and my sister, I could see, one after another, the source of my traumas. I could see my fears and the defenses I put up to protect myself against them. All the my problems that, in themselves, seemed inexplicable, were put into context and I could see where they came from. My defenses now made perfect sense to me. And I realized, at the end of the very last day of my family’s visit, that I have learned to create a space for myself to be who I am by separating myself from them.
Once I decided that I don’t want to be like my parents, that I don’t want to be like my sister, I removed myself from them. I was myself, as I wanted to be, because I didn’t belong to the family anymore. On the very last day of my family visit I realized that I am myself, as I want to be, by removing myself from a relationship with everyone else. I am who I am by separating myself from others. And if I can’t maintain the separation, if I can’t remove myself, then I am gone. Who I am, myself, unique and original, is gone, as I merge with whomever I am with. And the possibility of this happening is terrifying. Terrifying enough to hunt me with nightmares.
Those last three weeks were very intense. My relatives just left a couple of days ago. I’ve been sitting in my office, which now is my office again (not the guest bedroom), in the wonderful peace and quietness of a house occupied only by Chris and me. I’ve been sitting here, in silence, after three weeks of speaking nearly constantly, in two languages at the same time, and I could feel my body relax. I could feel my head open, I could feel my mind slowing down and expanding. My body is resting.
My body is resting not only because the stress of being a hostess, and a tour-guide, and a translator, is now gone. As I realized that I am who I am by separating myself, I also realized that I don’t have to do that. I don’t need to be always on my guard, I don’t need to be always careful about where I am, and with whom. I realized that I am who I am, in any place, with anyone. I realized that I don’t have to remove myself from any situation, from any person or company of people, that are not just like me, that don’t support being me. I am who I am. I can be who I am. In any place, with anyone. I can simply be me with everyone and everything, always, if I choose to.
Is there a point of me being who I am otherwise? I can enjoy being God all I want, I can revel in my uniqueness by myself or with the select few I feel safe with, but what good does it do to anyone? What good does my being here, on earth, right now do to anyone, if I can not be myself with others? What good is there of my being compassionate only with compassionate people? What good is my being enlightened only with enlightened people? What good is there in me be being open and tolerant only with open and tolerant people?
I can have a nice, pleasant life, being who I am by myself, within the limits of the world I created for myself, admitting only those select few who “fit in”. By being who I am with others, with anyone, at any time, I can change the world.
