Being God
How do I change the world? It is a hard question to answer, isn’t it? But I found an even harder one: how do I live with the world, and in it? How do I remain myself, when I feel the constant, strong, irresistible pull to be “one of them”?
I’ve been so angry, so frustrated and outraged in the last few days, because of all the changes that are happening in America right now. I would have ranted and raged uncontrollably, had I allowed myself to open my mouth and say anything at all. So I didn’t say anything, not out loud, but the furious argument was running in my mind, all the time, without pause.
I did not know what to do with it, about it … I still don’t know much, but I can see the reaction. I can ask myself: “why does this affect me so much, why is this so personal?” and I can trace it back to the place where I was a child, living in my family’s apartment, and not allowed to be myself.
Yesterday, lying in bed, I felt like I was back in my childhood home, back in Poland. I felt like all the years of MY life have been erased, canceled. I felt like I was one of them again, like them again. Who I was, my own life, my own creations, my own reality – even the possibility of having my own reality, was gone. I did not have my own life anymore, I was part of them, a member in the system, a family system.
And so here I am, no less angry, frustrated, terrified and disgusted … because I feel that I am not allowed to be myself again, because the system (whatever that may be, family, society, law) is intruding into my life and wants to adjust me to match everybody else, so that I am not myself anymore, not a unique, autonomous, independent woman – but simply one of them.
So what do I do? How do I live with society, in a society, but my own way?
Of course I know the answer, I know that it is not a system that is doing this to me, it is not society that forces me to let go of myself. I know that it is I who is not remaining present as who I am, it is I who has collapsed and merged, it is I who let go of being responsible for how I relate.
“Be happy”, Brooks says, “this is a great news! It’s a wonderful opportunity for you to graduate!”
sigh…
1. Thinking doesn’t solve problems, it causes them
2. Disagreement is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate uniqueness
3. We can be no less than perfectly happy, ALWAYS, and
4. nature is the best model to learn from
5. There is no need to know anything
6. and so there is no being in the entire Universe and beyond, who knows how my life should be lived
I read a question today: “how do you define progress” … and I found myself lacking a definition, lacking any idea, lacking anything at all, on the subject of progress. Nothing I thought about it felt right.
My head would persist in providing me with all sorts of reasons why progress was good: the improvement, the growth, the development, the help extended to those in need, the cure for diseases, the better world … but my body was not convinced. My body is not convinced.
I sit here right now feeling what progress is, and it feels to me like a mind running wild. Progress feels to me like my mind getting very busy, determined, motivated. It feels to me like my mind creating a whole reality for itself, a story, like a virtual life, where mind sets the rules, values and goals. In this virtual reality everything has to always move forward, because mind can not rest. In this reality things must be always happening, there must be always something to do, more things to do, and more, and more…
In this virtual reality, created by my mind, all issues, problems, dilemmas, are solved by more activity, more doing, more creating, better creating, better doing, better, faster, more …
As I sit here, observing my mind, seeing where it goes at the though of progress, my body is unmoved. It sits here, warm, comfortable, peaceful.
My body sits on a chair. There is no need to move. There is no need to do anything, there is no need at all in my body. It is simply here, present. And it feels good. Calm, relaxed, grounded.
I am here. That is all, there is nothing else and there is no need for anything else. The need is in my mind, not in me. Progress is in my mind, not in me.
I am here.
How can life be wasted? What does it even mean: wasted life? A friend told me today about her father informing her, that she wasted her life, and it stuck with me, because I could not see how she could do such a thing. I could not see how life could be wasted.
Am I wasting my life? I am not doing what many would agree I am supposed to be doing. I don’t build a career for myself, I don’t have a job nor do I look for one, I don’t have much money nor do I feel I need more. I don’t have children, nor do I plan on having any. I don’t own much, other than clothes, books and some furniture. I have no safety, no security, no property and no prospects of having any. Am I wasting my life?
From my friend’s father’s point of view – yes, I am. But not from my point of view. From the “normal”, “common”, “established”, “traditional”, point of view I have not achieved much in my life. I have not gathered much, I have not accumulated much, I have not created much of what society considers desirable, important, necessary. I have not followed the rules which we all, normally, play by. In fact I did my best no to follow them therefore, from the game’s point of view, from the society’s point of view, my life is wasted. Wasted, because I can never win. I can never win, if I don’t play.
But I have made a choice not to play, and this is what makes my life valuable in my eyes. I have chosen to spend my life on discovering who I am, in relationship to it. There are no rules or structures that can help me with my purpose. No one can tell me what to do or how. None of the “ways of doing things” can be of any use to me if I want to do what I want to do. Because I am the only one who knows what it is that I want, who knows how what I want looks like.
My life is very well spent, according to me, because I chose to create it myself. My life is very valuable, according to me, because I chose to design it and to decide how it looks. I decide whether having stuff or money is important or not, I decide whether being rich is a mark of status and value, I decide whether I should have a job, or work a lot, or not at all. I decide. And because I decide how my life looks like – my life is not wasted.
When I thought about the place from which I see my life, and the place from which my friend’s father sees it, I realized that what he sees as life well spent I see as life wasted. What I see as life well spent, he sees as life wasted. And yet, though our points of view are as different as may be, I do not see his life as wasted – if he has chosen it for himself.
There is a young men I know. He has chosen to be a film maker and decided to put his entire energy and time into it. He doesn’t have a job, he doesn’t have a home. He lives on couches, in guesthouses, supported by his friends. He does odd things here and there to make some money, but other than that he focuses his entire attention on doing what he wants to do in life. What he wants is important to him, everything else is a distraction.
He doesn’t do the right thing, not by a long shot. He does some things that can be questionable, from the normal, moral point of view, and from my point of view. He does some things that I could criticize him for, and yet yesterday, when Chris and I were talking about him, I found myself saying: he really is a quite remarkable man.
As I considered this closer I realized that I do feel that about him. He is not a “good person”, he does some things I would not do myself, but he knows he’s doing them. He chooses to do them, he owns the fact that he is doing them. He decides. He designs how his life looks, he creates it how he wants it. Whether I agree with his choices or not doesn’t matter much – his choices are his, mine are mine, naturally they are different. What matters, I realized yesterday, what is important, is that he is there, present, aware. That he is the one who chooses.
And so today, after I talked to my friend, as I thought about life wasted, I realized that this is what a wasted life means to me: a life that I did not choose, life that is organized for me by others, life that follows the rules set by society, culture, parents, teachers, establishment, anyone but me.
If I am not present in my life, if I am not choosing it, creating it, designing it – then I am wasting it.
I used to be afraid of snakes. Really, honestly and deadly afraid. A thought, an idea that there could be a snake somewhere in the house (if I read a story, or saw a movie with snakes in it) would be enough to scare me to death and keep my legs up and away from the floor for hours.
On the main street of the town I live in there are people with snakes sometimes. They bring the snakes in big plastic containers, take them out and let people touch and pet them. I would always keep an eye out for the snake people, making sure to cross the street as soon as I saw them. I couldn’t walk by them. Sometimes, when I’d forget to pay attention and walked to close to the snakes, I would freeze for a moment, then turn around and walk away as quickly as I could.
Few days ago I walked down the main street with my husband. The snake people were there. I noticed them and realized that I could walk by them, that the fear wasn’t coming, the paralyzing terror was not showing up. We walked towards the snake people, closer and closer, and still I felt that I didn’t need to run away.
I told my husband that I didn’t feel afraid, and he said: great, let’s go then, and walked straight to a lady who was holding a snake, rolled up in a little ball in hear hand. I followed, stopped few steps away from the woman. I felt that this was enough, that it was a huge achievement for me, just to be these close to a snake.
The woman came closer, she wanted me to hold the snake, I jumped away. She wanted me to put out my hand, but I wouldn’t. It was terrifying, I wasn’t ready to be this vulnerable with a snake. Instead I extended one finger and touched it a little, on it’s back and on it’s belly. The snake didn’t move, my husband was holding my hand. I was breathing fast, I felt like one does when walking into a cold lake, deeper and deeper into a cold water. The body is in shock at first, tense and ready to jump away, then, slowly, it relaxes, ready to take the plunge.
I was not relaxing yet, my body was in shock. Being this close to a snake, this intimate with it, was to much, too intense. I could not hold it, could not stand it, I could not stay present – so I started talking. I asked the woman about the snake, it’s breed, it’s age. As she talked, I relaxed. I felt safer somehow, the talking, mind stepping in and organizing the situation, made me feel safer, calmer. The connection with the snake, the presence of the animal, was not as intense, not as clear, not as immediate. I put my mind and the words between us, like a shield. I felt safer behind it.
When the woman asked me to put my hand, palm up, on her palm, I did. She promised me that she would not remove her palm until I was ready, then she put the snake into my hand.
I held it. It wasn’t moving. It was rolled into a little ball, looking at me with it’s black eyes, and the woman removed her hand. I held the snake and felt no fear, though my body would not relax. I was breathing too fast, hyperventilating, I begun to feel dizzy and handed the snake back to the woman. I felt faint, I didn’t want to drop it. My husband gave the snake people a donation and I walked away.
It took me a while to come dawn, it took my body a while to relax, to let go of the adrenalin, to come back to normal. It was a big deal for me, holding the snake. A big deal that the fear which was always there was now gone. I thought about it a lot, and my thoughts would come back, again and again, to the moment when I could not stay present with the snake, and I talked.
It was a big deal for me to hold a snake, and yet I felt I missed something. I missed the real, direct experience, the full experience of the presence of the snake – because I would not stay present, because I started talking.
Talking was a distraction, protection. It did not encourage relationship, rather it put a distance between me and the snake, it separated us. Because of fear, I talked.
I do feel sometimes that I could feel so much deeper, be so much more present, if I didn’t speak. And yet, it is not speaking itself that is getting in a way, I think. It’s not the language, words, that are distractions, that diminish the experience. It is how I use the language. It is how, and when, and why I speak.
I can talk to protect myself, to distract myself, to remove myself from an experience, to keep myself safe. Or I can find my own, unique voice – and then say something. I can speak words that create reality, that are who I am. Then there is no distinction, no separation between me and the words I speak. Then I can say the word – and the world will change.
Didn’t God create the world with a word?
