Creating Reality
“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.
“No one cares about me! Everyone wants something from me, all the time! My mother, my husband, my dogs! No one cares about what I want!” I thought on the night of the fourth day of my family visit. My mother being here causes all the traumas I’ve ever known or haven’t know to come up and bite me. The “no one cares about me” is quite an old one and I did recognize it, and yet I took it seriously and got angry. I barked and growled and hissed at my husband until he left me alone, and went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning still angry, though everything seemed hazy and unclear. I knew that there was trauma that came up, I knew I should let go of it, clear it up, but I didn’t want to. I was too resentful, too attached to it, I wanted to keep it with me for a while.
We went to run some errands, Christopher and I. We had to return a car we rented, do some shopping. The morning was overcast, foggy and hazy. I couldn’t see anything clearly, there seemed to be a smoke in the air obscuring everything, blurring the edges. I drove to the rental place rubbing my eyes to see better, drifting in and out of my anger and resentment, starting to let go and then grabbing onto it with a new force. Thoughts floated through my head telling me that I really should give this up … that it’s only trauma … that no one really cares about me … that on countless occasions no one bothered to ask what I want … that I am really making all this up and looking for evidences … that I am always the one made responsible for everything. Then I saw bright lights flashing at the edge of my vision, and I knew that there was no haziness or smoke in the air. My eyes wouldn’t focus properly because a migraine was coming.
I knew it was one of those heavy-duty migraines, one of those that always begins with haziness and flashing lights, and sends me to bed for hours with as many pain killers as I dare to take, then leaves me confused and achy for a couple of days. “I better let go of this trauma now!” I thought, and I felt into it and let it open as much as I could, and as fast as I could.
I sat in the car waiting for Chris to return the rental car. I kept telling myself to be present, to relax, to be who I am, to allow my head to open. Feelings rushed by me too fast for me to register. Pain, anger, frustration, I thought, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to merge with it, I knew that this is where the pain was. I went deeper and deeper inside of myself, out of my head, deep into who I am. There was pressure in my head, there were pangs and stabs. It did not hurt me where I was, but I knew that it was the pain.
I could not feel the pain because I was in the very middle of it, the very center of it. It was calm there, like in the eye of a cyclone. I sat in the center letting my head open, allowing the trauma to leave, to clear out of my body.
We drove to a store, got out of the car. My husband hugged me, told me that he is sorry for how I feel, sorry for everything, that he loves me. “I could feel loved right now” I thought “if I let go of this story, that no one cares, I could feel really loved”.
We walked into the store, the thought still hanging in my mind. Suddenly I felt that I left my head. Something shifted and my awareness was not localized in my head anymore, it was now in my entire body. My head was still there doing whatever it needed to do, healing, I hoped, but I wasn’t in it, I wasn’t stuck in there. The pain of the migraine was even further away now, I knew my head felt it but it didn’t touch me at all.
I couldn’t think much, I felt instead. A men came to talk to us. I didn’t know exactly what he said, but I could feel what he really meant, what he felt. On a way to another store my husband talked to me, explaining ideas he had about something. I could hear the words but they didn’t seem to have meaning, they scraped me, scratched me. I told him that there is no use in talking to me. Conversation happens in my head and I was not in my head. I wanted silence, I wanted for the world to be quiet. I needed to be quiet and my head needed to heal.
We arrived at another store and I started feeling my body going into panic. I still couldn’t feel the pain, but I knew it was there, so did my body. I became feverish, nauseous. Suddenly I wanted to cry, I felt sick and exhausted with reaction. I wanted to cry half with pain and half with relief, as though some terrible disaster was over, as though I now could let go of the shock, as though now I could cry.
The nausea was getting stronger and I felt like a little girl, sad, hurt little girl. I stood in a corner of the store letting those feelings open, letting them be. I tried to make them leave at first, but it only made the feelings stronger, more acute, and I thought I’d better relax and see if thy will float away on their own.
As we walked back to the car I could feel my head getting better, clearer. The child-like pain was fading away, the nausea was clearing out. I felt that the migraine is healing now, that it’s ending. I could tell that the pain is growing less and less. I still couldn’t feel it but my body was calming down, the panic was gone.
I was very, very tired. “I should go lie down” I thought, but it didn’t feel right. I was afraid to lie down, I though that if I drift away into sleep, if I loose even a bit of the presence, then the pain will take over. I thought that I have to stay with the tiredness and remain present till the very end, till the migraine is gone. Then it occurred to me that the tiredness may not be an effect of the migraine, the result of the process – but another stage of it.
I thought that and relaxed, and let myself be tired, and the tiredness grew less and less.
We arrived home, took dogs for a walk. The pain was gone now, the tiredness was fading away quickly and I begun to fell happy, really, really happy! The migraine was over and I knew that the trauma, the pain, the frustration which caused it was over as well.
We went back home for breakfast.
I described the process to my husband. “Wow, it’s amazing” he said. It didn’t feel amazing to me, I didn’t do anything special, there was no magic, no super concentration powers, no secret or sacred levels of consciousness available only to the select few. All I did was pay attention, be present, and let go. Be who I am and let go of the trauma that was not me. And yet I healed my migraine, without feeling any pain, without taking any drugs, without having to lie down. It was gone completely within an hour.
“What WAS special about it?” I wondered, “why could I do it now, while I couldn’t have done it five years ago?”.
Five years ago the migraine would happen to me. I wouldn’t know why, I wouldn’t know how. I wouldn’t connect how I felt with how my body felt, I wouldn’t connect the emotional pain with the physical one. Five years ago what happened to my body was caused by outside forces, therefore fixing it would have to be done by outside means. Five years ago I would have taken painkillers and gone to bed.
Today I know that if I don’t take care of the trauma, if I choose to invest in it, if I am not present, not responsible for it, then my body will have to process the trauma for me and it will get sick. Today I know that all I have to do to heal my body is to be present, to allow the trauma that causes problems to open, allow it to leave.
“You just discovered a cure for cancer” said my husband. “Not only for cancer” I said ” but for everything”.
On Monday, in Shtokholm, three American scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their research explains a significant aspect of the process our cells undergo as they age and die.
The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres are the caps on their ends. A unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation during the cell’s duplication process. With each duplication telomeres are shortened, causing the cell to age and, eventually, to die.
Telomerase is an enzyme that makes telomere. It’s activity is high at the beginning of cell’s life, then, as the body ages, telomerase becomes less and less active. Eventually telomerase stops recreating the telomeres, telomeres disappear completely, and the body dies.
This process is true for all cells in our body, save for one kind. In this one kind of cells telomerase’s activity always remains high, telomere length is always maintained, and the death of the cell is delayed indefinitely. Those cells are immortal. They do not age, they do not die.
Those cells are the cancer cells.
I read an article explaining this research and it made me wonder … with the quest for immortality, with the terror and denial of death, with developing technology that keeps the body alive for as long as possible, with the intense drive to always be young, to never change, to never die … what is it that we are really doing?
The only immortal cells in our bodies are cancer.
It does makes me wonder…
life is a mystery. The true nature of the universe, and our true nature, is hidden from us. Teachers, prophets, the great sages of human kind, posses the hidden secret of the universe but only share it with the select few, the worthy ones, the ones who are prepared to receive the knowledge.
I used to think so. Back in my “zen years” I would get exasperated with all the cryptic stories that ended a second before the culmination. The student would always see … something, but the story would not say what. “What did he realize? What happened? Why can’t they just say it?” I wondered. I was told the dharma was “deep and mysterious”, and those who understood it, the teachers, wouldn’t just say what it is. They would ask strange question and give silly riddles. I preferred straight, direct answers which, I thought, I could never get from them.
And yet today morning, as I was finishing the newest Dan Brown’s book, “The symbol”, I read: “This information is powerful. The ancient mysteries can not be shouted from the rooftops. The mysteries are a flaming torch which, in the hands of a madman, can scorch the earth” and I thought “no, this is not so”.
“Know ye not that ye are gods?”
The Buddha said: “You are God yourself”, Jesus said: “the kingdom of God is within you” and “the works I can do, you can do … and greater”, the gnostics taught to “Abandon the search for God … instead, take yourself as the starting place.”
“As above, so below”
“Know thyself”
“The secret hides within”
“God created man in his own image”
You are God yourself. How much clearer, how much simpler and more direct could this message be? Shouted from the rooftops, proclaimed by religions, prophets and philosophers, the mystery of who we are has been revealed and repeated over and over again.
There is no danger in this knowledge. There is no danger in discovering the truth of who we are, for there is no pain, no fear, no destruction in God. Pain, anger, fear, exists where God has been forgotten, where who we are is forgotten. Being who we are, God, fully and completely, can not scorch the earth, it can only heal it.
This knowledge is not a hidden mystery. There is nothing and no one, in this universe and beyond it, that has the power of hiding the truth of who we are from us – except for ourselves.
The truth of who we are has been repeated over and over. It is not hidden from us. It is us who are hiding from the truth.
“Is anyone else having trouble sleeping with all these planetary changes?” asked my friend today.
“What if planets have trouble changing because we don’t sleep?” I asked, in response.
“Well, if the planets are trying to align with me, they’re in trouble.” she answered, and I said:
“The fate of planets is in your hands, and so the most important question in all of reality, right now, is: how are you doing?”
It was a fun little exchange and yet it stuck with me. How would it be, I wondered, if we were, in fact, influencing the movements of planets? How would it be if my moods, my emotions, my reactions determined reality?
The reality would shift completely, my life wouldn’t be just “mine”, isolated, private. It wouldn’t be just “my business”, it would be everybody’s business, the whole world’s business, reality’s business.
Can you imagine who you are affecting not only you, your family and friends, but the entire planet? You get sad, and it rains, you get angry and there is draught, you are happy and there is a beautiful, sunny, fresh weather. You are furious and the earth shakes. If that was the truth – how would you see yourself, relate to yourself? With what care and awareness would you experience every minute of every day, if you knew that the wellness of the whole planet depended on it?
Kings and queens knew that responsibility, I thought. They knew that their life isn’t only their own, but also, if not most of all, their people’s. They knew that by being who they are they created reality for entire nations. They accepted the responsibility, they held the space, and so they were given a great power.
Powerful people of present day … do they rule and organize the world because they have the money and influence that allows them to do it, or do they have the money and influence because they know that their life is not their own, because they know that who they are creates reality not only for them, but for the world? And so the universe provides them with power that they can handle, with influence that they can hold space for.
What if your life is not just your own? What if how you relate, how you are, determines the faith of planets and the movements of stars? What if this is the simple truth, for all of us. Not only for the special few, for the king or the queen, but for everyone?
