Creating Reality
I remember the first time Christopher visited me in Poland. It was shortly after we met, about eight years ago. I lived in Warsaw at that time. One day, in the evening, we went for a walk at the river’s bank. It was a summer day and there were tents with beer, french fries and grilled sausages stretching, one after another, along the promenade. Nearly each tent had a band or a singer, playing and singing old polish songs that every polish person knows.
We sat in one of the beer gardens, drinking and listening to the music. Suddenly, as the band begun a particularly lively song, people sitting around us jumped up from their sits, held hands, formed a large circle and begun to dance, right in a middle of the promenade. They were strangers, they did not know each other, nor did they need to. They knew the song, the song moved them, so they danced. I run to join them leaving Christopher, half shocked and half terrified, at our table.
I remembered this little adventure today as I watched “the Fiddler on the Roof”. There is a scene where men in a tavern celebrate an engagement. They are happy, excited, and they dance. They dance how they feel, they sing what’s in their heart. Not for show or entertainment, not to display skill, not to attract attention. They dance because they are moved to do it. They sing because singing expresses how they feel.
What do we lose, I wonder, what do we lose when we don’t sing our sorrow and our joy? What do we shut down and push away if we don’t dance because the music moves us, because the life moves us?
My teacher often makes us howl in class, or growl, or cry like birds do. It opens the body, opens the heart, helps to let go of mind. But it is a wolf’s way, a tiger’s way, a bird’s way. It’s their way of being who they are.
So what is the human way? Maybe it’s singing? Maybe it’s dancing?
Funny I should ask, since this very question was popping left and right all around me lately. It all begun with an email that was forwarded to me, an email that contained “Little gems from the Health Care Bill”. Those gems were all the parts of the bill that would allow government to force people to do things, dictate what things they can do and how, control their health, control their business and investments, control their marriage, control their life!
As I read the tension grew, with every sentence the fear was stronger. Fear of being manipulated, forced, restrained, trapped. As I continued reading the email I remembered a question that Brooks asks occasionally: “So whose body is it anyway? Whose responsibility is it?”
It occurred to me, as I considered the email and the place from which I felt it was written, that there is fear where there is no responsibility. There is fear where there is no independence. Because whose responsibility is it that I am healthy? That my body is open and balanced? And whose responsibility is it to bring it back into balance when it collapses and becomes ill?
If I make it the doctor’s responsibility, if I make it the pharmaceutic industry’s responsibility, then there is place for fear. If they are responsible for my health then my body is in their hands. If my body is in their hands then they can manipulate me, control me, restrain me, trap me.
But what if I don’t? What if I realize that it is my body, that it’s not a doctor’s job to heal me but mine, it is not medicine’s job to heal me, but mine. Because it is my body, my life. I get to say whether I am ill or not, healthy or not. Who else could possibly make that decision for me?
There is no fear here, there is no room for control or manipulation in this place, there is no possibility of control or manipulation because I am here and I am responsible. Because I am here and I am responsible I am free to be however I wish to be. There is nothing here that could stop me, because I am here.
So what is my responsibility? Everything. Because it is me, because it is my body, because it is my life. I am creating it, I am designing it. I am free to do that, absolutely free to grow and open, with no limitations, because I am responsible.
I am done with my life, I realized recently. It’s been coming on for quite some time, as a feeling, sensations I couldn’t see clearly. And there was trauma clouding and distorting.
But as the picture cleared, as my presence opened and the trauma left I realized that I am done with life. I am completed with life as it is usually understood and structured. I have a family, I have friends, I have a way of making money I enjoy and am good at, I live in a lovely place. Details of my life are organized as I want them to be. I realized that there is nothing more I need.
I could work more and make more money, or I could work doing something else, I could move to an even lovelier place, to a different place, to a bigger house or just a different house. I could get another car, I could rescue another dog … I could get much more but, in essence, it would be more of the same. I already have all I need.
Seen from mind’s point of view, seen from society’s perspective, my life is completed.
Seen from my own point of view my life is now beginning.
I am finished with organizing the outside according to the outside rules, I am completed with doing things to get other things. I am now free to be who I am.
I am completed with organizing things that are considered necessary and important. Now I am free to organize things that are an expression of who I am.
I am completed with existing inside of reality defined by others. Now I am free to create reality that makes sense to me only, because it is mine.
I am completed with being Pausha Foley, age 34, a wife, polish immigrant, graphic designer. Now I am free to be whomever I wish in the world, even if the world has no name for it yet.
I am completed with relating the way I was trained. Now I am free to relate the way I relate, even if my way of relating isn’t known in the world yet.
Now that I have done what was expected of me, now that I have completed all that a person “should do in life”, I am free to be. Boundlessly, limitlessly, uniquely myself.
A while ago a friend of mine was interviewing me about my childhood and my family traditions. It was an exercise we did during a retreat, we were supposed to recognize the patterns, models, lessons, traditions that our family installed in us, and see how those models shaped our own life.
I expected to tell the same story over again. A story of unhappy childhood, of loneliness and neglect, of having to always depend on myself cause there was no one else to depend on, on having no connection, no ties, with my family, of living in an apartment with three strangers who happened to share the same last name. As I talked, however, I realized that the story is not a sad one at all.
Answer after answer came out, describing a perfect childhood. The situations I related were the same, the circumstances haven’t changed, but as I talked about them I begun to realize how perfect they were. I begun to see very clearly that the childhood I had gave me the exact space in which I could grow into who I am right now. I saw that what felt like neglect twenty years ago now seems like freedom. I saw that what felt like lack of support when I was a kid now feels like the exact space I needed to become responsible for myself. I saw that the lack of connection that was so painful to me as a child now seems like the wonderful opportunity for me to leave, to go out into the world, to explore life on other continent, to make my life the way I wanted it to be.
Everything that I love about my life, the freedom to do what I want, the space to be who I want to be and how I want to be, was supported by my childhood.
It didn’t seem like that back then though. When I left Poland eight years ago I felt that California is just about far enough for me to have a comfortable relationship with my parents. In fact a phone call once a year or so seemed perfectly sufficient for the first six or seven years. There was so much pain, so much make wrong, so many shoulds and unfulfilled expectations, so much anger. I didn’t want to deal with it, I wanted to leave it behind and never look back.
But there were moments, small realizations that would come as I was growing. The more independent I became, the more present in my life, the less and less I needed to have parents. I remember a moment when I realized that my parents were people, just like everyone else. They did the best they could with me. It wasn’t much, but it was all they were capable of. Somewhere during those eight years I realized that I am not a daughter anymore. I am who I am. I don’t need my mother to be my mother, I don’t need my father to be my father. Sometime during those eight years I grew out of being my parent’s child. I became who I am, and all the anger went away.
The blame disappeared, the makewrong was gone. What was left was a space for me to relate to my parents in any way I wish, as their parter if I wish, as their daughter, if they wish it. I didn’t like them, we were not friends, our realities were too different for that, but it was not a problem at all because I didn’t need it to be any other way.
Two nights ago my mother called me in the very middle of the night. It was morning in Poland, she just left the US embassy where she went to get a visa. She called me to tell me that she got it, and that she plans to come to visit in October, together with my sister and my nephew. It didn’t come as a surprise, I knew about the visit before, I knew she had the appointment, but tonight, three days later, while bathing my dog, I suddenly realized that my mother may actually come here!
My mother! My 59 years old mother who has never in her life been on a plane! My mother who is so thoroughly terrified of life that she won’t take a single step on her own! My mother who eight years ago, when I was leaving, didn’t believe that United States existed! (she KNEW it, of course, but really didn’t believe it). My mother who grew up in tiny little village, who worked in the fields after school, who raised her three brothers cause her parents were permanently drunk, my mother who makes my father deal with the simplest of situations requiring interacting with any sort of institution, this very mother filled out an online application, went to the embassy (without my father!), talked to the consul (an experience that is legendary in Poland for it’s unpleasantness), got a visa after merely 10 minutes long interview, and now she is coming to America!
My mother who doesn’t speak a word of english is going to get on a plane, somehow communicate with the flight attendants, somehow find her way through international airports, and then somehow talk to the immigration officers when she arrives. My mother! And she is doing all that on her own!
I realized today that, even though I am not my mother’s daughter, even though we are not friends, even though I don’t like her as a person, we are still allies in this life. We are partners here, on earth. I realized that just like she created the space for me to grow and open to who I am, fully unique and completely independent, now I hold the space for her to open beyond who she always was.
Now I am here, and she will travel halfway around the world, to the place that used to be a legend.
“Oh, come on Harry. All you mortals get all hung up over your precious souls. You’ve never seen your soul, never touched it, never done anything with it. What’s all the to-do?” said Bob the Skull, the spirit of intellect, to Harry Dresden, a professional Wizard.
Bob the Skull’s opinion popped up in my head yesterday when my husband told me about a friend of ours who, after reading several books and doing some hard thinking, figured out why exactly USA attacked Iraq and how exactly the bad guys are going to take a total control over everything, and forever deprive everyone of their freedom. I listened to it and thought “all we mortals get all hung up over our precious freedom. We don’t use it, don’t exercise it, don’t do anything with it. We are content to follow the rules, be raised and brought up, trained and taught. We are happy to obey society, traditions, religions, laws, regulations, media, PR specialists, marketing agencies, teachers and gurus. We do what we are told, live like we are told, anyway, so what’s all the to-do when it comes to freedom?
We get all excited and twitchy when someone suggests that our freedom could be taken away. We fear that we will lose it, we fight and kill to protect it, we write books and make speeches in praise of it and condemn those who attempt take it away and yet, when we look deeper, we may realize that freedom can not be taken away.
Freedom can not be taken away not because we already gave it away, but because freedom is what we are. Freedom is not a condition granted, a privilege, a gift, it is simply us. We don’t have it, we are it. We can not possibly lose it. In any situation, in every single moment, in every single circumstance, we are free to choose, free to decide who we are, free to choose how we relate. When we are present to who we are, when I am present as who I am, I am simply free.
I thought about Bob the Skull again today morning. A friend of mine sent me a link to a website about unusually intense solar activities, about solar storms and all the havoc they are going to play with Earth. “Oh, this is another one of those ‘we are all going to die!’ scenarios” I thought with a true, polish cynicism. What is it about humans? What is it about mortals? The world is always coming to an end, a disaster is always looming, someone always prophesies the end of all life.
We mortals get all hung up over our precious life. We hardly ever experience it, we are to busy being scared of it, trying to survive it, suffering through it, trying to protect ourselves from it, most of us never does anything with it other than spending a lot of time trying to accumulate things, so what’s all the to-do when it comes to life?
We get all excited and twitchy when someone suggests that our life could be taken away. We are terrified of losing it, terrified of life ending and yet, when we look deeper, we may realize that life can not end.
No matter what the circumstances, no matter what the situation, we can not lose life because life is what we are. Life is not a condition or a circumstance, it is not limited to our bodies staying more or less in their current shape. Life is not something that animates our ideas, opinions and thoughts, and shapes them together into a person. Life is not limited to what we think of it, life is not limited to our stories about it. Life has no end, no beginning and no limits because we have no end, no beginning and no limits, and we are life.
No matter what the circumstances, no matter what the situation, no matter the state of the physical body and no mater what story our mind tells us, or what story of who we are we have to let go of – we are who we are. We are life.
It is not possible for us to lose our freedom. It is not possible for anyone or anything to take freedom away. It is not possible for us to lose life, nor is it possible for anyone or anything to deprive us of it. There are no such things as disasters. It is not possible for anything bad to happen because no matter what happens, no matter how things change, transform, evolve, we are who we are. Life and freedom. And we don’t change.
