Creating Reality
What does it mean to be God, here on Earth? There is no end to my asking this question because there is no final answer. There is no end to what being God on Earth can mean, there is no end to posibilities and, therefore, there is no end to fun!
The answer, when it comes, is always one of relating, not an instruction on what and how to do. If I relate as who I am as God, only, then I am unlimited. Unlimited meaning not constricted. Not constricted by mind’s ideas of who I am, not constricted by what society thinks I should be.
Time does not constrict me. Time is an irrelevant consideration to who I am as God. I am who I am, right now. I never was anything else than who I am. I will not become who I am in a future, I will not achieve the full awareness of who I am in another lifetime. I am who I am now. An unlimited opportunity of how I can relate exists right now. There is no time.
My body does not constrict me. My body is who I am as God, my body is an expression of who I am here on Earth. How my body feels is simply how it chooses to relate. Whether it’s healthy or sickly is simply how I choose to be in relationship to reality.
My relationships with people do not constrict me. When I relate with others as who I am as God, simply, spontaneously, the relationship is an opening, an invitation for everyone to be who they are, for everyone to open, for everyone to enjoy the unlimited opportunity.
When I am God everyone is God. There is no need, no reason to defend, nothing to understand, nothing to explain. There is nothing to say.
There is only a mutual opening, a connection that is endless and full of unlimited potential of who I can be, of who the person I connect with can be.
This is a very simple experience, a very ordinary experience. It doesn’t change what I do. It changes how I do it, why I do it. It changes reality.
From a place of fear, struggle and uncertainty reality becomes simply an opportunity for me to be who I am, for everyone to be who they are. It becomes a place where time is irrelevant and everything I choose to be is available to me right now. It is a place where the only consideration in my relationship to other humans, to trees, to birds, to rocks and flowers is to experience them. To open and connect, to experience yet another way for every one to be who we are.
Relating as who I am as God, only, changes reality. Without doing anything, without organizing anything, wthout struggling and fighting, helping, fixing or saving – it changes the world in an eye blink.
I watched a great, old Polish TV show a while ago. It’s about organizing a Bank Not of This World. A lady was going through an interview with a board of directors of angels and saints, she was applying for the CEO position. She talked about the system she was going to implement to facilitate transactions, about the controls and securities of bank’s operations, about the models that were tried in the past and proved to be very successful … and every time she finished a point one of the board would interrupt her to say “yes, we know, but we are interested in other systems”, “yes, we know, but we are interested in other models”, “yes, we know, but we are interested in other operations”.
Eventually the lady fell silent, she had nothing more to say. At that point one of the angels explained: “this bank is organized to give help to those who need it, poor, lost people, all those who can not deal with this reality. If a person who took a credit can not pay it back the bank should give him another credit, so that he can pay the previous one. Not only that, the second credit should be larger than the first one, since the first one obviously was not enough. Remember, every acount is not a number – it’s a person, a human being in need of support and wise help.”
This doesn’t make any sense. This is a way of relating to reality that doesn’t make any sense. And yet it could change the world, in an eye blink.
I took an Art of God class this weekend. It was very powerful. There were only three students and the work was very deep, very focused, very intense.
We just kept going with hardly any breaks for talking. Opening, transforming, letting go of old trauma, becoming present in places we’ve never been present before, in places the reality was never present before. After 4 days of this focused, intense experience I can hardly remember what it is we were doing. I could probably figure out the general scope of what we worked on if I put my mind to it, but I simply don’t remember. My mind was hardly present during the class, it hardly registered anything.
On Sunday evening, back at home and lounging happily in a bathtub, I thought that I’d like to enroll in some art classes. The idea seemed to come out of nowhere but, as I looked closely at it, I remembered that I wanted to go to an art high school when I was a kid. I didn’t. I was too intimidated, afraid that I wouldn’t be accepted, that I wasn’t talented enough. Then, in high school, I wanted to go to art academy … and I didn’t. I put aside myself as an artist so completely that I forgot it was even there. I became a psychologist instead.
The art trickled out of me since I started working with Brooks. After few months of working with him I begun to draw again, after few years I became a professional designer, but it still was not the “real thing”, the real flow. It was still just a trickle, a small part of the creativity pent up, it was just what I really couldn’t hold inside that would come out to be expressed.
I had no idea it was there, the whole part of me, of who I am, of who I an be in this reality, as a human being. I didn’t even remember it existed, I didn’t remember shutting it down. When I feel into it now it’s like being a 10 year old again, with her life before her right now, right here, in this moment.
It is a strange feeling, like going back in time … or rather canceling time, opening to the opportunity to start all over again, having a whole different life, being someone else entirely, right now.
It is a strange feeling, it is what I would imagine regret feels like only without pain. It is the realization that I could have done something else, could have explored, experienced, opened to a whole new me. There is no pain in this realization because there is no loss. I can do it, I can be it, I can experience it all, right now.
Nothing is lost, there is no “bed time”, “good time”, “right time” nor “wasted time”. There simply is no time. I can be who I am, however I am, whenever I choose. I can explore who I am whenever I choose. There are no restrictions, no limitations imposed on me by reality, by time, by age.
I don’t have to adjust my life to reality. I am who I am. All I have to do is to choose it, open to it, and the reality will adjust to me.
So I’ve decided to enroll in some drawing classes and see what will happen.
I have responded to a comment on my “bankruptcy” story few days ago. Here is what I said:
“Thank you, I believe however that my friend can see another way of creating her life, one that is not encompassed by the usual “home and a job” model. There might be a whole new way of being, available now, since the old way is crumbling.”
As I thought about my response it struck me as nice, gentle, pretty vague and incredibly unhelpful. I’ve been thinking to myself for the past few days: “if you have to talk you might as well say something useful, you might just say what you mean!”
Here is what I mean by “more than one way of being”: our reality, human reality, at this time, is organized pretty much only and completely from mind’s point of view. We have societies, rules, structures, that are designed to keep us safe, to help us survive.
Mind is a separation, it is a defensive orientation to reality. Mind splits the world into “me” and “not me”, and everything that is not me is potentially threatening and dangerous. I have to defend myself. I have to defend myself from life, I have to survive my life.
In my experience the need to survive is what society is created in response to. Society gives tools, guidelines and rules which, when obeyed, will keep one safe and protected. It tells us what to get and how: education, job, salary, house. It promises that if we follow the rules of the system the system will take care of us.
The system is crashing now, it is not taking care of anybody anymore, it doesn’t offer safety and protection. It is a very painful and very scary experience and yet there is a great opening here, there is an opportunity for a realization that, even though the system collapses, we are still here.
My friend has lost her house – and she’s still here. She filed bankruptcy – and she’s still here. She is still alive, she is still being in the world, she is still doing what she wants to do in life. Without the structures that were supposed to keep her safe she is still here, doing well, being herself.
She is who she is, even without the house. She is who she is without the credit. She didn’t collapse, die, disappear.
I believe that the economy’s collapse, however terribly painful and scary, opens a space for something new to arise. It opens a space for the realization that the system might not have been needed in the first place, that there might be nothing to be afraid of, that life is not a scary, terrible thing that only an open credit can protect us from.
Because there is no credit now and yet we are still here.
When I look beyond mind, beyond the split and separation, beyond the fear, life appears to be a wonderful adventure. It is not a chance for me to keep safe and survive, it is a chance to experience. To experience myself, to experience the world as myself, to experience others as myself.
Only when I collapse and forget who I am, only when I start believing that I am my mind, only when I start believing my fears, do I need protection, systems, structures. When I am who I am, as who I am, there is nothing that’s needed. There is no fear, there is no danger.
When there is no danger there is no need for a system designed to defend. When there is no danger there is space for experience and expression. When there is no need to strive for protection there is a space to be and enjoy. When there are no rules for how to live life, there is an ultimate freedom to be oneself in whatever shape or form we choose.
I have several friends who suffer pretty badly from the current economic collapse. Some of them lost their homes, some got laid off, most of them were faced with the necessity of filing bankruptcy. When I listen to their stories there is sadness, fear and confusion in what they are saying, and sympathy and compassion for what they are going through. It is not easy to have one’s life turn upside-down all of a sudden.
Except for one person.
She is in her early sixties, she just recently lost her house to a foreclosure after a long and exhausting battle to save it. While she fought to keep her house she was also dealing with her partner possibly loosing his, and she was completing the process of getting her book published. The stories she had to tell during that time were nowhere close to fun and happy. She talked about exhaustion, fear, constant stress and upset, and yet every time, while I listened to her, what I thought was: what a great opportunity this is for her! No matter how sorry I felt for what she was going through I could not help but think: your life wants to change, all you have to do is let it change, all you have to do is let go.
She didn’t see it quite this way, and yet that was what emanated from her every time we met.
She stopped by today, briefly, to pick up a book. She was just coming back from signing papers that finalized her bankruptcy. She was not at all happy about it and yet again, as soon as she said it, I thought: there are two ways of looking at bankruptcy, one is to view it as a failure, another is to see it as an opportunity.
Bankruptcy can mean that I lost. I was not smart enough, cautious enough, aware enough, I didn’t pay attention. Now I got in trouble and can’t get out of it any other way than to admit that I failed entirely and, after a period of punishment, try again, but wisely, better, smarter. It can mean that I was not a good society member, that I didn’t follow rules well enough, that I couldn’t follow the system, that I failed to be successful.
It can also mean that I choose not to follow the system’s rules any longer.
As I listened to my friend today I thought that bankruptcy doesn’t have to mean that I failed inside of an unchangeable, unquestionable system. It may mean that the system failed me.
There is a great opportunity in a collapse of one’s reality, an opportunity of allowing it to collapse so that it can be replaced with a life designed not by a system, not by society, not by financial advisors and habits and customs, but by who I am, for who I am, as who I am.
I suffer from hypochondria. Whenever I collapse, fall, forget who I am, I start getting scared. I crumble, turn into a little girl and I am afraid. Really, really afraid that I will get sick and die. The fear takes over, terrible fear that makes me almost unable to function, the fear of death. It is irrational, it changes me. Who I am, how I see reality, how I function, changes.
I learned to recognize it and see when it’s coming. I can see the signs: loosing myself, being distracted, lacking presence, loosing my power, loosing my authority.
As I grew into myself more and more I learned to distinguish between me and the fear, me and the trauma, me and the little girl. When I feel it coming I can stop, open and return to being who I am.
The fear came back yesterday and, as I was working thorough it, a though came up: the point in life is not to stay alive, to not die. The point is to be who I am.
Dying is not a problem, dying is not a disaster, dying is not a tragedy. It is normal and natural, it is just another step, another opening, a graduation. I am here, as this woman, I will them move on to something else, somewhere else. This life is not who I am, this body, this person, is not who I am. The point of me being here right now, in this world, is not to cling to this body and to this person, to preserve her at any cost. The point is to be who I am.
Brooks says: we exists only in relationship. He also says: if you merge in relationship with your partner, if you loose yourself, then then the relationship doesn’t do anybody any good. You don’t contribute to your partner, he cannot enjoy who you are, because you are not there, you are some version of what you think he would like you to be. If he merges with you then you don’t get to be with him either. The promise, the opportunity of relationship is gone, lost, and the relationship actually does more harm to everyone involved, keeping everyone unconscious.
I realized today that the same applies to my relationship with life. If I merge with my mind, with my ego, my persona. If I merge with society, with rules, ways, systems, I loose who I am and being alive doesn’t do me any good. I cannot fully take advantage of the opportunity that being alive presents if I am lost, unconscious, not present. Life, the world, doesn’t benefit from being with me either, it cannot experience who I am in all my uniqueness because I am not here, I am lost, merged, collapsed.
Life is not the greatest treasure we have. The opportunity of being in relationship to life as who we really are, as God, is.
