God in Relationship
I walked in the mountains yesterday. There is a trail winding it’s way up a mountain side. It splits at one point, a path goes on, following the mountainside into a valley, another leads up to the very mountain top. I wanted to stand at the top of the world yesterday, so I climbed up. The way up is steep and I was out of breath in no time, paying attention to nothing but my burning legs, my hammering heart, my lungs that were about to burst, and the annoying little flies trying to dive into my eyes with great determination.
My dog did not like the path, she kept falling back, stopping, I had to drag her forward.
“There is a mountain lion here” I realized half way up the slope. I couldn’t see it but it’s presence was as clear and strong as if it was standing right next to me. I kept on climbing, I wanted to see the view from the top.
It took me few minutes to catch my breath. There were mountains stretching down below me towards the valley where the city lies, tinkling with lights, and the ocean beyond it. The sun had just set leaving the sky a luminous shade of lavender and pink.
I stood at the top of the mountain and felt the mountain lion’s presence. It was it’s territory, I knew. And what if it shows up? I thought of scaring it away, of yelling on top of my voice, weaving my hands, shaking sticks. I heard that this is the appropriate response in case of meeting a dangerous wild animal.
“Nonsense” it occurred to me “why should I attack the lion? this is it’s place, why would I challenge that? I have no quarrel with the lion. If it comes and wants me gone, I will leave”.
The lion didn’t come and I walked away after a while. The sky darkened, the mountain path was full of shadows, the night was falling. My dog was scarred, skittish, starting at the slightest noise, but I was not afraid. I belonged there, in the wild, in the mountains, with the trees and the birds, with rocks and mountain lions.
“I am nature, just like the trees, like the lion, like the birds” I realized. I could feel the life in my body, the air in my skin, the earth in my muscles. “The mountain lion and I are not so very different”, I thought, “we are both animals, we are both nature. The lion has a way of expressing who she is that is different than my way but, ultimately, we are not so very different at all”.
We are no so very different – humans, animals, trees, birds, rocks, oceans. We are nature. We don’t have nature, we don’t own nature. We are nature. And because we are nature, all of us, we can relate, there is a common ground, a space where we can understand one another. We can relate when we allow ourselves to open to the possibility of relationship.
“We are not so very different” I thought in the last few weeks, as the battle over health insurance raged on. “Why do republicans fight the change so desperately?”, I wondered. “Are they all evil psychopaths who wish to exterminate half of the population for the sake of profit? Or are they scarred and fighting for safety for themselves, for better life for their children, for care and support? Isn’t that what democrats want, what Obama wants? Safety, better life for children, care, support?”
Republicans way of organizing it, of expressing it, is different than that of democrats but, ultimately, they all want the same things. They strive and fight for the same reasons.
Are the CEOs of large corporations corrupt, greedy monsters, who care nothing for anyone or anything other than the number on their bank account statement? Are they willing, intentionally and with cold blood, to bankrupt nations and poison the earth, so that they can buy yet another house, yet another car? Or are they looking for safety, for protection that they believe comes from power? Are they striving to create empires that will provide for their families for generations, that will give safety and support to their children?
The corporate way of organizing it, of expressing it, is different than that of “regular” people’s with nine-to-five job and a mortgage but, ultimately, we all want the same things: protection, support, safety.
We are not so very different. And because we are not so very different, because we all strive for the same things, there is a common ground, a space where we can understand one another. We can relate when we allow ourselves to open to the possibility of relationship.
How would the world change? If all we did was to realize that we are nature – humans, lions, birds, trees, rocks, fishes in the ocean? If all we did was to realize that we are not so very different, that we all want the same things, that we strive and fight for the same reasons? How would the world change?
Without organizing, fixing, overthrowing governments and revolting against the powerful and wealthy, without creating new systems, new sets of rules, without imposing new, “better”, order, without inventing new technologies, without saving the earth and rescuing the planet, but only with the simple realization that we are all nature, that we are not so very different – how would the world change?
It might turn into a paradise, for everyone, overnight.
Everything is. There is a universe in the tiniest leaf, there is a whole of creation in me. I will see it, if I look.
I really enjoy my art class. The teacher begun her introduction, on the first day, by saying: drawing is not about putting shapes down on paper, it is not about what you can do with pencil and charcoal, it is not about technique and skill. Drawing is about looking. Everyone can draw, she said. If you can see it, you can draw it.
We had a homework exercise that made the point beautifully. The task was to draw a fruit or a vegetable, from memory. Then to take an actual fruit or vegetable and draw it again, this time from observation.
Drawing a pepper from memory took me about five minutes. It was a simple shape, elongated, grooved. It looked like a pepper, it was a pepper, everyone would recognize it as a pepper in an instant.
Then I took a pepper and placed it in front of me. Forty minutes later I was nowhere close to completing my drawing. There was so much detail, so many shadowy shapes, so many highlighted places. The longer I looked at the pepper the more details I noticed. Grooves, ridges, stumps, kinks, depressions, curves. They were endless. I could have drawn for hours, for days, for years, and never be “finished” with describing the pepper with my pencil. The pepper was endless, unlimited.
What a beautiful illustration of our relationship to reality that is, I thought as I drew. We see reality in symbols, simplifications, streamlined shapes. An elongated shape is a pepper, a round shape is an orange, a round shape with rays is a sun. Killing is bad, being nice is good, stealing is wrong, giving is right.
Our mind, being always on the defense, can not open to the wealth of shades, shapes, kinks, curves, stumps and depressions. The mind makes things simple so that we can “deal with them”, categorize them, judge them. So that we are safe, so that we understand, so that we are sure to be good, sure to “do the right thing”.
But what if we let go of mind? What if we look? Then we will see an entire universe in a small, red pepper. Then there will be an entire universe in a smallest leaf. If we ask a question and look, we will see an entire universe in ourselves.
Then every single pepper is perfectly complete and unique, no better or worse than other peppers, but perfect as itself. Then each one of us is complete and absolutely unique, perfect as who we are. Then everything is complete and absolutely unique, perfect as what it is.
Everything is the real question. Everything is the real answer. If we can see it.
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?
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.
