God in Relationship
How would we connect to God if there were no religions? How would we experience God if there were no priests? How would we open to God without “spirituality”, without meditations, rituals, ceremonies, sacred circles, candles and incense? Where would we find God if there were no churches, temples, sacred places?
Those questions came to me as I was watching a video yesterday, sent to me by Brooks. “This woman is an example for unique modeling of advanced life opportunity, creativity, and she is complete in God and advanced beyond God” said the email. When I clicked on the link I saw a video of a pole dancer performing in a pole dancing competition.
I looked at the video, at the, admittedly, amazing athlete and a fantastic dancer and thought: but this is just a stripper! The way she moved, the way she flew through the air, her grace, was incredible and yet the foremost thought in my mind was: but this is just a stripper!
I finished watching the video, I looked through the dancer’s website, I looked at photos of her, most of them nude, and still there was the persistent protest in my mind: but this is just a stripper!
And yet there was such beauty in her face, such light in her eyes, such innocence in the nude photos of her and such total, complete and unquestionable joy in what she does, that eventually I got it. The persistent thought went away and in “just a stripper” I saw the amazing woman, complete in God.
As I saw it I realized that it is not about what we do, it is about who we are, it is about how open, how present we are. This woman is a pole-dancing stripper fully, completely and absolutely. Her dance is so full of power, beauty and grace because it is so completely who she is, so totally who she is, only who she is. Totally present as a human being, fully present in her body. Her presence, her awareness, made the pole-dancing a beautiful experience.
It made me think of a man I used to date, long ago, back in Poland. I was a zen student back then, he was a painter, an artist. He used to say, when I would invite him to meditate with me: “I don’t need to. Whatever it is you experience in your meditation is what I experience when I paint, when I create. I don’t need to look for it anywhere else”.
So how would we connect to God if there were no “special ways”, “special places”, special “middlemen”? Would we recognize God without flowing robes and a glowing halo around his head? Would we recognize God dancing half naked on a pole in a night club? And even more importantly – would we recognize God looking back at us in a mirror when we brush our teeth in the morning?
“The more I write about who I am, the more I share myself with others, the more present as who I am I become, more centered, more grounded” I told my friend yesterday. We talked about writing books about our own experience, writing of sensitive stuff, embarrassing stuff, private stuff.
I looked at my writing, at more than a hundred posts I wrote in last two years. I thought about the way I write, as honestly and as openly as I can, and I realized that every time I describe the deepest and truest thoughts and feelings I become more than that. Every time I write a story of who I am, as openly and honestly as I can, I become more that that story. Every time I become more present of who I am beyond the story, of who I am that is beyond all stories, that can not be contained in any story, of who I am as God.
I believe that life is a deeply personal experience. God is a deeply personal experience. Reality is a deeply personal experience. But it is not private. It is not separate, it is not hidden, it is not a secret.
The more public who I am becomes, the more public my experience of reality becomes, the more public the way I feel and relate becomes, the stronger is my presence, my presence as the God that I am. The more I share myself with the world the more present, more real I become.
Who I am is not the story of me. Who I am are not the stories I share in my blogs and yet I experience who I am more deeply when I share those stories because who I am is not a private, hidden experience. Who I am only exist in relationship.
“I move from wish to wish in my life“ I realized, while in a shower, a couple of days ago. “I wish to do something, to be something, and my life moves in that direction. I wished to become a psychologist for a while, then I wished to become a designer, then I wished to become a freelance designer to regain the freedom in my life, now I wish to become a writer.”
Each wish comes up slowly, quietly, gently. Each wish opens and grows, until my life shifts and the wish is realized. Then, after some time, another wish appears. I don’t make those wishes up, I don’t think of them. They come, show up, emerge. I simply open to them, follow them, because each wish is about who I want to be.
”It’s just like one of my favorite books, a story about a boy making his way through the magic land of Fantasia.“ I realized. The boy has no other guide but his wishes, his innermost desires. Wishes that don’t determine what he has or what he does, but rather shape who he is. He moves from one wish to another, he has to. If he ignores one wish he gets stuck, his journey stops.
”Fairy tales are our way of cheating the mind“ I thought. The mind says that reality is structured, predetermined, full of rules, regulations, boundaries and impossibilities. But we know better and we fool our mind by saying: oh, this is not real, this is just a fairy tale. That way our mind can safely entertain the idea.
We know the truth however, children know the truth. My husband knew, when he was 6 years old, that he wants to be a trash truck driver. He wanted to be a trolly driver some time after that. Not because it was a respectable profession, not because it was a great carrier path nor because he would make a lot of money doing it, but simply because it was fun!
That was all that mattered. It was fun and he wanted to have fun. Then he wanted to be someone else, then someone else again. Until the day came when someone told him: you have to choose one thing you want to do in life. You have to choose it and stick to it, you can’t just keep changing your mind. You have to make money, you have to have a carrier, you have to have a steady job, you have to be safe.
”What would happened if no one had told him all those things?” I wondered. What would happen if no one had told him he can’t do what he wants, be what he wants? What would happen if no one had ever told him that life is not for having fun, that life is for work? What would happen if no one had ever told him that life is broken, that the world has to be fixed, that he can’t just have fun, that he has to go make things better?
What would happen to our lives if we could, just like kids, want to be a doctor, or a designer, or a writer, simply because it’s fun? And when we were done doing one thing we could do another, and then another?How would our lives look like if we knew, just like kids know, that we can be anything we want, at any time we want?
In the story the boy traveled through Fantasia, guided by one wish after another. A wish to become the strongest and most brave, a wish to become the wisest, a wish to be part of a community, a wish to be loved, finally a wish to love. With the last wish the boy was led to the fountain of the water of life, and brought the water back to the human world.
It is wonderful to be outside. I begin to believe that living in houses really wasn’t such a good idea. It is so spacious, so open, so unguarded to just be out in the world where trees are, where birds are, where the sky is.
Working in my yard today was such a pleasure. I was pulling generations of old, dried ferns out of the ground. It was not an easy task, they resisted, clung to the earth with all their might and did all they could to become slippery and fragile, twisting, bending and crumbling, doing anything to defy me. I was pulling really hard, slipped and collapsed on the ground, laughing. The bed of ferns I fell on top of was cool, soft and fragrant, the smell of fresh, moist earth exhilarating, and the sky was so gorgeous, and I was happy.
My yard needs a lot of work. When we moved to this house, about a year and a half ago, the yard was a disaster. Hardly anything was still alive, what was alive was hopelessly overgrown and tangled. We put some work into cutting and pulling the brambles, cleaning out the space for new plants … and … we got busy. From time to time we would realize that the yard needs landscaping but neither of us had any experience with plants, there was so much work, we had no time, there were other priorities, we were too tired. The yard continued to look bare, dusty and dismal and we knew that something should be done, that it should get fixed. Occasionally we would plan to call someone, get someone to come and do something, but we never quite got to it.
Which is why my recent and sudden love of gardening was surprising, not to say strange. I spent hours outside those last two weeks digging, planting, watering, pruning. I enjoyed myself so thoroughly that it took me over a week to register that this is not like me. Not only working in the yard is not quite normal, but even more strange is me doing it for pleasure, because I like it, because I am happy doing it.
This is what happened, I realized, this is what’s different. Before the yard was a duty, it was something that had to be done. It was a space that didn’t work for me esthetically, and needed to get fixed.
But today, as I was pruning roses and cutting faded geranium blooms, there was such a peaceful, spacious, restful space. The kind of space that really close friends enjoy, friends who can sit together in silence for hours simply being in each other’s presence, feeling the connection. I felt that my house was surrounded by friends. I didn’t need to talk to them, just being with them was enough. Letting go of my mind, relaxing my body, and simply enjoying being alive.
And it made me wonder – why do we want to save Earth? Why do we want to save nature? Is it because we believe we should? Because it’s our duty? Because it’s the “right thing to do”? Is it because we are really, really scared and want to save our collective butts? Is it because we need nature to survive?
And if we didn’t need nature to survive, if it could collapse without taking us with it – would we miss it? Would there be a hole in our lives, a hole that’s left when a loved one is gone?
Do we actually like nature? Do we enjoy it’s company? Or do we simply use it for whatever it is we need?
Our mind would have us act out of fear. It would have us be terrified of an imminent danger, always ready to defend ourselves, to fight for survival. Our mind would have us act because we should, because we need to, because we have to, because it’s right, it’s a duty, it’s an obligation, because it is our job.
But when we let go of the mind, when we come back to who we are, who we really are, I believe we act because we like it, because it feels really good, because we really enjoy it, because it’s fun.
Which may be why after nearly every session with Brooks during which I open really deeply to who I am, when I ask him: “what do I do now?” he doesn’t say “go save nature and save the world”. He says: “go have fun”.
Emu was a monkey. She lived on a small island with about a hundred of her kind. Barely visible on the horizon were other islands with more monkeys. She never saw them, nor did they ever see her. But they were of the same species and shared similar lives and behaviors.
Of course, it was not her mother who had named her “Emu.” That was the scientists’ doing. They arrived one day in a large ship and anchored a short distance off the coast. A few of them had gotten into a rowboat and paddled to shore. There they placed a pile of sweet potatoes and departed. From their ship they watched, as scientists are wont to do, and observed the behavior of the monkeys.
Now Emu and her clan had never seen sweet potatoes, but they soon learned to eat them and like them. Every day the scientists paddled ashore to drop off a pile of sweet potatoes and every day the monkeys would come to the beach and eat them.
One day, a wave splashed up and took a potato that Emu wanted. She went after it and retrieved it. She found that the salt from the sea tasted good on the potato. The next day, she took a potato and deliberately washed it in the surf before eating it. Soon, she showed other monkeys how to wash the potatoes. Before long, all the monkeys on the island were washing their potatoes before eating.
The scientists noticed how the monkeys on Emu’s island had changed their behavior because of Emu’s example. All along, they had been feeding the monkeys on the other islands as well and observing them in the same fashion. What surprised them, however, is that, soon after all the monkeys on Emu’s island started washing their potatoes, monkeys on the other islands started doing the same. Somehow, the learned behavior of one tribe had spread to the others.
Far away from the islands of the monkeys, in a little town of Ojai nestled in a valley among Californian mountains, in a little house up on a hill, Pausha sat on the couch. It was an early evening, the golden sunlight filtered through the trees surrounding the house, played and sparkled on her face. Little patches of brightness and shadow danced around the room in a frantic rhythm, in time with wind shaking the branches. Pausha sat quietly, listening, feeling, opening. Opening to who she was, really, beyond her mind, beyond the story of who she is as a human, beyond any concepts and separations. Opening to herself as herself, only as herself, a unique being, God.
A thought occurred to her suddenly: “I have changed reality. Just now I changed the world. It used to be a world where all that people could be was their minds, their egos, their stories. It used to be a world where it was impossible for a human being to simply be God. Now it changed. Now this is a world where humans beings can be simply who they are, who they really are, as God. Now it is possible – because I just did it.”
“I am not a teacher”, Pausha thought, “not a great Guru with millions of followers, not an international authority on anything. I do not run nor work for any organization, I am not involved in any movement. Without doing anything, without proclaiming anything, without teaching or enrolling or changing or convincing anyone of anything, I just changed the reality completely. By simply being who I am.”
