God in Relationship
I was holding space this weekend for the exploration of poverty and abundance. In a beautiful retreat center nestled in the hills of Montecito, with a view on gorgeous, sprawling mansions on the slopes below, with the ocean beyond, with mountains reaching up to the sky, I learned that 45% of the population of Los Angeles can not pay their bills and buy food all in the same month. There I learned that in some urban neighborhoods, within 15 miles radius, there are 45 active gangs. There I learned about neighborhoods with 100% poverty rate, neighborhoods where shooting on streets is an everyday occurrence.
Among the old oak trees, tall pines, beautifully manicured lawns and rose gardens, I learned that there are african women who are sold into slavery to rich families. When those families chance to come to Los Angeles for vacation those women will sometimes manage to escape from the hotel and find their way to a shelter that can offer them help. “How?” I wondered. “How do they do it? They don’t speak english, they’ve been kept in captivity ever since they left their african villages. How do they manage?”
“And what now?” I asked myself when I learned of all those things. What now? It is too much to ignore, it is to large to simply turn around and say: not my problem, not my life, not my reality. It is my reality. Those things happen in the same world I live in, in the same society I live in. What does it mean? What does it mean about my life? What does it mean about the life I live that when I “flip the coin” I see people dying, starving, suffering?
What do I do with this knowledge?
And then I heard a lady speak. A lady who created and runs a place that helps homeless people, poor people, helpless people. She said: “when I look at a man who lived on streets, at a drug addict, at a gang member, I don’t see a broken, worthless trash. I see a hero, I see a survivor. I see a man who endured and survived more than most of us could ever handle. I see a man who lived through hardships that most of us could not even conceive of, and I see him here, still here, alive. I see a survivor, I see courage and strength, I see a hero. And when I see a hero in this man he looks in my eyes and sees the hero in himself. When I see the courage and strength in him, he sees himself as strong and courageous and he changes his life, he opens, he creates miracles.”
There were stories that I heard this weekend, stories of a young navaho kid who, after running away from the reservation to escape from alcohol and drugs, was living in Los Angeles, on the streets. Without money, without any chance of getting a job looking as he did, with his neck and arms covered in tattoos, he begun to draw and paint and is now a full time art student. Stories of homeless drug users who discovered their passion for writing and became published authors. Story of a woman who lived as a drug addict, homeless, on streets, often raped, bitten up, abused, starved. She now has a home, a family and masters degree in computer science.
There were other stories that I remembered, a story of a young girl who spent 5 years of World War II in Ravensbrück, german concentration camp. She walked back from Germany to Poland, to Warsaw that was a ruin of a city, and became a well known artist, painter and sculptor. Of a man who escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp and became a famous polish actor. And how about a story of a polish kid who came to America with nothing but a bag of clothes and became a designer and an artist?
I know those people, I’ve met those people, I heard stories of those people.
And it occurred to me, sometime during this weekend, that those people had nothing. No money, no possessions, no jobs, no carriers, no connections, no power. But they did have themselves. They had who they were and that was enough, that was more than enough. With what they had, with having themselves, they created extraordinary lives. Having themselves they have impacted lives of hundreds and thousands of others.
And I realized that this is the answer, this is my answer to all that I heard about poverty and lack. The answer is: there are no such things as poverty and lack because each of us has who we are.
Living in a society, being a part of society that considers money, possessions, power, to be the most important, I see and hear and experience, over and over again, that who we are is enough, that who we are is more than enough, that who we are is so much that it is limitless, boundless. That having nothing but ourselves there are no limits to what we can create. That without money, without a house, without a job, there is no end and no limit to abundance for all of us, for every single person on the planet, because every single person on the planet has themselves.
And I thought that if I see myself and everyone, every single person I will ever meet, as a beautiful, courageous and powerful being, then they will see themselves as such. If I look at everyone and see the treasure, the power, the beauty in them, they will see it in themselves and they will open and change their lives, just like the navaho kid did, just like the homeless woman did.
And I thought that when we all relate to ourselves and to every single person we ever meet as to an amazing, creative and powerful being, then we will realize the abundance of who we are, the unlimited potential of what we can create, and we will open and change our lives. We will create miracles.
When we do that the poverty will become impossible, when we do that the world will change into a paradise – in a dance of uniqueness.
There is a city I’ve been creating for one of my stories yesterday. A city that lies on the border between the human reality and the elfish forest. It’s precarious position influences it’s reality: the basic layout of the land is set, laws of physics, for the most part, are consistent with those of the human world, plants, trees, rocks, can not move around or speak – but they are alive and conscious.
Being strongly influenced by their closeness to the elfish world the citizens of the city, though decidedly human, relate differently than humans usually do. They can feel and communicate with feelings. They can relate to trees, animals, plants, as they would to any being equally intelligent and conscious as themselves.
They can communicate with each other without words, without thoughts, through feelings and sensations, without language. Their language, when used, tends to be somewhat strange, they don’t pay as much attention to rules of grammar and such, focusing instead on the melody, the feeling and energy that certain words and sentences carry.
Being very closely aware, conscious of and connected to the flow of reality people of this city don’t have much tendency to gathering or hoarding stuff. They feel it as a disturbance, as a separation and exclusion from their surroundings. Being uninterested in profit they work for pleasure. They tend to focus on developing their interests and passions throughout their lives.
Their openness and strong awareness of each other makes hurting one another a very unpleasant experience for the one inflicting hurt as well as for the one receiving it, therefore they seldom do it. Though they do get angry and deal with conflicts, generally they don’t hurt anyone intentionally, there is hardly any crime.
There is a governing body in the city, although it plays a different role than it does in human cities. Since there is no crime, there is no reason to discipline nor to enforce. The governing council plays the role of space holders and facilitators. They make sure that there is always a space for everyone to flourish and develop, they give assistance when needed and, when necessary, mediate and reorganize situations that cause conflicts. The office of councilor is not a paid position, it is a service that everyone in community undertakes at some point or another, always taking care that there is an equal amount of men, women and children on the council for the purpose of having the broader perspective possible.
The institutions of marriage and family are not very common. Because of the great sensitivity and connection that everyone has with the rest of the community, individuals are free to pursue their own interest and their own way of being without ever feeling lonely or alienated, therefore often they have no reason to congregate into families. They form partnerships that last for different amount of time, some are short affairs, some are life-long, but very rarely do they enter into a formal union. Children are cared for by everyone, though they have very strong connection with their parents when they are young.
I showed this description to my husband last night.
“I like it” he said, “I want to move there”.
“much like an utophia – perfect reality sort of thing” I said, “this is what our earth could be like, right now”
“enlightened people” said my husband
“yep” I responded, “because nothing that I’m writing is a fantasy, it’s all truth, it’s all real”
“I know” said my husband, ” that’s why I like your idea so much”
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.
When I change the world changes. When the world doesn’t change I know I didn’t.
I was in a full-blown neurotic reality for the last few weeks. Afraid of everything, all the time. I couldn’t sleep well, my thoughts were running obsessively in circles without rest, without stop. I was tired, so very tired of being alive, of being afraid. So very resigned that I though dying would not be such a bad thing after all. I have no problem with dying, remaining alive in a gray, scary world seems to be much worse than peacefully and irrevocably leaving it.
I was not aware, of course, of what was happening until I met with Brooks and came back to myself, opened to who I am outside of the story of little Pausha. I would imagine I felt like an alcoholic does when he becomes aware, wakes up suddenly and sees what he did to himself and to his life. Looks at the bottle and thinks: “o my God, what have I done!”
As I was waking up I could see exactly what I’ve done. I begun letting go of things, taking responsibility for things. I made a choice, over and over, to be who I am, not the story, not the trauma, not the fear. I would choose not to give in to the obsessive thoughts, I would choose not to indulge in the helpless fear, I chose to claim myself right in a middle of it.
It took about a week for the fear to go away and the whole world changed. It wasn’t scary anymore, it was safe, protective. Life wasn’t gray and hopeless, it became full of possibilities, full of freedom, a perfect playground for a perfect Goddess. Everything changed, reality changed.
Brooks told me: you are not living your life as who you are, this is why you keep collapsing. I thought about it for a while, I didn’t understand what he meant exactly by this statement, but the longer I was with it the more I could feel it, and I knew he was right.
Who I am is not reflected in my life, as my life. My life is structured according to rules I was given by my parents, by the society. What I do in life and how I do it is controlled from outside of me. I am who I am – but by looking at my life you could never tell.
God cannot stay long in the closet. She will either transform the closet into an open, endless, undefined playground for being whomever she chooses to be, or she will remain in the closet and soon forget about being God.
Who I am is not separated from my life. Who I am exists in relationship with reality, with people, with nature, with the world. When I change the reality changes, the world changes. If he world doesn’t change, if reality doesn’t change, then I did not change.
I dreamed the dream of being God instead, safely hidden in my closet.
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.
