The Edge of the Amorphous

I have had this inner experience before, but never was the sight so clear and the level of what I have managed to grasp with my mind so deep and breathtaking. I actually had the experience in May in Germany on an intense retreat with Robert Gonzales, but the realizations are still arising and penetrating my awareness.

The best way for me to describe it all would be to say that, upon exploring some feelings within myself, I suddenly perceived/saw/experienced my inner world as it is. For a brief moment at least, that is. Suddenly it was so clear that what I normally perceive as my inner world is in fact not my inner world, but rather a very very simplified portrait of it. My inner world (and I guess this applies to pretty much everybody on this planet) is just not like a storage place full of categories, you know, feelings here on the left, thoughts on the right, needs over there in the back and values in between, and a bit to the left. Some feelings being red and others green (or whatever), some needs intense and others less strong, with some parts of myself being beautiful and others sad and painful.

It is just not like that at all. The inner world is completely amorphous, shapeless, with no categories at all. So, when I look inwardly and try to sense what is going on within, I actually, with my old-fashioned primitively-constructed human mind, create some simple categories and try to squeeze the amorphous “content” into them, so that I can make some intellectual sense out of it and finally, not being able to communicate more subtly and directly, put it into concepts to get it across to you. Saying this is how I feel, this is what I need, this feeling is annoying and that need it beautiful… But it is actually none of that.

I guess this is why the old saints and enlightened people meant by calling it Sunyata, the great emptiness, the ultimate void. Not meaning that there is no content at all within us, but rather that there are no categories, no distinctions, no forms and shapes. Just the amorphous… I guess what they meant was that when we finally wake up, the shadows from Plato’s cave melt away just in the same way as our dreams disappear when we wake up.

Now, of course, to try to understand the amorphous inner world with our narrow dualistic minds and even to describe it…, is but a joke.

So, the more I try to sense it all, the more I feel that my awareness (hm, now, that’s a funny category just waiting there to be torn apart, doesn’t it  ) is residing somewhere on some sort of an Event Horizon; black hole of the inner world on the inside, with nothing being able to come out in it’s pure shape. Once our mind claims to have understood it, this means that it has definitely not understood it at all. And the same applies to our attempts to perceive the so-called outer universe on the outside.

Our minds struggle with categorizing and “understanding” them both, and ultimately always end up just juggling hopelessly with meaningless interpretations and maps.

So, I guess this means that it does not make much sense to take anything that we perceive too seriously. Because it is never but a heavy distortion.

Now, this sounds like a fun life to live, doesn’t it?

A good life and a good death

A week ago my mother-in-law suddenly passed away. No warning, no disease, nothing – just suddenly she was gone. Brain stroke, unconsciousness, death.

Two feelings were immediately present in us and still are. First is an immense void. You see, she was a simple lady and she was all about giving, caring, providing. She was not a front-person, but rather worked in the background, guessing our needs and taking care of them, cooking, baking, cleaning, and filling our car trunk with her home-grown vegetables and fruits whenever we came to visit. Always with a gentle and loving smile on her face.  She enjoyed giving so much. And now, with her not being around anymore, we stare in disbelief; such a vast void is left after she and her loving care is gone.

And the other feeling that has been present is a peaceful one, a sort of a relief actually, knowing that this was the best way for her to go. She left while still in a very good health, with no suffering and pain, knowing that her two kids were happy with their lives, knowing that her grandchildren were doing great. She left while being in a loving and trusting relationship with her husband. And, what is perhaps the most important thing – she knew she was being loved by us all. It was impossible not to love her and half of the town was on her funeral. Some people drove for seven hours to be there. We cried for days after her death and I believe all these tears were love pouring through.

Death is not an unfortunate and tragic event. It is an inevitable part of our existence, a part of life so to say.

Her life was a good life and her death was a good one.

Thank you for all you love, Rozi. You loved so well.

Bon Voyage!

Mildly anxious about Cairo

Tomorrow early morning I will be flying off to Cairo, Egypt, for a congress of interculturalists. And I am feeling a bit edgy about it. Not that the travelling itself causes that; there has been so much of travelling and flying here and there in the last years that the excitement has all gone and has been replaced by the irritation over being squeezed in the seats of the planes and over the endless security checks at the airports. The anxiousness is also not about having so many things to do before leaving, since basically everything has been done already – about nine hours before the departure from the house. So I will even get a proper sleep this night.

The nervousness has been building up during the last few weeks because I feel that this is going to be a trip into my past and into my long forgotten feelings.

I spent a few weeks in Cairo in 1983, on my hippy journey into the unknown, at 17. After hitching a free ride with a ship from Jordan across the Red Sea to Port Suez, I entered Cairo late at night, no money at all, no clue about whatever, no address to go to, no food, nothing. Somehow I managed to come down to Aswan a few days later, but my attempt to enter Sudan without a visa failed and after a week or so I was in Cairo again. Well, it is a pretty long story, but in the next weeks I befriended some Tanzanian guys with equally empty pockets, and one of them kicked me from the self-pitying state of mind into a pro-active one, telling me that if I ever wanted to get enough money together to buy a visa for Sudan, I needed to get on my feet and start doing something about it. So, there I was, for the start going from one church to another, trying out my luck. In one Coptic Orthodox church a priest with a long black beard and utterly shining eyes stood at the courtyard, smiling warmly at me. Before I could complete my lies about being robbed, he stopped me, squeezed some money in my pocket and told me: “You come to us. We will take care of you, feed you, host you and help you get whatever you need.” His eyes were lovingly smiling and sparkling, as if he knew me all the way down to the bottom. And so I came and was fully accepted and taken care of, for about a couple of weeks. The priest was one of the most gentle souls I have ever met, just being warm and supportive, never even attempted to convince me into his religion or anything. Finally I left, clean, well fed, with the Sudanese visa and a train ticket in my pocket. And with a very warm heart.

In 1986 I took my first trip to India. I flew from Europe via Cairo and experienced a nightmare at the airport, with my passport and tickets being temporarily lost because of some confusion of officials, then raced in a van toward the plane that was already standing on the runway ready to take off, racing back after a few minutes because I had failed to provide baksheesh that would actually get me on the plane, spent another few days losing my mind over illogical discussions with the airport officials and finally found myself in the Cairo city, having to get some senseless paperwork done in order to finally sit on my plane. And so I also paid a visit to the priest. It felt like coming home, to my old and dear friends that had accepted me in my dark times just the way I was, never questioning a thing, never asking for anything, just embracing and holding me…

Anyway, the fact that I am going to return to Cairo after so many years keeps resurrecting many memories and evoking a wide variety of feelings from deep within. I am not sure I will be able to find all the places, it’s been 26 years after all, but just thinking about it keeps bringing me in touch with the feelings of confusion and hopelessness of a lost teenager in a big wild world. I would love to find that little dodgy park where I was sitting under a tree, completely clueless, and was approached by Tanzanians, who soon in a way adopted me… And I certainly wish I will find the dearest priest in a good health and be able to express my gratitude for how deeply he had touched me.

Oh boy, it really feels like walking into a time machine, heading towards the distant past.

Tribal wars

Among the many important things I have learned about the nonviolent communication and nonviolent relationships, the issue of requests vs. demands holds a special position. Not only that it is now completely clear to me that I don’t want ever to demand people doing anything at all; simply because I don’t want them to be doing anything out of being forced to do it by my demands, but rather because they would be genuinely interested and honestly motivated to do it – you know, the children-feeding-ducks analogy again. Another thing that I also learned is to distinguish within myself between requests and demands. Namely, sometimes I might be quite convinced that I am only requesting people to do something, but then it turns out that there was a demand hidden underneath this polite request. The way of checking out is pretty easy; I just need to sincerely ask myself: “Will I be completely happy if their answer is NO?” If I will be disappointed, angry, hurt…, then this means I was in fact demanding, expecting the other to behave in a certain way, with plenty of shoulds in my head: “He should this, she shouldn’t that…”

Anyway, lately I have been struggling with another issue in regards to the question of demands and requests. Working with youth or when communicating with my teenagers, I often find it so difficult to get across that I am only inviting them to do something, proposing something, requesting, but not demanding anything. Somehow my communication gets distorted somewhere in the empty space between us. Our dialogue follows this algorithm:

Me: “Would you be willing to do ….?”

Teenagers: “So are you saying we should…?”

Me: “No, I am not saying what you should or should not, I am just asking whether you would be willing to …?

Teenagers: “Yeah, but the thing is that you are expecting us to…?

Me: “No, I am inviting you to… And if my proposal is not working for you, I will be only too happy to sit with you and try to find a way that will work for everybody…”

And sometimes this dialogue continues: me sincerely inviting, them hearing demands, me proposing, them hearing shoulds and shouldn’ts, me honestly requesting, them hearing orders, me wanting to empower them and their power of choice, them hearing restrictions and limitations… Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes weeks for them to start hearing my message…

It seems to me that the contextual communication is overriding the direct one. It is not what I am saying and what the energy behind my words is. It is rather who I am. You see, I am an adult and they are teenagers, kids. From their perception I am from the hostile tribe of grown-ups who don’t listen, who don’t hear, who don’t pay attention and who don’t give a damn about kids’ needs, feelings, inner worlds, opinions, perceptions…

I belong to the violent tribe of grown up masters of the world, who have the power over kids and who just demand, order, expect, boss around and manipulate in any way just in order to get their way. I am a member of the aggressive clan that they have learned to be very careful with and fight very hard to emotionally survive.

Actually, understanding the context in which they are hearing my words now makes my attempts a bit easier, a bit more clear. Now I at least know that when I start working with a new group of teenagers, I need to be extremely careful to not invade their world with my adult arrogance and to not try to rape them with my “wisdom”. Because then I will only prove to them that I indeed am from that tribe and the war will start.

What I need to do to is to sit in front of them as simple and open and honest as I can, vulnerable and imperfect, and listen to them with a sincere desire to understand their world, to respect it, to connect with it. And patiently wait for the inspection and evaluation period to be over and to, perhaps eventually, be honoured to be trusted and invited.

And when this contact happens, it is just about the most beautiful feeling of connecting with another over a huge and a deep gap.

Definitely not a fast learner

It is pretty embarrassing. To begin to understand something I have been teaching others for about two decades or so. You see, I have been preaching all over the place how extremely important it is to firstly understand each other fully, before you even think of trying to make a deal, an agreement, a strategy to resolve a conflict and to then proceed. I have been teaching all that time that it is really essential to genuinely wish to understand the other person first; if you ever want to reach an understanding and resolve a conflict.

And just during the last couple of weeks I finally started to get this myself too. In a way, I am understanding myself finally.

I am just beginning to comprehend that it does not make any sort of a sense to even open my mouth unless I have a clear and sincere desire to simply connect with another person, to just connect with what they are feeling, how they are perceiving this life, what is hurting them, what is motivating them. Unless I have this genuine intention to step in their shoes and listen, understand and empathise with their world, it is far better to keep my mouth shut and to walk away for the time being. And perhaps come back later.

Because as long as I want to change others, as long as I want to fix them, make them understand, make them see, make them realize that they are wrong and that I am right, as long as I try to prove my point and have it my way, they will resist. They will not feel understood, they will not feel respected, they will not feel accepted… They will in fact feel violated, pushed away and they will resist. Fight. And I can easily understand them, since I don’t like to be pushed around and be told that I am wrong, that my perception is wrong, that my feelings are wrong. When I am being treated this way my motivation to communicate truly goes downhill.

Although I know it on the rational level, it is so damn difficult to put in practice the knowledge that it is never about who is right and who is wrong. Conflict never resolve at this stage – they just get suppressed and postponed. Yet I like to jump, especially when emotionally involved, right into it, proving how right I am and how wrong the other person is. You know, firstly to climb on a higher ground, obtain a superior position and then, and only then, start talking. But who will want to talk to me then, after I have built these walls?

So, right now, after these intense realizations I have had in the last few weeks, I want to imprint it in my brain, tattoo it all over my hands so that I can see it all the time and not forget about it tomorrow when communicating with my kids or wife or whoever: “Firstly connect with them, with what they are perceiving, what they are feeling, what their needs are… You don’t have to agree upon anything, just understand, empathise and create a genuine, open, sincere connection with a human being over there.”

After this it is all much easier.

To do what you’ve got to do

This is what I call fast: a couple of weeks back I have met him at the Warrior of the Heart training in Belgium, and a week later Steve, on his tour around Europe, already visited me in our home. Having him here for a few days and taking him around the country was really great, but what was the most meaningful thing for me was, as usual, the simple and sincere sharing of where we are at with our lives.

And the thing that touched me the most was when he was sharing with me his experiences and feelings of working voluntarily in the Kufunda Learning Village in Zimbabwe. Now, everything he shared with me was so damn inspiring that I immediately felt like joining in and contributing what I can to that beautiful project.

On the other hand, I have sensed the typical humanitarian sadness and frustration in his words. A general feeling of fighting an omnipotent and invincible dragon there. For every head that is cut off, hundred new fire-spitting heads pop up. For every problem solved, a thousand of new problems incarnate. For every child saved, there will be hundreds of children dying tomorrow.

We are not saving anything really. And it can be very depressing to face that.

I guess we are down to the question of ethics, the question on which basis do we choose, in our lives, what to do and how to do it. There are, generally speaking, three basic approaches, as far as I know.

The first one would be to just follow the rules and duties, imposed by the culture or authorities, the so-called deontological approach. They say I should be honest and not lie, therefore this must be the right thing to do and so I will stick to that. It is said that I should go out and help people and therefore this is the right thing for me to do and so I will do it.

The second one would be to think about the consequences of actions and go for the actions that will ensure me the consequences I want. If I lie, I might get caught and then I will be punished. This consequence I do not like and so I will not lie. If I will be honest people will like me, which I prefer much more than people not liking me, and so I will be honest. And if I will help people, than not only will people help me back, but the planet will be a better place and we will all be so happy, like in Hollywood happy-ending movies. Now, this is a very nice consequence, isn’t it?

But perhaps, if I choose to be honest and to not lie, people will, in some cases, be hurt and consequentially angry with me. Perhaps they will not like me anymore. So should I lie anyway? Just a little bit? Is there a good lie, the one that makes people happier than the bad truth? Hm, I am getting lost. And, why should I go saving the world if I know that I can not save it. If I know that everything is going downhill. If I know that the child I save today will die next week. Why should I do it and not somebody else (a classical excuse in consequentialist way of thinking)?

Frankly, the more I think of it the more I believe that the good old Aristotle was damn right in saying that thinking about consequences will not get us anywhere and with his suggestion that it is best to live by the ethics of virtues. When we are not concerned with the results of our actions, but rather with the question of how we want to proceed in our lives, what kind of people do we want to be. In this case I am choosing to be honest simply because this is what I want to be: a honest person. This is how I want to live my life. I do not even want to lie on a burning stake, for that matter. And I do want to be nonviolent and respectful towards others; not because some god was reported to have said so or because I believe I would get some sort of a reward for that, but just because this is how I want to live my life, even if it gets me in more troubles and even if this means I will not make all that shiny money.

So, back to humanitarian work and helping people: I believe the only thing that will get a humanitarian worker through all the ups and downs is this very approach of virtue ethics. Helping because this is you, this is what you want to do and what kind of person you want to be. Helping because this is how you want to spend and experience your own existence.

Now, the question for myself, of course, is: Do I dare to climb that horse or am I just trying to be smart here?

And I am back to the question of courage again.

Violence intolerance

I am feeling rather shaken, frustrated and sad right now. I have been working with a class of 13 years old kids in one primary school and I am in a state of shock because of the level of violence I am facing there.

It is not physical, but rather rational and emotional, so to say. It is at the level of kids wanting to hurt one another because they simply want to hurt one another. They want to cause pain in others and when they see the pain and the hurt in the eyes of their school mates, they feel victorious and they laugh. And they feel this is really all right, they like to have power over others, and they want to build up their strength, physical as well as social, in order to achieve that. They simply do not want to look for the nonviolent strategies of conflict resolution because they are completely happy with the violent ones. They like them.

I know, I know, I know that there are completely opposite feelings and needs underneath this violence, I am aware of that fully. But, oh boy is it difficult to see this connection when on the scene. And find empathy within me. I am used to work with people who are being violent but, if not immediately than at least some time after, feel sorry for that. Or at least feel they do not want to be violent but are “being forced to” by other people. Or fail to find other strategies, though they are searching for them. But in this case these kids keep stating that they actually like violent strategies and feel no need to move anywhere from this point.

I do not want to become violent myself, using my power of an adult over them to “make” them less violent and more respectful and all of that, because that would of course lead nowhere. And so I am persisting, trying to melt down the violence and connect with them on the deeper and more true level. Honestly believing it can be done.

However, my system is really in a state of shock and suffering in these situations. I just cannot tolerate violence. Was never able to. I was never able to punch a person in the face because I did not want to hurt them, even when I was a kid. I do get nervous when people are violent towards me, but I get extremely bewildered when I see people violently hurting each other. All of my beingness has been rejecting the world of violence for as long as I remember being alive. I cannot live with it. I do not want to live with it.

Seeing it all around breaks my heart, it really does.