Happily juggling and balancing between connecting and disconnecting

You know, I could easily get used to a life like the one I am having for the past few days, being on my seven-day retreat in solitude on the out-of-the-tourist-season Adriatic coast. With our van, of course. Sunny days, calm sea, nobody around (except for a few cats and two or three little fishing boats slowly passing by each day)… The beauty of it all lies in the possibility to simply follow my needs, from one moment to another. Meaning that I sleep a lot, eat when hungry, sit and stare into the horizon for as long as it feels good, do some stretching on the beach when my body desires so, climb my bicycle when my blood feels like moving a bit faster… Sounds like pure Zen, now that I think of it. The absence of pressures, obligations, responsibilities, should and shouldn’ts is just so liberating.

One big part of me totally enjoys this, yet a small part of me misses being with people that I love and longs for reconnecting with them. And, when I am home or when I work, a big part of me enjoys the contact and the connection with people, yet a small part yearns for solitude.

There seems to be this eternal inner conflict, or rather a discrepancy between the two tensions: the first one is to relate, to connect, to have love and friendship and communion and all of that with other human beings, and the other is to back away from everybody and just be free, spontaneous, autonomous, self-caring. Connection means relationship and it limits freedom. Freedom brings isolation and limits connection.

It does not seem to me that one would need to choose between the two (what a relief, actually ). But it does seem that both clusters of needs are of a crucial importance – perhaps not for everybody, but I dare to say that for many of us.

I am happy to notice that I am really in a somewhat ideal position regarding this matter. Through my wife and kids as well as through the work I do I get all the connection and communion I can ever need or wish for.  No needs unmet there, no frustration whatsoever. On the other hand, when I need to go somewhere away and be alone, I again have all support possible. Kids are totally cool with it, and my wife, my dearest wife, she is so supportive that I am afraid I will never be able to equally reciprocate.

But I do need to be careful while juggling with these needs: be with myself, be with my wife, be with my kids, be with my friends, try to do a meaningful contribution through my work… If I start neglecting one, I soon start feeling entrapped, frustrated… It is really all about balance, isn’t? Juggling and balancing, this is what personal growth seems to be about.

It was me & kids a few weeks ago, now it is me & myself, and we already plan to do a me & my wife weekend off soon… And in between I work a bit, which covers the me & everybody part.

Life’s not that complicated, after all.

The one that shook my world

The other day my dear friend Ian wrote a post about the ten books that shook his world. I immediately thought that was a great idea and decided to do it myself too.
After a minute I realized I was not going to do it, after all. It would just take too much time and effort of trying to remember them all, write about them as well as what they meant too me…, nah, just too much. I am not as dedicated as Ian and he wins. Touché.
But, in the process of thinking about it I did remember one of the very important books of my life, one that I haven’t been thinking about for a long long time since I read it, say, 25 years or so ago, when I was pretty young: Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.
When I discovered Hesse I read many of his novels and I loved them all: Demian, Siddharta, Journey to the East and especially Steppenwolf. By the way, do people still read Hesse at all? Anybody knows what the situation is nowadays? In my time if you were into personal growth, Hesse was a must. I believe even more so if you were male, as I remember. Which, now that I think of it, is quite interesting.
Anyway, for me The Glass Bead Game was above it all. I still remember how very shocked I felt when reaching the last page and reading something I was totally unprepared for. After everything the main characters has gone through, after finally achieving the very top of the world, he decides to let it all go. He decides to abandon it all and to step into something very simple yet meaningful, into serving. But then, finally feeling completely free and content, he suddenly dies. Abruptly. The end. No more.
I can so easily reconnect with that moment, lying in my bed with the last page in front of me, my heart pounding hard and my face staring in disbelief. It felt as if all the four existential dilemmas (freedom, death, isolation, meaninglessness) suddenly hit me in my forehead, really hard. For days my mind was pulsating with thoughts: “Everything I begin, will end. Everything I build, will eventually crush down. Nothing is permanent and whatever I may achieve, whatever peak I might reach, even if I reach the absolute freedom, it will all end in total isolation and with death I will vanish from this world. So what is the meaning of it all? What difference does anything make? Why move? Why try?“
The romantic worlds and illusions started to crush down and I kept attempting to build them up again, and again, and again. I wanted to have a nice illusion of absolute meaning, of eternity, of connectedness and free choice, yet the pictures never held for very long and there were always pieces missing. Only in the last couple of years I seem to be starting to come to peace with it all.
Well, that book definitely shook my world. I believe I would be somewhat different had I not read it. But I am totally happy I did, of course. No mourning here, just a celebration.

 

The beautiful dilemmas of life

The other day in New York City I was talking with a friend of mine about possible reasons for such a strong need in humans for an ideology – a religion, a philosophy, a new-age system and alike. Why is there always a seemingly endless queue of happy customers for just about any possible type of ideology?

Then it dawned on me – since the purpose of ideologies is to help us make some sense of the world, they offer us a model of the world and provide us with answers. This way they seemingly take the dilemmas away, especially these existential dilemmas, the most annoying ones. You know, the big four existential dilemmas about freedom/responsibility, death, isolation and meaninglessness.

Yes, this is what an ideology does – if you go for one, you are suddenly provided with all the answers, about life, death, future, nature of things, nature of yourself… Everything is suddenly clear, you have gotten rid of the stressful and frightening dilemmas and you are fine. As long as you stick to these answers you are safe, you will not be disturbed, you will have the comforting feeling that you know what your life is all about. It’s like a drug, isn’t it? Creating an illusion that your existence has no unknown realms, everything has been explored, there’s nothing to be afraid of, everything is clear. Just don’t forget to give some donation on your way out of the temple. And make sure you don’t ever question the provided universal answers.

This may be the reason why I find it so hard to communicate with people who belong to religious or new-age ideologies – whenever I express a dilemma of mine (like, oh, I am really wandering about the purpose of what I am doing in my life, for instance) they instantaneously jump with an answer (yes, but but but you must, you have to, it is like this, it is like that…).

I guess it all has to do with the ability to face and live with the unknown. To face the fact that there are and will always be these existential dilemmas around in our lives and they will not be ultimately answered – until the moment of death at least. Because all the possible insights into the nature of our existence are inherently embedded in so many contexts that they cannot ever be reliable. Yes, letting go of the illusion of knowing and sinking back into the humble role of ignorant explorer can be frightening. But you get used to it and start using the sentence: “I don’t know” more often again. Perhaps this is what Suzuki meant when he said that the true goal of Zen practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind, since only the beginner’s mind, the mind of the not-knower is free of self-centeredness and involves true openness to the complexity of existence. Tomorrow I am leaving for a Zen seshin retreat and I will have plenty of time to climb another few rungs out of the illusion that I know anything at all, and explore the beginner’s mind.

The need for God

The other day I realized that I have been omitting writing about God in my blog and I started to wonder why – because I definitely do have many things on my mind about this issue. I guess I was trying to be nice, to not rock anybody’s boat, to play it safe, to not upset (and lose) my readers… A nice guy, you see, that’s what I am.

But, upon realizing this I immediately decided to express what’s on my mind about this topic as well, and so in the next months I intend to write posts on subjects like which God among many, the reasons for talking about God, God’s books, the plans of God, the personality and the values of God… and perhaps other things as well. And I will start with the questions of the need for God.

To begin with, let me paraphrase an old Zen saying:

If you believe in God,

things are just as they are.

If you do not believe in God,

things are just as they are.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what we think or believe about God or anything else, things are and will be just as they are. So, relax, this is what I suggest…

Anyway, the questions whether there is an omnipotent creator of everything is definitely an utterly fundamental question, but there are other questions like this too, like whether there are multiple universes or is this time/space the only one, or whether this universe is expanding or not (and what is it expanding into), and whether we are alone in the universe… All these questions are important, crucial and all-embedding, but in general we do not talk about them all that much and definitely we do not fight or even kill each other over them. Apart from the questions about God. We do kill each other over them.

So why is the question about the existence of God so important and special? Why would we want to stress and expose it over and over again? There are a few possible reasons that pop up in my mind when I ask myself the above questions:

• The existential dilemma of freedom is a scary one, since being completely free to choose also means being completely responsible for these choices. Full responsibility for our lives, for our existence. Therefore the external locus of control, the feeling that control is not within us but out there, in the hands of destiny, God, some ultimate authority, is a very comforting one and perhaps also the reason why we have the need to reassure ourselves, over and over again, that we are children of God. Not fully responsible. Thus not having to fully face the scary freedom of choice.
• Another reason for talking that much about God may be that there’s yet another existential dilemma we are having difficulties to face, and this is the question of meaning of it all. The question of the meaning of life seems to be rather unanswerable and it is not easy, we all know that, to go from day to day without some sort of a steady meaning. Now, the paradigm of the existence of God makes picture perfect and simple, bringing peace of mind. Or at least pacifying the horror of the meaninglessness. You do not have to know the meaning, as long as there is God who knows. So all you need to do is just trust and continue. Knowing that you are on the right side, on the side with a meaning.
• The third possible reason I see for talking about the question of God all that much in our lives could be in running away from the dreadful feeling of being isolated, of ultimate loneliness in this dark and cold universe. If you remind yourself every day that you are actually warmly held in God’s lap, you have this warm feeling of safety and eternal belonging. So the notion of God brings a relief from this isolation. Now, this lack of ability to be alone could be seriously problematic. Fromm said that the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love, and I could not agree with him more.
• The last, and to my mind the most powerful possible reason for having God on our lips that much could be that having a living connection with the supreme force in the universe gives one a tremendous power. By being the child of the greatest and the one and the only God means being in the right club. This connection gives you power over others, the unbelievers, the unfaithful. It was so easy for the Crusaders to kill everybody around by screaming: “God wills it.” It is so easy to fight God’s wars, to be the hand of God, to have this connection to the ultimate authority. Frankly, I have personally met so many “Godly” people, various religions, various cultures, with God on their tongues all the time, but no respect for other people, no love, no empathy, no acceptance, just the will to judge, control, change, punish… On the other hand, so many loving, gentle, respectful, empathic, warm, wise people never mention God at all.

So, these are some possible reasons that I see for the question of belief in God not being just one of the many intimate personal matters we are all having, mentioning them here and there, but rather an ultimately important concept that is not only shaping lives of individuals, but the history of humankind, to a such dramatic extent.

And I wonder what your thoughts are.

A beautiful shock

I believe everybody that has ever worked as a psychotherapist or a social worker, has heard enough heartbreaking family stories to be now highly aware of the consequences that certain ways of treating children create. I have, with years, developed such a sensitivity for that matter that it is not only rather stressful for me to observe parent–child scenes that are causing pain in children; much more, I started to notice that I actually automatically expect a power struggle to be happening at some point and so am all the time a bit tense when in company of parents and their kids. Not much, but just ready for the moment when a big one will hit the fan.

And yes, they often do happen to a certain degree, power struggles in which parents either go violent and want to have power over their kids, to win, to dominate, to have the final word, or going passively and become victims of their own little dictators, who at the end really freak out in these relationships with no clear boundaries.

These situations tend to evolve and turn into habitual nightmares in which parents go manipulating (…but don’t you love your daddy?), threatening (…if I see you doing this just one more time you are going to regret it!), laying guilt trips on kids (…our kind visitor is going to be very sad and he is going to cry…), lying (…I really don’t have any money left to buy you a chocolate…), evaluating (…you are such a selfish boy and you are making your mommy so sad…) and so forth. The latter one is a particularly hard one for me to hear since I have heard it so many times in my own childhood. And it was damn painful, confusing and isolating feeling. Terribly isolating.

Well, this is a post about good news, actually. You see, being ready for the worst, sometimes I experience a beautiful shock. The last one was when spending time in Warshaw with my newly acquired friend Ian and his little daughter. Of course, for about ten minutes or so I was in my typical state of alarm, but than I noticed how respectfully, with gentleness, patience, empathy, honesty, openness and love he was treating her. And I started to feel I was just melting down in a relief, just emotionally relaxing, breathing again.

Suddenly it was so great to be there, knowing I did not need to worry; he was going to handle everything in the most beautiful way. All her ups and downs, all her problems and demands, all her feelings and needs, all her worries and confusions. Man, was I enjoying their father-daughter company and all that day became beautiful, with love all around.

I don’t know, Ian, if you are ever going to read this, but thank you so much for infusing that day for all of us with all that love.

Is Communication Just a Big Joke?

I have been working as a communication trainer for 20 year, yet I still find communication as damn difficult. When things get down to the personal issues, intimate relationships and emotional realms, it seems to be so difficult to communicate, to truly reach an understanding, to get my messages across and to in fact get what other people are trying to communicate to me. Even if everybody involved is really trying very hard.

And I have been practising, wholeheartedly, the nonviolent communication which seems to me as the ultimate way to communicate and a clear bridge that leads from one shore to another. Yet, often, much too often, I feel completely hopeless, not having any ideas what to do, how to bridge the gap, how to communicate, how to reach the other person (or let the other person reach me). No bridges anywhere, just gaps and canyons. No answers, only piles of questions. An ultimate insurmountable mountain.

Gets me thinking about our human individual existential isolation. As Yalom puts it, existential isolation refers to an unbridgeable gulf between ourselves and any other being, or even a fundamental separation between ourselves and the world. We like to think we are cross-connected and not really alone, however sooner or later we will need to enter that last tunnel and experience, as Yalom beautifully puts it, the most lonely human experience – death. And face our isolation, I guess.

I know we do not like this idea of isolation and tend to seek shelter under concepts of universal connectedness, divine love, everything being one, and so forth. However, on the very experiential level here and now, aren’t we ultimately captured inside our own limited and isolated little individual beingness?

I guess no communication and no relationship can ever eliminate this fundamental isolation. Yet, it seems to me we are trying exactly this. To somehow cure our pain – or at least the heaviness of realisation – of being isolated, to run away from it, to make it disappear, to pretend it is not here. For as long as we can. Find our soul mates, deeeeeeep relationships, spiritual family… Isn’t it simply out of not being able to bear with the isolation?

At least this is what I can observe within myself. Putting so much effort in trying to be completely, properly, ultimately understood. Because I will than feel connected and not that isolated. Just how neurotic is that? I must be driving people mad by trying to accomplish perfect communication with them.

I guess this blog is one aspect of this neuroticism as well.