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. And it was so clear and vivid that what I normally experience as my inner world truly is 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 really 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 the 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, but really 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 the definition of a heavy distortion.

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

The most precious moments of my life

Today, while hiking in mountains (again no camera on me, only my phone, hence a lousy photo) with a friend, thinking about the quality of the time in my life, the question arose within me about what makes a certain moment in life a precious one. How do I evaluate whether a certain moment of my life was/is precious or not?

Locating the most valuable moments of my life is easy. Deep insights into the nature of my existence and various awakenings into the presence of now, that kept occurring in the wild meditative period of my life about 20 years ago – these moment were absolutely crucial and they are still here, with me. Being there when my kids got born, to participate in this miracle of life… Precious beyond words. All the aha moments of my life. All the magical moments of pure contact with others. Lying with my wife in bed, in tight embrace, feeling completely loved and accepted. The moments when I have managed to provide some support to somebody and was honoured to witness the sparks ignite in their eyes…

Now, when I think of these many precious moments, I can see the pattern. I believe I evaluate a moment of my life as a precious when it is either about:

• a full – and when I say full I mean full – presence here and now. When the mind stops, when the time stops, when all that can fall off actually falls off and the only thing that remains is… well, nothing, emptiness, just this…
• an open contact with another being, absolutely open, nothing in between. The flow, the connection, the union.
• the feeling that I have contributed to somebody’s life being more beautiful. When I see them shine. When I see them smile. When I feel they are taking my hand and that I have helped some needs of theirs being met. And when I feel this is meaningful to them. I guess I could also say that in these moments I feel I have given love and that this love was indeed needed and accepted. And I melt.

So, I guess, it is the presence, the openness and the free giving.

Just as simple as that.

If I start focusing my life around these three crucial attributes, I believe I should soon find myself living a very very precious life.

This feels very weird: suddenly the question of the meaning of life seems so frightenly simple and easy.

Ubuntu – nobody is ever outside

My wife, an interculturalist, introduced me to the Ubuntu concept after she got home, entirely inspired and enthusiastic, from an international training that was led by two African interculturalists. I remember that immediately when hearing about the Ubuntu, I sensed an utter greatness in it and felt an immense respect and admiration for it.

But, on the other hand, I also felt rather distanced from it, almost completely unable to connect to it or to relate to it in any other way but rational, intellectual. I did not know why I felt this remoteness, but did not think about the matter all that much until I, a couple of days back, was awarded with the Ubuntu badge.

On the one hand I felt really honoured and happy about this award, but my confusion in regards to my perception of the Ubuntu concept came out again and got me thinking and observing. What is it that distances me, in my body and in my feelings, from this concept despite I admire it so much. Why am I having difficulties to connect with it, what is this gap made of?

I noticed that my respect for the Ubuntu spirit was mixed with feelings about my westernised mind being just too dirty and spoiled with the intoxicating ideas of the omnipotence of the individual identity, the importance of personal growth and development, all this individualistic discourses, that the abyss between me and the otherness was just too wide for me to feel the fundamental connectedness of us all. I felt I was so far away from even understanding the Ubuntu, let alone living it.

But I was still exploring this area within me and while watching Mandela’s short explanation of what the Ubuntu in life is (or used to be in the old times, at least), it finally dawned on me.

It was the deserve oriented language that made the gap, the canyon between the spirit of Ubuntu and my little self. This discourse of always operating with the idea that I have to deserve to be accepted, appreciated, loved, respected…, this cultural context of there being some universal rules I need to (and will always fail to) follow in order to deserve my needs to be met within a group of people, this paradigm was dominating the society and all my socializations throughout all my life. And I internalized it into the very fundaments of my own being and my beingness. Do I deserve to be accepted? Do I deserve to be a part of this beauty? Have I complied with all the requirement to be let in? Am I good enough? Will they find out that I am in fact not?

I see this deserve oriented language of conditioning as one of the most fundamental failures of the humanity. Resulting in being conditioned and conditioning others. If you do this and that then you may qualify to deserve my love. If you comply with this and that, then you may deserve to be let in. Distinctions. Hierarchy. Levels of importance. Inner and outer circles. Social climbing. Competing. Building up as much power over others as possible…

What I am trying to say here is that I feel, somewhere very deep and barely tangible within me, that the Ubuntu starts within us, with our perception of ourselves, our own worth and our own needs. And with the realization that it is not at all about deserving or not deserving. This language and these notions are completely irrelevant and meaningless.

Ubuntu, as I see it, is a complete absence of evaluation and deserve oriented perception of self and others. We do not have to deserve to be accepted, to be part of it all, to be taken care of. And the same is true for everybody else. Because we can not actually be separated, be not-connected. We are connected, ultimately and universally. We can not be if others are not. We are because others are. We are because we all are.

The only choice we have is to choose to continue denying it all or to choose to cease denying the obvious and fundamental. And to step in, fully.

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.

The Question of Fatalness

What makes a certain person in our lives fatal? What makes somebody so special that our hearts melt, our minds go blank, we feel overjoyed, overwhelmed, over-everything? Why is it this person and not that one?

There are many theories about that, from very spiritual ones about soul-mates and journeys of souls and reincarnations, to very depressing psychoanalytical theories that it is actually nothing but our subconscious mind searching for the compatible persona out there, the one that will represent our father as well as our mother, the good stuff as well as the bad one, and enable us to continue with acting out whatever games and roles we have learned to interact through. And, yes, there are even more down-to-earth theories, about the chemistry in our brain, about the neurons and hormones and synapses and all that stuff.

But, what really bothers me is the same questions as Forrest Gump attempted to answer: “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.” So, it is the question whether there is an objective fatalness or am I myself making a certain relationship a fatal one in my life, by adding certain qualities to it, be it consciously or unconsciously. Is it me choosing to open up widely and deeply to a specific person and thus experience an intense fullness of our contact and connection, or is it that there actually is, objectively, something special between us, something that is becoming alive now, overwhelming us with its energy?

If it is an objective fatalness, than life on a planet with billions of individuals really sucks. It’s like searching for a needle in a hay stack. In this case I certainly hope we do communicate also on subtle and very spiritual levels, otherwise there’s no way to find each others in one life time. On the other way, if it is us who are, by shaping our perceptions, literally creating fatal people around us in our lives…, well in that case you can just grab the first one on a street, define him or her as the fatal one, and live happily ever after.

Oh, yeah, they will need to see you as a fatal one too, so this complicates things a bit.

Anyway, be it this way or the other, I can count myself as an extremely lucky guy since I have been living with my fatal one. It settles so many questions and brings so much peace and bliss. Having your goddess, your fatal one here, around, with me, I mean, isn’t that a paradise? I can look at her, smell her, touch her, hug her, interact with her in every way, every day…

Well, I guess tomorrow it is going to be a fatal day for me, when she comes home from her business trip and reads what kind of stuff I have been posting about her on my blog.

No world out there

I find it very natural to just sit and observe people, at airports, in restaurants, cafes. Yet the other day I realized that I do not know what do I observe really: other people or myself. Let me explain.

When I am centred, at peace with myself and my life, all I see is beautiful, wonderful people, carrying wounds and pain in their hearts, being soft and fragile within, full of love… I see their sincere attempts to do good, to be fulfilled, to make sense of their lives. My heart melts in warmth, my eyes get filled with tears and I am all empathy.

On the other hand, when I am feeling nervous, under pressure, frustrated, in inner conflicts and stress, I do not see that scene at all. All I can see than is egotistic, pushy, aggressive, ugly and terrible people, being nasty to each other, torturing their children and spouses. And my mind goes cynical. No empathy. Nothing.

It is obvious that my perception is utterly shaped by the state of my emotional being.

So what am I seeing really?

Nothing out there.

All I can ever see are merely my projections, my own emotional colouring, my subconscious patterns, cultural discourse, mental patterns and expectations… I do never communicate and interact and live with such and such people, with individuals and their objective attributes. No, I live among people that I am creating inside my head, shaping them this way or that way, arbitrarily.

That’s why my wife is sometimes divine Goddess, and sometimes…, well, something rather different. It is me who keeps changing her, inside my head, not her. In other words, if I want to see you ugly, there’s nothing you can do about it. And in case I choose to see you beautiful, you are trapped again… The same applies for everything; I am the creator of the world I live in and I keep re-creating it moment by moment.

So, you and me, we do not live in the same world. Pretty scary, isn’t it?

The secret of remote monasteries

20 years ago when coming home from intensive heavy-duty meditation retreats, I felt personally fulfilled, but physically broken – exhausted, tired, a few kg lost… And it is at least interesting, if not utterly sad, how my lifestyle – and consequentially my experiencing such retreats – has changed over these years.

A Zen seshin is now a complete bliss for me; not only in spiritual/psychological aspect, but in physical terms as well. It is actually a rest, a vacation. I don’t have to think, to organize, to plan anything, to take care of anything. Just being present in the moment suffices. On the emotional level I am suddenly not responsible for anything, nobody expects anything from me, I don’t have to save anybody’s life problems, no dilemmas around, nobody actually notices me at all and I can rest as an invisible shadow.

And on the physical level: hey man, this is heaven. I get to sleep much more than at home, I eat regular meals, I even manage to exercise. And my body is so grateful for the treatment so that even my knees don’t hurt at all after hours upon hours of zazen. It is incredible.

Now I understand why people leave their families and disappear in far away monasteries. To rest and enjoy life. That’s why they have built monasteries in all those out-of-reach mountains – so that their wives could not find them and drag them back.

Anyway, just sitting for days in a maximally stable and centred posture, with mindful and peaceful breathing, being gently present in the moment, here and now, feels like finally living, finally existing, being truly alive, awake and present in this existence.

But than again explaining it to other people is a hard task. I cannot get across that the beginning and the end, the reasons and the goals, the questions and the answers, it all melts into one point, one moment. The moment, that is both full of presence and empty of any content.

After listening for some time, my dear Marjeta ended with a soft: “Well, I still find this rather weird…” And I sense a slight trace of worry in her eyes: “Is he already going downhill?”