Spirituality, defined as being present as what we truly are, appears to me to be beyond times, societies, theories, schools, ideas and concepts. We are – and we make up stories. And sometimes making up stories about what we truly are, and then studying those stories, is called spirituality.

It always begins with an experience – let it end there.

To effect any change it is usefull to be present to the whole picture, to see the entire situation in all it’s implications. The ideas of rightness, justice, goodness, injustice, evil, limit the perspective drastically and make the change nearly impossible to occure.

I can tell you all this, I can tell you the stories of my life but they will give you nothing at all.

How did I learn what I know…

I learned by choosing to look, by choosing to question, by choosing to consider. I learned by listening to others and then looking within myself for my response to their words, for my opinion, for my way of seeing what they see.

I learned by looking inside to see my way of being me.

I learn from being in nature, with trees, with plants, with animals. I learn by feeling them, I learn  by moving how they move, by howling how they howl, by resting how they rest. I learn by being in my body the way they are in theirs, I learn from being present as they are.

I learn from being with people, from being with my husband and feeling him, feeling myself with him. I learn by considering my feelings, seeing where they come from, choosing to feel them or to let go of them. I learn from being present to what I feel, to what I think.

I learn by discovering myself.

The world around me, the universe around me, the nature, other humans, are a mirror. They do not teach me of who I am, they do not tell me what I am, they do not give me wisdom that I don’t have. They reflect me, and in their reflection, by choosing to look, to consider, I learn of what I am. And as I learn what I am, I learn what the reality is, what the universe is. My universe, my reality.

There is no teacher born in this world, nor has there ever been one, that can teach me about my reality – because not one of them is me.

I learn by being present as what I am, being present to what I am.

How did I learn to be present? I heard of tools, I practiced them. I sat in meditation and learned how to be still and look inside. I studied with Brooks and learned how to feel and be present beyond the restrictions of my mind. My Zen teacher, Brooks, they taught me methods, they gave me tools, but they did not teach me what I know. That I learned by using the tools they gave me.

Where the tools came from, what teacher taught them, what book were they described in – it doesn’t matter much. Knowing that will give you nothing at all.

The wisdom does not lie in tools, in other people’s heads, in other people’s words, in other people’s books. The wisdom lies in you. One tool is no different from another. If you look for wisdom any tool will help you find it.

If you choose to look for it.

The initial feeling of “this is okay, there is no need to worry about this” was swallowed by fear, quickly. Fear soon turned into terror and I froze. My insides froze, my head froze. A straight jacket of fear kept me stiff, rigid. I could not think, I could not speak, I could not live.

But this is not the first time, this has happened before. This fear has happened before. My mind knows that, while my body is torn to shreds, gutted, burned by fear. I can’t do anything, I am frozen, I can’t move.

But this has happened before.

Is this it? This time, is this it? Is it cancer? Will I die? Now?!

Now that everything is going so great, now that Chris creates amazing business deals, now that we are moving to Europe, now that the world lies at our feet, now?! Now will my life be reduced to running from doctor to doctor? From surgery to surgery? From one cure to another? Now?!

Now would be the perfect time – my mind informs me. Now you have to grow, now you have to graduate. The world might be at your feet, but you have to grow big enough to carry it on your shoulders. Now is the perfect time for you to collapse. Chris might be creating an amazing opportunities, but now you have to support it, now you have to be present here. What better way to bring him down, what better way to bring you both down, back to where it’s safe, back to what you know. What better way than to fall apart, now?

But what if this is real? What if this is not just my fear? Not just my hypochondria? What if? What if? What if!

Thoughts are flying in frantic patterns, terrible thoughts, scary thoughts, doubts, stories, nightmares. I follow them and stop – I can’t do that, I can’t think this, I can’t think right now. Stop.

I don’t think. I feel instead.

The feelings are deep, grounded. The fear, the terror, now without the scattered thoughts, is settled and calm.

I can feel this. I am feeling it. I am here.

I can be here, I realize. I can be here and I can feel this. All of it. It doesn’t hurt to feel, without thoughts the fear doesn’t scare me. Without thoughts the pain doesn’t hurt.

I am here.

This is what will happen when I die, I realize. I will be here and the thoughts will be gone. I will be present, like this. I can do this now, I don’t need to wait. I can be here, present here, now.

The feelings change, shift, open. Trauma moves. Anger, fear, hate, pain, moves slowly, majestically. I feel it, I am with it. The feelings don’t feel good, but I do. Safe, calm, grounded, present. Because I am here.

The feelings are not what I am, though my thoughts would have me believe otherwise. The feelings are. I am. they move and change. I am.

I can graduate here, I realize. I can not only be here, present, but I can grow here, I can open. I can move on.

This is wonderful, I realize. This is wonderful.

I read about the rules as I stretch my arm …

“No, this is not how you stretch your arm!”, says the rule “this is wrong, you have to do it like that!”…

I move, flex my fingers … “No, not like this! This is the rule for how you flex your fingers, like this…”

I turn … “No, this is wrong, this is the wrong way to turn, the sinful way, it will have you damned, it is how you fall! Here, this is how you turn, this is how you stretch, this is how you roll, this is how you move, this is how you live, this is how you think!”

I move and stop … arrested, corrected, fixed, righted.

My body grows tense, rigid … I move just a little … “wrong!” … I freeze …. I try again, slowly, maybe this way … “no! wrong!” snaps the rule.

I stop. Shocked, terrified, blank.

My body is frozen, rigid, tight. I can’t move anymore, I wouldn’t dare to move for the fear of rolling my hip the wrong way, the shameful way, the damnable way. I can’t think, the risk of thinking an improper thought is too great. Inside of the blank, tight, constrictive box I can not move, breath, feel. I am frozen, and it is just as well.

I do not need to move, breath, feel. The rules do it for me.

The regulations, the rights and the wrongs, the meanings, the ways – they are all here, pulling on strings they’ve attached to my arms, folding my legs into proper configurations, setting my feet just so, rotating my head into the proper position, at the proper angle.

I watch the rules as they move me, twist me, rotate me. I watch the rules, trapped inside of the tight, small box of my frozen body, immobile, blank, shocked. Shocked into being a puppet. But a proper puppet, a right, good, moral, upstanding puppet. A well adjusted puppet.

The rules pat me on the head, they are pleased with me. “Good girl!”, they say.

“But there is space here, within those rules” I allow myself to recognize, “in every rule that pulls on my hands there is a space, there is an experience. If I can be there, feel there …”.

I feel the space, the space within the rule. I flex my muscles tentatively … there is no protest. I move a bit more … and a bit more … nothing! “I can move here!” I realize with elation. Here, within the very heart of the rule, the very meaning of the rule, I can move and nothing stops me! I can move how I want to move, I can move my way!.

I wave my hands, they are my own again! There are no strings here, inside. Here I am myself again, within the rule, within the experience of the rule. I roll and twist and bend in a way that is mine, that feels good, that feels open, spacious, and I can feel the rule, I can feel it’s experience in my body and I move with it, twist with it this way and that, my way.

“This is how I dance with this rule … I choose … this is the right rhythm for me, the right form for me, the right relationship for me!”

Here, it is all me now – how I dance, how I move, how I relate. With the rules, within the rules.

There is only space to be what I am, when I choose to experience this space.

I did not open my eyes, I did not want to enter the day just yet.

In the hazy, undefined space I felt love … it didn’t feel good … I was not quite myself there, not all the way real … there was unconsciousness there, trauma …

Childhood trauma, that’s what it was.

I looked there, the unconscious place opened and drifted away and I was present, present in relationship as what I am, in relationship with what he is…

Here there was no trauma – there is no trauma here, I am here, he is here. We are, and the space is unlimited, the possibility here is unlimited, for what I am, for hat he is, for what we are.

This is the meaning of honoring, a thought passed my mind, this is the very essence of honoring, this is what honoring means.

“I love you” did not hold this presence.

“I am with you” … this is what I say in this place: I am with you, I am present with you.

I say “I love you” and it feels flat, constricted. There is need, an attachment there, limits, ways of coping with reality, ways of surviving.

I say “I am with you” and there is only what I am, nothing else, only the presence for everything else, for anything else to open and become.

Honoring Presence

I am with you

My mouth pressed together into a thin, angry line, my body rigid. I stare at him, unblinking, hardening with his every word. I am not angry, I am hardening my body into an armor.

He doesn’t talk now and I stare at him. I will have to say something soon, he waits for me to say something. But I can’t. I am so rigid, hidden so far behind my defenses now that all I can think to say are sarcastic, angry things. Words that will push him away, that will stop his words, that will let me escape.

I don’t want to say those words, I see what they are, I see what they are for, I see that they are not real. I can’t say anything that is real.

I try, I look for it, I try to reach myself under the thick, hard skin, but I can’t speak it. I try and the armor tightens, It’s getting harder to breath, harder to sit still. I try to speak and the pressure strengthens. I fight against it now, against the urge to fight back, to bite, to kick, to scream, to push … I don’t want to fight.

I press my lips harder together and say nothing. I can hardly stand it now. The armor is suffocating me. I need to get away but I can’t without fighting, without giving in to it, without doing what it wants me to do.

I don’t want to do it, I want to stay present no matter what happens. Stay present even if only a little, even if all I can do is sit still and stare. But the pressure becomes unbearable and I hide my face behind my hands. I can’t stare anymore, I can’t look.

My head is spinning, reeling in a drunken confusion. Christopher speaks, asks me if I could look at him but I shake my head, I can’t, I can’t look, I can’t stand it … he says something more but I can’t understand him now… there is a noise, a swirling, dizzying motion in my head and then suddenly something lifts, something leaves suddenly, flies away and is gone …

I open my eyes – the armor, the pressure, is gone. I can be here now, I can look at him, I can talk to him.

“I’m sorry” I say

I don’t know what it was. I can see, looking back, how it affected me, how it changed me, but it’s gone now. Where I try to look, to see – there is nothing. It’s gone.

I had an impression of my childhood, of the trauma, the national polish trauma, that I inherited at birth.It must have been something from that time, but I don’t need to know what it was, I don’t need to analyze it, I don’t need to understand.

It was there, it was trying to control me, I would not be controlled, and it left.

Now it’s gone, gone as though it’s never been.

Uniqueness

I can hear the word

Uniqueness

I think it

In this fog, in this soft, warm and undefined sleepiness my eyes are heavy, my thoughts rapid and insistent.

Uniqueness

Stay with this word the word, with the sound. It tries to escapes me, but it never runs too far, never too fast, flimsy and elusive like a silky thread in the wind – a light touch on my hand, a pressure, then I flex my fingers to catch it but there is nothing there, nothing to grasp anymore and yet, before I fall back into the dark softness, there it is again … mocking … tantalizing….

Uniqueness … here, stay present I say, do not fall asleep, stay here … uniqueness

It’s dark here, warm, inside of my body … uniqueness … here it is … I don’t need to think it anymore, I don’t need to hear it … it is here … I am it … I can feel it, I can feel the word … I am the word!

I am the word – uniqueness, unlimited. I am uniqueness, unlimited, my body…

I can feel everything now, unlimitedness has no limits, I can feel the energy in the belly of the Earth, in my belly, rising, falling, swirling in fluid celtic patterns, flowing up through the rock, through my bones, up into the soil, into the roots, into muscles and branches, into the tips of the smallest leaf, into my fingertips…

It flows into water, in great waves and tides, filling the oceans’ beds, spilling into rivers, into my veins, rising, falling, moving wit a solemn grace … I hear it’s pulsing in my ears …

The Earth is resting, I am resting, the sun shines on her skin, on my skin … with the myriads of shines and sparkles the Earth soaks up it’s splendor, stretched in the warmth like a fat, lazy cat … I purr, stretching my paws, rolling on my back … it is so good, so right to be here … it feels so good to be unlimitedness, to be uniqueness, it feels so good to be those words that are not words anymore, that are me, that are Earth…

I am the word … I have become the word … this is why, this is what the body is for!

That’s why, that’s why this animal form while I am here on this planet, in this life – so that I can be here as myself, as this planet, as this life, as Earth

Without separation.

Nature is not a sentient being, a partner, but a thing – we use it and discard it as we would any tool.

Once we die we cease to exist, we lose everything, we are gone for ever – so we cling desperately to this life and all we can gather right now. Right now is all we have.

People who disagree with us are wrong and, if they persist in being wrong, they become bad, evil, psychopaths – so we fight them, force them to obey and if we can’t – we kill them. We do that to save themselves from their own evil, it is for their own good.

To change the world, all we have to do is change our ideas about it.

Nature is a partner, friend, ally. It is present and alive, often much more so than human beings are. We can befriend it, learn from it, let it support and help us. We an enjoy it.

Who we are does not die, when this body ends it’s functions we simply graduate, open into another expression of ourselves. We never cease to exist, we lose nothing. We don’t ever have to be afraid, nothing wrong can ever happen to us because we can not die, we can not end, we will simply change. We are safe.

People who disagree with us are original, unique, just like we are original and unique in our views. That we don’t agree is the sign of our presence and individuality. We can celebrate it. Those who disagree with us reflect us, present perspectives on reality that enrich us, they help us grow. We can enjoy it.

There is no need to destroy. There is no need to fear. There is no need to fight.

All we have to do to change the world is to see it for what it is – beautiful, supportive, varied, safe.