Freedom what does it really mean?

 

Freedom what does it really mean?

 

From a very young age, I longed for release from pain and war. Born as a freedom-loving Sagittarius to German Jew Refugees during World War ll, my desire for freedom guided my life until today.

In my search for self-liberation, I have gone through different stages of understanding. I grew up in a warring environment and a home where my parents fought bitterly, particularly since they too dealt with a heavy cloud caused by the loss of family in Germany. In addition to the inner turmoil at home, outside we suffered the fear of physical attack and death in the streets of Jerusalem, Palestine under the British mandate rule (now Israel.) Influenced by my parents and the overwhelming atmosphere, I wanted to get away from such oppression. I longed for the privilege of having food rather than going hungry, and freedom from the fear of war and guns. The wish to unload the heaviness on my shoulders from the age of three, guided my urge to escape and find another way. Later, as an adolescent, I reluctantly succumbed to parental supervision and the provincial rule-based society I lived in at the time. But I dreamed of liberation as soon as possible.

Luckily for me, my father left us and emigrated to the U.S.A. When I reached my late twenties, he invited me to visit him in New York for the summer. My encounter with the American culture greatly enlarged and transformed my idea of freedom. Visiting and then living in a leisure-oriented society void of any inkling of real war or hunger on the land, I found America to be the pinnacle of abundance and plenty, so opposite from the culture I came from. I had just arrived at the end of yet another Israeli war. The American culture focused on undoing oppression by fighting the established conservative political structure and by supporting the change in my attitude toward the underdog. Specifically, I saw the black community fighting for liberation from injustice based on history’s legacy of slavery. Kris Kristofferson and Joplin’s timely Bobbie McGee, song -“freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’ brings in another version of the topic of liberation as surrender for a cause bigger than life. This invited me to consider surrender as the next exploration for my evolution.

A bit later, when I landed in California, freedom looked to me as license to indulge in hedonism, criticisms of the system and the rest of what the Hippie movement offered: sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, as they called it then. Initially I felt aghast, then joined in and enjoyed the hedonistic experience until I burned out on it. It didn’t bring me immunity from anxiety, or negative reactions to work, or relationships.

I urgently searched for “real” freedom that would allow me a state of contentment, peace of mind and satisfaction. I realized this was different from carte blanche behavior.

I wanted to find inner freedom, a true liberation from suffering. I chose meditation as my path now. It presented a challenge, but helped me look squarely into my inner resistance, unhappiness, and arrogant judgements. I knew I had finally found the true source of freedom. This journey continues to offer opportunities and an interior wisdom. It also opens my heart with more love, something I longed for from the beginning of my life. To learn more about the journey I took to come home, check my memoir: From Mud to Lotus: I meant to behave but there were too many other options. There you can find more in-depth explorations of the topic.

 

Facing Fear

 

Facing Fear

I sat on my easy chair on the lanai (balcony or deck in mainland American language) rocking and swaying rhythmically soothing myself as I was feasting my eyes and heart on the rainbow-colored sunset that finally arrived close to nine in the evening.

As I attended to my insides, I noticed a wall like sense of tension that was “holding my body together” that was made of the caution and sense of unsafety of this world I live in. Strange in a way for me to now see this tension I didn’t really explore so deeply before.

Yes, I have faced my fear courageously, maybe stupidly and certainly naively. I walked into such traps that left me very scared for my life and survived. How resilient we humans are.  Many stories of such adventures I divulged to the world in my memoir: From Mud to Lotus, I meant to behave but there were too many other options. But rarely did I take time out to befriend the inner bodily reality of my fear that sometimes grips me like a straight suit which holds my almost every move in the world of humanity. When I come to a new and unknown city or wind my way through unfamiliar streets to a shop or park in a new town that is unfamiliar and new to me or talk to strangers till they become friends.

Mostly this fear embraces my relationship with our disintegration as humans, the slow decline on our way out. I wonder why it is that humanity, as a general rule, has to go through such uncomfortable or painful deterioration in its marathon of nearing the end goal of dying, freeing ourselves of the physical body.

Taking an evening to sit and meditate on this inner dynamic of tension and relaxation into being, with curiosity rather than ignoring it, denying its existence, or conquering it through closing my eyes and thus still maintain control over my internal experience of shaking with terror. The last resort I noticed myself doing is overcoming the uneasiness by surrendering into active loving when there was no other option of escape. I have tried all these tricks. They are all chapters in my life I tried they all seem temporary. So now I found a new vista of meeting fear-- just sit and explore it as if it is my best friend in the world that I am happy to be intimate with, rather than an enemy I fight, tolerate, or expunge disquietude with action. now that seems an interesting new journey.

I realized that though I have beliefs (ego-based structures of self-protection) that we are both spirit and ego or what we recognize as our body, personality, or mater-based self. A belief that when we die, we shed our body like a snake and reincarnate into our true essence of consciousness free of pain and ego consternations. That belief doesn’t penetrate deep enough into my fear base cellular being to eliminate questions or wonders about what really happens when we die.

But even more close to the bone is the angst about facing deterioration as a single person, on my own. I have seen and heard of so much torture and pain that was doled out on us in the holocausts, in wars and dictatorships all over this planet.   Why do we humans have to have such pain of transformation?! Why do we have to suffer in our leaving the body. I truly wonder if we need this angst and pain to be willing to dismantle our life and attachments and start new.

Some say that we never walk into the same river twice… why is it that walking into a truly unknown river of consciousness without a body or body armor is so frightening to many of us?

Courage and curiousity

 

Courage and curiosity

This picture depicts well the deep connection between courage, curiosity, intention, attention to the immediate moment, and fearlessness. Curiosity guided me, from childhood, throughout my life. When I started exploring the topic, I had to admit that curiosity was my best friend,

My trust in people and the wish to know more, live fully be engaged in what was around me and even more so with what seemed to be fun and adventurous started when I was four years old. Not knowing enough to be afraid, I befriended what I learned later was the enemy. To innocent unafraid me, they seemed interesting friends. The feeling I had when being curious was one of thrill, inner support, happiness, and friendliness.

Curiosity to me is and was engagement, full engagement; daring to connect with people, our inner web of musings, dreams, adventures. Sometimes against a solid wall of fear and reluctance still being motivated to break the spell and move through it. I found myself being willing to do the undoable, break taboos with the wish to overcome my (or other people’s) opinions to see what is real.  It was about a hunger to be included, see into the unknown, understand, and overcome uncertainty through trust. In a way it was also trusting the unknown to be not only known, but also rewarding, rich and strengthening my ground, growing expansive wings of freedom. Curiosity supported me to delve deeper into the essence of the moment. And get out of doubt, fear, despair, or ignorance.

I believe Curiosity is actually a tool to get out of fear and despair. It certainly served that for me. As you probably read in my Memoir. I know some call it recklessness, others (me included) call it the joy of living fully, giving myself totally into the experience, and maybe that means living dangerously sometimes. All in the name of getting to the bottom line of the truth, that life presents us with, which is hidden in the shadow of conventions or social agreements we have gotten used to and don’t often question.

Sometimes curiosity was a way I found useful to get out of boredom or habitual way of living that no longer made any sense, because the aliveness in it was sapped dry.

I told myself that life is changing all the time and staying in structures that are stifling invite the courage to initiate daring change, to explore what is outside the cage, whether a marriage, an attitude to a person, or a lifestyle. I explored many varied opportunities I stepped into with trust and allowed my curiosity to roam toward the new possibility, expansion, or disaster. Feeling fully alive, shaking in fear at times in the process.

 There is another element of curiosity that was a part of the soup of curiosity though, as the Latin language tells us the word curiosity is cor which translates to heart.  When stepping out on a limb, I found that I had to recruit an open heart. Surviving the danger often came from the heart, Because as I found, at the end of the road the power of love overcomes the love of power. I wonder what you’ll think when you read my memoir, From Mud to Lotus, I meant to behave but there were too many other options. Please let me kno

Belonging

                                                                        Belonging 

Ever since I was four years old and sent away from home with my two-year-old brother to a strange family up north, I was longing for Belonging. My continual longing for a home created sorrow-filled sobbing and withdrawal. I yearned for intimate contact with my parents which was not to be had. I was searching for it in the seemingly most obvious places: My parents. Family. But coming from a very dysfunctional family in the middle of a harsh, violent divorce, and a disappearing father; I had nothing to hold on to that felt enveloping and gave me support. After realizing I won’t find it in the family nest, I shifted my attention to friends and later lovers. I felt the craving to belong and hoped I’ll find it with the right partner. It didn’t take long in my matrimony to unveil that finding this deep sense of belonging continually over time was an illusion not to be had in a relationship. It was another fantasy. We all are just fallible humans, and it is rare to have but moments of true unconditional love, true joining in a relationship. A relationship is not able to offer that continual true belonging I was searching. But I was not willing to give up. I knew it must be part of life and must be found if I explored further or deeper. The yearning kept haunting me till I started searching for it in spirituality. There was the right door to enter resting in full presence. The entry into the non-dual existence that is beyond good and bad right and wrong is the nectar that allows the joy of belonging to flourish whether sitting alone in silence, with an intimate friend or in a group. I derived a sense of grounding that emanates from within and contains a deep restfulness that needs no other, knowing you are a part of the whole existence, always in any mood or state. There is no way to behave in order to fit in, no requirements We are always welcome. A friend just called me this morning to share a “strange” experience she had last night. She was lying in her loft in the darkness feeling so deeply lonely, existential loneliness she called it, she felt into her sadness and then looked at the moon through the sunroof in her ceiling, she finally felt more relaxed, regulated and surrendered to the whole. Moments later she received two very unexpected and precious texts from friends she longed to connect to and hasn’t seen in eons. ” Wow,” she thought” How unbelievable, a feat of grace to let me know I am not alone” she said. When we are connected and surrendered into what is, miracles happen, grace appears. That is where I belong, forever more. To me that is the real thing. That lesson took me a long while to learn. In the process I learned a lot about other ways we human pretend, sometimes for life, that we are belonging. Oh, how sad! All that journey and finding my way home are explored in my memoir: From Mud to Lotus: I meant to behave but there were too many other options. Check it out if you too have or had this longing. For those of you who have yearned to belong this book is a deep journey of exploration. As you’ll read, being willing to give up the tangible sense of a person being there to the spiritual took both courage, letting go of self-deception, and desperation.

Healing Emotional Pain

 

Healing Emotional Pain: # Me Too Era and me

 

When I was told by a reader of my memoir,” From Mud to Lotus, I meant to behave but there were too many other options” that I should have left out of my book, or just written in my diary all the sexual experiences I have had; I had to wonder why I felt the urge to go public with it.

Sex abuse has flourished in my childhood days and beyond because of the secretiveness of it!

 “It you talk or tell about it –I’ll kill you” is a familiar expression of the predator to a victim which I have often heard in the therapy room from clients. Secrecy is half of the abuse. Once it is out in the open—it can’t continue so easily. Not just with a particular abuser but as a permissible behavior in our patriarchal culture.

Still to this day we have major news item like the exposition of Epstein villa in West Palm beach where he systematically abused adolescent and young adult girls for years with the support of his female friend. It was possible to continue for years because it was a secretive fraudulent operation.

I felt the need not only to admit the sexual experiences I was confronted with, time and again by many men but admit it in public, break the secret, and from there feel the release of the trauma I was holding in my body from these experiences. Yes, I also went to therapy in my day to work on my untrusting attitude to men as a general gender that is selfishly feel entitled to treat girls and women as objects of personal excitement and pleasure. I wanted to share this cultural trend and its impact on me in my book because I believe it needs to be admitted by all of us as a culture.  Admitting and taking responsibility for our behavior brings about more equality in the treatment of each other that allows dignity to us women whether we are naïve or innocent or not.

I also wanted to share that other side of my sexual education and evolution, an experience that brought me to deep intimate connection, lasting love and sexual pleasure that went along with it.

I feel it is time to open this book of secrets and not hide, dismiss, or be ashamed of our loving energy and its sometimes-sexual expression. It is also time to stop treating us women as a toy, tool for pleasure or gratification of the dominant male at the expense of the victimized and traumatized woman.

I am willing to dare the judgement and criticism of the readers who feel uncomfortable to share my truth and my journey as the mission of the sharing is a growth experience for me and a necessity for the improvement of equality in our culture.

Roe Vs Wade

 

Roe Vs Wade

my personal experience

When I hear the political and judicial debates about freedom of choice Vs. right for the embryo to live, I am propelled to reflect on the assumptions behind the right to live argued by the radical religious right group.

 It seems that their attitude to women assumes inequality or inferiority to men. Whereas men have the freedom to act out of lust impulsively and sometimes even aggressivity. Women, on the other hand, are not given any freedom, instead they are containers for babies. I happened to have the opportunity to go through a transformation in my life that allowed me to deeply reflect on this hypothesis.

When I turned Thirty, I married the love of my life, eager to join the motherhood cult. But no matter what we tried no pregnancy happened. Instead, I experienced monthly disappointment or despair. We could not conceive. We tried all the medical options available at the time—but nada. After mourning “not being a woman” for not getting pregnant I joined Kris Kristofferson’s idea that freedom is another word for nothing else to lose.  With little risk I was able to be like a man.  Sexually Free.  Luckily for me, I didn’t have to bear the consequences of losing a career, nor did I have to take on a lifelong responsibility I did not choose to have. Read more about that chapter of my life in my memoir: “From Mud to Lotus: I meant to behave but there were too many other options”.

 Nonetheless, I was plagued by this Roe VS Wade dilemma and concluded that legally the ones who insist that a 7-day fetus is a human being that needs to live should also own the responsibility to carry it to term and raise the child from birth, nurse it, get up at odd hours, and pay for the consequences—as it is their choice and thus their responsibility. Until science makes it possible for men to be pregnant and bear the child to maturity, the law needs to protect unwilling women from the coercion to carry the fetus to term, because men want it. When science affords men and women the same choice of avoiding pregnancy or birthing, women will become free of the forced responsibility if they don’t want to do so. Also, the babies will receive a loving parent—then and only then is it humane to bring another baby into this world.

Until we arrive at such scientific innovation, let’s look at options for both men and women to sterilize themselves and not cause for unwanted babies to be born. This will bring equality for both sexes. But, if men cannot birth babies, and don’t have to experience themselves what they demand unwilling women to go through, they cannot have a say.

 As long as the law coerces unwilling parents to birth a baby. Inadvertently, the law supports trauma for the unwanted child. That is an act of promoting harm thus, the law of Roe Vs. Wade should stand and be supported by all.

A Daring Experience

I was so happy to write my memoir and life experiences stories, I thought nothing of sharing many of the wild and naïve experiences I participated in throughout many years of my life, they seemed normal to me.  The joy of sharing with no one in particular, or the “accepting computer” (as long as I had my spelling correct), was inviting and comforting. I was exploring writing, a new and unknown avenue of connecting into a bigger, anonymous, and varied community.

 I also found that sharing a piece of writing at a time with a writing group was extremely helpful and nourishing. Alas, already in the exposing my story to the particular makeup of personalities in my writing group, I noticed some squirming of one or two of the more Christian and traditional participants as they shared in their feedback their discomfort with some of my more wild or intimate experiences. I tested my daring against their wall. I looked forward to the challenge.  I remember that I took in their criticism and considered it deeply, however, I kept sharing my curious, one could say naïve, explorations of life all the way to the limits, in one writing group meeting after another. I am now aware that I was testing my capacity to share my intimate life courageously, tolerate the criticism (Which I deeply appreciated) to see whether I would have it in me to “come out”, expose myself to the world at large. Of course, I did it. I published my memoir “From Mud to Lotus, I meant to behave but there were too many other options.” Recently.

I am very aware that growing up mostly in boarding schools from a very tender age and not having a home to speak of for most of my young life while experiencing wars and the creation of a new country for a group of often very traumatized Jews- escaping persecution, hatred, and the terror of genocide, - I had an unusual story to share with most American born sheltered from most such experiences. Even to the Israeli population, my story was not the average one. So I thought it will make a compelling read.

 All that said, in my life, as told in the book, I exposed myself to criticism, rejection, and many opinions by people who haven’t had either the opportunity or courage to engage in stepping out into the world and making every stranger a friend until they proved not to be one. Is that naivete?? Is that foolishness?? Or is the open willingness to give anyone or any experience the benefit of the doubt and   being courageously engaged in living a full, rich, imaginative life?

   I believe that being willing to step into life with optimism, openness, and joining is part of my personality called by many Naïve. From studying trauma and PTSD I also believe it was also influenced by my youth, where part of my survival strategy was expanding my family to the human family and the “universe” or the natural (sun, moon and such) and unseen world.   I related to the “rules that run this planet and our bodies we know little about” as the true authority that even though mysterious and uncontrollable, is benevolent and supporting me to enjoy whatever is possible to, while visiting this unknown place with a code book to be deciphered through that curiosity and courage to step into experiences with all I have to offer…my humanity.

The thrill of what I received through the vulnerability I exposed, risks I took and the sometimes disregard or avoidance I experienced, is excitement, engagement with the ones that chose to read my story and learning how the world relates to an odd bird. Tantalizing indeed. I highly recommend exploring sharing your vulnerability and tolerating the anxiety and maybe humiliation and dismissal to reap the wonderful fruit of aliveness and richness like no other.

 

Let’s face it. At the end of the road, we all have to face vulnerability, courage and meeting the unknown. So, developing a comfort zone with enjoying curiosity, being willing to face risks is the last frontier for us all.