Saturday, June 4, 2022

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.

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 Sagittariu...