Free Fall Without a Net
Caída libre sin red
A student shares her experience of traveling alone through a country in crisis, discovering that the hostile world she long inhabited may have been a mind construct, and finding unexpected love and openness in the midst of darkness.
Free Fall Without a Net
A student shares her experience of traveling alone through a country in crisis, discovering that the hostile world she long inhabited may have been a mind construct, and finding unexpected love and openness in the midst of darkness.
I'm going to sound like a broken record, going round and round again, but I am so grateful for this group. I'm traveling, and I've come to the conclusion that I hate traveling. But now I'm almost into the third week, and I'm settling into it. It's okay. It's like juggling another ball, then another ball. I can do this.
One of my biggest limitations, the imprint from my past, is that I can't function. The cognitive faculties close down. It's like, "Help me, help me." Here I am traveling. I have to deal with everything. I'm all by myself in this "hostile world."
And I have to tell you: I've never been in this place in my life. It's free fall, again and again, and there's nothing to hold on to, and there's so little reactivity. There's so much love, so much gratitude. It's blowing my mind. I am traveling in a country that is imploding. It's Israel. I lived here during two wars. I visited during two intifadas. Those are nothing compared to what's going on right now.
It can be overwhelming, but it's just another thing. It's just another thing. So I figure out: what do I need to do to deal with this moment, right here, right now? That's all. I don't have to save the country. It's phenomenal.
The imperfection keeps opening
And I want to say: it's the imperfection. It just keeps flowing, opening. Another opening, another beginning. It's a new moment every time. I don't need to figure it out and I don't need to be enlightened. I just feel so much love, so much openness. And it's not that I'm great. It's just that I keep bringing myself to these places, with you and other people. It happens by itself, despite me. Who would have thought?
I come from such a dark, dark place. The world was so hostile for most of my life. Now I'm finding out that maybe it was a mind construct. What a cool discovery.
I barely want to say anything because I feel you're in such a great place that I don't want to touch it. You sound amazing.
I love hearing you. Go for it.
The collective mind construct
What you're going through, I truly respect, because I have not been in the kinds of places you have, or lived where you have lived. But what you're describing, what you just said about a mind construct: it is that, and it's not a small thing. Because that's what the collective in that country is immersed in. That construct is what breeds the violence and what breeds the conflict.
That's what I'm experiencing. The time watching people take a pistol to their heads and to other people, on a metaphoric level. The insanity of it. It's so profoundly painful. That's why this is so much more painful than any war, because in a war it's very clear: you fight the war. This is like watching someone at the edge of a building who wants to jump off and take the rest of the country with them. The people I'm talking to are horrified, so it's magnified a thousand times.
I don't take it lightly. But what I'm taking lightly is me, my mind construct. And the beauty of it is that I can watch what's around me and see the collective consequences of that level of insanity.
All you can do is look at yourself
That is all you can do: look at yourself. And that is a lot. We have the example of so many people, and you just mentioned Jesus. That's an example of somebody who all he did was look at himself, and two thousand years later he's still impacting the world.
Exactly.
I don't want to touch much of what you're bringing, because it's beautiful to hear you and you sound great. It's just a big yes. And what you're seeing, you're seeing it in the darkest place. Not only are you in a place in the world that is dark, as you're saying, but you also know that darkness in yourself because you've inhabited it for so long. When, in that place of inner and external darkness, you see the construct of darkness, you start the process of freeing yourself from it.
Showing up is enough
What has been clear to me for a very long time is that I can't save anyone. I can only save myself. And I can't even save myself. I can just show up, and then the magic happens.
You can't save yourself, no.
I can't. But I show up at these meetings, and all of a sudden: all this love, all this gratitude, all this depth of okayness. It's phenomenal.
I see I can't save people. And I think this is an incredible opportunity for me to be able to say goodbye to this country, which has meant so much to my grandfather, my parents, my family, myself, people who are near and dear to me. In so many ways, an important place. And just to say: I'm in free fall, and so is this country.
What's hard for me is to still love the "jerks" who are making it happen. So that's an opportunity too. That's the big one for me right now.
Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing. And soon we will see your face again.