WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

I am a human being having a spiritual experience.

Do you believe this statement?

If you do, life probably does not make sense to you.

Humans are sentient beings. We think all the time. In fact, we tend to over think. Our minds are incredible super-computers that work nonstop, 24/7. Our minds are capable of observation, examination, scrutiny, analysis, dissection, classification, deduction, and conclusion. We are able to build metaphors and allegories. In our dreaming state, we work with symbolism.

Still, life does not seem to make sense.
We ask questions like:

Why am I alive?
What is my objective in life?
What am I?
Who am I?
Why do bad things happen to me?
Why do I suffer?
Why must I die?

We never seem to find satisfactory answers to these questions. But it is in our nature to question, and we do not feel satisfied until we find answers. In despair, we decide to believe in an external creator—a being beyond our comprehension—who pulls the strings of life in a play of the absurd.

It’s an answer, but it still does not make sense. It just creates more questions:

Why did God create me?
What is God’s will?
Why are some babies born blind?
Why do some people die young?
Is there life after death?

And then:
Who is God?
Is God a father figure, a sadist, a killer, a monster, an avenger, or a loving despot?

More painful still:
Does God really exist?

Who knows? Who can figure any of this out?

This type of questioning makes life even more of a mystery, and death—the unknown—even more of a threat. We make our lives and the lives of others miserable and then call it “the will of God.” Coming from a place of fear, we invent stories, believe in them blindly, and justify them as “faith.”

Such stories cannot be questioned, as they are unable to stand the filter of reason. Yet we use them repeatedly to brainwash ourselves and our children, convincing ourselves in the process that they represent the truth. We repress our sexuality, re-directing its energy until we come into imbalance. In doing so, we make ourselves prey to fanaticism and violence of all kinds. We divest women of their rightful place by inventing a male god. This leads to all kinds of discrimination, and more and more violence. We terrorize ourselves through fear of death. We force others to subscribe to our particular stories, and kill them if they don’t. Anyone who doesn’t believe the same things we do poses a huge threat to us.

We spend a lot of time, waste a lot of energy, and shed a lot of blood trying to make sense of life.

In spite of all this, life does not make sense. Why? Why doesn’t it make sense?

What’s the answer? When we believe that God is an external entity, a being that exists outside of us, life does not make sense.

There is great comfort in believing there is someone outside of ourselves who is responsible for steering our lives in one direction or another. Someone whose will is stronger than ours; someone we must obey; and therefore someone who can always be blamed for our lack of accomplishment or satisfaction. If someone makes our decisions for us, it relieves us of the responsibility for the outcome. In a guilt-ridden world, it is a relief not to be guilty of everything.

The problem with this belief is that we give away all of our power. We are always the victim, subject to someone else’s whim. We have no real choice in how we lead our lives. Our creations aren’t really ours.

What is the alternative? Let’s see what happens if we change our perspective.

I am a spiritual being having a human experience—of my choosing.

This means we are eternal, all-powerful beings—creative spirits who have chosen to have a human experience. From this vantage point, there is only energy and imagination.

You are the creator. So you decide to create yourself a universe. It’s such fun that you elaborate on it. You create galaxies and planets. You create parallel universes, a multi-dimensional universe, a Multiverse. There is no confinement here. You are eternal and you are everywhere.

You multiply at different scales, mirroring yourself in different forms. You want lots of playmates, animate and inanimate, so you divide yourself into countless “others” to interact with. You create “sets” to play in and fill them with beauty of all kinds.

Your essence runs through everything and every being. You create a “him” or a “her” to have a duality, and then a mixture of him and her, with multiple nuances in between. Deep in all of them, you are.

Now you really get into it. You create a being that is a physical manifestation of your self but does not know it! The challenge is to remember that it is you. This is the Game of Life. Creation is a process of discovery.

We—the eternal being—create this and countless other simultaneous realities in order to have a human experience and learn more about our true self. The path that leads to the knowledge of your true self runs through your body. You just have to find it.

Your body is a wonderful system of systems. You have a mind, a psyche, you feel! You are full of beauty. You can conceive, create, and replicate yourself. You have a right brain and a left brain. With the left brain, you can think sequentially, develop and speak languages, use logic. With the right brain, you can access your creativity and, ultimately, your divinity.

You are in each of your creations. That is the meaning of Oneness. The same life force runs through all of us, animate and inanimate; mineral, plant, animal, and human. It even runs through our machines.

You are me, the tree is me, the bird is me. They are all me. And I am you. This was the wisdom of many ancient peoples.

Is this beginning to make sense?

Through all of these “others,” you inhabit your “sets”: your oceans, your deserts, your mountains. Water—the best conductor of electricity, energy, and light—flows through it all. You create time and space. Then you build a fantasy inside a fantasy and create “reality,” which you bring to life. Reality is the riddle that you, as all your alter egos, have to solve in order to know your self.

The clues to who you are everywhere. Nature is full of clues. Religions and sacred books are full of clues. The Christian creed, for example, says we are all created in the image of God, and that the body is our temple. I’m sure you can find many other clues if you just think about it for a while.

What fun it has been to invent clues to help you find your self! Once you find them, though, you still have to make sense of them. To do this, you need to open up your mind and eyes to see through the veil of reality.

Alexander of Macedon visited the Oracle at Delphi and asked about the purpose of life. The Pithy told him, “Know thy self.” He listened, and became the Great!

EXERCISE: LISTENING TO YOURSELF

Place your left hand, which corresponds to your right brain, on the point midway between your pelvic bone and your belly button. This is your tan-tien, or center.

Close your eyes and look inside. Does this feel like your center? Your gut will not lie to you.

It’s funny (and so sad), but once you truly see, you then have to believe what you see. This is difficult to do when it is contrary to what you have been taught or “made” to believe. I have seen so many people manifest something and a moment later say it was just a coincidence.

You are a powerful creator, not a victim. You have free will. What you do with your life is your own choice. You create your own existence. Success is a state of your mind.

Think of Helen Keller, who was born blind, deaf, and mute. Isn’t it preferable to believe that she chose the challenges she was born with than to see her as a hapless victim?

In choosing to overcome incredible challenges, she proved that no matter what circumstances we seem to have working against us, the human spirit is strong enough to prevail.

If she could accomplish so much in spite of such handicaps, what is it that you, who are able to read these lines, cannot accomplish?

When you accept that it is you, and only you, who have chosen all the things that have made you feel victimized, you will feel yourself transforming into the powerful being you really are.

You have chosen:
To be born
Your parents
Your race
Your nationality
Your sexual inclination
Your spouse
Your children
The day and the way in which you will die.

You have chosen to play the Game of Life. The Game is designed to last for X number of lives. Periodically you shed your human body and return to the source, where you eventually choose your next adventure. In one life, you might choose to be a woman; in the next, a man; in the next, gay; in the next, blind; in the next, a movie star; in the next, a member of this or that family, culture, race, economic situation, and so on.

If you are able to look beyond your first impression of any difficult or uncomfortable situation—if you manage to get out of your victimhood—you can begin to see the advantages it represents. For example, maybe you didn’t get the job you thought you wanted because a better one is waiting in the wings.

But, you ask, if we all can create, what happens when we overlap?

Good point!

We are all creating at the same time. As a result, we co-create events, places, and external realities. There is no such thing as coincidence. Instead there is synchronicity, or co-creation. Synchronicity is when we vibrate at the same frequency as other parts of ourselves (other beings) and our wishes intersect. In fact, if you consciously support one another’s wishes, the effects can be staggering. Synchronicity is one of the truly fabulous aspects of life.

You can choose anything and everything NOW!

Let me repeat that in a slightly different way:

NOW you can choose anything and everything!

The day you accept that as truth, your spiritual journey begins in earnest. Growth happens as a natural consequence, along with the realization that life can be a tremendously joyful experience.

In the awareness that we create it all, there is far less drama. When we are open to seeing the reason behind the “reason,” we realize there is nobody to blame—not even yourself. Nobody, not even an external God, does bad things to us.

Life is not a valley of tears: life is an adventure we create at every step. It is a learning process and a discovery. Our purpose is to re-member ourselves; to rediscover the divinity inside of us. It’s also about creating ourselves.

Eternal and immortal beings that we are, we have plenty of time to do so. Being human is only one of our countless experiences. The possibilities are as infinite as we are.

Again, we create everything in our lives, whether or not we are aware of it or believe it.

I prefer to create consciously what I really want instead of creating randomly what I do not. It took me a long time to see the wisdom in this, and by the time I realized how true it was, I had created a mess of my life. Fortunately, I realized that if I had the power to create, I also had the power to de-create and re-create. Once I figured out how I created the parts of my life that made me feel like a failure, I de-created them and replaced them with those that turned my life into a success. Along the way, I learned what I truly wanted.

Life is so much easier once you take full responsibility for your creation of it. It starts to make a lot more sense.

To Love

Distance draws space for my dreams!

Confided the wind to the storm

The rain beat the drum and with a moan

The bamboos licked the ground

Gentle breeze sneaked between our seams

Whispering goose bumps beyond the skin

Look, my love: Our faces mirror the stream

Of the wind’s wild-tempered dreams

We were lights dancing a tango

Passionate illusions caressing the night away

Souls touching, leaving traces on the naked skin

Of our wings … and… on the wind?

An echo bounced between us

Soared uncontrolled, opened it all

Tore down the screens

Of our windows, that steamed

The wave closed our eyes in mid stare

Our mouths dreaming dreams of no distance

Blew a glimpse of timelessness into a kiss

We wove the tides of eternity – and bliss

We expand …and …and …expanded

Joy increased our deepest being

Demanding surrender

Open up! Rise to sing!

Said the night to the day:

You’re the light, the caress

I am yielding the earth

Let us fly and be wind

Sophia

January 30, 2004

The Crow

A man’s foot clad in a thick leather boot buries itself in the wet grass with a sucking “swoosh”. It is a steep slope. The second boot hits the grass about a foot higher up the hill. Right boot, then left boot hit the wet grass heavily. Richard climbs with difficulty. He carries a heavy backpack. On the backpack, seemingly unconscious, rests Fred, his face buried between Richard’s neck and the upper part of the backpack. Richard is out of breath. Although the kerchief tied around his forehead captures most of the sweat, thick beads form rivulets along his forehead and cheeks. He is a handsome man in is late thirties. – Don’t worry, my brother, we’re almost there. Shit!
He slides on the muddy terrain, but with some difficulty recovers his balance. – Who would have thought we would have to be coming up at the end of the autumn? It was always in the middle of the summer. How the sun burns here in summer, remember? The top of the hill is thickly shrouded in fog. Somewhere beneath it, a pale and bluish sun shines tiredly. Shreds of fog reach almost to his legs. – I don’t remember ever seeing a drop of water along this path. Ever.
He keeps on walking up the hill. The effort turns his face redder, almost purplish. He lifts his eyes to the top of the hill.
– We’re almost there. Not more long to go. Jesus! Once more, he slides. The hill tilts dangerously. This time, unable to recover his balance, he falls on his face.
His backpack and his “brother” on his back make his breath come out in a hard gasp. Making an effort he tries to stand up. It’s not easy. His muddy hands slide along the wet grass. He finally rises on all four and then, slowly, stands upright. With a simultaneous movement of arms and hips, he places Fred, once again, in the center of his spine. – Sorry, brother. This way seems so long. Not because of you, no, really, it must be all this mud. And this backpack that weighs a ton. They reach a clearing in the forest. Very old pine and alder trees, with thick corrugated trunks. Only a few reddish leaves hang from the naked branches. Richard looks around.

– It smells of vanilla cookies. The ones aunt Susana baked. We would produce hand-fulls of crumbs from our pockets to share them here. My mother was always after me to explain what that sticky stuff we had in our pockets was.

He looks around. The landscape is beautiful in the fog.

– Ok. Brother. Here we are. I told you, we promised, and I have delivered. Thank God it was not the other way round. I doubt you would have been able to carry me up that hill.

Very delicately, he helps his friend from his back. He sits Fred with his back to a very thick tree trunk. Fred’s head hangs down. Richard straightens it up and leans it against the tree trunk. Fred’s eyes, open, are beyond seeing.

– I want you to see every step of it. Look while I dig. I want you to see it all.

Richard opens the backpack and takes out a thick piece of cord and a shovel in three pieces, which he puts together. A sandwich wrapped in foil. He straightens up and looks around. Walks two steps in one direction, two steps in the other.

– About here?
He stares at Fred’s face for a few seconds.

– Yes. This is the exact place.

He begins to dig with stamina. He pushes the shovel into the ground, forcing it deeper with his foot. He pushes the broom down and lifts it upwards, heavier now, carrying a big chunk of earth covered with grass. He shakes the earth off
the shovel farther to one side. He pushes the shovel into the ground.

A crow flies silently over Richard. Very gently it sits on the naked branch of a tree. A slight, almost imperceptible drizzle begins to fall.

– (OFF)The only time I felt unprotected was in the war. If you had been there, covering my back, I would not have been scared. But, where I was, you had to have eyes in your neck. Four eyes. Yes, sir!

His voice reaches the silhouettes of another crow who joins the first with a fluttering of wings.

Richard has dug up a fairly big hole. He works rhythmically, almost mechanically. He is deep in thought. At his sides, in front and at his back, little mounds of earth and grass have been growing and grow with each shovel. Now and then, shards of his words reach us. The sky is taking a darker hue of grey as dark clouds gather overhead.

Fred slides slowly and three-quarter falls to one side, where he keeps sitting, in rigor mortis. His arm rests on the coil of rope.

– Not even when we both fell in love with Lisa. The day you told me you didn’t love her, I was about to tell you the very same thing. I would never have allowed anybody to ruin our friendship.

Richard looks around, satisfied. He has dug a huge grave. His shape is really small in the hole now. The walls are almost twice his size.

The drizzle turns into gentle rain. It falls on the trees, trying to compete witht he fog.

Richard looks at the gray sky. Around himself, he can only see walls of black and shinny earth. On the upper margins of the hole, now rest spiky hills of black earth and grass. He turns around in the grave and nods appreciatively.

– Ready. I think you will be happy here. A beautiful and ample grave. Richard lets go of the shovel and tries to climb out along one of the walls that has

turned into a skating ring. He slides down again and again … and again.

He looks around. Lifts the shovel, sticks it into the wall. He tries to lift himself with the shovel. The shovel tenses and bends, and then breaks with a loud crack.

The crows lift their heads, surprised; two of them rise a couple of inches away from the branches. Then, slowly and deliberately, they descend back to their places. The rain falls steadily now.

Richard walks to the end of the hole, runs against the opposite wall, trying to gather momentum for the climb. By now, a thick layer of mud covers him completely except for parts of his face.

Somewhat unsettled, Richard walks around the hole, looking for something with his stare. He finds it. It is a root that protrudes half way up. Richard’s strong, muddy hand closes around it. He pulls. It seems to hold. When his feet are perpendicular to the ground, the root, rotten, slides out of the earth. In his hand he holds only crumbs.

Richard slams his angry fists against the earth wall, furious. – The rope! Where is the rope?

Looks around the earth at his feet, where pools are forming. He kicks one with his muddy boot.

Richard looks up. The sky is stormy gray, with touches of violet.

– Brother! Hand me the rope will you? The unmovable face of Fred stares straight ahead. The coil of rope is pressed under his arm. The crows stare straight ahead, unmovable. Richard sits on his toes, blows at his frozen fingers in the twilight.
The sandwich, wrapped in foil, falls on his head. He jumps up, startled. In the semidarkness of dusk, he can barely see the walls that surround him, or the sky. Richard picks up the package and looks up in wonder. The body of Fred has slid down completely. His head protrudes over the top of the hole, his eyes frozen. Falling, his body has pushed the rope into the hole. Part of it is still resting under him. The rest dangles a little over Richard’s head. Richard lifts his hand incredulously, wraps the rope around his wrist, puts his right leg against the wall and pulls himself up with all his might. The rope underneath Fred, tenses to the pull. Somewhere, in mid air, he meets Fred’s almost surprised stare. Then they fall, Fred in Richard’s arms. The backpack lands on top of them. Semi darkness. It is raining.
The tree branch where the crows sat is empty.
A last terracotta leaf falls, shrunk and wet, and is carried away by the wind.

The End