Today again, just like then on the pier in Hong Kong, the tears came. Their words were different, but their essence seemed the same, as it felt again like a prayer.
I shouted to the sky (even though I was sitting in complete silence on the couch at home). I find that it feels like ‘shouting to the sky’ when one acknowledges being stuck at some conscious level which is obvious as not precise and as so not beneficial, and next to this acknowledgment there are no solutions, no thoughts, only the clarity that something in ones being is ‘off track’ and the clear awareness that at this given moment there is nothing one can do about it. It’s a type of surrendered helpless awareness, the same one a dog might experience when it acknowledges the infertile act of trying to catch its own tale. In that moment of surrender, something in one psych collapses into itself, and all that is left is a trail of tears and a silent scream.
At the base of this specific type of scream laid the acknowledgment that I have no idea what has happened to “me” in the last year and a half.
I do know that whatever it was, it rocked my entire existence from the tips of my toes to the tip of my head, and yet, I cannot explain it and I find some sort of explanation needed for me to grab my “shit” and “move forward”.
This lack of words to explain makes it swirl inside me endlessly, like a cake batter that swirls endlessly in the blender without being sent to the oven. In those moments on the sofa, I realized that all I want is to understand, yet all I can’t feel is understanding.
My mind, which is conditioned to look for a solution outside in the form of “someone” lifted its conditioned head. “Someone” who will help me, in this case – to understand.
This need to “understand” didn’t sprout from the common need to fit any experience into a pattern, but rather from the desire to succeed in bridging the magic I was a witness to during this period, with all its shades, pains, and joys. To bridge it all “outside”, although these borders between the “inside” and the “outside” have faded more and more away during that period itself.
A great pain that splits the stomach is felt when one is faced with the clear awareness that this “someone” does not exist, and so that the whole search for this someone is fruitless. In earlier days of my life, I might have looked for a psychologist, but today this illusion that there is someone who has the objective ability to help, to assist…it too, like so many other things, got shattered.
Afterward, at the beach, while watching the sunset with Chris, he shared with me that today he felt tired of existence. “I’m tired of playing other people’s games, I’m only willing to play my own games”, he said.
In those moments, while I was listening to him, I felt his words had a special impact on me but didn’t yet know why. Only on the way to the fair, on the motorcycle, dressed like a little girl, tightly hugging the waist of my father whose role was taken by Chris now, I realize that those words were exactly the words I was missing, and that unknowingly Chris actually described exactly what happened to me that year, which I refer to as ‘the year of death’.
During that year, the world games were revealed to me, down to their rooted origin in the human consciousness. At the same moment when they were revealed, they were abandoned. Looking backward I understand now that a place inside me, without thinking about the results his actions might have, without even wondering about their origin, simply dropped all the game tools in one second and left the board behind.
As soon as I saw that everything was an endless game, created by human consciousness, a game in which I was a simple tool, in that moment I was out of the game. And so, a year passed.
A year in which I would wake up every day again and again to a world I found zero interest in. A world that no longer held the impact it used to hold on my consciousness now that the nothingness at its base was revealed. A world that is built on the base of inventions that seek to give meaning in a world where ‘meaning’ itself is also an invention. A world that I found can offer me nothing but various kinds of escape from its nothingness, in the form of endless preoccupation, Sisyphean activity, which supposedly has many goals while at its core there is only one goal – to make one forget the pain the human consciousness encounter when it’s not being occupied.
During that year, every day, as soon as I opened my eyes, I recognized again the same need to “do” sprouts inside me just a few seconds after the awakened consciousness got turned “on” again. To do something, anything, for it really doesn’t matter what one does to this consciousness that can’t bear itself… Every day I re-examined this urge “to do”- maybe this time I’ll find a new motive behind it, and every day I couldn’t find anything but the same old motive to get rid of that endless inner itching my consciousness felt each time it wasn’t occupied.
I realized then I had been a slave for the past 40 years to this avoidance of feeling this scratch, and so each day, again and again, I refused to serve it anymore.
Then, Chris came and with him, a new, fresh spirit entered my existential experience. Something happened, something that suddenly put all in a different light. Although that something wasn’t on the mind level and therefore couldn’t be put in words, its roots echoed strongly in me, carrying the realization that as long one is breathing, one cannot escape participating in the game.
Right from the very beginning of our acquaintance, I called him “my Indik”, (based on Rabbi Nachman’s story about the king’s son who woke up one day and thought he was a Rooster – Indik), and since the main thing that arose following Chris’s entry into my existential experience was the re-experiencing of concepts mainly referred to as ‘desire’ and ‘will’, there was nothing left but to assume that the element of desire and will has an essential role in this whole story of the existential experience; the games that involve in it and the manner and degree of participation in them.
In the ‘year of death’, before the entry of Chris into my existential experience, I couldn’t hardly find within me desire or will for anything. What’s the point of wanting something after one encounters the realization (not on the mind level!) that all the things a man may want, and desire, are at their core a fruit of one’s imagination, and various inventions of the mind. A mind that is used to invent desires every moment, driven by the unconscious fear of not being left naked.
Desire, will, it turns out, is the opening shot of any game, for without them one cannot participate in the game. Desire and will are the tool game that man uses to move across the board.
Although I stated that the entry of Chris to my existential experience brought with it the element of will and desire, it might not be that accurate, for there was a will inside me before Chris arrived- a will for a ‘friend’ in this world. Someone who will understand, someone who will know, a knowledge based on experience and not intellectual understanding- how all is a big illusion. My consciousness wasn’t looking for a man or a woman. I felt so transparent outside the game, not holding to all the familiar concepts that seemed to be at the core of all human relationships. To this someone I won’t need to explain anything and can be just silent with him or her, for when one understands just how deep the rabbit hole goes, one becomes more silent. I assume the above will which was pulsing inside me during that year might hold some credit for bringing Chris into my life… Whatever ‘credit’ means…
At that point, after lacking the presence desire, and will in my life for a year, I could have much more clearly spotted their recurring presence. I found myself suddenly wanting. Wanting to experience the space that was created between us. It wasn’t me, nor him that held interest in that consciousness of mine, rather it was the space that was created between us- “us”.
These wills and desires were refreshing to feel after such a long period, but as time went by it became obvious that they inevitably carry with them other wills and desires, like a locomotive of a train carries with its energy a chain of wagons. All these wills, in turn, made it more and more clear that if I want to experience this beautiful new “us” and deepen it, I need to take care of the organism that allows me to feel it and to overall carry my existential experience.
This acknowledgment didn’t find its way gradually. It hit me as a tsunami wave hit the shore, without any mercy or consideration for the unaware crowd that might be having a relaxed beach day. Tsunamis are vivid evidence of a huge earthquake occurring beneath the surface, which the human eye and mind cannot reach.
During the ‘year of death, my “I” ceased to exist in a way. When there is an “I”, there are wills and desires, and as all the wills and desires I was accustomed to, were no longer relevant, the old familiar “I” faded away.
It turned out, that to experience a tsunami wave without an “I” is like finding oneself back on a game board, but without any game tool to move across the board with.
Waking up to a hit of a tsunami wave without having an “I” bears an unavoidable drowning.
And so,
“I” started to drown.
And then to get terrified
This led me to fight the tsunami and as one might imagine, there is only one outcome for fighting a Tsunami …
And then, after a few weeks of fighting, weeks with endless salty water fluid streaming through the two balls referred to as eyes, came the blissful moment of surrender.
*
I went to the closet, opened its cracking door, and saw her, my I, hanged on a hanger.
The “I” who raised two daughters alone, created for them and for herself a place to call home. The “I” which went to all the conferences and created all the business ties that eventually allowed it to build a company. The “I” who left that company behind. The “I” which wrote a book and went riding every weekend on the motorbike on the off-roads of Israel’s deserts and forests.
Her head was leaning forward, like a marionette that its strings hadn’t been pulled for a long time.
I took a wet cloth and started to wipe the dust off her.
And with each new layer of dust being wiped out, the same old familiar fears, desires, and pains were revealed.
And I knew, that now, that I would have to use her again, I would be forced to meet them all again.
There is no other way.
Me and “I” will start a new path together.
A path where the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ might lose their boundaries, for it may seem, to an outside viewer that all is as it was before the year of death and nothing has changed.
Only the one who will look closely will see.
See, that although all is as it was,
All is far from being as it was.
For now, it is “me” the one who is the user.
And the “I”
Being used
