In the article titled “My 3+1 helper in the next period”, I mentioned that I would be learning about three methods. I am already in all three courses, and I will soon write an article about where I am with them.
However, this summary article is definitely preceded by today’s.
Yesterday was the third session of the Writing and self-knowledge course. This online training focuses more on self-knowledge than writing techniques. We reflect on ourselves in the group with the help of poems. I have very interesting experiences here. On the one hand, the questions and answers that come to me, and on the other hand, while listening to the experiences of the group members. I have long believed that participating in such a group is a huge gift, precisely because of the experience of different perspectives.
One of the working methods followed in the group is that while listening to or reading the poems brought by the trainer, we have to formulate what feelings arise in us, or which part of the writing speaks to us in relation to a given question.
Yesterday we were given two poems at once, and the question was which one we see our current situation in. One of the poems contained such difficult thoughts that when it was my turn to reflect, I expressed myself in such a way that I almost cut a vein by the time I got to the end. I read difficult, trying thoughts, which were perhaps not difficult because I couldn’t identify with them, but rather because I saw so much work involved in deciphering them, based on my experience, that the magnitude of the work was more burdensome. Maybe I was just tired last night and the memory of the magnitude of the work was shocking…
To my greatest surprise, the instructor told me that he had already heard the opinion about the same poem, how beautiful it is, expressing positive thoughts. Today I read the poem again and it is not as difficult as it was last night. Today I also see it as positive, because today I read the results in it, not the work that appeared before me.
At the end of the course, a common question arose. “What will you take with you from today’s occasion?” I usually answer this question without any problem, because I always take home a lot of experiences. However, yesterday I couldn’t find that thought. It was strange for me, but I immediately accepted that I couldn’t articulate it today. Because I had the feeling that I would take a lot of things away today, but I just couldn’t name them. Of course, I would have been at peace with it if I had nothing.
I listened to the others. Then one of the group members mentioned a sentence from the trainer. Regarding a particular poem, she said that “I read myself in it.” I immediately knew that this was what I got today.
How many times do I hear lines meant for me in a song? Just think, for example, of the song chosen as the “Motto of the blog,” or of another song mentioned in the article “In search of something lost.” In these songs, I hear something that others might not, or might not hear it the same way I do. Actually, I read myself in these lines…
After the course, I got in the car and went to the store. In the car, the song “Tell me more” by the Kárpátia band was playing. The line chosen for the title is heard in it: “Tell me more, oh, sweet God!”
How did I find God?
Although I do not believe in a personal God, I do believe that there is a greater organizing principle that governs or connects the world. We might call it the universe, fate, or natural order—a kind of law that shapes events. I do not imagine it as a conscious being, but as a fundamental force that is present in everything. Perhaps it is created by a combination of coincidences and laws that many see as divine providence. Whatever we call God, to me it is more a symbol of the complex and mysterious workings of the world than a supernatural being.
And from now on I can boldly call this organizing principle God, fate, universe, creator, almighty, whatever, because the magnitude of the organizing principle perhaps allows me to call it by any name or imagine it in any form. And in that case I can even personalize it. I can attach actions to it. So, it is capable of action. While writing all this, the words of Lajos Kassai ring in my head, according to which the man of today’s world arbitrarily creates all kinds of beliefs for himself, excluding from every system what he likes. I would not like to act like that! Therefore, I had to bring faith into this writing strictly only thinking about the organizing principle, God’s ability to act!
So! God can tell tales!
With this in mind, while sitting in the car listening to the song, the following thought occurred to me.
What if our whole life is just about listening to the tale God wrote for us? And do we hear that tale the way we like it? Maybe I don’t even hear what He’s telling me? Maybe it’s simply a communication issue, the question of happiness or unhappiness? I can even hear the most beautifully pronounced word “apple” as “pear”. Maybe a person’s life ends when they are no longer curious about God’s tale? Maybe Gábor Máté talks about this in “The Wisdom of Trauma“? Maybe I thought about this too in the article “Forgive Yourself, Soma!“? Maybe in a tragic story, in a chapter of our lives, we simply don’t notice what God wanted to tell us? Instead, we hear our own past based on our own trauma-driven story? Maybe the only meaning of the word responsibility is what we hear in the story told to us? Maybe acceptance is simply about accepting, finding, hearing what moves us forward in the story?
I swear, I wasn’t philosophizing because I drank too much. I simply heard something in the tale told to me, which I just wrote down.
I will definitely hear the song Carpathia with different voices after this…
Oh! Yes! One more request: Tell me more, oh sweet God! If I may, as long as possible! I love listening to your tale!
Today’s Ringing Bell
It may sound unbelievable, but I’m not really in disbelief anymore.
As I was writing these lines, my Messenger signaled. The following article by Todorovits Rea, mentioned in my article “My sweet suffering” appeared:
I think about how many times I believed that God was somewhere up there, way up high. He sits above the clouds and looks down on me from there. How many times I believed that He was even closer, that He just lives above me. I just have to hit the ceiling with a broomstick and He will know I am here. How many times I believed that I should just ring the bell and He will open the door. I believed that I was a good neighbor. Cynical, but patient.
Sometimes I thought that I was really at his place. I trusted that he had left the key under the doormat and that I could come in at any time. Maybe if he was not home, I could wait for him. Then it occurred to me that he might hear that I existed. I was loud, loud, and even more determined, in case he looked down at me from upstairs and noticed that I was breathing downstairs.
Yes, that occurred to me many times.
Then I wondered if he was disappointed in me? What would he think of me when he opened the door. Had I caused him grief? Would he say I had failed? That anything could happen, that I should do anything, that this was all wrong? And he could say anything. He could say that I was bad, useless, and that I had lost my way countless times. But he could never say a single thing, that he did not know me.
I often thought of what I would say to him. How many things would I accuse and hold accountable for, that I would be my Neighbor and the judge of my life in tears. I would tell him about the mercy from which I had hardly asked, yet I had not received, that he did not give it, but I received something else.
But then I realized that I couldn’t argue with God with my head held high, defiantly. I would rather lie quietly next to him in a hammock and watch him, thinking about how many prayers I had that I hadn’t said yet.
Then one terrible night, when I was lying helpless on the floor, I understood that God could neither be upstairs nor could I be his downstairs neighbor. Because he is there with me on the floor.
He sits there beside me, he exists down there, all the way down to where I fall.
There, in the unimaginable depths, I finally found God. I understood that he couldn’t be up there, because he is always waiting for me down there.
He lies there beside me in silence and every morning I receive his mercy. He is there in the sunrise, in the sunset, in my mother’s crooked hand, in the eyes of my children, in my grief, in my desire.
And yes, many people say they don’t see God. Look down. We deny it so many times, we send it away, we chase it and we cry out. But it doesn’t speak, it just comes silently, closer and closer. Again. Again. Again. Then you feel it’s already there beside you. On the floor.
Source: Todorovits Rea