We Are (from) Home

When two or more people meet for the first time in Israel (and probably everywhere else in the world, too), one of the most common questions they ask each other is "Where are you from?".

Since I started to notice the self-narrative matrix, I've come to find it both intriguing and frightening to see every time anew that both those who ask and those who are asked assume unconsciously that the question concerns the country (or the city if it's well known) where the body which their respective soul, which is their essence, borrows for a life in this world was born though the question can have multiple meanings.

This self-identification with the body must be the most fundamental and stable part of the narrative matrix about themselves and others these people have.

When I answer this question by saying that I'm from Home, none of these people seems to understand what I mean, at least at first. After I try to explain to them what I mean, some of them say that they are also from Home. But this understanding of theirs is only theoretical, and they haven't internalized this understanding. Otherwise they wouldn't ask this question and wouldn't expect the kind of answer many people give automatically.

It took me many years to come to realize that I'm from Home. I may be able to make the life of myself and those who ask me (and others) this question easier by answering what they expect me (and others) to answer. But I can't deceive myself any more by giving them what I consider an illusional answer.

For this reason it has become more and more difficult for me to be invited to a place where I have to answer this question again and again. What really exhausts me is not only this question itself but what follows afterwards. Those who ask this question don't stop here and continue to ask further questions to categorize and label me (and others). But the time they have finished their "ritual" of "interrogation, they have made in their mind an image (of me and others) that has nothing to do with our essence. The more we know about someone, the less we know them. Somehow I have to find a way to let go of this futile struggle.

Recently I've started to realize that we are not (only?) from Home but are actually Home. I still have and want to continue my spiritual practice to directly experience this.

Alena Dergileva and Her Watercolor Drawings of Moscow

Since I was a child, I've never been attracted to any type of visual art. But there have been two exceptions to this rule. This blog entry is dedicated to the second exception.

In one of my last visits to Moscow several years ago I saw a book entitled Москва: место встречи at one of my favorite bookstores in the city. The watercolor drawing on the cover of this book never left my mind since then, and I was sorry that I hadn't bought a copy of the book back then. Just in time before the start of the (stupid) sanctions against Russia, however, I bought both a print copy and an electronic copy of the book online from two bookstores in Moscow.

But the enigma of the artist of this drawing in which I literally fell in love remained unresolved, until I stumbled upon one article - Everyday life in Russia through the eyes of illustrators - published in one of my favorite online magazines in Russia a few months ago, and finally discovered the artist.

She is called Алёна Дергилёва (Alena Dergileva) and naturally lives in Moscow. In the meanwhile I've also found her website and started following her page on the Russian social media VK. It didn't take me a long time to find an album of her watercolor drawings of Moscow entitled Нарисованная Москва.

To make a long story short, I finally got a print copy of this amazing album last Friday with the help of a close friend of mine in Jerusalem who visits Moscow every month for his business.

I don't know when I'll be able to visit Moscow again as long as I can't use my credit card in Russia due to the sanctions. Until then I'll visit streets of the city in this album. I never seem to get bored to see these heart-warming watercolor drawings again and again. I'll complement this virtual trip of mine by starting to read at long last the above mentioned collection of memoirs of Moscow by a number of famous Muscovites.

Homo Categoricus

Having consciousnly observed myself and others for quite some time, and having read two books by Steve Taylor - The Fall and Back to Sanity - again this week, I've become fully convinced that the majority of human beings are suffering from one serious collective disease - unconscious obsession with categorizing and labeling everything and everyone, including themselves. Mankind should better be called homo categoricus rather than homo sapiens. We seem to be programmed to be unable to perceive reality except through the lens of our mind.

This seems to be the price human beings pay unconsciously in exchange for the acquisition of language. Mind is supposed to be our servant, and language its servant, so our subservant. But for the majority of human beings mind has become their master, and language its gatekeeper.

Almost everyone I meet for the first time in any place seems to be obsessed with knowing about others instead of knowing them. Of course, the worst manifestation of this obsession is categorizing and labeling themselves!

It's getting more and more painful to me to find myself in such a context where I meet more than a handful of people for the first time as I have to go through their "inquisition" with the same result with few exceptions - the more they know about me, the more they categorize and label me, and the less they know me, for mental categorization and labeling only distort reality.

But nothing is more painful to me than to see them so sure of what they think they are though in reality they are only identified with the illusions of their egoic mind.

Whether they categorize and label others or themselves, they are equally trapped in the false self, including the body, its place of birth, family background, etc. The true self, on the other hand, is free from all these "identities" and nothing but pure presence.

Naturally, such an explanation doesn't help them understand what I mean as there seems to be nothing I can do to help them if they are not only "asleep" but also totally unaware of this very fact.

This is my biggest life challenge I face now. Though I have no patience any more for go through this same process of "inquisition" followed by categorization and labeling again and again with each new person I meet, I've been trying to find the best way to "neutralize" this obsession without sounding judgemental to them.

PS: Of course, I'm fully aware that this way I myself may be categorizing and labeling these people.