Move As Love, in Covid times
In the diaries of Etty Hillesum, whose birthday is now – January 15th – there is a place where she speaks about the Nazi officer that yelled and barked at her, and how she felt with it. Etty describes how she saw this young man as a little confused boy. She looked behind the SS uniforms into the lost human that was there, even in that extreme situation. I highly recommend reading her diaries or getting the cards that my friends Emma-Shmba and Dina Awad (an Israeli and Palestinian woman) created from Etty’s timeless inner wisdom. (English link \ Hebrew link)
At the end of this article, I will bring two amazing quotes from Etti about the way she related to the Nazi officer.
It worked for me lately, when I was held by the border control of the USA for long hours of interrogations. I saw the officers that were talking to me. They too are humans, even if they work for an old, harmful and irrelevant system. I spoke with them as a human to a human, with respect, dignity, with no drama, and with clarity. I could see how after a while they too started to relate to me in a different way.. with respect, dignity, and kindness – as much as their job allows them. One of them was even shy and curious, during a small talk we had while checking all the items of my bags, about my (soon to be) 20 years open relationship with Dawn. I am really curious how did this officer go home that evening back to his partner, or what will he say to his next date…
So, yes, I travel a lot, even during the Covid years. My double nationality and the official marriage to an American citizen helped a lot. During Covid times I traveled several times between the USA and Malta, Israel and Portugal. I visited Turkey, Croatia, Montenegro, New Zealand (that is where Covid found us in 2020), Spain, Switzerland, and more, and now I am sitting on a home bus in Iceland, under a snowy mountain, the cold wind is blowing outside yet I am very cozy in my little wooden room. Dawn and Eugene will arrive soon and the ISTA Level 2 training will sail into the wild.
What is happening in the world now is amazing in my eyes. simply: the old systems of control are all shaking and falling apart. Nature, in her powerful sweet way, did not want to wipe humanity out. She gave us a little, not too dangerous virus that will hack the systems and put the dysfunctional world we had built into a frenzy. So many people are waking up nowadays. Trusting the governments, the politicians, the medical institutions and the banking system is a joke nowadays. They all lost the trust of the billions of people that (still) give them power.
And in times like that, we all just do what we know how to do!
Those who all they know in life is to try and force control, and when it does not work, they try to force it even stronger, do exactly that. Facing the big uncertainty that mother nature puts us in, they try to do what they were told to do: control! But it doesn’t work this time, and it wouldn’t. Those systems are deeply cracked and it is just a matter of time how long will they stand broken before the big collapse.
We, who learned and practice Love and Freedom, following the ecstatic current of life force, we also do just what we know how to do: We follow love, we LIVE AS love, we live AS freedom, and we do not buy into the story that the media, the politicians and the pharmaceutical companies want us to play in. To be clear: fighting with the old system IS buying into their story. In any story of control, there is a part for fighting with those who do not submit. The system is ready and eager to fight with those who fight back.
I do what I know how to do: I move from love, I live free even in detention because freedom is nothing anyone can give me or take from me, it is my state of being. And – I go around the world and meet those souls who are ready to live the old story behind, including the fight, and are called to build, create, live a new paradigm.
We are living at the threshold of a new civilization. Not less. Each of us can wake up and connect to what is true and alive all the time here. Our soul, in connection with the soul of this Earth, and with the universal soul. These are not just words. This is a way of life, a way to live in every moment. Live from your soul, or be a slave.
Civilizations shift. It takes time though. It might take more than our life span even, but within 50 years there is going to be here whole different humanity. No doubt. So what moves me is to help create those bubbles of new civilization already. To support individuals and communities to live AS love and AS freedom, while not wasting their time fighting with the old systems. Respect the confused humans that are working for the old systems of control. Relate to them too with love, dignity and do not lose your own center. Invite them, by being Love, to remember that life can be different. They too can shed off the old uniforms and run naked one day on a nude beach, laughing, feeling, crying, embracing life in its fullness, and living from love.
2 quotes from Etti Hillsum about the way she related to the Nazi officer:
"I am not easily frightened. Not because I am brave, but because I know that I am dealing with human beings and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import of this morning: not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask, "Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?" Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him there and then, for I know that pitiful young men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind. But all the blame must be put on the system that uses such people. What needs eradicating is the evil in man, not man himself. —"
"Let me gather up the energy to write down the dream I had the night before last, a dream that was also so much a part of me: S. had been arrested, was in Drenthe, and I was walking past the Skating Club, sadder than I can possibly put into words. I met a German soldier, looked him straight in the eye and, asked him point-blank, "Have you got a fiancée back home?" He nodded, and I said, "Then your fiancée must be feeling just as sad as I am right now." We became friends, the soldier and I, the dream didn't explain just how, but we went on talking to each other for a bit and discussed the outrages the Germans were committing. We agreed that we must face up to everything squarely and become reconciled and that reconciliation will start with us. I also told him, "Needless to say, I'm bound to come up against something in you which will make me think, isn't that typically German. But that won't be a reason for hating you, I shall just have to accept it as a fact."
Ohad Pele / January, 2022
