THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO

by Wafa Faith Hallam

  Annette managed the two main retail stores of Urban Zen, an organization founded by Donna Karan, which advocates “patient well-being, children empowerment, and preservation of culture.” Needless to say, I immediately saw Urban Zen’s dictum “Raise awareness; inspire change,” as a portentous sign, synchronicity at work again!

  My next mission was to look for a new tenant for my landlord and find a place for my daughter to live in Manhattan where she was attending college and working part-time. I had decided to simply put all my belongings in storage until I determined what my options would be in the fall.

  Within two weeks, I got a message from my landlord informing me that he had contacted his realtor and listed the apartment for sale. “Hopefully,” he wrote, “The unit will sell quickly, as I was forced to price it below what I paid for it.” By mid-April, he had a serious offer, followed by a contract.

  On May 5, I started working part-time in Sag Harbor and driving back home to look for a roommate for Sophia. A week later, I found her a bright corner room with a separate bathroom in a cozy Upper East Side apartment. I began praying for the closing to happen by the end of the month, since my landlord would not release me from my lease, contending that no deal was done until the cash was in his hands.

  Because of the lending freeze that followed the financial meltdown, stories of buyers waiting ad infinitum for mortgages abounded. Incredibly, though, he closed on June 1, and Sophia and I moved out on May 30. Clearly, the universe had fully cooperated and facilitated the entire process with hardly a bump.

  I was certain my life had taken on a new meaning.

  “What are you going to do after the summer?” I was asked by friends time and time again when I announced my short term plans.

  “I have no idea but I’m confident something else will come along in due time,” I told them, adding with a serene smile, “I have pledged to accept uncertainty in my life without fear and with gratitude for all my blessings.”

  “Wow,” they said. “It takes a lot of courage to do that.”

  “I don’t think so. At least, I don’t see it as anything to do with courage. In my mind, courage implies danger, and I’ve never been in any peril. I prefer to call it trust, since there is no hint of anxiety in me anymore. I keep reminding myself that I’m resourceful and there are countless opportunities out there. I trust things will happen exactly the way that’s best for me.”

  In truth, I reveled in my newfound freedom. I felt exhilarated even as I gently stirred myself to relinquish control, relish the unknown, even welcome uncertainty. Every morning, as I opened my eyes, I reaffirmed my gratefulness for being alive, healthy, and blessed with so much abundance and natural beauty around me. I then sat in meditation and re-emerged anew steadfast in the conviction that my spirit, mind, and body were opening up to the universal energy field and its endless creativeness. I knew such a field was part of a unified whole which was also within me. Connecting with that field through stillness and presence, the manifestation of my intentions and desires becomes possible. The simple ritual made me feel as if I walked on water, floating through my days in joyfulness.

  This was precisely the kind of leap of faith I could never have taken had I not undergone a profound shift in belief. To be sure, there were many spiritual laws I continued to struggle with. One of the most challenging to me was the practice of non-judgment, the third essential element to successfully master the law of all possibilities—the two others being meditation and communion with nature. As humans, our entire mindset is conditioned to judge, criticize, label, and otherwise close ourselves to the inherent and exceptional qualities of that which is before our eyes, the world in its pristine state. We do this because of our fear, insecurity, and all-consuming need to dominate our environment. When that need gets out of control and affects our relationships with others, it leads to wide divides of resentment and, eventually, alienation.

  My relationship with my daughter, which was frequently beset with conflict and confrontation, testified to that fact. Certainly it had benefited from my daily routine of Being without thoughts, from silence and meditation, but it suffered from my tendency to criticize, manipulate, and control her behavior, which I mistakenly confused with a caring motherly instinct.

  As I wrote about my rapport with my own mother and the pain I had inflicted on her during my teenage years, I began to see more clearly the angst my own daughter was experiencing. Since I had ushered spirituality in my life and benefited from its transformative power, I explained to her as best I could what it was I was trying to accomplish and even gave her a copy of A New Earth to read.

  “Mom, I’m nineteen, seriously… you think I’m going to read this?” She rolled her eyes and shoved the book aside.

  Ignoring her scorn, I persisted. “It’s just that I can relate to the kind of anxiety you experience day in and day out. I’ve been there; I know how unbearable life can feel at your age. Why don’t you just give it a try, it’ll spare you years of misery,” I pleaded.

  I felt very helpless in those days watching her gain weight and struggle with wild mood swings.

  “Listen, Mom, I’m old enough to live the way I want to. It’s my life, after all, and when I’m in need of advice, I’ll ask you. I know I’ll make lots of mistakes but they will be my mistakes, not yours. That’s how I’ll learn… As much as you want to, you cannot protect me or ‘save’ me from myself, even with all your experience.”

  Time after time, her level of maturity and clarity rarely failed to impress me. Still, I found it nearly impossible to witness her pain and not put in my two cents’ worth, but also, inevitably, my criticism.

  “You spend hours watching tabloid reality TV and on the internet when you’re not working… You don’t exercise, and you keep eating all that junk food. How can you expect to lose weight and feel good about yourself?” I complained.

  Remarks like that enraged her, and she’d swing back at me with ferocious comments meant to hurt and take revenge for the wound I had just inflicted her.

  It took me a long time to be able to let her be, and, even then, it was difficult. She was aching to be on her own, to free herself from my domineering presence. And I became well aware of the necessity for me to let her go, even as it filled me with apprehension.

  All my life, I’d had to care for someone other than myself; first, my mother, then my daughter. Their needs superseded mine, even as I embraced my sandwiched position and its huge responsibilities to the point of complete identification with my roles. And suddenly, I had to learn to drop the role playing, catch the automaton in me, and just Be.

  When the opportunity came up for us to part ways, much sooner than I had anticipated, Sophia was thrilled to move on her own to the big city, and I knew I had to let her go gracefully, keeping my advice to myself and learning to love and support her from a distance. Living apart for the first time presented us both with another test of personal and spiritual growth. Sophia wanted me off her back but not out of her life. What she yearned for was to be loved unconditionally for who she had always been, not the vision I wished her to be.

  She needed to be recognized as my equal, not my inferior, and that meant accepting her completely as she was, without judgment, and always, not intermittently. It meant learning to listen to her in silence and compassion without rushing to find solutions for her, allowing her instead to come up with her own answers. It meant letting her experience suffering too, no matter how hard it was for me to watch. For, as Tolle writes, “the fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.” I gradually recognized that it is only through the acceptance of suffering, not just pleasure, and the surrender to the evanescence of all aspects of life, that serenity and peace are achieved.

  For true consciousness to emerge, I reminded myself of the ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself.” As a guiding rule, I had to be willing to observe my thoughts and actions, recognize the kernel of truth behind others’ criticism of me, accept it despite the pain that exercise e
ntailed, and finally transcend that suffering to experience true freedom, freedom from my ego. Inherent in my criticism of my daughter and my desire for her to behave according to my wishes, was the belief that I was right and she wrong. By rejecting her objections and criticism of me, I simply assumed I was blameless, which of course I was not.

  When I moved to Sag Harbor, my environment became my best teacher. My journey so far had taken place in a very safe and controlled setting, my own home. I had learned to be present and aware, but my ego had not yet actually been put to the test except, on occasion, by my daughter. The real challenge was yet to come.

  Everything I had known, from my home, to my friends, to my occupations, I had carefully orchestrated from an advantaged position. By relinquishing it all, I surrendered to a whole new reality. I lived in someone else’s house, worked under someone else’s authority, and met people who viewed and labeled me as a subordinate. Swallowing my pride, rebuffing my ego, recognizing that the very traits I loathed in others were often also mine, were all vital, albeit painful lessons.

  I wept and moaned in disbelief as I admitted as much to gentle ears. How was it that those same remarkably strong, intelligent, and independent women whom I instinctively loved and admired also turned out to be controlling, self-righteous, and egotistical? For the same reason that their soul, their true beingness, like mine, was overtaken by their ego and identified with form—material success, intellect, sophistication, worldliness; they and I had been cast in the same mold. How could I judge them when they were the mirrors I could now clearly see myself in? Didn’t they weep too in incredulity when, periodically, their armor was pierced and their hearts torn, often by the very people they cared most about?

  And so my journey took on a new meaning, one that was epitomized by Gandhi’s statement, often repeated, seldom understood: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” All of us wander around wishing for circumstances and people in our lives to be different and conform to our needs, all along ignoring that it is we who must change first, and everything else will follow. My relationship with Sophia was a living proof of this.

  The more inclined I was to listen while fully present, admit to my flaws, and willingly receive her criticism of me—even as each of her rebukes felt like daggers in my flesh—the faster she acknowledged her own failings. Every time, we would look at each other with renewed respect and apologize. Because old habits die hard, it took us months of engaging, relapsing, retreating, and connecting again before she could begin to think of me as a trusted ally who would never betray her.

  “It’s hard for me to confess this, Mom, because I’m afraid you’ll use it against me later,” she had often complained in the past.

  By and by, Sophia turned to the very books I had offered and she’d rejected just months earlier. Concepts that once sounded impenetrable began to make sense to her, and slowly she experienced the transformative changes in herself she had witnessed in me. Nothing in this world feels like the love and wonder a mother feels when her child takes her first flight on the path to awareness, nothing! Like a peacock parading in a sweep of brilliant plumage, I was swollen with pride even as I realized that it was my willingness to carry my own cross that had led her to pick up hers.

  My summer in picturesque Sag Harbor began early and ended late. The part-time job I was hired to do turned into a full-time occupation that lasted till the last day of the year. The main sales associate had abruptly accepted another position elsewhere and it fell upon me to fill in. Unfazed, I stood on my feet from forty to fifty hours a week, often foregoing my lunch break altogether, in a fast paced, exciting, and beautiful setting. I had never worked in retail but soon I handled my responsibilities with ease and aplomb. I was in the moment, at peace and happy, and I met countless people making new friends almost every day. And while my income was small and my savings depleted, my heart was full to the brim, my consciousness expanding.

  From this first opportunity, others followed effortlessly. The more I let go of my old fears—fear of the unknown being at the core of it all—the more I embraced uncertainty, and lived in the flow with the least effort and most detachment, the more things turned out for the best. Every day, I practiced and experienced the law of intention and desire, the law of giving and receiving, of cause and effect or Karma, and the closer I felt led to my purpose in life, or Dharma.

  The universe opened its gateways wide for me to be all that I could be and more. This is my journey; it is life itself, laden with setbacks and lightened with small triumphs, and it will go on until my dying breath.

  Today, what I know with absolute certainty, and from the depths of my being, is that there always was a reason for me to stubbornly resist looking for a job solely on the basis of income. At first, it was an inexplicable, irrational feeling, yet it was so profoundly ingrained that I could not find it in me to thwart it yet again and settle for the road most traveled. I was willing to use every last penny of my savings and retirement assets to fulfill what could be seen as an elusive goal, a fantasy. I somehow knew that if I were to accept a position only to support my privileged lifestyle and protect my assets, I would forever relinquish the light I was blindly seeking. I had to make a living with purpose, all in the service of a higher principle and with the passion that inhabits me!

  I now know that my human form is only a vessel my soul temporarily inhabits. I know that my purpose in life is two-pronged: My primary, inner purpose is simply to be, and exist in full awareness and presence. My secondary, outer purpose is that which my human form is here to do and accomplish in my earthly life. The challenge is to reconcile the two, doing while being, regardless of what shape and actions the doing takes, for it will likely change throughout a person’s lifetime.

  From my early teens, I have been consumed with issues of social justice, peace, and freedom. I pursued my education filled with the expectation of one day applying my talent and efforts to my ideals regardless of income considerations. That dream faded as I took multiple shortcuts and succumbed to the lure of financial success in the land of opportunity. I have now come full circle.

  I no longer consider a lucrative career on Wall Street solely as the blind pursuit of money over all else, particularly Being. If material success represented as much for me in the past, it only did so because of what I was missing, my inner purpose. George Soros, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, three of the greatest philanthropists and wealthiest men on the planet, are testament to how the combined pursuits of inner and outer purposes are not only compatible but also the road to great abundance and personal fulfillment.

  A successful career can take any form at all, as long as one partakes in it in full awareness, in alignment with one’s inner purpose, and not merely to satisfy the ego. “Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling your true purpose. It is the basis for true success,” writes Tolle. In that sense the seamstress, the custodian, and the surgeon are all one and the same, if they perform their task in full presence, full awareness, full acceptance, without ego. Peace and joy are sure to follow.

  EPILOGUE

  Dharma

  It has been only two years since I first took my leap of faith and three years since I began writing my book. I have never set foot in an Ashram or spiritual retreat, never traveled to India or Nepal or Tibet, never met or took counsel from a guru or a sage, and I am very far from being either myself.

  My journey so far has been inward, a self-exploration based principally on silence, meditation, and acceptance as well as on the daily exercise of non-judgment, detachment, and faith. All the books I read have essentially emphasized these same basic principles. The key for me has been my willingness to put them into practice, no matter how hard, until they became second nature, a way of life.

  At the risk of sounding contradictory, I can say with certainty that I’m aware the person I am shall never completely know the unfathomable me, only what I am not. And yet, even such infinitesimal i
nkling is enough to fill me with peace. My life’s ultimate purpose is not only to persevere on the path of dis-identification with everything I once held essential to my happiness—for I now know it is all in me, always was—but also to invest my talent and effort to help spread the word far and wide in any way I am able. I am convinced our humanity needs every voice to begin to heal.

  Yet, forever, I shall remain mindful and stay alert to life’s ruses, for every step I take on that yellow brick road will lead me to a new dragon—one of the many manifestations of the ego—the slaying of which I have to undertake again and again, if I am to move to higher grounds. It will not always be a smooth journey, and I’ve already been acquainted with the sour taste of unforeseen setbacks. Such is the nature of evolution that it is often a messy process, fraught with stumbling blocks.

  Ultimately, the most startling revelation about my awakening was that it had little to do with my separation from my mother’s alter ego, or the “re-building” of my own fractured self. Instead it meant the dissolution of my ego—the ego that depends on the vision of others to exist, the self-indulgent little “me”—and the awakening to my true self, the “I” beyond the ego.

  Still, spiritual books alone would not have accomplished the transformation I experienced without the simultaneous and cathartic process of exposing and relating the account of my life intertwined as it was with my mother’s.

  On that fateful night of April 2007, my departed mother had indeed channeled her desire for me to write her story, foreseeing all along that it would lead me to the unearthing of my own narrative, which in turn would pave the way to my true purpose. For if during her lifetime, she never knew how to experience the lasting inner peace and joy that awareness brings, she witnessed it in me, and that must have allowed her to finally rest in peace.