Universal Love goes beyond words and intoxicants

I haven’t seen the human being who brought me to this World for almost 3 years, so when my mother came to visit, in an attempt to pay back the kindness for all the love she has poured into me, I decided to be in attentive presence with her as much time as needed during her 10day visit, even if that meant to take her to some mall. [Did I just write 10day? ;-)]. And what a 10day!
She wanted to know San Francisco, and given “my housing situation” she decided to stay a couple of nights in San Francisco to make logistics a bit easier. While I was arranging to stay in the hotel inspired by the idea to uplift people’s hearts and minds, she was buying some stuff in the most commercial part of the city. It was Monday (the day I practice silence), so it was a lot of fun to communicate with people’s puzzled shining eyes 🙂

I went to pick her up at Union Square. The place was packed but isolated. Packed because it was “Christmas/New Year’s time” around stores; isolated because very few people make eye contact let along connecting in a wholesome talk with a person “you don’t know”. As I silently blessed all these people, I sensed how my mom (whose English is in the early stages) started to losing up the tension of being in a foreign culture, shopping for hours, where you cannot verbally communicate well. That’s what you get in a material based society: isolation.

We walked about 15 blocks to wait for the bus that was taking us to Sami Sunchild‘s hotel in Haight-Ashbury. I knew that the last 6 blocks were very tough, since poverty (physical and spiritual) shows in so many ways, even in the so called “1st world”. Since my mom was very tired both physically and emotionally, the walk didn’t work pretty well. Every person sleeping in the street, every sex worker, every person who thinks objects can buy happiness, contributed to her visible misery. It is incredible how in the middle of so many people we fail to nourish each other. She needed to have an empathetic conversation due to the cultural shock, but it was Monday.

I only kept smiling (with eyes, mouth, body and spirit) and thanking her for bringing me to this incredible Planet, and for making this trip to visit me.

As we were waiting for the bus, if it wasn’t clear enough, the gross reality of poverty and suffering manifested “on-your-face”.

The lady and the young man:

Perhaps we waited close to 15 minutes in that bus stop. From the porn theater in Market St in front of us to teenagers smoking, from people cursing the delay of the bus to an angry brother trying to sell a token. My mom was sitting, silently in shock with some sort of a shield trying to hold on her single shopping bag and purse. I was standing in the cold evening trying to radiate warm love.

Then a lady, who could have been as old as my mom (late 50s early 60s), tried to take the trolley from a nearby stop. Wobbling, she ran towards the door, barely stood up in front of the door, but the driver was not taking her. As the trolley left, she pulled back to the sidewalk and made an obscene sign to the driver. She stayed in that position for a couple of minutes.

She was a bit overweight, her cloths were dirty and one could infer she was drunk by the way she was walking.

I sent my blessings to this human being in profound misery, hoping that she could understand my silent love.

Then, she started walking towards us. When she was close enough (about 5 meters) she looked at me and yelled:

“How the f*** could you smile when someone is dying, asshole?”

I kept smiling but now with my most profound compassionate look. She kept walking towards us and during one of her wobbles, I smoothly looked at my mom (who missed the scene and was still nervously sitting in the second sit of the bus stop) and I was very happy to see that her non-reaction was a sign that she didn’t understand (or completely understand) what the other lady in pain was saying. After all, having a broken English is not that bad! Mirror neurons are mirror neurons 😉

The lady approached me and rudely asked me for money, I opened my hands mimicking empty hands and empty pockets at the same time as I was smiling respectfully at her, but with shining eyes all the time. She turn around and proceed to have a seat.

“Love and respect, love and respect” came to my mind/heart as she sat on the 1st seat by my mom. The lady took out a little transparent glass bottle from her pocket. She drank the transparent liquid and threw the bottle on the ground. Unfortunately it wasn’t water, as I smelled later that alcohol coming from her breath.

I was waiting to see if she was asking my mom for some money, or to be ready for any interaction they might have since they were almost rubbing elbows, but that interaction never happened. My compassion to this woman increased even more when I could noticed the dry blood on one of her temples, the fresh scars in her face and more dry blood below one of her nostrils. Her hands had some minor scratches too. All signs of a very hard day… or maybe week or perhaps hard months living in the streets!

Then the lady got into a hibernation mode as if the warmth of my mother was doing something to her.

The bus we were waiting for arrived in the inner lane of Market St, so we had to walk fast to jump into the bus since we were on the sidewalk. Other passengers got on the bus. My mom went first and handed me a $5 dollar bill to pay the $4 fee of the two of us. Then the wobbling lady showed up at the door. I mimicked to the driver that the $1 dollar change was for her. He gently smiled and he nodded. I held her hand for a brief instant to help her get onto the bus steps. Then I showed her that there was an empty seat for her in the semi-packed bus.

I sat by my mom. We were 5 seats from the lady. After 2 stops she fell asleep. The bus got really packed and then, after another couple of stops or so, more cursing and yelling.

I looked at our lady, but she was still sleeping. This time it was a Latin kid (mid twenties who got in the bus after us) insulting and yelling at our lady, as he was in a contiguous seat (paraphrasing him without the cursing):

“You pig! You really need to take a shower! Are you listening to me? I’m going to vomit, Jesus Christ! How can you live like this, pig? Aren’t you disgusted of your nasty smell? Get off the bus! I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t!”

That’s when I got to stand up again and walked to stand up in front of this young man and our lady. As I approached the scene looking at them with profound love, the yelling stopped. The young man could not look at me in the eye. As I was holding the upper bar of the bus in front of them, our lady, opened her eyes, looked up, made fuzzy eye contact with me and implored for some love: “do you have a transfer?” she said. I grabbed the two transfer tickets from my pocket and put them in her hand. The slight touch of our hands was the signal for her: “it’s all good mother, now you can keep sleeping, I’ll take care of the rest”. As if it were verbal communication, she smiled at me and closed her eyes again.

Then the young man said, as if he was looking for the acknowledgment of the people around him: “I respect you, I respect you but not her man! She stinks man! Respect to you brother, respect to you.” Then he opened two of the windows above her seat and stood up by the door exit with a young couple that was following the drama.

The people nearby the scene suddenly had a glow in their eyes. “Hatred dissolves in the presence of love” I said with eyes and smiles, the language of the heart. The young man said: “I like Gandhi man, I like Gandhi” (as I was wearing the famous Gandhi sweatshirt). I bowed with respect and palms together making loving eye contact with him (for the first time) and a big smile.

“Oh I see, you are deaf, you can’t speak and you do signs [as he was doing some sort of signs with his hands].” “I like you bro, more respect to you brother, more respect to you.”

He also started being friendly with the young couple as if he desperately needed some acceptance. The people around were smiling from ear to ear. As we all made eye contact, I bowed to them with palms together.

The young man decided to move to the back part of the bus. We smiled to each other and then I went back to sit by my mom who was still in subtler pain, but that’s another story… 😉

Yes! Universal Love works! 🙂

— anonymous 🙂