Transcriber: Daniel Goetz Reviewer: Sandra Zajączkowska
I feel really privileged to be here.
I have cried, I have laughed,
I have been profoundly touched
and I feel really privileged to be alive.
I am grateful that I am alive.
In 1944, my parents were in a concentration camp
in Vichy, France.
My mother engineered an escape.
She actually got my father out.
And my parents walked through the Alps.
My mother was pregnant with me.
And when they got to the Swiss border,
the border was closed to refugees.
My mother threw herself into Switzerland.
Anything for her was better than going back
to the hell she came from.
And my father succeeded in smuggling himself a few days later.
And in 1944, I was born.
Decades later I am sitting with my mother
in an old age home in Israel.
And I cannot bear to see her.
(fights, tears, sighs)
She is sitting in a wheel-chair.
She doesn't know who I am.
I feel guilty. I feel sad. I am struggling. I am angry.
This is my hero. Why should she be here?
And I realize that I am not visiting her.
I am with my own emotions.
And I make a decision.
I am going to cross the bridge
to the world of my mother.
I will leave the world where I am struggling.
I and will go and meet her.
And I will bring with me new eyes.
And so I did. I came, I sat across from her and I crossed the bridge.
And I landed in her world. And I looked at her.
And she looked at me.
And in Yiddish she said:
"Du bist mein Tochter."
You are my daughter.
And I started to cry and with her hands she gently wiped my tears.
She hadn't recognized me for months.
Of course, I hadn't been there - emotionally.
This miracle with my mother illustrates
the three invisible connectors that I want to talk to you about today.
It is the relational space - the space.
It is the bridge between the worlds - the bridge.
And it is the encounter.
Human essence to human essence. The encounter.
These three invisible connectors - you know them.
You live them.
But you may never have framed them that way.
And in working with couples for many, many years
I have come to see that those are the three invisible connectors.
Let me start by talking to you about the space.
It is the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber who said:
"Our relationship lives in the space between us."
It doesn't live in me or in you
or even in the dialogue between the two of us.
It lives in the space that we live together.
And he said: "That space is sacred space."
Now, if we don't know about the space,
if we don't know how to take responsibility
for the space we live together,
we will actually pollute it
the way I polluted the space with my mother.
I polluted the space with my mother
not because I was feeling my feelings.
I polluted the space with my mother
because I unconsciously put all these emotions in the middle between us
- unconsciously.
When we don't know about the space,
we pollute it quite automatically.
A word, a look, a reaction, a withdrawal,
a criticism, a judgement.
We put it there, unconsciously.
And the space becomes uncomfortable.
And when the space is uncomfortable,
we react to the discomfort in the space
and the space becomes more uncomfortable.
And slowly but surely, discomfort after discomfort, the space becomes dangerous.
And then we react to the danger in the space.
And how do we react?
Some of us react by exploding our energy.
We talk louder, we shout, we say many words,
we are in your face.
Some of us react to the danger in the space
by constricting, hiding, withdrawing our energy.
And once those two reactions come together
as a reaction to the danger in the space,
the danger grows
and now we are reacting together to the pollution and danger
we co-created in the relational space.
What shall we do?
How do we take responsibility for the space between us?
Which is sacred, as says Martin Buber.
Here comes the metaphor of the bridge.
We take responsibility for the space between us
by crossing the bridge to the world of the other
and bringing our full presence on the other side.
How do we do it?
First, sit down.
Take a deep breath.
Put your feet on the ground.
Allow yourself to get to the present moment.
Align yourself with here and now.
Know that you are alive! Be grateful
for this moment of your life. Right now!
That already is a very important beginning
for your journey across the bridge.
And then, you begin to consciously and deliberately
walk the bridge -- slipping the rubber band
that pulls you back to your prejudices, your story, your identity,
who you think you are, your feelings, your emotions, whatever it is in your world.
All you take with you across the bridge
is a little plastic bag, transparent,
with a passport and a visa.
The reason it needs to be transparent:
you cannot bring anything of yours to the other side of the bridge.
And when you have landed
on the other side, what do you do?
You listen.
You listen with an open heart.
You listen with new eyes.
It is Marcel Proust, the French writer, who said:
"The adventure of life is not about discovering new landscape.
The adventure of life is seeing the old ones with new eyes."
And you bring your new eyes and your open heart
and your generosity of spirit
and you listen as if you're learning a new language,
a new music, a new rhythm.
You listen by repeating the words.
I hear you say.
"Have I got you?"
And you learn. You learn about the landscape in this other world.
And so what can happen on the other side?
is the encounter.
Now, what is the encounter?
On a biological level, the encounter
is the resonance between two brains.
The relational neurobiologists call this resonance the brain bridge.
Two limbic systems that resonate together.
The seed of our emotions beginning to resonate together.
And relational neurobiologists have found that
when there is this resonance between two brains,
our central nervous system begins to calm down.
Because, they have also discovered,
that our brain is the only organ inside of us
that doesn't regulate from within.
It regulates on the outside through another brain.
We need each other for self-regulation.
We can only regulate through the other.
Through the eyes of the other. Through that resonance.
And what happens then is very interesting
because, 10 years ago approximately, relational neurobiologists
discovered those mirror neurons
that we have in our brain.
Our capacity for compassion,
for empathy,
for deep, deep understanding of the other.
And during the encounter these mirror neurons become very alive.
And what happens then?
New neural pathways begin to form in the brain.
New neural pathways that give us
the capacity to be in relationship.
Because the brain has been found to have an enormous plasticity.
It can change at any time during our lifetime.
And so these new neuro-pathways that are formed in our brain
give us a chance to become
more relationally intelligent
and more relationally mature.
So, that is the encounter in the biological sense.
But in another domain it is harder to define
what the encounter is.
It is the meeting of two full human presences.
Or two human essences. Or the life force in each person.
Or the meeting of two souls.
And what is that life force?
What is the human essence?
My father has a story about that.
My father had the largest collection of Yiddish stories in the universe.
And he loved to tell them.
And he laughed harder than anyone
when he told his stories.
This story is about Mr. Goldberg, the tailor.
So somebody came to get a suit from Mr. Goldberg, the tailor.
And he tries on the suit and he says:
"Mr. Goldberg, this suit looks very strange.
This sleeve doesn't fit at all."
And Mr. Goldberg looks very seriously and he says:
"You are right. For that sleeve you have to hold your hand like that. OK?"
The man says: "You know, the other sleeve doesn't fit at all."
"Look, look at it!" - Mr. Goldberg says:
"You are completely right. For that sleeve you hold your hand like that
and you put this shoulder like this. OK?"
"What about the right leg? The right leg looks very strange. What about it?"
And Mr. Goldberg says: "You are right. You just have to put your foot
a little bit inside like that."
"What about this one?", he says. "Well, that one you put your foot like this."
Well, now the suit was fine and the man comes out of the tailor store
and as he is walking in the street this couple comes by
and the woman says to her husband: "What an amazing tailor!
A man in this condition - the suit fits him perfectly!"
(Applause)
Well... This is us. We are in this suit.
We walk around in this suit because we have adapted to our life.
And we don't even know that this is a suit, a survival suit.
We know that this is us.
For example, if I adapted by being withdrawn and cold and really distant,
I think this is me.
Inside the suit is our human essence - intact!
Inside of our survival adaptation we are our essence.
And coming over the bridge allows our spirit to be nourished.
And this transformation to happen from this survival suit
to our true human essence.
It is in being with each other that our essence becomes revealed.
It so it reminds me of this wonderful saying:
"I used to be different. And now I am the same."
I started with a story about my mother.
I'd like to tell you one now about my grandson Leo.
I was in Istanbul with Leo. And we were in bed
snuggling and watching a movie.
And at the end of the movie Leo looked at me
and he said:
"Bube, grandma, I love you."
And I said: "I love you, too, Leo."
And he said: "No. I love you."
And I said: "Sure, sweety, you love me and I love you."
He said: "No, Bube. I love you."
And then I understood.
He didn't want me to deflect his love.
He wanted me to step over the bridge to come to him
to take in the pure, essential love he was giving me.
And so I did. I looked at him. I took him in.
I let what he was giving me in that moment penetrate.
And I said: "Leo, I hear you say: You love me."
And his face just shone.
He was teaching me that it takes courage to be connected.
I'd like to share with you one of my favourite quotes
by the Sufi poet Rumi, of the 13th century,
who said: "Beyond right thinking
and beyond wrong thinking
there is a field.
I will meet you there."
I have a dream. I envision 90 million couples
honoring the three invisible connectors,
honoring the space between them, crossing the bridge to each other
and encountering each other, human essence to human essence.
It is enormously important to me because our children grow
in the space between us.
The space between the couple
is the playground of the child.
And when we know how to honor that space
and make it sacred, our children can blossom
in sacred space.
And I have a date in mind. November 11th, 2012.
International Crossing The Bridge Day.
It isn't just for couples.
It is for human beings and it is for nations.
I envision a time when nations
will know that the space between them
is sacred space. That there is a bridge
to cross to know the culture of the other.
And that we can encounter each other.
Human essence to human essence.
Beyond right thinking and beyond wrong thinking
there is a field.
I will you meet you there.
Thank you.
(Applause)