Copyright 2008 by Dr. Mokhtari,  All Rights Reserved

(Presentation  by Dr Nahid Mokhtari, Iranian Dialogue Abroad, Tehran July 2000)

In this talk, I intend to give you a sense of how we have created the life we have and how we can create the one that we desire. How we can heal ourselves by letting go the past and of old beliefs (our internal dialogue) and choosing to feel with our heart again. The implication of this concept is quite profound because our society, our culture, and our parents have had a much deeper impact on our lives, behavior, opinion, and beliefs than we realize.

After many years of teaching as an educator, researcher and scientist (in the field of medicine working with US Food and Drug Administration and big pharmaceutical companies) and a seeker of healing myself and my environment, I came to understand that drugs are not the answer to our pain. They don’t work in the long run. They are only a temporary relief for the pain! I have found that we may say our traumatic story hundred times; trying to work through the pain and reaction but only when this experience is truly felt in the present moment can there be true healing and freedom from the pain of the past. The only reason the past can repeat itself is because there is a part of its experience that has not been fully felt-without reacting or judgment. As we work through past traumas and lovingly embrace the feelings that arise in the present experience, we can forgive ourselves and those involved in the experience.

I believe the time has come to start a new dialogue, to awaken to our true identity. The way that we have perceived ourselves and others has created all the suffering and diseases that we see in our own lives, families, societies, and in the world. I feel we need to re-educate ourselves, and come to a new understanding of who we are and how we have created the world around us and take full responsibility to create the new world that we desire. In my view, the transformation of our nation is the result of transforming ourselves; we must heal ourselves first to serve our country.

As I stated earlier, when I left Iran years ago to create an opportunity for growth in my professional life, I felt that I left half of me home and I had to pretend that I was whole and complete. What I discovered was I lost the emotional and spiritual bond with myself and people. I looked everywhere in my personal and professional life for that bond and I could not find it no matter how successful I had become. However, what I came to learn is that I did not leave it in Iran nor could I find it anywhere. Rather I had to deal with the wounds of my past and allow it to grow out of me. In dealing with the pain that I had avoided all my life, the emotional and spiritual bond grew naturally within me. I came to find it is a journey we each need to take and we cannot heal our organization until we deal with our personal pain. The success I found was a pretense and I found what was not there, and that which I longed for was my own heart, my own feelings of being connected because I chose to shut it down many years ago.

Now after 13 years of being away I have come to understand that all the desires and longing that I have had for Iran and my Iranian community has been only a reflection of my own separation from my heart. I had been living separated within my own being and externalized it into the world and it is that separation that created so much suffering for me. It is when I chose to go deeply into the source of the intense pain and suffering of the past that I found that which I longed for. I am not an advocate of pain and suffering, however, until we surrender and experience what we carry within our own being, releasing the past and forgiving everyone including ourselves, we cannot heal and create a future that is not bound to the pain and suffering of the past.

Today, my personal experience is that we create our own diseases (dis-ease), our own pain by the way we perceived (judge) ourselves and others. When our defenses are up, judging ourselves and others, we can’t be healed. Our defenses are our mind and our judgement. The mind cannot

distinguish itself from the mind. We live in our physical body, it is the body that is the main vehicle or the key to access all levels of healing. Our body and our heart are the sensory organs for feelings, all the pain and joy that we experience. If we don’t transcend the pain by fully experiencing it, meaning acknowledging and embracing it (not to fear the pain), we never truly experience the Joy. What I have done for many years, for most of my life, I have not given myself permission to feel. There is magic formula for joy and that is "to the degree we allow ourselves to experience the pain we can experience the joy of life." To heal myself, I had to come back to my body, pay attention to all the pain and diseases that I had developed. I had to look deeply to see what happened and how I lost the energy and enthusiasm for life and how life became so empty and meaningless and full of pain. As a woman, I denied my body and my feelings for many years because I was ashamed of being a woman and was afraid that my scared space would be violated again. To heal myself the integration of all the dimensions of my being: mental, physical, emotional and spiritual was necessary.

What I would like to do now is to share my own story with you. To share my understanding as a scientist and a seeker of truth who has been away from home for the last 13 years. Being away from home and longing for being home was so intense that I found my true self in my way home.

As a little girl I learned to live according to my parents and society. I was also abused as a little kid, so I learned to withdraw to protect myself. As a teenager I wanted to study psychology, sociology but since there was no money in this field, I was not allowed to study them. Then, I chose to be a doctor to heal people. However, in the first year of physiology laboratory, I cried for a week and couldn’t eat with my hand after dissecting a frog. I could not forgive myself for creating so much pain for that little creature. Then I realized that the medical field and dealing with the pain was not my cup of tea. So, I decided to run away from pain and chose herbal medicine because I thought plants couldn’t feel - that was my perception at the time.

As a young woman, I did what was required to be fulfilled in life and did not find much satisfaction in my heart, even though I was a successful and respected professionally in the society. I realized something was wrong and I was not fully satisfied with life. Something was missing, love was missing. Nobody loved me for myself, I had to be a certain way to be loved, by my parents, teachers, society, but not the unique way that I was, just me. There was no space to be me.

The story of my life is about love and compassion that was missing in the world. In reality, what was missing was love and passion for myself as a unique creation or a unique being. I didn’t realize that many years ago at very early age I shut down my heart not to be violated and abused again. I decided "this would not happen to me again," so, I didn’t allow myself to feel. I decided to be responsible and independent. It was like I was irresponsible and dependent; otherwise the violation wouldn’t have happened. Something happened and I made a decision about it and totally forgot that I had made a decision. Since then, not being conscious of it; that reaction, that decision, has run my life without me being conscious of it. I had no clue about the source of it. I always defended myself and the need to be right about every thing and blamed others for what was happening.

During the last five years, my biggest passion has been to bring change and a love for people to the government and organizations. It was as if I could create that for them then I could experience it myself. It was so difficult to give to myself. In reality, my love was missing for myself and for others. Traditionally, we have been taught it is not good to ask for yourself. So, we give not from the heart (but from our teaching and duty) and are always left with the feeling of being empty and lonely, feeling sorry for ourselves. This reminds me of my own mother.

Now, after many years, I realize how afraid I was of my own feelings. I would not allow myself to feel my own pain and I ran away from it. It took me many years of research and study, teaching and learning, to come to a new understanding that I have today and I want to share that with you. The truth is that the dialogue for the people abroad is not much different from yours. Even though it seems it is. All I have heard during the last 13 years that I was out of the country was that we will be back one day, this is temporary. Perhaps we all have been saying it since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. Did you know that Iranians are the only foreigners in the United States who have not been recognized as minorities to claim certain rights for themselves because they don’t feel a sense of belonging? The dialogue between people and our monologue (our internal conversation) both are longing for coming back home. However, in reality, we are not at home with ourselves. We are neither here nor there, we live in barzakh.

You may ask why I said that there is not much difference between the dialogue of the people in Iran and the Iranians abroad. Because that’s the classic story of being separated, separated from our own self, our own heart. Because we are not willing to embrace the parts that we don’t like about ourselves, we become separated from our own being. For many years I have been keeping my self so busy not to be with myself. Because if I became quite (not doing) the pain would be there and I knew that I didn’t want that. For me, I had to be totally separated from my home country to feel the intensity of the pain. It is not the same for everyone. The intensity of emptiness and meaningless of life was so much that I had to deal with it. I was forced to deeply look at it and go into it to heal myself.

Today, my understanding is that until we face the pain (what is not working), we cannot create anything new. Do you know anybody that is causing pain and is not in pain himself? I do believe that we can’t give what we don’t have and if we can’t give to ourselves we can’t give to others. I realized that my priority in life has been to protect myself. At early age, I decided to be responsible and independent, so I became professional and learned to stand on my own feet and survived. Yes, I became successful but for the wrong reason, not to contribute to the life of others but to survive and be able to protect myself. I became my own story, the story that I have been telling myself. The perception that I had about myself and about others was leading my life. This is what was, is and would have been had I not chosen to live differently. So, I had to look deeper. Knowing that I had to deal with lots of old wounds and I had to sit with them to take the old scab off to see the freshness and newness of my own heart. I had to deal with the past and all the pain as an adult (not as a 5 year old emotionally in an adult’s body) and let it go. I had to forgive everyone and particularly myself to create a new space for what I want to see happen in the world.

Five years ago that I set an intention (or you may say a pray) for my life: "to become love and to create a new reality based on love by unfolding the potential of love in every heart." Every thing in my personal life (fixing my relationships, seeking my husband’s soul, thinking he had no heart) and my professional life (no love and compassion for people) has shown how much love is missing in the world and it’s calling for an action. Now, I know that I was looking for my own heart, and love and compassion for myself. It was like if others have it then I may get the love and compassion too. I was longing for me, I was longing for God. Now, I ask myself if I was not willing to give that to myself, how I expected to get it from others!

Now, that I feel free from the past, I ask myself what do you want to do with it? Now, I want to come home to create a similar environment with you. I want to create a safe space for my family and my friends to take the same journey home. It’s safe, I have been there, and it’s OK to go there.

I am asking myself how can I share this understanding, how can we Iranians heal the separation within ourselves? How can we Iranians with so many talented individuals come together and declare our true essence in the world? One day this land was the heart of culture and civilization and I believe we all are that, we are the heart of the Middle East and even the world. What is not working is only telling us where insufficient work has been done. To pay more attention to our heart, our feeling .To bring balance into this area of our life. I feel the world is pregnant to see the birth of Iran. It’s the time for our vision, it’s the time for union, and it’s the time for resurrection. Rebirthing, coming out of ourselves and creating a new world. I want to create with you our own story.

After the revolution, we lost our trust and our belief in who and what we are. It seems the more we try to adapt to the western culture we are living in, the more unfulfilled we become. The price that I paid was the emotional and spiritual bond that I thought I had with my own people in my own country. Perhaps one possible way would be to delve into who and what we really are as Iranians (warm hearted with full of love and passion) and believe in ourselves again. We need to re-educate ourselves in the development of our heart. This is our heritage, what we have taken with ourselves to the western world. We need to create a balance (integration between the two, the heart and the mind) to heal ourselves. We have lost our history, his story, your story, and my story. What is our story? What are we going to tell our grandchildren, what is our message to the world? May be we can be the first ones to have that civilization dialogue, but the dialogue is not with the US, or the people living abroad. The world outside of us is only the reflection of what and who we are. The real dialogue is our internal dialogue: "who we think we are vs. who we truly are." The dialogue between the mind and our heart, these two have to come into balance, to be integrated. We have developed strong minds that live separated from our heart. We have to re-educate our mind to allow the heart to fully experience the pain and pleasure to go beyond our fears and create the future that we want to live. We have to become what we wish to see in the world. There is no future without forgiveness. To create a new world, we need to acknowledge and forgive the past. To birth a healthy child, the mother has to be healthy. Before doing anything for the world, we have to heal ourselves, the child within ourselves has to grow up and become responsible adults. Realizing we are recreating ourselves in every moment by what and how we believe about ourselves and the world around us.

My dream is that we find our true identity and create a new vision for ourselves (as an individual, our own unique story) and our country - becoming a vital society that nurtures the world, living in the oneness of universe with "All That Is"- becoming Shams who opened Rumi up to certain dimensions of the mysteries of Divine Love that he had not yet experienced. Perhaps we, Iranians are the Shams for the rest of the world. Maybe we are here to create many Rumis. For Rumi, separation from Shams was the outward separation from God, which is only half of the story. Rumi’s message has a practical and concrete relevance to our everyday world. What is his message for you? What is it telling you? What is your message? Who are you and what is your life about? Are you in action in what your life is about?

Many people believe that the greatest poet of modern times is Rumi. He would say that if you come into the world and do ten thousand things well, but forget what you came to do, then you have wasted your life. I believe that our culture has always been a "messenger," a bearer of intellectual and spiritual gifts for the world. We invented much of mathematics and chemistry and offered these like pure water to the world.

Our culture was the cradle of the most modern of the Great Religions, and it's sweetness pours around the globe like healing nectar. Many of us harbor disparaging thoughts about what has happened to our country and thought about what our role might be to help bring healing. I believe Rumi has already provided us a part of the answer. Rumi told us that a soul is like a container, and what is inside cannot come out until there is a crack.

Perhaps, Persia may now be likened to a broken container, and what is inside will be able to come out. History is pregnant with its need for our voice. We are the bearers of a message striving to be born in the world. Each person holds up his or her part of the sky. The universe would be impoverished if any one of us were not here.

Now is the time for us to embrace our own healing, to remember the music we came to share, and to pour this out upon a parched world. I want to challenge you and as well as myself "let’s not just read Rumi, let’s become Rumi," not only for ourselves but for the world, or better yet maybe we need to challenge ourselves to become the Shams of the world

  Foundation for the Education of the Heart