I continue watching The Chosen and I am watching it alone. And sometimes that actually makes me a little sad, because I have no one to sit with afterward and talk about all the deep philosophical things I see in it and feel to every bone, as if I am truly remembering the Istina. I pause episodes, rewind scenes, sometimes watch the same conversation several times because almost every episode feels like a masterpiece to me. And I don't even mean purely as a religious story, I am the one who is LESS interested in religion as an institution. I mean as an exploration of what it means to be human, of free will, fear, choice, truth, responsibility, true repentance, our reasons for doing what we do, our need to protect ourselves and the people we love, our tendency to control others when we believe we know what is best for them, and our ability, or inability, to see a human being behind their actions.

I started Season Two yesterday evening in the forest while designing a new dress for fall, and already the first episode stopped me several times. There is such an honest portrayal of ordinary human nature in it. When someone humiliates a person we love, we want to defend them. When someone spits at them, we want to punch that person in the face. When someone does something cruel, something in us wants them to experience the consequences immediately, preferably in the same language in which they delivered the harm. It feels natural, almost righteous. We call it justice, protection, loyalty, love. And yet underneath so much of it are our ancient survival programs: danger means defend yourself, attack means strike back, loss means take back what was taken, scarcity means grab what you can, humiliation means restore your dignity by making the other person feel small, pain means make sure the person who hurt you understands pain too. This logic is ancient, deeply embodied, and it still governs an enormous part of human relationships, from two people fighting in a kitchen to nations fighting wars.

And then Jesus enters that chain and simply refuses to continue it. What struck me most was the way he seemed to remain an Observer, without immediately attaching himself to a story about what was happening to him or around him. He did not seem to need to turn every action into a meaning about himself, the other person, or the world. He spat at me, therefore he has humiliated me. He hates me, therefore I must defend myself. He disrespected me, therefore I must restore my dignity. He hurt me, therefore something must be done. None of that seemed to happen. He simply allowed the moment to be what it was. Someone spits at him, and he does not turn their hatred into his hatred. Someone humiliates him, and he does not allow their behavior to determine who he becomes in the next moment. In that sense, he almost becomes a mirror: what another person brings to him is reflected back without being absorbed, amplified, or turned into another round of the same violence.

And I kept thinking about how extraordinarily difficult that actually is, because hitting back is often much easier. Hitting back gives us something to do with the pain. It gives the ego a story in which dignity has been restored and justice has been served. Loving someone who loves us is relatively easy too. But seeing the human being inside someone who has just spat in your face, while remaining fully present in the love for life, love for human path, present to what they have done and still refusing to make their darkness your own, is something entirely different. There is tremendous strength in that kind of non-reaction. It is not passivity. It is the ability to remain free in the very moment when everything in you has been conditioned to react.

And this is what affected me most about who Jesus was in that scene: a true observer, allowing experience to move through him without immediately constructing stories about himself, other people, or the world. He did not need another person's hatred to mean something about him. He did not need their darkness to become his darkness. He could see what was happening, see the person doing it, see the fear, pain or hatred behind it, and still remain himself. Maybe this is one of the deepest forms of freedom there is: the space between what another person does to us and who we choose to become because of it.

The story of Helek was particularly tender. He could have been portrayed very simply: here is a thief, here is the crime, here is the moral lesson, here is the punishment. Instead, the story shows us a human being. Helek is a human being... We see need, fear, survival, circumstances,  obligations to feed his family, the history behind the behavior. None of that makes stealing right, and none of it erases responsibility or past behaviors, but suddenly an enormous space appears between the statements he stole and he is a bad person. And I think transformation becomes possible precisely inside that space.

Because Helek tells the truth! As it is...  He admits what he has done and tells his story as it is.  He does not present some polished version of himself that will be easier for other people to accept, and he does not first transform himself into someone worthy of love before allowing himself to be seen. He simply comes into contact with his own experience: yes, this was me, yes, this is how I lived, yes, I did these things, this is what I feared, this is what drove me, this is what happened. You could see faces of all disciples showing horror and disgust... but then something extraordinary happens: the truth about him does not become a weapon used to destroy him.... 

This is what affected me so deeply, because we so often confuse truth with judgment. We think that admitting something about ourselves automatically requires passing a sentence on ourselves. If I betrayed someone, I am a betrayer, if I stole, I am a thief, if I lied, I am a liar, if I hurt someone, I must be a bad person. So instead of meeting our own experience, we begin defending ourselves against it. We explain, rationalize, rewrite the story, find other people to blame, insist that we had no choice. Sometimes those explanations contain very real truths about trauma, fear, survival and circumstances, but they can also become armor. As long as I believe that seeing the whole truth about myself will destroy me, I have an enormous incentive not to see it.

Helek is given a different experience: I can tell the truth about myself and still remain human. And I think this is exactly what changes him. He is not transformed by humiliation, punishment or being told how ashamed of himself he should be. He is transformed by coming fully into contact with his own experience without being annihilated by judgment. The moment he no longer has to defend himself against condemnation, he no longer needs the armor that kept him separated from his own truth. He can finally look at what happened and take it back as part of his story, not as an excuse, not as a life sentence, but as experience, as wisdom of HIS path of this life. And when we are able to truly own our experience, experience can finally become wisdom, true wisdom.

Watching this, I suddenly heard the word repentance differently. We have loaded that word with so much guilt that it can sound almost like, “I am guilty, I am bad, judge me, punish me, let me suffer enough to deserve forgiveness.” But the repentance I see portrayed here feels completely different. It is the ability to stop running and say, yes, this is true, this happened, I did this. You truly admit to yourself, to your heart! Your heart aches with realization of what you've done. Not your mind, but you FEEL it in your heart. you truly grief yourself, being lost in this mind games.... You say this as a confession without destroying yourself. Because only after that can there be a genuine choice. How can I freely choose who I am becoming if I cannot acknowledge where I have been? How much freedom can I really have while half of my energy is being used to protect the image of the person I need to believe myself to be? Real choice begins when I can withstand the truth about myself.

There is another beautiful layer to this in the conversation with Thomas's father. He does not understand the choices his children have made, he worries about them, he disagrees with them, and he says so directly to Jesus. I loved that he is allowed to have his own truth. Nobody forces him to suddenly become the perfectly enlightened father who smiles and blesses everything his children decide to do. He is allowed to be afraid, confused, disappointed and unconvinced. Yet at the same time, he does not take their choice away from them. And that opened another enormous question for me about love: I can love you and disagree with you, I can believe you are making a mistake, I can be afraid of where your path may lead you, and your life still belongs to you.

How often do we call something love when what we are actually doing is trying to remove another person's freedom? I know what is best for you, I know whom you should love, where you should live, what career you should choose, what you should believe, how you should heal, when you should leave, when you should stay, and I am doing all of this because I care about you. Concern can very easily become control when we forget that loving another human being does not give us ownership over their will.

Then Jesus says something to Thomas's father that stopped me again. He essentially tells him that he has very high expectations of those who choose to follow him, and no such expectations of those who do not. I paused it here... and sat with that for a while because so much human conflict seems to be built on exactly the opposite principle: I have chosen a particular truth, therefore you are now required to live according to it too. I chose this religion, therefore you should believe it, I arrived at this understanding of relationships, therefore you must understand relationships the same way, I went through therapy, therefore I can now explain how unconscious you are, I found a spiritual path, therefore I am entitled to tell you why you are living incorrectly.

But what Jesus seems to be saying is radically different: if you choose the path, the path places demands on you. Not on your neighbor, not on your husband, not on your children, not on the person who never promised to walk where you are walking. And I find this incredibly mature. maybe the more truth I see, the more responsibility I have for the way I live, rather than the more authority I acquire to correct everyone else? 

But I think there is an even deeper meaning here. Once you have seen a truth and consciously chosen to live by it, that truth begins to demand something from you. You cannot really unsee what you have seen. Truth is not simply something beautiful to understand, something spiritual to talk about, or another philosophy to add to our collection of beliefs. If I say that I have seen it, if I say that I choose it, then eventually it will ask me to become congruent with it. It will expose the places where my life contradicts what I claim to know, where my actions contradict my words, where fear still makes my decisions while I speak about love, where I demand freedom for myself while trying to control the choices of others. Truth, once chosen, becomes a responsibility. You can't say "I have not seen the truth" when you did... what you can say - I have seen the truth, but I chose to continue living in lie, because I am not comfortable, because I am afraid... 

And this is why the expectations are higher for those who choose to follow. The path itself begins asking for transformation. Not perfection, but honesty, and not obedience out of fear, but the willingness to let what you have seen actually change you. It is easy to recognize truth, admire it, speak about it, teach it, even defend it. It is much harder to allow that truth to enter the places in our own lives where it will cost us something. Because at some point truth stops being an idea and becomes a choice: if I know this now, what am I going to do differently?

This is why truth and love seem so inseparable throughout these scenes. Love here does not mean pretending everything is fine, hiding something because "they will get hurt" otherwise, excusing every action, or removing responsibility. Jesus sees the behavior, the fear, the dishonesty, the theft, the weakness, the contradictions. Truth is never sacrificed in order to make someone comfortable. In fact, LOVE does exactly the opposite: it creates deeply uncomfortable conditions in which a person can no longer escape themselves. Why? this is one of the most radical expressions of love I see in Jesus: He loves people enough not to rescue them from their own encounter with truth. He does not rush to remove every consequence, solve every problem, make every decision for them, or protect them from the discomfort of seeing themselves clearly. There is something profoundly respectful in that! He does not treat people as weak, helpless, or incapable of finding their way. He DOES NOT TREAT THEM AS SHEEP needing someone to watch over them... He seems to trust something sacred within them, that inner connection to God, consciousness, truth, whatever language we choose for it, enough to let it guide them through their own experience, through their own transformation, through their own darkness. He gives them room to struggle, to question, to disagree, to make mistakes, to recognize what they have done, and ultimately to choose. To me, this is love that refuses to INFANTILIZE another human being. It says: I see your humanity, I see your weakness, and I also see your capacity. I believe you are capable of meeting the truth and becoming responsible for what you create from here.

And this is what becoming an adult really means on a spiritual level: moving from being someone to whom life simply happens into becoming a conscious participant in what happens next. Not a creator in the sense that we control reality or can make anything happen simply because we want it, but a creator in the much more demanding sense that we become responsible for what we bring into the world through our choices. Jesus does not make their choices for them. He returns the choice to them. Again and again. And in doing so, He gives them something far greater than comfort: the possibility of becoming conscious creators of their own lives.

Yet the human being is never reduced to the worst thing they have done. And this is exactly why love can transform a person in places where judgment often only strengthens their defenses. If you can be the Observer... and hold the mirror and be the witness of someone's confession and reflect ONLY love for their path... what do you think would happen? 

Shame makes us hide, judgment makes us defend ourselves, fear can make us obey, punishment can stop behavior, a weapon can force another person to put down their weapon, and sometimes protection, boundaries and intervention are absolutely necessary. But none of those things by themselves create peace. You can silence someone, defeat them, frighten them into submission, establish order and call the absence of open conflict peace, but if fear, humiliation, hatred and the desire for revenge remain alive underneath, the war is simply waiting for another opportunity.

And I keep coming back to this thought: no weapon will ever create peace. Love creates peace.

I don't mean sentimental love that refuses to see reality, and I don't mean the kind of “love” that allows people to harm us while we congratulate ourselves on being spiritual. I mean a love strong enough to withstand truth, a love in whose presence a human being can finally say, yes, I stole, yes, I was afraid, yes, I betrayed someone, yes, I lied, yes, I did not understand my child, yes, I wanted a different life for them, yes, I tried to control someone I loved, yes, I hurt another human being, yes, this too belongs to my story, and then hear something other than “Now we know what kind of person you are.” Instead, there is another question: Now that you know, what will you choose next?

I think this is where real freedom begins. Wisdom may have very little to do with never making mistakes. Wisdom is born when I can touch the whole of my experience without throwing away the pages I am ashamed of, without rewriting myself afterward into the good person I desperately need to be, and without condemning myself forever as the bad person I am terrified I might be. I did this, I lived this, I see what was driving me, I see what it cost, I see what it created, and now I have a choice. This is no longer guilt. This is consciousness. This is responsibility. This is the moment when the past stops being merely something that happened to me or something I did, and begins becoming wisdom.

The further I go into The Chosen, the less I experience it as simply a series about religion. I see an extraordinary exploration of the human being, our fear and freedom, our survival mechanisms, our need to be right, our attempts to control the people we love, our capacity for repentance, our longing to be seen completely, our difficulty allowing others their own path, and the almost unbearable power of discovering that we can finally tell the truth about ourselves and love does not leave the room.

That is the moment when a human being can finally stop merely surviving and begin to choose.