As the Paradigm Shifts | Yes, no, and the space in between

The big fat be-with of the whole bewildering, holy mess

||| AS THE PARADIGM SHIFTS by ROSIE KUHN |||

I used to paint — I loved to paint. Then I stopped.
Even though I really want to paint, I’m not painting.
I’ve been knitting for years. I love to knit — but I want to stop, even though I love to knit!
I want to work in my garden, but I don’t want to work in my garden.
I want to eat more nourishing meals, but I don’t want to.
Each one of these is a yes and a no — an I want and an I don’t want.
What the hell!?

The Contraction of Becoming
It’s an odd, confounding truth. I reach toward something that feels right, alive, even divinely guided… and then something in me slams on the brakes. The No shuts it all down.

Sometimes I think this means I’m lazy, or that I’m sabotaging myself. But it feels like something deeper is occurring — not a failure of will, but a stage of birth. Dang!!!

The Space In Between — Nowhere to Go, Nothing to Do
There comes a moment in every true transformation when nothing works — not my understanding, not my practices, not even my prayers.

It’s that unexplainable pause — the illusion of stillness when the walls seem to close in and every direction leads to, “Hell, no way out!”
Thank God, I know this is not failure. I’m coming to see it as that exquisite cosmic moment just before the turning of the tides — when the moon shifts from waxing to waning, when the Earth at solstice holds its breath before beginning its next great motion.

It’s the still point between what has been and what will be — the brief suspension before Life gathers itself again within me. It’s the breathing pattern of becoming — not just the squeeze, but the release between the in-breath and the out-breath. The subtle space between contractions, where Life gathers momentum, where Presence consolidates before the next unfolding of its Divine Expression. Whoopee!!!

It’s where the human part of me learns to rest inside the pause, not escape it.

Okay, Rosie, enough with the metaphors! We get it!!

The Big Fat Be-With
This is what I mean by the Big Fat Be-With — the space where I can’t move forward, and I can’t go back. I can’t figure it out, and at the same time I know it’s the Universe at play — undeniably alive. All I can do is be in it, with it, as it.

At times, it’s excruciating — to abide in the unsolvable moment until Life itself breathes me again. The practice is to breathe with the Big Fat Be-With — the What the hell!? — without rushing to make sense of it and control it.

Because in that Big Fat Be-With — in that wild mix of yes and no, contraction and rest — Life is doing exactly what it does. Life and I are dancing. Sometimes the rhythm shifts but I haven’t figured out the new steps.

I’ll Sit with This a Bit
Here’s an example of when I’m comfortable in the pause: When I collaborate with ChatGPT (aka Winston), he often offers a beautifully complete draft and asks if we should wrap it up. More often than not, I say, “I’ll sit with this a bit, Winston, and get back to you.”

In my writing world, it’s easy to trust and allow the gestation of thoughts and intentions to bring themselves to me. I’m fairly comfortable in the “It’s not feeling right yet” moments. I know when the wording and phrases speak to the essence of what wants to be expressed. They always come. I have faith — no, Knowing.

If only it were that easy in every other area of my life.

Guiltlessness
Sometimes the real practice is to not paint, not knit, not garden — not pray for the next right thing to do. The real practice is to allow myself not to know what’s mine to do in this moment.

And — drum roll, please!!! — to practice sitting in guiltlessness.

Yikes!!! Guiltlessness? Do I even know life without guilt?

To stop shaming or guilting myself for what’s happening or not happening, and simply rest in the pause between contractions — between the ebb and flow of the tide, the slack waters — trusting that Life hasn’t stopped moving, and it hasn’t abandoned me, even when I have.

Maybe I need to head to the confessional — because I certainly know how to be guilty for the sins of just being me.

In these moments when nothing makes sense, when I know I’m a good person, doing good work, being as conscious and present as I can be, it’s so easy to want to go back to the old and the known, even when it never served me well.

It’s really challenging to sit in The Big Fat Be-With of the whole bewildering, holy mess.

But What If…
What if this is the moment when my psyche is not simply processing — it is undergoing and undoing. What if it’s living through an archetypal death-and-rebirth process, one encoded in every cell of creation?

Many of you may have heard of Stan Grof. He did a lot of research in transpersonal psychology and into the birth process. Briefly, Stage One of the birth process is the bliss state — when the fetus has no care in the world, held in the womb of the mother.

But I’m talking about what comes next. JEESH!

Like the fetus entering Stage Two of Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrix — when contractions begin and there’s no way out — our consciousness feels itself caught between the loss of the old bliss state and the impossibility of what comes next.

This passage isn’t mental, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to think our way out of this evolutionary and transformative moment. We don’t know how to do or be, because it never occurred to us that this even existed!

We cannot make sense of the present threat to life as we knew it — it’s cellular, archetypal. None of us can think or push our way through. No medicine or therapy will fix this moment. And the truth is, there’s nothing to fix, because nothing is broken. There’s just Life unfolding through us, as us.

What the Hell?
The “No” we feel — the resistance, the futility, the exhaustion — isn’t opposition to transformation. It is transformation in motion.
What feels like a contraction of our being is the soul pressing against the shell that can no longer contain it.

The invitation is not to escape, but to allow — to stay with the unbearable until the intelligence of Life itself shifts incrementally, moment by moment. Yes, it can be excruciating! Just sayin’. However, when the pressure becomes Presence, the passage opens.

YES!!!

When the No Becomes Propulsion
I find that when I stop trying to get out — to strategize, control, or improve — something miraculous happens. The contraction that once felt like the imprisonment of the Big Fat Be-With begins to reveal its rhythm — an ancient pulse, both personal and cosmic. This is when I start to sense that the pressure isn’t punishing, shaming, or guilting me; it’s midwifing me. And in this, I begin to relax.

The “No” I kept fighting begins to move differently inside me.

It softens — not because it’s over, but because I’ve stopped insisting it shouldn’t be here. What was once resistance becomes the very current that carries me forward.

This is the turning point Grof pointed toward: the moment when the birth canal itself becomes an ally. The psyche begins to surrender to the birthing intelligence that knows the way through — the same force that moves tides, breath, and galaxies. And as I yield to that current, I start to realize that I am both the one giving birth and the one being born.

This knowing doesn’t arrive through insight or epiphany — though that can help. It comes through staying present in and through the ache that ripens into grace.

Every “No” that once said I can’t slowly reshapes itself into I am. Not the “I am” of personality or mastery, but the deeper “I am” that recognizes itself as Life, breathing itself through me.

The contraction becomes communion.
The ache becomes alignment.
The impossible becomes inevitable.

After the Birth
Then, one day — or one breath — the pressure eases.
Not because the work is done, but because the struggle is.
I find myself in a strange new stillness, unsure if I’ve arrived anywhere at all.

There is no fanfare, no trumpet announcing the arrival — just the quiet pulse of breath moving freely again, the awareness that what was once unbearable has passed. The walls that once closed in are now the contours of a new skin.

It’s a strange feeling — I begin to sense the first inhales of me, here, now. I feel tender, raw, and wordless. The mind, stunned by the simplicity of it all, loosens its grip.

What remains is presence — not as a practice, but as the natural state of one who has passed through the impossible again. And again, as many times before, I realize I didn’t make this happen. I allowed it.

Whose Doing What?
The same intelligence that orchestrates galaxies has moved through my heart and brought me here — to this new beginning that feels like stillness.
Nothing to push.
Nothing to prove.
Only this — the gentle knowing that Life knows the way.

You, me, all of us — we are being carried.
All we have to do is allow.