I’m Not the Church Lady | Don’t start with me, Arne

||| I’M NOT THE CHURCH LADY by ROSIE KUHN |||

What happens when all our efforts to change what is have been exhausted—and presence is the only thing left? Even presence turns out not to look the way we imagine it will. Because sometimes presence is a paper bag, a middle finger, and absolutely no interest in becoming enlightened.

There comes a point when you are just fucking done. Not surrendered. Not accepting. Not peacefully abiding in the present moment. Done!

You have tried everything you know to do. You have thought about it, prayed about it, journaled about it, talked about it, reframed it, surrendered it, taken it back, surrendered it again. You have asked what the lesson is. You have asked what you are supposed to learn. You have tried being compassionate with yourself. You have tried being compassionate with everybody else. You have attempted gratitude. You have looked for the gift. You have looked for the opening. You have tried to become the person who doesn’t need an opening.

And now you are flat out done.

Welcome to Presence
You met Houdini last week. She’s still in her paper bag, desperately wanting out of it—or at least she says she does. She struggles. She searches. She wonders where the bag ends, and she begins. She entertains the possibility that there might be a her outside the bag. Sometimes her dog Barney sits nearby, waiting patiently for her to figure out whatever the hell she’s trying to figure out.

Recently, Houdini stopped struggling. Not because she achieved enlightenment, but because she’s exhausted—I-have-nothing-left exhausted. And that’s when Arnold Mindell showed up. Not literally. That would make this a very different essay.

Arne
Arnold Mindell—Arne—was a physicist and Jungian analyst who developed Process Work and Worldwork. I trained in Worldwork many years ago. It’s a phenomenal orientation to human consciousness, conflict, groups, bodies, dreams, and disturbances. It can also be pretty far out there. Think Obi-Wan Kenobi saying, “Use the Force, Luke.” Same but different.

My experience of training in Worldwork wasn’t always one of expanded consciousness and transcendent insight. Sometimes it felt like the worst, chaotic, frustrating and disillusioning experience, ever! Group process was excruciating and infuriating. Things weren’t necessarily resolved. People became upset. Friendships dissolved. Conflict intensified. It was awful. And at the same time, something else entered the room—something unexpected and hugely important.

Back to Houdini
So, here I was, imagining Houdini completely flattened by her struggle. And all of a sudden, the ghost of Arne Mindell appeared in my imagination and whispered: What’s in the room? And Houdini, who at this point has absolutely no interest in cultivating consciousness, answers: “A FUCKING PAPER BAG, ARNE. THAT’S WHAT’S IN THE ROOM.” And then she declares, “Don’t start with me, Arne.”

But here’s the dilemma. Houdini is right. The fucking paper bag is what’s in the room. And Arne is right too. Because what else is in the room? A bunch of stuff that is ignored, avoided and perhaps denied. Exhaustion. Anger. Hopelessness. Frustration. The unimaginable, and so much more.

Houdini wants to give this whole spiritual journey the middle finger. And she does! This is what I call the Big Fat Be-With.

Presence and the Big Fat Be-With
We tend to imagine presence as a particular state of being. Peaceful. Open. Spacious. Perhaps sitting beneath a tree with hands resting gently in our lap. We breathe deeply. We accept the isness of Is. However, sometimes presence is simply the willingness to acknowledge: “I am here. I hate this. I don’t know what to do. Nothing is resolving. I want out—no I don’t! Give me the answer I want, not some bullshit that makes my brain implode!!” This isn’t nearly as marketable as serenity, presence, and OM. But it may be more honest.

And this is one of the things I took from my experience with Worldwork that I am only now beginning to understand more deeply—25 years later. We tend to interpret disturbance as evidence that something has is wrong. Something needs to be fixed. Someone needs to calm down. The conflict needs to be resolved. The symptom needs to disappear. I need to feel better.

But what if the disturbance isn’t interrupting the process? What if the disturbance is intelligence itself, attempting to become acknowledged?

This question changes something for me. It doesn’t mean every horrible thing that happens contains a secret spiritual message that I need to decode. I’m not interested in that. I don’t need to turn suffering into a treasure hunt. What it means is that, when something disturbs the organization of reality, perhaps be curious about what is now visible that wasn’t visible before.

Egg
Which brings me to a simple egg. I imagined accidentally cracking an egg—not neatly into a bowl, but as it falls out of my hand onto the countertop. Suddenly the contents begin oozing out. I’m trying to catch it. I need a bowl. A towel. My hands. Something! It’s moving toward the edge. It’s dripping into the open drawer and down the side of the cabinet. And then it’s on the floor. It’s a huge mess. A Big Fat Be-With!

The whole thing struck me as hysterically funny because it is such a perfect image of what happens when life escapes the structure I had assigned to contain it. I cannot put the egg back into the shell. So often, Life is like that, isn’t it?

Something happens: The relationship isn’t what I thought it was. My body isn’t doing what I expected it to do. Someone I love isn’t behaving according to the role I unconsciously assigned them. A belief I’ve lived by no longer makes sense. An identity that told me who I was cracked. The future I expected isn’t happening. And there I am with spiritual paper towels trying to put reality back where it belongs.

The catastrophe isn’t necessarily that the eggshell cracked and there is uncontrollable ooze. The catastrophe is that the shell can no longer do its job. The shell gave the egg form. Boundary. Predictability. Containment. Now there is no controlling where the egg is traveling.

And suddenly I realized something about Houdini. The paper bag is her eggshell. All this time I’ve assumed she wanted out. And she does. Sort of. She hates that fucking bag. It confines her. Limits her. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. She’s exhausted from struggling with it. It’s been her life’s work—struggling with the bag. And at the same time, the bag tells her where she ends. Inside the bag: me. Outside the bag: who the hell knows.

Which means the question may not actually be: How do I get out? The more terrifying question may be: What if I do? What happens to me then? What if I ooze all over the place? What’s in the room? What’s in the paper bag? What’s in our minds? What’s hiding inside our assumptions?

BLAAUCH!!!!! Our shells—our paper bags

We do this with identities, beliefs, relationships, roles, rules, expectations, institutions, and spiritual understandings. They become structures we struggle inside, while simultaneously depending upon them to tell us who we are. We want freedom from the things that confine us.

But we also want them to keep containing us. No wonder we want transformation but don’t want to change. It feels insane!

Who am I without this identity, this attachment? Who am I without my stuff? What holds me together? Where do I end? What happens if the structures I’ve depended upon to organize my reality aren’t there anymore? CRACK!!!

We talk about liberation as though Houdini gets her head out of the bag, looks around, and says: FREE AT LAST! But, I’m beginning to suspect the more honest response might be: OH FUCK. GO BACK IN!!! Because spaciousness doesn’t necessarily feel spacious when the thing that gave us our orientation disappears. Sometimes it feels like the annihilation of existence itself. And this is where Faith has begun entering this inquiry for me.

Faith is in the Room
I don’t mean Faith as optimism. I don’t mean believing everything will work out. I don’t mean everything happens for a reason. And I definitely don’t mean that God is going to come along with a divine spatula and put the egg back into the shell. I mean something far more vulnerable: What if I allow this–there’s something beyond me and the bag?

Just like Houdini, this is always hugely and surprisingly difficult for me. Because there’s a part of me that has built an identity around figuring things out and having faith in: “I can do this. I can handle this. I’ll find that opening. I understand what’s happening. I can get myself through. I can control Life.”

But sometimes Faith asks something entirely different. Not that I stop being competent. Not that I become helpless. But perhaps that I loosen my exclusive claim on knowing what’s in the room–what reality is, how it looks and how it will unfold.

The paper bag is here. The exhaustion is here. The hopelessness is here. Anger, aloneness, and grief are here too. I know these things. But are they all that’s here? I don’t know. And that I don’t know may be the opening through which Faith enters. YES! THIS TOO SUCKS!!

Faith?
I wonder sometimes whether we confuse the security provided by our structures with Faith. We have faith in our beliefs, our identity, our relationships, our spiritual framework. When our world makes enough sense, we say: I trust Life. But perhaps what I trust is the shell. Then the shell cracks. Now what?

This is where Faith becomes something other than certainty dressed in spiritual clothing. Can I remain in relationship with Life when the thing I depended upon to contain Life no longer does?

I find this question excruciating. Because Faith doesn’t promise another shell. It doesn’t tell me what’s going to happen. It doesn’t guarantee that I will understand. It doesn’t even guarantee that I’ll feel peaceful.

Faith may simply allow something else into the room: the Unknown. Not the Unknown as a solution. Not the Unknown wearing angel wings and carrying instructions. Just the possibility that reality contains something I cannot currently perceive.

Maybe faith isn’t believing in the unimaginable. Maybe Faith is making room for it before we know what it is. And perhaps that’s enough. Houdini is still on the floor. The paper bag is still on her head. Barney has called for backup. There may still be a middle finger involved. Nothing has been resolved. And I don’t want to resolve it.

Lead me not into temptation…

Because I think that’s the temptation—to turn this into another spiritual story in which Houdini finally understands, removes the bag, discovers her True Self, and the Angels sing.

No. Not today.

Today the paper bag stays. Today there’s egg on the floor. Today I don’t know how to be with the messiness of life. Today I may not even have Faith. But perhaps I can make room for the possibility of Faith. Perhaps I can stop trying to put the egg back into its shell long enough to notice that I’m still here. And maybe—just maybe—there is more in the room than I know.

At which point I can already hear Arne: “What’s in the room, Rosie?”

“Don’t start with me, Arne!”