I’m Not the Church Lady | Learning to Unlean

Who Could I Be in My Enoughness?

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

Something essential about me is not enough yet.

Recently, I realized the degree to which I’ve been living in a constant lean. Whether it’s leaning towards relationships with businesspeople, clients or family, I’m not centered in myself. I’m ungrounded. And I’ve been living in this uncentered, ungrounded leaning for so long. I thought this was me.

My leaning is towards ensuring people see me and experience me as available, devoted, supportive and accessible. I love the ability to be flexible, fluent, and to be present when people need me. However, I realize the degree to which it’s been a detriment to my own well-being. Do you know what that’s like?

What this leaning feels like is a constant longing— a constant waiting and yearning for something that might show up. I realize this comes from a sense of not being enough in my own being. It also comes from a requirement to continue to prove and improve so that I appear to be more than enough. This I believed would ensure that people will want me, see me, work with me, and love me.

Once realizing that I’ve been in this pattern forever, it’s like fighting my way out of a paper bag.

I don’t know who I am without leaning. I don’t know who I am without proving and exerting effort to get people or get something that appears to establish my worth and my value.

When life themes like this one become obvious, I see them as opportunities to be curious and to discover all the ways that perhaps I’ve been living in something other than a true essential nature, and in my authentic expression of the Divine.

A Paradigm of Presumed Incompetence and Not-Enoughness
Most of us live immersed in the paradigm of presumed incompetence and not-enoughness. There is a universal angst experienced if we are not persistent in improving and proving. Books, podcasts, social media of every category are there to ensure we stay on the path of continual pursuance of being good, better, best.

At the same time, there are teachings and principles that say you are as you are. And as you are is whole, perfect, and nothing more is required. In A Course in Miracles, it shares through the text, you need do nothing, you will be told what to do. Stop doing what isn’t in your highest truth, your highest good, your highest knowing. “I am as God created me.” ACIM

In the book, Oneness, by Rasha, one of my very favorite lines says, “You have come to this experience you know as your life in order to be able to reject, completely, the consensus view of reality imprinted upon you since birth, and to replace that structure of understanding with a perspective that totally transcends it.” (P.21.) Yikes

Knowing and living in these teachings is a hell of a lot of work. I can hear you say: “What do you mean, I need do nothing? What do you mean, reject, completely, the consensus view of reality. That’s madness, isn’t it?”

Over the past few posts, you’ve heard me rant about the challenges of just being me. And, as I begin to engage more directly with my core, essential self I’m able to make choices that profoundly affect all areas of my life. I’m learning to unlean.

I find myself more frequently in the choice to doing nothing, sitting in presence, knowing that what’s mine to do will be revealed. Over and over, I see what in consensus view of reality presumes my not-enoughness and the need to continually prove and improve.

Where Does Proving Get Me?
One evening, listening to Paul Selig channel the Guides, they said something that sucked! They said, “There is no need to prove and improve.” JEESH!

How, for the life of me, am I supposed to be a Life Coach, and not support clients in proving and improving? This was a big ah-ha moment. Another paradigm shift!

However, as I discerned the intention and underlying principles of how I work, I realized that I presume my clients as competent—they know who they are and what’s their’s to do. They, like all of us, have been anesthetized into believing they didn’t know. My job is to let them know that I know that they know!

Here Is an Example of What This Might Be Like
My client, Carolyn, has been working on some core issues for a very long time. As an amazingly courageous woman, our explorations always cut through veils of resistance, emotional debris, and beliefs that no longer serve her. Ongoingly, she exercises and stretches herself in support of coming to a place of well-being that she never knew existed. Carolyn is no small potato. She is a high functioning, highly educated, and highly trained individual in the field of art, humanity, and
spirituality.

She starts our most recent session in a big harrumph: “I’ve lost my customary defense against negativity. It’s making me feel depressed, and it’s scaring me. I’m losing my sense of ambition. I’m over sixty years old and I’ve got to continue to build my career, but I don’t even know what I want anymore. It’s unsettling. I don’t want to build my practice. I have nothing of value to offer. It’s all downhill from here. Heck, I don’t even know who I am. I have no intrinsic value.”

These conversations always scare the Bejeezus out of me. I totally get where Carolyn is, and at the same time, I have no idea how to be with her here. So, I just followed my intuition and jumped in. I asked: “What if this is true, that you have no intrinsic value?”

First, Carolyn was startled by the abruptness of the question. But then she closed her eyes and felt deeply into this experience. “It makes me feel depressed. My heart hurts and my body sags. I feel physical pain. It feels really uncomfortable.”

I was experiencing my own felt-sense of what it’s like to be without intrinsic value. It was painful and uncomfortable as Carolyn described. I acknowledged her and her experience, then asked again, “And what if you had no intrinsic value?” (I was asking myself the same question!)

Carolyn again went inside. After a short pause she disclosed:”I feel empty. I feel nothing.” She paused for a long time. Then, she exclaimed, “Wow, feeling this way, I don’t think I’ll ever want to do anything else ever again. I feel at peace. There’s no longing, no worry, no struggling; it feels wonderful. Stillness!”

She allowed only a brief moment in this stillness before she interjected with some urgency, “How am I supposed to live life after feeling this quality of being? There’s no need to get anything done!”

I asked, “What is it that you think needs to get done?” Carolyn replied, “I should be effective, making money, be like everyone else. I should be connected, not a weirdo who sits around and meditates all day.”

I listened as Carolyn reconnected into her current, fear-based paradigm of should’s and shouldn’t’s. In this state, she’s needing to strive, to push, to preform, to prove, to demonstrate her worth. What I want for her, in this moment, is to perhaps create new pathways to this emerging paradigm she’s just now realizing—one of… I don’t need to do anything!

Softly and slowly, I speak: “Carolyn, come back to that place of peace and stillness. What value does making money and being like everyone else have for you? How do these ways of being serve you?”
C: “I’m doing things that make me valuable to others. I’m afraid they won’t like me that they won’t want anything to do with me if I don’t.”
R: “And if that’s true, that they won’t want anything to do with you, what will that mean?”
C: “It means that they will reject me.”
R: “And if that happens, that they reject you, then what?”
C laughs: “That will mean I have no intrinsic value,” she says. Then she sighs, relaxes back into stillness.
R: “Tell me what has intrinsic value to you? What’s important to you?”
C: “My husband Sean, he’s important to me. My grandchildren are very important to me. My work with my students is also really important to me. . .. Oh, so . . .. I don’t have to do anything that I don’t want to do. I don’t have to do things to try and please other people. I can create a life based on what I choose as meaningful—not what I think others would choose for me!”
R: “And, as you say this, what’s it like for you in this moment?”
C: “I feel relaxed and still connected to my life. I can acknowledge and be in this state of peace and still function in the real world, doing what matters to me. This feels really good!”

Knowing One’s Intrinsic Value Eliminates the Need to Prove and Improve
Carolyn started out this session wanting to get more effective, more productive, making money and being wanted. In her mind this requires getting more clients and making sure she is being appropriate in order to remain likeable and valued.

What Carolyn did was quiet herself and discern what is true for her.

Like most of us, she was thinking about what to do and how to be based on her context about herself, the world and the people in it. She was assessing based on what she believed to be of value to the world, such as being of service, care-taking, making money, being successful, and being powerful. Her strategy was to then figure out how to lean into those truths.

Who am I when I stop leaning? Who am I if I have nothing to prove, nothing to improve, and nothing I need to do? Who am I as God created me? The current paradigm of our consensus view of reality immediately says: “Hell, no. If you’re
peaceful, not productive, not trying or proving, you are on the path to self-destruction!”

As another client, Clara, asked, “If I stop leaning, how will I feel connected? Will I be seen? Or will I become inconsequential and insignificant? I’m afraid I’ll deconstruct—evaporate—becoming nothing to no one!”

Learning to unlean is a very scary endeavor for any of us. Incrementally, if we so choose, we traverse each day, noticing that we aren’t exploding, evaporation, or becoming invisible.

It feels at times like a big-fat-be-with of Hell, no way out. Learning to unlean doesn’t guarantee what comes next. It simply asks that we stop organizing our lives around what we think we need in order to be okay. We cannot control the situations or the outcome. We don’t know the outcome, but we can trust enough to just stay the course.

The Sacred Ache That Comes with Unleaning
For me, it’s just a constant devotion to discovering who I am when I’m not leaning as an unconscious habit. What I am discovering is that each time I notice striving or an impulse to do, based on “I’m lacking,” even for a moment, something relaxes.
This learning to unlean is not about becoming better people, but becoming more fluent in the experience of being who we already are—without the requirement to prove anything or to improve anything.

I’m not arguing against growth, learning, contribution, money, service, coaching, or ambition. I’m questioning the assumption that our value and our way of being depends upon them.

As I sit with this practice of learning to unlean, I notice things becoming available that weren’t available when I was organizing myself around proving and improving. I find myself returning agency back to myself. I trust my own knowing more readily. I notice an innocence emerging—a willingness to experience what is infinitely pleasing rather than what is merely expected.

I’m becoming less interested in validation and more interested in communion. Less interested in proving my worth and more interested in discovering what is meaningful to me. My intuition, imagination and creativity have more room to breathe. Not because I’ve improved myself, but because I’ve stopped leaning—long enough to notice what’s always been here, naturally.

Wow, feeling this way, I don’t think I’ll ever want to do anything else ever again. I feel at peace. There’s no longing, no worry, no struggling; it feels wonderful. Stillness!” –Carolyn

I’d love to invite you to my radio show, live on KIXP 102.3 FM, Sunday mornings at 10 AM.

I’m Not the Church Lady is a slightly irreverent (and playful) conversation exploring spirituality, everyday life, and the mystery of being human.

If you’re out of reach of the radio signal, you can livestream the show at KIXP.org or listen to the recordings at Dr. Rosie Kuhn on KIXP FM

I’m Not the Church Lady was born from a simple question that led me to explore the relationship between our human lives and our human spirit. This Sunday morning conversation is for anyone seeking connection, meaning, and a deeper relationship with their own inner knowing—without doctrine, hierarchy, or needing to go to church.

From the Listening Edge, we explore how we recognize, trust, and honor the wisdom within us, remembering that we are not alone and that each of us already knows more than we realize.