I’m Not the Church Lady | Time for hammacking

When there’s no way out, can I stop trying to leave?

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

Whether I chose it or not, life presents me with passages I cannot bypass. I’m again in the midst of a purging, flushing, detox moment. The ache and anguish feel irrepressible. Time for Hammacking!

There is a lot happening on the planet, and I know this can create a flushing out of dense energies—not just for me, but for all of us. But regardless of how much I know, or how many times I’ve been here before, these moments when there’s no way out—only through—can be exquisitely excruciating.

Symptoms of this flushing out of what no longer serves, may arrive as coughing, sneezing, burning, farting, crying. It may feel like a cold or the flu. It may feel like a hangover, being hit by a bus, or like some part of you is dying. Sometimes it lasts a few moments. Sometimes days, weeks, months, or—I’m sorry to say—years. It is part and parcel of being a spiritual being having a human experience. Who wants out? I do!! I do!!!

The only thought that brings me relief comes from A Course in Miracles: “Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in.”

What? You mean this moment—the one that feels like the flu, a hangover, and being hit by a bus all at the same time—is also Divine? Nothing is wrong or lacking?

Yup.

When I repeat that line to myself—over and over—that there is no lack of any sort in this moment, or any other moment, something subtle but profound shifts. I experience a release in the whole of my being. The depth of the angst and anguish softens enough that I can align myself with the truth that there is no lack here, now, or anywhere.

Nothing in the experience necessarily changes. The sensations of purging and flushing are still here. The heaviness, fatigue, tenderness, flu-like ache, and ache in the heart are all still present.

What shifts is the incessant rant in my mind: “This shouldn’t be happening. Something is wrong with me. I should be able to transcend this more quickly. I should know what to do. I’ve been here so many times—it should be easier by now. What am I missing? Will it ever be done? Will I ever be done?”

And then the line from the Course returns: “Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in.”

Something deeper shifts. This too is Divine expression—the Divine unfolding as it does everywhere, always. It doesn’t look the way I want it to look. I want it to be different. OUCH!

Rites of Passage: No Way Out—Only Through These Moments of Ouch!

When my clients describe what is sometimes called a spiritual detox, a dark night of the soul, spiritual emergence, grief, loss, or profound transition, I often compare it to having a cold or the flu. The symptoms are unpleasant, but they are not evidence that something is wrong. They are evidence that something is unfolding—naturally. The body knows how to heal. The soul does too. I strongly suggest to them that they take time to be present to themselves. Rest, recover and allow the process to be their guide.

The challenge is that we’ve rarely been taught how to move through these periods without assuming something is wrong with us. We experience fatigue, confusion, uncertainty, sadness, fear, or anguish, and immediately begin searching for a cause, a cure, and an exit, an expert.

This is how suffering is born. The suffering isn’t the ache. The suffering is the insistence that the ache means something is wrong and there must be a solution.

Chemotherapy offers another example. A person enters treatment knowing it may be difficult. There may be pain, exhaustion, nausea, uncertainty, and no guarantees. Yet they enter anyway—not because they enjoy suffering, but because they understand they are participating in a process larger than their immediate comfort.

They are in it with no way out—only through.

I believe many of life’s most profound experiences function in much the same way. For me, these are modern-day Rites of Passage. Something old no longer works—or perhaps never did. Something new has not yet been revealed. We are asked to enter the uncertainty of the in-between and allow ourselves to be in it.

We enter in faith. We surrender in faith. We allow in faith.

Faith takes courage. Courage to remain present when there is no apparent way out—only through.

Whether it arrives as illness, grief, loss, transformation, or what I experience as a spiritual purging, the invitation is the same: to stop assuming something is wrong with me, it, or them; to trust that this too is part of life unfolding; to remember that while I may feel lost in the passage, lost is not actually possible.

The In-Between

In this state of being—in the in-between—something else reveals itself.

I begin to see how deeply I’ve lived as if lack implies that I would be better off being someone different from who I am. Ouch! I also see how my suffering comes from a sustained belief that my fundamental existence, my isness is lacking—always has been, always will be.

Ouch again.

Staying in the in-between without trying to fix this moment or change it in any way, trusting I won’t go poof, something begins to leave. The beliefs I’ve held to be true about myself start to loosen. What I’ve taken to be reality starts to empty. This is the purging, detoxing, flushing out of what most of us have been stuffing down into our unconscious. It’s the stuff we didn’t want to see or know. Inevitably, with courage and faith, most of us will find ourselves in the in between.

Ouchy, yucky, with no way out—only through!

These moments are uncomfortable, bewildering, exhausting, and utterly inconvenient, but not lacking. Just sayin’.

What Shows Up When I Don’t?

When I don’t leave myself? When I stop for a few hours, when I stop attempting to prove the absence of lack…. Does the world disappear? Does it reveal how insignificance I truly am? Does it show me just how meaningless my life truly is? OUCH!!!!

Um…

Sometimes the holiest thing I can do is stay in the hammock. Stop trying to get somewhere else. To stop trying to make the ache go away. Stop assuming that because I hurt, something is wrong. In staying, another kind of faith begins to reveal itself. Not faith that I know where this is leading. Not faith that I’ll get a reward for enduring it. Not even faith that it will all make sense. It’s a faith in staying. Faith in the process itself. Faith that the ache is not evidence of abandonment, but of something moving through me that cannot be known until my belief in abandonment is abandoned.

Living in faith takes courage.

It takes courage to remain present when there is no apparent way out except through. It takes courage to surrender by ceasing to argue with the process while I’m in it. It takes courage just to stay.

And then something shifts.

The very thing that seemed to be taking me down suddenly becomes a doorway through which life reveals itself more fully.

What Becomes Available?

When we release what no longer serves us, allow the uncertainty of the in-between, and discover that we belong even here, that our isness is more than enough, something unexpected becomes available.

Space.

Space where resistance once lived. Space where fear once argued. Space where certainty once demanded answers. And in this space, life begins to reveal itself in unexpected ways: Moments of wonder. Unexpected peace . A wave of love that seems to come from nowhere. A sense of being guided. A spontaneous knowing. A deep intimacy with life itself. What I called “spooky” in an earlier essay.

Something arrives when we least expect it.

The irony is that these shifts rarely appear when we are striving for them. They seem to emerge when we stop trying to escape where we are. When we stop arguing with the ache. When we stop insisting that this moment should be different. When we stop trying to leave.

What awaits us on the other side of any Rite of Passage is not a reward, but a deeper participation in life itself, and the profound discovery that there can never be lack, anywhere, in anyone—not even me!

Wonder doesn’t replace the ache. It emerges because the ache was the catalyst for creating the space. And perhaps this is what I’m learning through all of it: I can’t know myself until I stay in the in-between long enough to courageously and curiously discover who I am and what is actually true. Only through that kind of staying do I begin to live as the essential me—no lack in sight.

Is it enough? You can’t know until you go!