The Land of the Un…
Questioning how to undo what we know, trust who we are, and fall into what we want.
As a mother of three grown children who were all unschooled, I have thought a lot about this idea of true self existing in the development of “un” states of being. When I work most deeply with clients, I consider the space we enter and realize it has the feel of unhealing. In these times, I am not working in a known field of consciousness or a learned set of techniques. I am becoming undone with and by my client. I am opening into a greater field of being and setting the stage for two people to exist in an unknown and unthought of space.
Last week, I facilitated a group in which women were paired off and, not speaking, vibrated themselves to their partners using breathing techniques and conscious opening to parts of themselves. Once again, I noticed how much more healing potential there is in this nonverbal space. By allowing attention to meet an edge of being and have that edge be shared consciously with another, the potential to heal changes. The healing shifts aren’t loud and theatrical. All the talking that we normally use to converse goes away. Cells intermingle and currents of energy flow into and around us. I believe these kind of experiences, these subtle shifts of energy in relationships are the foundation for connecting to the truest self. Unhealing is a necessary part of healing.
What does healing entail?
There are so many theories around the true nature of what brings about healing. In our world we use nutrition, herbs, talking, emotional release, pharmaceutical drugs, hands on healing, mantras, the list goes on and on. Entire cultures have created their own systems for healing - Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, Indigenous Mysteries, Herbalism, Modern Science. Off shoots abound within these systems - TCM versus Classical Chinese Medicine, Naturopathy versus Homeopathy, Flower Essences versus Tinctures. Every single one of these systems has value and answers. But do any of them truly have all of the answers?
My husband is a professor. I love hearing him talk to his students about the theories of Chinese Medicine. He has an amazing ability to interweave modern medicine with classical Chinese medical theory with imbalances of spirit, body, and mind. Yet a part of me can’t help but think about how the theory might have more value than the practice. I have unfortunately had too many ineffective acupuncture treatments to believe that all that is necessary is theory put into practice. To be effective, the healers and doctors we choose to engage with have to have something in them that can shift our own capacity to heal. All the theories in the world cannot change this more magical interaction, the need for the unknown to enter healing relationships. There is something deeper going on than what we normally acknowledge.
How does one create true healing within a healing relationship? How can the self be honored, valued, and embodied to create a healing experience in relationship? What creates effective healing? These questions have been churning in my system for almost 30 years. The foundational question that has fueled my own constant learning and discernment of what I learn is also what makes me who I am. It is a rare day that I do not ask myself the question “What is the essence of healing?” As I sit with my core self I wait for an answer. I realize that the process of unfolding and becoming is just as much present in my inability to get a clear answer as it is in the fact that only in death will I stop asking this question.
The lesson I most commonly learn in life is that I don’t know anything. This is true for myself as a woman, a healer, a mother, a lover, a wife, a daughter, and a friend. I continue to find my own happiness in stepping away from my ego and letting my life unfold from a place of surrendering into the unknown. My own becoming and relationship to my life has meant that I undo, I unfold, I consistently disintegrate and reemerge. While I don’t always embrace this process gracefully, I rarely actually have choice in the eventual reality. I have a tendency to learn, take what I need from what I was taught, and drop the rest. I have forged myself using only the teachings that resonate with my soul. In this reality, there is no need to be too concrete or known. The safest place to be is the unknown.
I think about how natural it is to want to connect to what is known, identify with what has been learned, and create a concrete story of self based on the being we believe ourself to be. This is human nature. Unhealing goes against humanity at a surface level yet embraces it’s deepest needs. The foundation for unhealing is that everyone needs to unfold in their own unique way. Inside us are all the answers to all of our problems. All we need to do is curiously await for the unfolding of our being. Have you ever really felt this aligned with your own life? It is so much easier to fix than to sit in the discomfort of our own blooming. The easier route, in this case, keeps us the same. Only through losing do we know what we have. Value makes itself present when we have the choice to keep or to let go.
Self Deconstruction
To deconstruct the self means embracing the tools that have already shown up in your life but to utilize them differently.
Go deeper into the foundation of what you have learned by being alive.
Hold onto trust and surrender.
Open to essence of self.
Find deep curiosity.
Embrace compassion.
Seek change.
These tenants of being enable the creative wave of self to unfold. When we can sit in the self and with another completely relaxed, open, and curious the magic will happen. When we sit in judgement, categorizing, confusion, and separation, we are blocking our own deconstruction. Anything we do to escape the present moment is missing the most important aspect of being alive.
Poetry often explains these states of being more profoundly than explanations. The following poem speaks to the power of the un…
Against Certainty
There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think “this”, it answers “that.”
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar’s strictness.
If I then say “that”, it too is taken away.
Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity,
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.
I would like to enter the silence portion as she does.
To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
One shadow fully at ease inside another.
Jane Hirschfield
Unhealing Relationally
Have you ever shut someone down unintentionally? Perhaps they are sharing an emotional experience and your words make them stop sharing. Perhaps the emotion changes as a result of your input. Or perhaps you sense that there is something deeper and attempt to go there and meet resistance. Have you ever had this same shut down happen to you? In relationships, sometimes we can bring so much more healing by not speaking and not engaging. This is where a need for unhealing comes in.
All of us crave being deeply seen and heard. Even if we have trauma and fear that tells us there is danger in being seen and heard we still want it. We just want to be safe at the same time. This need to be seen and heard, valued and loved feeds into something more complex and unknown - the need to feel experienced. We want people to understand what we are feeling or thinking on a deeper level than just simple words or emotional expression. Our complexity needs to be understood, immersed in, experienced and resonated with in order to feel like all of our being can be accepted.
Unhealing is about not doing anything. It allows the possibility of taking a person in and metabolizing their own unknown depth while experiencing the self in the same way at the same time. Inside us all is the need to be immersed in another person, resonated with completely, and differentiated from with freedom. This is why we have sex drives. We want to be fully penetrated and still come out the other side as our true self. When someone shares presence with us and just tolerates what it is like to be with us, we are experiencing a communion that is similar to sex but with a meeting of soul to soul.
Of course, not all of us even have sexual partners that we can relate with in this way. Some of us have partners that we have sex with and not deep communion with. A lot of us have friends we do not commune with on this soul level. When this is the case, it is normal to feel a craving for more, to fantasize. How do we create a life that fills the gap between what we think we can experience and what our soul needs? Living a life without this kind of deep communion will leave us feeling unfulfilled. This need inside us will never be met. We will continue to band aid rather than heal.
I will be writing about this more next week. In this moment, I hope I leave you feeling just a little unfulfilled…
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