Falling Apart Into Reality
The third week at the Women Of Earth Bridge-House was intense. In fact, there hasn’t been a week that has not been intense. Finding a house in a new country, all four women working their way through grief and letting go of past partnerships in one way of another, being out on the edge in a new part of the world learning how to interact with each other in a way that can invoke the next step, or next dimension of the Women Of Earth in each other, and in the space. This journey is by itself intense.
Many things keep falling apart. Women announce proposals such as having watch parties of recorded Emotional Healing Processes; regular holding exchanges; movie nights, walks, practices, and towards the end of the week some of the things get rescheduled or simply cancelled. Other times right in the middle of a conversation or just before a call one of us hears a knock on the door and a wet red face asks “can you hold space for me right now?”.
When the falling apart happens, the thing that falls is not real. And usually not even needed anymore. The falling apart happens because you hold on to something. Maybe what you are holding is a vision, a plan, an idea, a fantasy, a memory, a hope, a conclusion. In any case, you are holding a story. But you are not just holding a story, are you? You are holding on to the story. Holding a story and holding onto a story are very different things. When you hold a story, you see it as a possibility, as you can try a new pair of sunglasses on and see how life is through those lenses. Or try on a new shirt and see how it is to wear it, and how that changes things for you. When you hold on to a story, you are actually fixing yourself and your life in the story, and forcing yourself, often others, and your experience to fit that narrative.
It is a similar process of creating resentments: you create an assumption, and then assume that assumption is true. When you assume your assumption is true you hold on to it and create an expectation. In your expectation you create your little theatre script in which all the people and elements in your life should be behaving according to. Then when life or one of the people does not behave as demanded by your completely arbitrary script, you get to hate and resent them.
The thing with stories is that they are not real, they are simply stories. Powerful stories, life-giving., life-taking, inspiring, sabotaging, murderous, empowering stories, but stories nonetheless, and still not reality. What can happen when you do the holding on to a story is that you lose contact with reality. You listen to your idea of a person instead of their actions. You listen to their idea of who they think they are instead of their actions. You listen to rumours, propaganda, marketing, instead of having your own experience of what is.
If falling apart allows the things that are not real to fall, then what is left is real. What is left is simple, intense, raw. It does not need explanations, or stories. What is real simply is so, without stories. It is pure presence, and that presence is not silent, it has words, it has feelings, it has things to say, real things to say because what is real demands it so.
What is real does not fit into the survival pretence of the looking good show, the having a plan show, the looking smart, or like you have it together show. And because it does not fit into those survival mode shows, it automatically and radically creates a new space, a new culture, where something else can happen. Something like real intimacy, which is dangerous for the pretence and the protection. If you want to see people falling apart and letting what is not real fall off and creating another kind of intimacy, please watch the episode 117 and episode 118 of the Beyond Repair Study Group.
We were a mess, and we were hitting bottom together. And it was only in the bottom that we could actually meet. If you are not at bottom, you are pretending, you are protecting. Then who we meet is not you, it’s the pretending, the protecting. Bottom is good news, because bottom is reality. Your Being exists in reality. There is nothing below the bottom. You cannot fall off from the bottom to a kind of bottomless pit, like many people fear. The ‘bottomless pit’ is the swamp, and the swamp is not the bottom, because the swamp is a survival strategy story-world, so it is not reality. The self-blame and self-cannibalism is not the bottom. The fantasy world is not the bottom. There are no stories to hold on to in reality.
One way to start hitting bottom is admitting. Admitting where you are. Admitting the show you’ve been putting on so that you are not at bottom. By admitting where you are you let the thing that is not real start falling apart. And then you keep going.
At the WOEBH the women have been falling apart and hitting bottom by first admitting. Admitting to themselves and each other where they are, or how much they have been allowing their underworld to run their lives. It has been such a relief to say it and to hear it. Some women are admitting how much in scarcity they are. Others how much pressure they put on themselves just so they can look adult enough to live in the Bridge-House. Others how much fear they have of each other, to be killed by each other. And going through the emotional healing processes needed about it. I have been admitting whenever I am trying to police myself and police others, and changed my mind about that. This has created a completely different way relating with the women, now we are more colleagues, asking each other questions like “how do we handle this in a way that creates Integrity? What does it ask of each one of us?”, and we look at it and practice it together. I have been admitting how much I do not have it together and fantasise about Love, tripping on the what if’s or the illusion that if I had done this or that then I would have created radiance and Love. That if I had loved him well enough, the way that he deserves, then he would heal and I would heal, and we would be stellar.
I am relieved that the Women at the WOEBH know all of this about me, and are by my side. And that I know all of this about them, and that I am by their side.
It is healing to know that we can be a mess, without pretending to be someone else, and still be in the loving and generous field of our team. This has given me a new base to stand on. I cannot believe how much I was keeping inside myself because I thought I needed to be strong, I needed to be an example, I needed to be inspiring, I needed to be perfect. I am what I am. That is what you get.
Each person’s Being yearns to be seen and met as they are, warts and brilliance the same. Pretending to not be where you are or not be who you are takes an immense amount of energy to do. Keeping the pretence day in and day out takes a huge amount of your life energy that you could use for something else such as being with, trying something new, practice being the space so your Bright Principles can speak, letting Gaia move you, being at the intersection of spaces with your Stand, listening to ECCO, invoke the Women Of Earth in every woman around you, look at the people with shinning eyes and sharp sword being on their team, practice being a yes to another person’s commitment, practice being a yes to reality, practice hitting bottom, practice radical relating, practice letting your fear speak to strangers, practice taking a stand from your Love instead of from pressure, practice feelings and expressing your feelings instead of analysing them away, speak with the consciousness of a plant, or a non-human animal, or a mountain, make a deal with your Archetypal Lineage Representatives and keep it, make a dinner made solely from what you have in the fridge and make it scrumptious, deliver a transformational menu in the subway or beach before you go to work in the morning, send a clear concise proposal to the United Nations about a sustainable future, and much much more.