IT’S UP TO THREE
By Char Easter
I was on a self-imposed, self-help restraining order. That included any personal or professional development workshops, classes, gurus, ceremonies, intuitive readers, certifications, energy workers, life coaches, healings via inter-universal consciousness networks and advanced degrees. It was time for me to step up and be my own authority. I am good enough.
But there I was, part of a large circle of people with serene looks on their faces and hands gently folded on their laps. I had arrived a few minutes late, but, to my relief, a woman flashed a welcoming smile. My friend Cedar, who’d suggested the class, fetched me a chair, and the circle parted for its new member. I was in.
After a moment of silence, the same woman who had given me the smile called the meeting to order. She was in her late forties and slender. She spoke in a calm, flowing voice with a mindful countenance. But beneath her even keel was a certain verve with, perhaps, a stitch of transcendental unrest waiting for something to go wrong. She asked us to go around the circle to share our name and experience with the group. The group followed the teachings of an adorable spiritual leader with a Brazilian accent. An online post stated that “her work reveals the enlightened potential of a new form of humanity. . . .” I stopped there. A new form of humanity, aka, the shift, is a top-ten topic in my crowd. Based on the Mayan Prophecy, the rumor was that a shift in consciousness would occur on 12/12/12 and 12/21/12. Despite much anticipation, nothing happened. Someone said that the wrong date was due to space constraints on the calendar. They ran out of room. As outlandish as that sounds, does it matter? We are on our own calendar now. When you want to believe, it will happen, facts schmacks.
My personal interpretation is that after the shift, conscious tasks will become automatic—like breathing or a heartbeat. One day we need to think about how to peel carrots and where to find our bus pass to get to group therapy and the next, we’re on to higher endeavors—like group therapy, level 2. I guess you could consider this collective-conscious prep work. And since we don’t have an exact date, we must be poised to shift. The thought sounded suspiciously religious. Isn’t there an interpretation of the shift in the Bible called Revelations, except that you float up to heaven? I wondered how the question would go over with this group. The last person in the circle spoke, “I’m Greg. I went to the leader’s talk in San Diego last month and resonated with it, so I’m here.”
The moderator smiled at Greg and repeated the gesture around the circle, pausing for each of us to acknowledge our being. Then she explained the first exercise. We were to silently mill around the room and choose a partner. “Stand in front of this person and observe your feelings, focusing on three places: yourself, the person in front of you, and the space in between. This is not an eye-gazing exercise,” she explained. “It’s not about staring down the person. And visit five or so partners.” With marching orders from our queen bee, we set out like a swarm. I observed my resistant self-talk, “This is uncomfortable. Why do I get myself into these things? Just choose someone.”
Then I found myself standing in front of a woman. She was taller than me, so my eyes, that were avoiding hers, settled on her chest. I frantically searched for other places to focus my gaze. Looking around could be construed as unfocused. And closing my eyes was checking out—or in. I chose a combination. Some semblance of social etiquette should be observed even if it was forced, so I added an occasional direct glance into her eyes to show I cared. Staring back at me was a benevolent being with a sweet smile that was pure and eager—like a dog, if dogs smiled. She was plainly dressed in a corduroy pastel-yellow shirt and a pale-green fringed scarf. She was somewhere in her fifties with reddish-gray long and frizzy hair, unbound from the trends of designer cuts. Her wireframe glasses sat on a pale face, backlit by an off-worldly happiness. I noted that I felt uncomfortable but fortunate I had found a friendly alien. We stood together for most of the exercise, despite our instructions to switch off. Finally, unable to discern a proper parting point, I broke free to seek a new partner.
Partner 2 was a stout and sturdy woman in her late sixties. A pair of reading glasses hung on a cord around her neck. The look in her eyes was that of a linebacker defending the field. I guess I would describe the space in between us as off-limits. The woman reminded me of Mrs. Miller the Killer, my second-grade teacher and possibly the source of certain traumas still hanging on that I am trying to address in a class such as this. My chance to face-off an old fear passed as the moderator called us back to the circle to share our experience. The benevolent alien went first. “I felt a profound sense of weight from the first person I encountered,” she started. The word “weight” weighed in my mind. I cringed, thinking that I’m too heavy and that my evil inner child was going to be exposed to the group of enlightened beings in progress. Then she continued, “We stood there for a long time, but I didn’t want to leave because it was incredibly comforting and grounding.” My tailspin into shame reversed course. I didn’t feel particularly grounded, but it may have been the contrast to her airy, fairy nature, or she was an alien still getting a grip on gravity. Maybe she sensed I was a bass player. You can’t underestimate the intuitive powers in groups seeking a new humanity.
When the river of comments ran dry, the moderator explained Exercise 2. We were to form triads. Each person would talk for five minutes on a topic of our choice. If we got too into our heads—or our “stories”—a listener in the triad was to gently touch our knee to bring us back to the moment and the physical realm. One woman had been to a previous meet, so I volunteered her to start. I felt out of character by being assertive. But she agreed and began, “I have always been embarrassed that I am a hairdresser,” she confessed. “I like my job: the creativity, working with people, and being an entrepreneur, but I never lose this feeling that I need to be more somehow: more accomplished or to make a name for myself.” I considered my mom’s take on this would be a combination of self-help, gospel sermon, and conspiracy theory. She’d say that we tend to put too much pressure on ourselves and that society creates expectations to be great. Her voice would develop an edge of irritation, the edge that reveals where she is confounded by mainstream mores. This is a mother who did not trust academia (even the lower grades) or intellectuals. And we were a family who lived on a mountain in the woods without electricity and running water for a year. These two facts are likely where I coped a bad attitude about groups. Losing the edge, my mother would conclude, “God is great, and he made us in his image and loves us. So we can love ourselves.”
I studied the hairdresser for signs. Did she look like a hairdresser? I thought about the time I’d asked my hairstylist, Sandi, if she liked her job. “I love it!” Sandi sparked, freshly aglow from her tanning treatment for one of her regular Vegas weekends. Her conviction was contagious and, for a moment, standing in her beige and gold suburban salon, a place where conversation tends toward what TV stars are breaking up with who and the latest diet, I wanted to be her, to love my job. I realized it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s how you wear it, how you sell it, how you embrace it.
The hairdresser didn’t embrace it. I could relate. Sometimes I feel that, for the grand sum of what I’ve accomplished, I could have sat on the couch watching TV my entire life. I reflected that this is exactly the kind of negative thinking that brings me to self-help and then keeps me from having a breakthrough. That is my story. I have a love/hate relationship with groups and myself. Do I keep the hate part secret or is the hate part exactly what I need to share, to grow, to evolve, spiritually? A guy in the group asked how do we separate “our story” from “reality.” But I’d expect a few fuzzy concepts from an alternative group prepping for a new consciousness with pop-psychology exercises.
“I don’t have confidence,” the hairdresser stammered. Like a hand on my knee, the phrase brought me out of my daydream and back to the group. She’d repeated that she lacked confidence enough times that it was now a theme; her story. And like every good story, the hairdresser’s included redemption. She had recently been in a Pilate’s teacher training, she explained, when “Just two weeks before finishing a nine-month program, I decided to quit.” This was the part in the story where the hero faces her worst fear. She continued, “Then the director convinced me to finish, and I did. I got my certificate.” Happy ending. She told us this with a calm confidence, the confidence that she was seeking but insisted she didn’t have. Maybe it was always there. I felt like I was in the Wizard of Oz.
The next person in our triad began her five minutes with my words, “I am in a career transition and no ideas are coming to me. My fear is that I am stuck here, not knowing.” As I listened, I decided that when it was my turn I would say, “Everything she said.” A career transition is likely a common topic in a town of hi-tech contract workers/spiritual seekers. Nevertheless, was it just a coincidence? Like me, she felt like she was spinning her wheels, wasting time, and bumbling about with no pragmatic plan, no tidy list of tasks to check off as designated milestones based on a clear overarching goal. My 2013 life direction mind-map was so all over that map that I considered making a digital version with multi-clickable levels.
This woman in transition felt lost. But I believe you have to get lost to find your way. It had a metaphoric ring that seemed fitting for all scenarios. I also like, “You have to end something to begin.” I remember editing the phrase in my mind on my way to work one day, feeling bad over a breakup. Combining metaphors, I decided that being lost is the place between the end and the beginning, the place in between. It’s where I used to find my muse as a musician. If our group could cross-talk (a group-therapy term to listen but not reply), I would assure her that the topic of “not knowing” is trending.
While researching this group, I listened to a recording by our absent but omnipresent founder on the topic of not knowing. Her cute Brazilian accent had a husky quality, as if she had recently abandoned a little girl identity to become a wizened fortuneteller. I recalled a psychic in Cuba who we brought rum and tobacco donations for her spirit guides. In the “not knowing” video, our group’s sexy founder sat in the center of a dance studio. She wore an artful blend of sci-fi and Russian Cossack fur that served as an outward manifestation of the earth and off worlds she inhabits. Her hair was pulled up in two fluffy ponytails adding volume to her wild and dramatic personality. Her message was filled with invitations to open ourselves to the information that is there but we block. It is the Kool-Aid that self-help, wanna-be enlightened junkies crave. But it’s like floating mist that is hard to grasp. When we lose our humbleness and the divine information fails to “flow in,” we tend to seek help through shaman tea parties, life coaches or Burning Man to break through. I perpetually experience not knowing. But at least it’s comforting to know that not knowing is good or, rather, not knowing that not knowing is good
Since I couldn’t reassure the woman in our triad, I listened. She looked of Scandinavian descent, in her forties, with straight blond hair that was pulled back to reveal an attractive, angular face. In another life she could have a rich husband and a Lexus. But in this one, she was possibly single, worked for a nonprofit—or would realize it’s what she wants to do—and drove a Subaru. She did an impressive job staying composed and undone at once. This shows a certain good breeding because she imparts to those in her presence a sense that she is capable, not needy and pitiful but not without issues of her own, so you can identify or even feel a wee sense of having it more together—which is always a nice ego booster despite being a cheap shot.
She used the word “fear” several times. She feared that it was futile. Then her story turned: “This has been going on for a while . . . until yesterday when I realized that this is not something I can force or rush. I just have to have faith that it will work out,” she said, mustering a subdued excitement. If I info-graphed her talk, that a-ha moment would be a barely perceptible spike in a flat horizontal line. I liked her reserve, but I was suspicious of the timing for her alleged breakthrough and wondered if she was putting a positive spin on the story for us. She should experience the Russians in my women’s circle. Those chicks can open the floodgates of tears and pour out their guts in melodramatic detail in a moment flat. But Nordic types are more reserved, and who can’t appreciate an uplifting ending? My mom would concur that one needs faith, with an “in God” spin.
The third exercise was also a triad. With a new group, we each had ten minutes—with a ratio of that time for feedback. Our feedback had to be a feeling, not the usual blah-blah-blah. “Don’t jump to solution,” the moderator warned. Obviously, we were beyond using articles before words like solution. Grammatically, we were jumping to solution. “Maybe you felt a twinge in your arm while they were talking,” the moderator suggested. This sounded odd, but I would come up with something. Our topic was about how we behave in groups: how we arrive; how we hide.
The woman in our group was eager to start, despite her timid demeanor. “Groups are difficult for me. I keep coming to these types of things, but it never gets easier. I prefer a one-on-one.” As she did her best to expand on the theme, she came close to tears a few times and I worried her mascara would run. Maybe I should save this for the feedback, I noted. She had a dark, ruby red dress and black hair and eyebrows that served, like menacing supporting actors, to intensify a mental state that became increasingly distressed as she spoke. I felt like she was taking us on a harrowing journey down a narrow path on the edge of cliff in a storm. I feared for her safety but didn’t believe the quiver in her voice as she made her various claims that she was afraid and doubted herself. This woman was a Viking. When she finished, we sat there, searching for an appropriate feeling to recall. Given the interpersonal melodrama we’d just witnessed I said, “I felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie.” Their blank stares moved me an attitudinal nudge farther outside the group.
The next person in the triad had one of those personalities that I don’t understand: solid, the type who inadvertently steps on toes and makes a good manager. She was in her early forties with thick features and an athletic frame that supported a perceived confidence, despite how she perceived herself. She didn’t smile, which added to her being intimidating. “I am one of those people who will always wear something stylish so that I stand out.” She gestured dramatically with her hands, which made me uncomfortable and seemed out of character for a stoic manager type. “And I have a tendency to smile too much,” she quickly added. “It’s kind of embarrassing, but I’m afraid to be mediocre.” I admired her for taking on that challenge, while recalling the red fur hat hung next to my coat. I wondered what she would be wearing if I saw her at a party, not practicing being mediocre. When it came time to give feedback, I smiled and passed not sure how to translate intimations of intimidation into a body sensation.
Now it was my turn. What I wanted to say about groups is that I arrive late and try to stay connected as long as possible before I part from the herd and begin to feel like everyone in the group is from another planet. I decided to wade in slowly—I had five-plus minutes to kill. I began by establishing my character: I didn’t run well in packs. “I had a birthday party where I invited eight close friends and no one knew each other,” I explained. Groping for another group misadventure, I explained that I had been forcing myself to go to a women’s group for over two years but couldn’t quit because I wasn’t sure if quitting meant that I was giving up a chance to face my fear to share something authentic or if quitting meant I was in touch with who I was and what I wanted. I became more and more withdrawn as I bumbled on about my bad relationship with groups, which was intensifying into neurosis. I was like the woman in red except that the emotion escalating beneath the surface was anger. This was odd because anger nary appears on my genteel palette of feelings. I don’t like conflict. I bumbled on toward disaster. Convincing them convinced me until I was fully in touch with my feelings of hating groups, and I wasn’t feeling that great about the triad either. Was this a breakthrough or the makings of a massacre? In an abrupt halt I said, “That’s it.” I wasn’t smiling. It was part act of defiance and part averting a catastrophe. I guess you could call it a breakthrough gone bad or a breakdown or breaking bad. Barely two minutes had passed leaving seven for feedback. The woman in red ventured in, “At first I felt a resistance in your voice, but it seemed to dissolve into compassion.” Okay. How could someone be more wrong? This solidified my separation from the WE.
The moderator called us back into the large circle. A new story ping-ponged in my head, “This is horrible. I am never coming here again.” A cute woman with light brown curly hair began the commentaries. Her head was backlit by a rogue light source that gave her a heavenly glow. “Normally, I feel uncomfortable in groups. But this time I was able to transcend that anxiety.” She emphasized her points by closing her eyes, “I felt blissed-out by the love and acceptance from my group.” Who are these people? I thought. Did I get a bad triad? As I stewed, the comments that followed reiterated the experience of support and good vibes. Finally, I spoke up, “I found the topic difficult.” The moderator asked if anyone else found it difficult. The room fell silent. Then an older woman raised her finger and said she also found the topic difficult. She reminded me of my late, great aunt Vera. Her skin was pasty white like stage makeup in natural light. And her eyebrows were painted on in thick lines. I had an ally. Maybe she looked like Spock in “Star Trek,” but I wasn’t alone in the group. The moderator admitted that it was true, talking about groups to a group can be challenging. Obviously, it was a setup. Then a few people chimed in to back up my experience with versions.
Would I come back? I don’t know. It brought something up. If I asked my father, he’d calmly fold his hands on the table next to his plate of Saltines and bargain brand, non-organic cheddar cheese slices and without a doubt say, “Listen to your instincts and live a simple life.” I could remind him that he goes to church. But I’m not sure how I’d defend a group I found via a random email based on a contemporary spiritual leader stacks up against Jesus or the Bible.
If I do go back, I have to ask: how many self-help scenarios does it take to screw in a light bulb of insight?
