Laughing with the Woo

Laughing with the Woo

10/11/2011

I have quite a few friends who have deep beliefs in metaphysics, new-agey spirituality. Quite a few. I am married to one.  I am a resister. Not because I don’t believe, and certainly not because I haven’t had many experiences that validate aspects of their belief systems. It is not the concepts that make me want to run screaming from the room, it is the language.

Being a person who loves words, I often run headlong into the limits of language.  Angels, archangels, evil spirits, lost souls, spirit-guides, God…. I’m totally cool with however other people want to express their experiences; but when they apply their language to my experiences, I have to stifle a reflexive gag.  My mother has observed numerous times (out loud) that I have a compulsive need to rebel. This, indeed, is true.  But truth is always bigger than language, and we only move further away from truth by trying to fit it into our words.

I have been to many healers. Miscarriages, pain, chronic illness: These things send even the most cynical to whomever markets a hope of doing something about the things for which nothing can be done. Many of these healers have been genuinely gifted. I have experienced healing on many levels in my work with them. I am moved and grateful and awed. Until they speak.  I have to close my ears so the experience is not limited, confused, and trivialized by the words that others choose to imprison experience.

Being a person trained as a scientist, I equally often run headlong into things that cannot exist, because they cannot be measured, quantified, or reliably reproduced.  Admittedly also a little on the snarky side, I have come to call these ephemeral experiences and beliefs the “Woo.” I’m not denying the existence of the Woo; in fact, I am participating. This is how I participate. By making up language to describe without limiting, without a grave tone of self-righteousness. The Woo has my edges; not mocking, but laughing. Not laughing at, but with, the Woo.

The Woo has caught on. It lends itself to great little jokes.  “Woo-hoo” I respond in texts when a friend tells me about a sign, a happening, an experience of healing or enlightenment.  “Boo-woo:” I am sad, life is not conforming to my expectations.

Recently, I am boo-wooing considerably. I have discovered that a person I was very close to was using the Woo for his own gain, at the expense of those who trusted and loved him.  BF, who was equally violated by said individual, and only recently coming to believe that there are forces that move us far beyond what we can explain, cried out with indignation and earnest anguish; “He’s misusing the Woo!” Her vulnerable, newborn faith was being violated, and it was a total outrage.

We feel “woobused.” We accuse him of being a “woobuser.” It makes our disbelief, hurt, and anger more palatable.  Early on in the discovery of his betrayals, when he was still invoking the Woo to get us to buy in to his schemes, I texted BF with this thought: “The Woo cannot save you from your own free will.”

As with all situations that reveal their true nature, each layer of illusion peeled away and the next was darker and more hurtful. Just yesterday the cracks in the illusion of my relationship with him broke wide open. I was confused, terrified, filled with self-doubt. How could this be true? There must be another way to interpret this information.  Am I losing my mind?

So I meditated. A lot. At the end of it, I felt calm. I breathed in acceptance and breathed out judgment. In- compassion; out- anger. In and out. In and out. I found a quiet place in my soul and went to sleep. I dreamt in symbols: Self-protection, strength, integrity.  I woke up and meditated some more.  Compassion. Non-judgment. Detachment.  All the while I felt like there was something, someone, trying to get through. Finally I said to the Woo, I don’t believe in you (a Master Woo, if you will), and your message is not clear. If you want to tell me something, it’s gonna have to be a lot bigger than this.

Not one hour later, we were going through our daily morning chaos. “Rudy, where are your shoes? Has anyone gotten the baby up? What do you want for breakfast? Where the hell is my brace?”  Rudy, my little sage, says quietly, “there’s smoke in the baby’s room.” I glance over and, not seeing or smelling anything, bark back: “Have you found your shoes? Get out of there and get your socks and shoes! You are probably smelling my incense.”

“Mommy,” he insists, there is smoke.” I go to investigate. The room is filled with what looks like smoke, and it is now billowing into the kitchen. Sandra grabs the baby while I call 9-1-1.  “My house is filled with smoke, but the smoke alarms are not going off, and it doesn’t smell like smoke,” I frantically convey to the operator, feeling like a lunatic. “Get out of the house,” she responds calmly, “we’ll be there in one minute.”  No sooner than I had gotten the dog in the van, the kids outside and away from the house, and Sandra had pulled the cars out of the driveway, a fire engine came screaming down our street. Then another. And another. Six total. Six fire engines with lights blazing. A veritable army of fire-fighters, with masks and hatchets and very tall ladders charged into, on top of, and surrounded the house.  Front porches filled with curious neighbors. I do the same. It’s the 2011 equivalent of a block party.

“Did you turn on the furnace?” It’s still 90 degrees! “What about the swamp coolers?” Haven’t used them in years- they are no match for the hottest summer on record, in the hottest city on earth. “Can we access the attic or will we have to go through the roof?” Uh-oh.  

“Ummm,” I manage to squeak out, eyeing the fire fighter on the roof with the giant hatchet, “there are inside access areas, but we had insulation blown in and I understand they are impassable.”  “Not a problem,” a very large fire fighter says, “Where?” I show him the biggest of two tiny openings in the ceiling. He hoists himself in, tearing hundreds of dollars of insulation out and dumping it through the hole behind him. Not that I care at the moment, I am so profoundly grateful that we have an army of help.  He combs the attic: Nothing. They check every outlet: Nothing. All the breakers: Nothing. They investigate every single inch: Nothing. No fire, nothing smoldering, nothing to be afraid of. I am quaking, inside and out.

“Am I crazy?” I asked. “Did you see the smoke?” Yes, when they came in the house, it had appeared full of smoke. It was difficult to see through. But the “smoke” was gone now. They had never seen anything like it. A 3-alarm fire with no alarm, and no fire.

No fire? I smell smoke now.  “That’s us,” a fire-fighter replies. “We like the smell. It stays in our clothes. Most people don’t.”  I too, like the smell of fire. It’s comforting. Just like this mass of heavily uniformed people moving through my house, making sure we are safe. The only woman in the group asks if we have a vacuum, because they’ve made a mess in the room with the attic door. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the one woman in this heroic gang clean up after them. “It’s in the laundry room, but please don’t....” Before I can save her, she yells to a colleague, “it’s in the laundry room, clean it up.” I might be in love.

While he cleans, I hang out with 6 guys just standing around in my living room, remarking on how much they like the house. We talk about its generous size and small footprint, the original house and the seamless addition. The architecture and the arched doorway. I am definitely in love. With all of them; brave, selfless, smoky and neat. With my house, not burned to the ground. With my family, all safe and returning to life as we know it.  And yes, with the Woo, who managed to get my attention.

Point taken Woo: Things are not as they seem. Just because you think you know something (like fire creates smoke, for instance), doesn’t make it reality. We are really in no position to judge anything: Frail, limited little creatures spinning on a disintegrating planet in an expanding universe. “Reality” is merely our arrogant interpretations of our limited scopes of knowledge.  

Our wounds are of our own making. We made up a story and somebody else changed the storyline. People are not who they seem. We are not whom we seem. All of it- an illusion, all of it a story. Sitting on the patio when everyone was gone, I saw, as if for the first time, my laughing Buddha watching me from across the pool. Laughing so hard his whole body jiggled. I finally got it, why Buddha laughs. This is funny.  We are hilarious. This world- our theatre, these humans- the stars of our own shows, the dramas we co-create and believe in fervently.

Nothing, nothing, is true. Reality changes when we change our minds. Friend, foe, total stranger- how many interpretations do we cycle through, believing in each one with full conviction? The Woo got me this time, a sign so big that it drew a literal crowd.  Woo- 1; Christina- 0. I lay down my arms. Actually, I was laughing so hard that I dropped them. The Woo wins again.