Gold Within the Garbage: A Process-Oriented Approach to Working with the Homeless

My first intention in my contact with the homeless was to apply Process Work. Ernie, my husband, and I went downtown and tried to do therapy with them, to use our knowledge of edges, double signals, secondary processes, etc. to help the people on the streets. But we had an interesting experience: we forgot everything we ever learned and we got hypnotized, awed and drunk from their auras and their personalities. We started to just sit with them, enjoy them and learn from them. We went downtown in order to help, and we left feeling blessed and helped with their view of life that reminded us of teachings of Don Juan, Lao Tze, Chuang Tzu, Buddha and the Native Americans.

The homeless people became our teachers and our Mends. Some of them, because of their vagabond-nature, we never met again although they still live in our hearts and our memories as teachers in various situations. Others became friends who we meet once in a while, and when we do, it feels like coming home.

My recurring childhood dream is that my home town was burning because of war. I had to flee and leave everything behind me. I knew that I would never be able to go back and that I had to create my home out there. Among street people I feel that I have found my home. I feel at home among them; among the rebels, the radicals, the weirdos, the crazy and the homeless of our society. They don't wear masks, they don't conform, they are nobodies and therefore can be anything and anybody. Although they don't identify with this role, they are our teachers.

It's obvious that the practical approaches, such as improving housing policies, increasing social welfare, etc. are needed. Additionally we need the ability and the openness to see their beauty and to hear their teaching. It is an attitude for all of us who are dealing with the homeless, as nurses, social workers, neighbors, parents, police or government. One of the first homeless people I interviewed said to me: "I am a big teacher and the whole world is my student. All the homeless people are teachers, but they are put into a closet." I am hoping to give them a chance to get out of the closet and to speak to us. They are teaching through their way of life and through their messages, which are often upsetting to us.

My dissertation is about their teachings. In about 50 videotaped interviews in Zurich, Switzerland and in Phoenix and Portland in the U.S., with homeless women and men, couples and families, white and black people, Latinos and Latinas, drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill people and drop-outs, between 15 and 75 years of age, I studied the common themes in their messages. Their words were teaching about being connected with nature, about detachment and letting go, about ultimate freedom, about being a warrior and having courage for conflict, and about generosity and love. Their life style was teaching about laziness and following passion, about letting go of will and surrendering to a higher power, about being nobody, and about finding a spiritual home on this planet earth. The following subchapters are excerpts from the dissertation.

Connectedness With Nature

■I'd like to introduce you to Raccoon-man. He is one of my favorite friends on the streets. We find him lying on one of the more quiet streets in Portland. He is an elderly homeless man. I love the contact I have with Raccoon-man; he creates a cozy, warm atmosphere and makes me feel immediately at home with him. He looks like somebody who belongs on the streets. His appearance is a little uncivilized: unshaven, and dressed in old, ragged clothing. He has a warm and friendly expression on his face. I lay myself next to him on the streets, while I talk to him. Raccoon-man says in his friendly, slow way:

I don't have to live on the streets... I don't know what kind of animal I am. I think I might be some kind of ~ you know - I am not a squirrel, I am not a dog, I am not a raccoon. But they, the raccoons - you know ~ they like me. Maybe I am a raccoon! If I am not awake, they come and wake me up. They start pulling my hair. I love them. Although they come and steal my food, I still love them. The raccoons are my friends... Animals, sometimes - you know ~ I love them more than people. The animals, the raccoons, the dogs, and the cats, they all like me...I can't live in a house. I love to live in the streets, live outside, live underneath the trees.

It is one of the most unusual, mysterious and wonderful conversations I ever had with a human being. Raccoon-man does not talk about human concerns. He seems to come from a different planet; he talks about what really is in his heart in the moment, his relationships with the animals and his love for nature. I feel transplanted into a different world, where humans and nature are one and live in a deep connection with each other. I feel that in my own life, I have lost the admission to paradise, that I have lost my oneness with nature and that I lost something big.

Our civilization has disconnected itself from nature. Many of us suffer from that loss and are looking for ways back to that paradise. But there are still cultures that are closer to Raccoon-man's philosophy. The Native Americans, with their strong love for nature would get along well with him. They speak the same language, have the same friends and care for the same values.

The Iroquois share a myth that illustrates a world where human beings still are at home with animals. They tell the story about a little boy whose uncle had left him in the woods alone after his parents had died. The boy is singing songs for help and suddenly he is surrounded by all the animals of the woods:

...bears, deers, foxes, wolves, beavers, muskrats, even the small animals, squirrels, woodchucks, chipmunks, moles...The boy did not know what would happen next. And that was when an old grandmother woodchuck shuffled up to him, poked him in the leg and said: 'Grandson, we heard your song. Do you need a friend'? '...my parents died and my uncle didn't want me...; I have no family anywhere in the world.' The old grandmother woodchuck said: 'Grandson, we will be your family! Pick any of us and we will adopt you.' (Abenaki, 1990, p. 50)

Couldn't this myth be the story of Raccoon-man's life? His family, the city, has abandoned him and does not like to take care of him. He is lying on the streets and he is singing; he is singing for help. His songs are special songs, and only the animals can hear them. And they all come and surround him: the raccoons, the dogs and the cats. An old raccoon pulls the homeless man's hair and says: 'We heard your song, grand-son; do you need a friend?' And Raccoon-man tells his story, that the city rejected him and cast him off. The old raccoon says: 'We will be your family; you are not alone anymore!'

Another document, the old and precious text from Chief Seattle, talks about this relationship between nature and human beings:

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect... We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family... All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. (Campbell, 1988, p. 33)

I strongly feel that Raccoon-man's fate is to heal a split in our modern Western culture, between nature and human beings. We have forgotten that we ARE nature, too. The homeless people are here to teach us how to re-establish our lost relationship with nature. If the homeless people can help us to regain our lost relationship, our lost connection with the earth and nature and the animals and the plants and the rocks and the wind and the rain and the sun, I feel they will have accomplished a great task, and we will owe them a big thanks.

I would like you to also meet the 'poet,' another homeless man who talks about his relationship to nature in a very poetic way. He is a younger man, maybe in his late thirties. He is sitting on a bench in one of the Phoenix parks talking about nature and life, as if sitting and thinking is his only reason to be alive. I can still hear his slow and quiet voice; he talks as if he meditates on his words, as if he creates poems while he is talking to me. That's why I call him the 'poet': "It's a quiet life: sitting under a tree, feeling the breeze, breathing in the air, soaking in the sunshine, listening to the birds and talking to people. There is no better life than that."

His words, the way he talks and the way he spends his time sitting and philosophizing under a tree, reminds me of thinkers and poets in the East:

Before I was forty I quit my job

and came to tread the way of saints and sages

if I come out, its just because

I love the hills and streams

my ears are clean

my vision's ample

when you ponder it, this is

true happiness the golden girdle girds calamity purple robe robes pain

are they better than my briar cane and cap of straw?" (Chang Yang-hao, 1978, p. 52)

There is a quietness and depth in the philosophy of the 'poet' and Raccoon-man as well as in the words of the Eastern thinker. It is a meditative and contemplative view about life, a connectedness with nature, and also our own inner nature. The homeless show us that this oneness with nature is still possible and that there are many ways to be happy. Some of these ways have to do with adopting a simpler life, closer to the nature spirits.

Laziness and Passion

Patrick Sueskind (1985) created a story about a genius who is a peculiar homeless man gifted as an artist. He creates perfumes like a musician creates a symphony. He is described as a passionate, driven and dedicated artist for whom the only meaning in life is his art:

He could be the best creator of perfumes in the whole world, if he would be interested! But he is not interested. He is not interested in being in competition with other perfume makers. He is not interested in getting rich from his art. He is only interested in expressing his inner world which he thinks is more miraculous than anything that the outer world has to offer. (Sueskind, 1985, p. 140)

We belong to a hard-working and success-oriented culture. People often react very emotionally towards people who don't share their values of work and success. The homeless represent a more 'laid-back', lazy, less success-oriented attitude. Our hard-working nation outcasts the 'lazy bum' into the ghettos. We call it 'lazy,' because we look through the eyes of people with a high work ethic, with a big interest in success and achievement. A T-shirt showing Bart Simpson is on the market; it has the inscription: "I am an underachiever, and proud of it!" I remember well when a

friend wore this shirt. Everybody laughed a shy and embarrassed laughter that indicated that this identity was not the consensus of the group but at the same time a forbidden and exciting thought: to allow ourselves to be underachieves and to be proud of it.

What is success and achievement? What is work? Where do we draw the line between work and what is no longer considered work? A funny story from the streets illustrates the relativity of the concepts of 'laziness,' 'business' and 'work.' I asked an elderly, homeless woman, who was pushing a shopping cart, for an interview. MOh, no, I am very busy right now," she replied in an assertive voice. "Oh please, just for ten minutes," I begged her. "No, can't you see that I am a very busy lady; I have to return all these cans" she said, pointing to all the empty cans in her shopping cart, "and get some money for them."

At that time, I smiled about this cute and funny story. I smiled because I looked through the eyes of an adult in our Western culture, and I thought that this woman was certainly not busy. But now, being more familiar with the street scene, I know that this is work for the homeless. Children have a similar attitude: they consider it as work when they build a tower with wood, paint a picture or make a castle with sand:

I am working so hard you just wouldn't believe,

And I am tired!

There's so little time and so much to achieve,

And I am so tired!

I've been lying here holding the grass in its place,

Pressing a leaf with the side of my face,

Tasting the apples to see if they're sweet,

Counting the toes on a centipede's feet.

I've been memorizing the shape of that cloud,

Warning the robins to not chirp so loud,

Shooing the butterflies off the tomatoes,

Keeping an eye out for floods and tornadoes.

I've been supervising the work of ants

And thinking of pruning the cantaloupe plants,

Timing the sun to see what time it sets,

Calling the fish to swim into my nets,

And I've taken twelve thousand and forty-one breaths,

And I am TIRED." (Silverstein, 1981, p. 78)

We unfortunately have lost our path to this world. We call it the children's way of life. I wish it would become more our way of life again. It reminds me of a homeless kid, who used to come and stay in the emergency shelter in Zurich. David was a very quiet, sensitive, creative guy, about 17 years old. He came from a rich and well-educated home. He had gone to high school for several years. He told me how he was at the beginning an eager, intelligent student, but then became less and less interested in school and in gaining knowledge, and more and more absorbed

with his violin. He finally quit school in order to be totally and exclusively devoted to playing his violin. His parents could not support that kind of life style, and he left home and became homeless in order to be with his big love, the violin. I still remember him very well. He used to come and he would hardly eat, he would not talk much, he would just lose himself in his violin playing. David was a true artist, his music always moved my soul. Was he lazy? He gave up 'work' in order to follow his passion. Is this laziness?

The homeless represent this attitude, but some people are forced by fate, through chronic symptoms, to learn a new life style that is in conflict with the dominant culture. I am thinking of the therapeutic work of Mary, a woman who came because of a mild chronic depression. The therapist asked her to create an image of somebody who is depressed other than herself. Mary immediately visualized the picture of a bag-lady. The client played the bag-lady while the therapist got involved in a dialogue with her. The bag-lady said at one point: "I am a real bum, I am not succeeding where everybody else succeeds. I don't even want to make it. I only want to be where my passion is." Mary's face showed a glow when she shared herinsight. The therapist supported her: "I agree, some people don't want to make it, they make it in another way."

The life style of the homeless is a big challenge to my way of life, too. I was in Yachats, Oregon, when a neighbor woman, an Oregonian, told me that every evening the whole village gathers at the ocean to watch sunset. Even when it is rainy and foggy and there will be no sunset, they meet at the ocean. She warmly invited me to join them. I liked the invitation and I thanked her. I ran into her the next morning. "Where were you last night at sunset; I was looking for you; I missed you," she said. I had forgotten completely. I was disappointed. The woman looked at me with a peculiar expression on her face, as if to say: how can you forget a sunset, what else is there in life to do that matters more than watching a sunset? She was more intimately connected with the spirit of David, the violin player, than I am.

David, Mary and the Oregonian woman share the myth of following their passion rather than their success. They each 'make it in another way.' They fell in love with their passion and they are as compelled to follow it, as many are to follow their success. They teach us about letting our passion guide our lives. They each show us how busy we are with things we think are important. Are they so important? What is really important in our life; what is really worth being busy with? Is it becoming famous, or is it to lie in the grass and watch the clouds on the sky, or is it to devote our life to playing the violin, or is it to express our inner world or to watch a sunset?

Thomas Merton, the Christian mystic, tells us a beautiful story about Chuang Tzu that shows that not all cultures share our view on achievement and our busy stressful life style. Prince of Chu had sent two vice chancellors to Chuang Tzu who was fishing in the river, to offer him the job as the Prime Minister:

Chuang Tzu held his bamboo pole.

Still watching the river,

He said:

'I am told there is a sacred tortoise,

Offered and canonized

Three thousand years ago,

Venerated by prince,

Wrapped in silk,

In a precious shrine

On an altar

In the Temple.

What do you think:

Is it better to give up one's life

And leave a sacred shell

As an object of cult

In a cloud of incense

Three thousand years,

Or better to live

As a plain turtle in the mud?'

'For the turtle,' said the Vice-Chancellor,

Better to live

And drag its tail in the mud!'

'Go home!' said Chuang Tzu.

'Leave me here

To drag my tail in the mud.' (Merton, 1965, p. 93)

The story reminds me of Ken, a homeless man who used to work as an engineer in a computer finn. He found his position too stressful; they always wanted the tasks done right away. He quit his job when he was 45 years old and became a 'fisherman'

and he is enjoying, so to speak, 'dragging his tail in the mud'; he would not want to 'become a Prime Minister'.

While I was writing about the homeless, I became very concerned about achievement and success, about becoming a 'Prime Minister.' I had gone for a month to the mountains to write. My intention had been to write very intensely, day and night, as I usually do in such situations. But the spirits of the homeless haunted me, or maybe it was Chuang Tzu's ghost reminding me not to forget 'the fisherman.' I had just arrived in my cabin and sat at my computer when the electricity went out for 12 hours; I could not use my computer. When the circumstances finally allowed me to work again, I got the flu so badly and felt so weak that I could not sit on a chair to write. I was so dizzy that I could not concentrate or think at all; nothing seemed important, nothing seemed to matter anymore, nothing seemed to make sense.

It panicked me. The spirits of the homeless did not give me a chance; they did not let me go, until I promised to be more of a 'fisherman' and 'drag my tail in the mud,' and to not be so concerned about success. It was not easy to let go; I had gotten caught up in achieving and in hard work, without even noticing it. The experience was so strong that I changed my attitude. Every day I spent a couple of hours following my passion and cross country skiing in the mountains. It was wonderful. Once in a while, I wondered if my paper would ever be completed. On my last day in the mountains, I finished the last chapter. It seemed like a miracle, and I thanked my homeless teachers for their lesson.

I am aware that we are part of a culture that is not very supportive of this attitude. But in my heart, I believe that we all have a deep need to be less concerned about success and more concerned about being and living. I believe that people are actually very attracted to non-achievement. They react so emotionally to the homeless people's not working, because they envy it. I remember an experiment in Amy Mindell's class on street people where he suggested that we free our minds from success, money and time and imagine what we would do and how we would live. After a period of 15 minutes, people did not want to leave that state again. They got addicted to 'laziness' which does not seem to be the appropriate name anymore. They got addicted to this state of not being concerned with success and achievement. We don't have to give up our jobs and become fishermen or live as homeless people in the parks; that is not right for many of us. But it could enrich our lives if we would be aware of the homeless person inside of us and would give her or him a right to live, too. We need to welcome our inner child which is 'laying the grass', the violin player, Ken and whoever is the homeless person inside of us. We need to get to know this part and develop it and let it be part of our daily life. Can you imagine embracing that part while doing your work?

Soen, a Zen master known as the playing monk, seemed to be able to embrace his 'lazy' part while accomplishing his task as the head of a monastery. He is described by Besserman in the following way:

Seeking to combine his artistic gifts, his playful nature, and his role as a Zen teacher, he gathered flute masters, Catholic priests, and street people as players in his elaborate Zen performances. Insisting that the spiritual and physical worlds, the angels and devils, and Bodhisattvas were all equally real, he invested every dharma talk, every retreat and koan

interview with the joyful spontaneity of enlightenment. (Besserman,

1991, p. 170) But not only Zen masters are able to welcome the 'lazy' homeless into everyday life. One of my favorite guests at the homeless shelter in Zurich tried it too. Mikel was a man in his late fifties who was homeless for a couple of years. He had told me that one day he could not stand his daily routine anymore and quit in order to live in nature. He lived for many years underneath a tree near a river. He described his activity as looking into the river, observing the colors and shapes of the rocks and enjoying the smell of the water. He spent the winter in the homeless shelter. He was a man with a warm, generous soul and a rare patience and tolerance for people. When things became tense, chaotic or violent in the shelter, he remained the stable center, he never lost his temper. The guests respected him more than anybody else. Towards the end of the winter, Mikel decided to apply for a job as a helper in a homeless shelter for elderly men. I was happy about his decision. He had learned to bring the peaceful, quiet and relaxed attitude of the river into a stressful work situation. Good luck, Mikel, I hope you don't lose contact with the river inside you!

1991. Bingham, R.D et. al., The Homeless in Contemporary Society. London: Sage Publications, 1987. Campbell, J., Myths of Power. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Merton, T., The Way ofChuang Tzu. New York: New Directions, 1965. Mindell, A., City Shadows - Psychological Interventions in Psychiatry. New York: Routledge &

Kegan, 1988. Mindell, Amy, "Moon on Water". Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation for the Union Institute, 1991. Silverstein, S., A Light in the Attic. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Sueskind, P., Das Parfuem - Geschichte eines Moerders. Zuerich: DiogenesVerlag, 1985. Wright, J.D., Address Unknown - The Homeless in America. New York: Aldine Gruyter, 1983.

Regula Stewart, originally Swiss, lives part of the year at the Oregon Coast and part in Arizona. The ocean and the desert both teach her about eternity in this life. Her private practice, teaching and work with the dying and the homeless give her hope to connect people with something eternal.

Original art work for this article by Robert King. See page 84 for details.

Bibliography

1. Abenaki, "The Boy who Lived with the Bears." Parabola, 1990, XV (4), pp. 50-54.
2. Basserman, P. & Steger M., Crazy Clouds - Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers. Boston: Shambala,