We had a wonderful experience the other day with our awesome surf instructor, Paige, at Doheny. A number of us commissioned her to take videos of us and give us feedback based on those videos. Doheny was super big that day – Surfline said 2-3+ and it wasn’t kidding. I think there were several 4-5. I got swept away in the waves and held under twice. I finally moved over from the main beach to the river mouth where no one else was surfing; Doheny can get so crowded. I told Paige not to worry about me, because I was moving so far away from the rest of the group. So I didn’t expect to get anything. I was just tickled that she caught the one wave I caught! And based on that wave and a couple of more where I crashed, she gave me a seven-minute video of feedback that I can work on this winter. Her advice is actionable – I already started working on it the very next weekend. Amazing. I am continually delighted that we have been so lucky with surf instructors. Paige is incredible. We love her and hope to see her again next summer. And I hope to be standing up at the top of the wave when I see her.
What was awesome about getting that video was that I could see what my body was doing. Ever since my brain changed and I’ve been able to get up with some regularity on the Admiral, I have no idea what my feet are doing. It’s like my body is just doing it, but I have no meta-awareness of my actions. So, embodiment is the thing that’s developing, but if I can’t see or know what is happening, then I can’t improve. I have been in this state of not really knowing what I’m doing right, so not entirely embodying the action. This is another way I'm trying to work out the limits of my agency in this world. A lot of both meditation and surfing is just getting out there and doing the thing -- just catching waves and catching waves trying to get up or just sitting and sitting trying to keep my attention on the breath. But what does it mean to "do the thing" when it comes to moving through the world with peace, strength, and equanimity? In my emotional life, I'm beginning to embody what I’m learning – so it’s not surprising that I had a really big dream the other night that brings this idea into further focus.
The dream opens on a battlefield. I see a wide, flat, muddy field surrounded by tall, dark green trees. A pine forest. Old, thick trunks with rough bark and sticky needles rise high in the sky. Dense. Impenetrable. The pine forest sits in the distance, watching through the fog of the battlefield.
All around the battle rages. Swords, blood, screams, smoke. Chaos. Darkness. Muck. I don’t actually see any people; I can just hear it, smell it, feel it.
In the foreground of my vision to the right sits an outcropping of rocks. Some dark spaces in between the rocks intimate a cave exists underneath. And on top of them, as still as can be, sits a girl. A young girl with long brown hair, facing away from me, watching the battle. She is scared and irritated. Bored from waiting. Waiting for everyone to stop fighting and notice her. See her. She appears untouched by the violence. Her clothes are clean, her hair is brushed, and she is impatient for the chaos to end. When the battle gets too close, she hides in the cave beneath her, but today, she sits in open view atop the boulders, watching.
Then enters an old woman from the left foreground of the scene. She stands tall, strong, and serene, eyes piercing. Her long flowing white robe pristine over a celadon gown, she wears a milky jade amulet on her wrist. Hair long, brown and gray ombre, she strides toward the outcropping, extending her right hand to the girl.
The girl climbs gently down the rocks, takes the woman’s hand, and they stroll across the battlefield toward the forest. Nothing harms them. Neither mud nor blood touches them. They move steadily across the distance into the forest.
My view then changes. I’m now inside the woman, seeing through her eyes, feeling the strength of her body. I can feel the small hand of the girl in mine, warm and strong, holding on tightly. She is calm. Relieved. Hopeful.
As we reach the forest, we find that it isn’t dark at all. It is filled with dappled sunshine and the light greens of new growth. Starflowers blooming at our feet, we walk a pine needle path through the forest and the sounds of the battle become softer, muted, then fade completely. In the silence, I can hear birdsong, the susurrus of feathers, and the crunch of our footsteps on the path.
The trees begin to thin out. Bright sunlight fills the sky. The pine needle path below us becomes sand. We emerge on a beach and look out to the sea. Safe at last. We are safe at last. My eyes meet hers. “Now, we can begin,” she thinks.
I processed the dream in therapy, because the Buddhist is oddly fantastic at the Jungian dream analysis. First, BTG wondered if the girl was really unharmed. She appeared physically unhurt, but she had witnessed battle, so perhaps her scars were internal. Hiding in a cave for so long can leave an invisible mark. I think we all know that this blog has been about me shining a light on those scars, so this rings true.
I also wondered about the perspective on the image and how it shifted midway through the dream. BTG noted that there were three of us in the dream: the girl, the woman, and the watcher. He remembered the idea of the Three Tenets: not knowing, bearing witness, and taking compassionate action. The dream might represent that paradigm and how I am embodying it. I've been working on my not knowing recently -- giving up controlling and planning and knowing. The Three Tenets is a way of living in the present moment without all of that anxious planning ahead. When I try to catch a wave, I don't know what's coming. I show up. I watch carefully for those green waves. And then, from that place of not knowing and careful observation, I decide which one I'm going to go for. In surfing, I'm struggling with this. Catching waves is really hard and I've completely lost the plot on where to position myself lately. But I am improving. And just like in surfing, my dream seems to show me that I am beginning to embody this way of living. Just showing up, paying attention to myself and other, and then taking the next right step.
First, not knowing means to “letting go of fixed ideas about yourself, others, and the universe.” It isn’t a shrugging-your-shoulders and saying “I dunno” kind of not knowing, but a purposeful stance rooted in the understanding that everything is always changing. If everything is always changing, then not knowing allows me to see what is, see reality, instead of what I thought it was or what I wish it would be. I need to be absolutely present and attentive to the present moment to see clearly. From the Zen Peacemakers website, I can “become like an empty vessel, empty of points of view and preferences. An empty vessel refuses nothing and receives everything that is coming at it from all directions.” I can set aside my own ideas and actually witness what is happening, accepting and allowing more to come in to view.
And while all three characters in this dream play all of the parts, I think the little girl is the not knowing. She watches and waits. When the woman comes to get her, she is open. She sees the woman and grabs her hand, embracing the opportunity. She doesn't let any preconceived notions or existing biases prevent her from getting off that battlefield. She took the right action, despite what must be fear or PTSD from living on a battlefied. She doesn't let her existing fear cloud her ability to see.
Recently, both BTG and a lecturer at a new sangha near me both talked about Dogen, the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in the 1200s. I'm becoming aware of his philosophy. Dogen wrote, “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.” To study the self is to forget the self.
Forgetting the self. I have to see my defenses in order to let them go, and I have been doing that for about a year now. Recently, I've framed my defenses as my "Inception Messages," based on the movie Inception. In the movie, Dom plants an idea so deep in Mal's mind that it stays when they go to a different world. The message was appropriate to limbo, but Mal kept applying it in the real world. My defenses began as true stories in my childhood. Beliefs such as "These people aren't safe," and "Nobody wants you," were true in my mind in my original world. Unfortunately, I kept those beliefs even when I left that world. I overgeneralized. The past year has been all about taking an inventory of those overgeneralized beliefs and letting them go. I see myself so I can forget my self.
BTG says that not knowing is seeing the self. One cannot be empty of one’s own ideas and biases unless one has seen them for what they are. So not knowing is actually bearing witness to the self, then setting those ideas aside so we can see others more clearly. From the book Opening to Oneness by Nancy Mujo Baker, "...we can’t let go of something until we know what it is we are hanging on to. Once we know what we’re hanging on to and are able to thoroughly welcome it—in fact, be it—it will let go of us instead of the other way around." BTG said something like, "The part of the self that is the stories, the defenses against the world, the fear, the callouses, the habits of mind that may have served at one point but now serve to separate us from the world,” all has to be known and set aside to truly connect and be actualized. We know ourselves so well that we are emptied out, “We are so embodied, the story of the self falls away. We are more connected.” Then we can, "touch something and be touched in a free exchange with the world." Rumi wrote, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
My newfound identity as a surfer has been a practice of not knowing. I went back to being a total beginner. I had no idea how hard this task was going to be or if I could do it. No preconceived notions, an "unbiased attention." I have been a sponge soaking up the lessons, seeing the ocean, seeing new friends and getting to know them, and seeing all of the insecurities that were blocking my progress. Surfing is an ongoing practice of not knowing. Of arriving at the beach in ignorance (sorry, Surfline), open to what is happening. Curious, interested, joyful, attentive. Not knowing when the next wave will come or if there will be waves at all. Not knowing what will swim under us or past us while we’re in the water. Not knowing. Just observing the constantly changing surface, being absolutely present and open to what comes. I haven’t known what my feet are doing recently since I’ve been able to stand up. I wanted to see that clearly, so I joined the group when we hit up Paige for video analysis.
This mirrors my emotional life: I haven't known my defenses so intimately until now. I wanted to see them clearly, so I went back into therapy. When I see them clearly, then I am free. Free to connect with others in a more genuine way. But the clearing out has to happen in order for my past selves, my past harms, my defense mechanisms, to not get in my way. Some of my friends have commented on how brave I have been to take on such a dangerous sport like surfing. For me, surfing is pure joy and fun. Even when I get carried away by waves and have a hard day in the big water, there is a satisfaction in that adventure that feels like the opposite of dangerous; it is exhilarating.
Facing my internal demons, however, has been the bravest thing I've ever done. Pema Chodron wrote in Start Where You Are, "Only to the degree that we’ve gotten to know our personal pain, only to the degree that we’ve related with pain at all, will we be fearless enough, brave enough, and enough of a warrior to be willing to feel the pain of others. To that degree we will be able to take on the pain of others because we will have discovered that their pain and our own pain are not different." There lies real danger, real vulnerability, real daring. James Baldwin said, "Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth."
Second, bearing witness means to see it all, “to see all of the aspects of a situation including your attachments and judgments.” If not knowing is seeing the self and setting it aside, bearing witness is seeing the other, the situation, “just as it is.” Earlier this summer, I practiced witnessing my traumas by allowing my emotions to rise and fall away. Riding those waves of emotion to their natural end with curiosity and compassion was not easy, but it allowed me to relax a little. I found that I could handle them when I allowed them. That my emotions weren’t so scary or overwhelming – that I could handle those conditions. Having handled my own pain, I am better able to handle the pain of other people. I can be more present to help others. Bearing witness is the opposite of numbing. Zen Peacemakers say, “In bearing witness, you are actively engaged and embodied, even struggling, with whatever is arising. Sometimes spiritual practices can have a neutralizing effect, flattening feelings rather than stimulating them. To hold to the center is not about becoming a spiritual zombie; it is about living the fullness of your own humanity. You are alive, so be fully alive.”
In the battlefield dream, I watched this whole scene unfold. The watcher watched until someone else came into the picture to rescue the girl. I have been the watcher. BTG said that as a caretaker, my strength was used for other people, not myself. Now I am beginning to embody my strength. Halfway through the dream, when we were safely in the forest, I entered the body of the woman and felt the girl’s hand in mine. I used my strength for myself but only after I was safe. I can maybe embody things quicker now. Now that I feel more safe here than I've ever felt before, that safety gives me a chance to try things out, stand up on some baby waves.
And what has been the most powerful factor in that safety? The Sisterhood. In bearing witness to my sisters and how fierce their love is for their children, and how they are able to also fiercely love themselves, I have learned a new way to be in the world. These women show up every weekend to play. They put themselves first in a healthy way, not abandoning their children, but caring for themselves in a way that allows them to show up for everyone as their true selves. From Untamed, “What if love is not the process of disappearing for the beloved but of emerging for the beloved? What if a mother’s responsibility is teaching her children that love does not lock the lover away but frees her? What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies? What if the call of motherhood is not to be a martyr but to be a model?” The girls showed me how to be wildly alive and how that can be freeing for everyone. They embody their full personhood. And in that embodiment, teach their children (and me) something very important: that they are worthy of care. Caretakers use their strength for others at the expense of themselves. Genuine care includes your self. Bearing witness to these amazing mamas has set me free from a previous pattern. New experiences, failing expectations, has given me new vision.
In surfing, I bear witness to the ocean every time I go out. I am still working on finding those green waves to catch, to see clearly when to go for it, and position myself in the right place. The waves rise and fall continually. Sometimes, I float like a cork on top of them. Sometimes, a wave breaks in a different spot and I'm swamped or I have to paddle my little arms off to get to safety. Every minute is different; never turn your back on the ocean. Out there, I feel “the fullness of my humanity” – I believe that feeling is why surfing is so addicting. I am myself out there. Fully myself. Nowhere to hide. One with everything: the ocean, my sisters, the fish. And I’m not even good yet! As you see in the video, I’m not entirely embodying the movement yet. But I’m on my way. Paige’s video allowed me to see. In the secure company of my sisters, I am beginning to stand up for myself.
Finally, taking compassion action arises spontaneously out of not knowing and bearing witness – really seeing yourself and the other clearly, being present, and taking the next right step, the caring and compassionate step. Just like the ongoing practice of getting out on the water, we do this process repeatedly in our lives when things arise. Zen Peacemakers say, “An effect of ongoing and consistent practice of the Three Tenets is that when you lose your sense of center and fall into reactivity, you also regain your center more quickly. And when you continually perform this practice in the midst of all the activities of your daily life, the practice will be readily accessible to you during the most challenging circumstances.”
The woman was an outgrowth of the watching and not knowing. She was strength embodied. She came from the left of the scene, my unconscious side. My strength has been there all along, but I have never used it for myself. I’ve used it to run away from myself, run myself away from what troubled me, but never for me, to rescue me, to become whole. This dream showed me that I am beginning to embody my own strength. BTG said, "You go get her and become embodied. You save yourself and become embodied." When I finally got inside the woman, I was just there, fully present, noticing the sights and sounds, feeling her hand in mine. I wasn't telling stories, I was simply acting compassionately. Unattached and loving.
Surfing is getting out there on the water every week, as often as possible. It’s trying again and again and again to see what’s out there, to overcome my own insecurities and doubts, and to ride that wave. Paige’s video showed me that I’m nearly there. I can stand up. I can catch a wave and stand up. I can handle falling down, getting swept away. I can get back up again and again and again. That it is actually joyful to do this. It’s not scary or painful – or rather, it IS sometimes scary and painful! LOL. And we get right back up and do it again, because it’s also amazing and wonderful and FUN. Exhilarating. Transcendent. Awesome. No other feeling like it in the world. Kai Lenny, big wave surfer, said, “For me, the ocean is a battery pack. I get energy from being in the water, and when I’m not, I don’t have that same spark. The light in my eye dims, maybe. I think for my soul itself, there’s no better feeling than riding a wave.” I feel the same way even on my little one-footers.
Through an ongoing practice of the Three Tenets, among other practices, I am beginning to embody my strong self, my surfer strength. My ability to gracefully ride whatever types of waves come at me is developing. I’m coming along. I have been able to unhook from caretaking and embody my own strength for myself, which allows me to show up for others when they need it. And one day, I may not surf anymore. One day, I will certainly not surf anymore. But I will always have this surfer strength. This new way of experiencing the world has taken hold of me and walked me off the battlefield of my previous existence. Centered, balanced, open and undefended, going with the natural flow of things, not being so terribly serious about everything. I am beginning to live this dream.
The Buddhists say that at some point we need to release all of our beliefs and biases – even their own teachings. Teaching, the dharma, is just words and words fail us. They can only approximate transcendent reality. They point the way to the path and along the path, but they are not the path. There is no substitute for experience. "Meditation is not what you think." They say, “Don’t confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself.” Surfing is the moon itself, and I am a surfer. Even when I’m not on the water, I am a surfer. Standing at the water’s edge, looking out to sea. Now we can begin.
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