Making the Turn

Under the right conditions, I can make the turn to surf down the line. At first, catching a wave just means looking back and trying really hard to notice a good one. As a beginner, a kook, there are too many details to organize and you can only do one thing. That's why beginners are often dropping in on other people. But now, my awareness is expanded. Every time I catch a wave, there is a whole process. I am looking back out to sea to notice the green wave coming. I turn around to start to paddle for it, looking back to see how close it is, and looking forward, right and left to make sure I have room and begin to decide which way I'm going: right or left. As I begin to catch it, I look ahead in the direction I'm going, making adjustments with my body on the wave. It's more complicated than learning how to drive. I still need to pop up better and at the top of the wave. Still have a ton of work to do to really catch waves consistently and go down the line, but I love that I can do it -- that I can begin to play with making the turn. That under the right conditions I can make the turn and have fun and relax and fly. Playing is freeing, a beautiful use of agency, especially for adults. In a world that is often so focused on achievement and gain, playing is subversive. Making the turn means I'm relating to the break in a different way, taking in the whole thing.

The right conditions are: small waves, slow movers, plenty of time in between, not huge crashing monsters that punch you in the face when you're trying to paddle out. I'm still a beginner, so no trying this on 3-4 foot waves or other big, fast moving, super consistent conditions. These relaxed conditions happen often at Blackies, the baby wave capital of the world. In baby waves, there is space and time to move and respond. There is more space around me, I feel more centered and relaxed. There is more time to see how things unfold -- in the water and out. I have time to consider both the ocean and the other surfers. As I feel more competent, my ability to discern gets clearer and I have greater capacity to make decisions for the benefit of everyone. I am able to neither drop in nor skip waves, deferring to others. I am able to claim my appropriate place in the line up, sharing the waves.

Same with relationships for me. I used to think that good, safe conditions were rare, that people are always hard, but I'm starting to feel differently. Just like surfing waves, I'm getting better at discernment. When I am not forcing things out of a feeling of inadequacy, I'm more steady in relationships. The steadier I am, the less I take things personally, knowing the everyone has their issues, everyone has competing priorities; the conditions of people's lives change all the time and we all adapt. With this wisdom in my body, I can see things from this larger perspective. I am able to be generally consistent in relationships, so if I'm uncomfortable in a relationship, I'm more inclined to think now that the problem is in the relationship not in myself -- self blame is slowly dissolving, blaming other people is dissolving. I'm more inclined to think it's just not a good fit. The feeling that people are going to hurt no matter what is dissolving. My embodiment of these ideas is changing everything.

I'm also letting go of perfection. I'm more willing to sit in the mess, abide with it. I don't feel like I have to fix things, for myself or others. This is real peacefulness. Most problems are not mine to solve, maybe not even solvable. Most problems do not need to be solved. Maybe they are not actually problems. I'm not having to prove myself or prove my worth, so things can be messy. Having more of an internal sense of worth means the people-pleasing also dissolves, the need to be needed dissolves. Any sense of urgency around anything has just left. I'm very capable of sitting for long periods of time watching the world go by and just enjoying it. Equanimity visits often these days and stays longer every time. Lots of old habits are fading and it feels really good.

Resting in this peacefulness translates to a feeling of patient abiding both with how things are as well as patience with changes. There is suddenly plenty of time and a lot of spaciousness. As Lama Rod Owens says in his book, The New Saints, "Space offers the capacity to exercise agency. Agency is our capacity to choose responsiveness over reactivity, and in doing so we can choose how to respond to something. This is the most revolutionary ability in our practice of getting free." And an option on this list of responses is "No Response." I am satisfied with what's actually here right now. I can just abide with what's happening and wait for clarity on the right thing to do.

So this means many things on a practical, daily level. No more striving for something different at work unless it meets very specific criteria (more money, more time, or more meaning). My job hunting is very different now. I'm more willing to let relationships go that no longer serve me, which means releasing parts of the Sisterhood where we are no longer aligned as well as we once were. I still love them, still so amazed that this supportive group still exists here in year three, and I don't worry about keeping it all together as we all develop differently and conditions change for each of us. The Sisterhood evolves, just like everything else. I can ride these waves of change with more ease.

This letting go is a beautiful thing. Very little grasping anymore at keeping things the same. Like the ocean, conditions are always changing, and we fully accept it. Accepting myself and others for where we are instead of wanting it to be any other kind of way is freeing. Just like I have confidence in my ability to swim and can handle different conditions, I can roll with life's changes when I have a measure of security in my worth as a person. This worth is slowly building. Lama Rod again, "When we start experiencing spaciousness, we can respond to trauma rather than habitually react to it. For most of us, that can be enough to feel balanced, safe, and happy."

The trip up north allowed me to release a lot of stuff. I spent a big space of time looking back and facing things, feeling the emotions I have been protecting myself against. Having done that looking back, I am no longer interested in dwelling in the past. Buddhists have an idea called injured innocence. In the Zen of Therapy, Mark Epstein discusses a quote from Adam Phillips, "We have been taught to wish for it, but the wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults, to our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be, among many other things, our most violent form of nostalgia."

As a person who was injured, I can't ignore what happened to me -- the effects are too obvious and impact my life. But I also don't have to cling to this. Epstein writes, “The fixation I refer to has to do with a tendency to blame one’s parents for their failures to be adequately attentive or loving when we were children or, in many cases, for their continuing failures when we are adults. Not that there isn’t often reason to find fault, but the obsession with it can keep people nursing old grievances instead of helping them accept, with compassion, the hands, or the parents, they were dealt.” I can use these feelings to heal without dwelling in them. When something arises, I can give the quick look back to see what's up, then look ahead to see how I want to respond.

As Epstein writes, "Few people emerge from childhood intact; there is almost always a sense of something missing, of some kind of failure in the family. Often this failure is internalized and a person feels empty or impoverished, an absence where there could have been more of a presence. Usually, along with the empty feeling, there is also anger at the perceived perpetrator.... Learning to 'hold' such difficult feelings in meditative awareness, without clinging and without condemning, is a crucial aspect of the work. The investigation of the self that meditation encourages rests on making room for such feelings and recognizing how easy it is to get hung up on them. Phillips’s phrase 'our most violent form of nostalgia' has helped me enormously in putting a brake on my own tendency to indulge in such notions." I have been stuck in despair and grief for a long time. I am beginning to make the turn to something else, bit by bit.

Lily Tomlin said, "Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past." I love that definition. Though I'm not sure I'm at the point of forgiveness, letting go of wanting a better past, of wanting things to be different, is useful. I'm making the turn to dealing with current life. I know much of how and why I got here; no need to continually go back and spend the night. I still have unhelpful, maladaptive, or unhealthy thought patterns and I work on them. BTG is back now and I'm so glad to have his good counsel. I greatly benefit from another voice, an objective, knowledgeable voice, to check my understanding. This time, I am approaching therapy much differently.

There is no finish line, no time or place when I will be declared "healed" and ready to go into the world as a 100% healthy and glowing human -- Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval perfect. No more hunting for what's wrong with me and trying to fix. I will continue to comb through situations and notice my unhelpful thoughts. I will reframe them, attend to them, and give them the love and compassion they need. Mindful Self-Compassion tells us that we don't try to fix anything. We learn to be with our feelings, what's upsetting, in a way that holds it kindly and carefully. Then things tend to resolve on their own. Lama Rod wrote, "... the New Saint is not afraid of taking risks, knowing that real liberation only happens through the discomfort of change—not through the comfort of staying safe. Discomfort forces us to grow, to think differently, and to develop a deeper sense of who we are and what we need. If you are afraid of making mistakes, then liberation work will be impossible." I'm in this for the long term. Delusions, illusions are everywhere and run very deep. I will continually bump into them by just living. Finding authenticity means to meet these discomforts and work with them as they arise. As Lama Rod writes, "Getting free is like preparing for a long road trip through the country of our delusions." And this road trip is life long.

And it is still difficult at times. I often feel really damaged. Ashamed that I do have "things to fix" about me, that these are serious issues that I am dealing with. Coming to the acceptance of having these issues is their own thing. I don't want to see these things about myself. I understand in a deeper way why we all defend ourselves in an effort to look normal -- having this acute awareness of my difficulties is hard all by itself. It's not just the issues, it's the thoughts about the issues. I often cannot click on the publish button here, because I feel too exposed and ashamed to do so. But I do it anyway. Maybe seeing this path will help someone else walk theirs. That is my hope. Brene Brown teaches us that shame thrives in silence. A willingness to share taps our common humanity: everyone has issues. I am not unique. I am in good company. We're all just doing our best.

I also experience acute fear and anxiety. It's like dropping these defenses leaves me particularly vulnerable on an ongoing basis, so sometimes, I just have to hide to rest and recover. I stay home, take hot baths, read for inspiration from my teachers, and nap. This constant work of waking up is difficult and frightening. Meeting the truth is challenging. Dealing with this fear requires serious strategies. Meditation. Self-compassion. Therapy. Regulating the body with surfing, yoga, swimming. Connecting with safe people, my inner circle. I have a whole host of strategies that help me stay on the path.

I have started the Anukampa program with the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies, Gil Fronsdahl and Vanessa Able teachers. The program is about care for self and others. It walks us through the paramis, the Buddhist perfections, such as generosity, ethics, renunciation, truth, and loving kindness. The perfections are like values, more wholesome ways of being. The idea is that we can choose our thoughts more wisely. That we always have a smorgasbord of things to think about and we can make choices about what we think about in any given moment, as well as how we think about things. I am learning what more wholesome states look like and feel like after a lifetime spent in defense against real and perceived harm. I am relaxing into care.

There is also the wisdom of the idea of causes and conditions and letting go of my ardent attachment to my ideas of my self. "Causes and conditions" is a Buddhist phrase that means everything exists in a context, and that context is always changing. When I was born, a certain set of conditions was in place, set in motion by a certain set of causes. Those causes are no longer present; new causes have occurred in the last 50 years to set up a different set of conditions that exist now. The world, myself, everyone and everything, is always changing. Life is an endless flow of experience. We can focus on what is happening right now -- what do I want to do right now -- instead of focusing on what happened ages ago. For me, I like understanding what has happened to me. It's helpful -- my default of wanting to know still operating! But I don't have to dwell there. I can understand and then make new choices based on the conditions now. I don't have to be stuck in a self that was formed 57 years ago; a new self is being reformed every day. These ideas help me hold things loosely. Not so identified with being someone who needs fixing.

One of the clearest ways I know I have made the turn is that I can look at my injuries as strengths. I've talked about feeling invisible before -- that I hid when things got difficult in my childhood home, so I got used to hiding, to making myself invisible. And while being invisible, I developed the strength of careful consideration of others. This is a skill that will help me in my Bodhisattva quest to liberate everybody. Perfectionism and my drive to achieve and know can be turned into curiosity, a love of learning new things and growing my understanding. On the trip up north, I even turned the emptiness inside out. This feeling of emptiness within me that was devastating is also a common condition of life on this planet. There is a lot of emptiness out there -- nature is full of it: deserts and open lands, time and space. I am mostly emptiness, and this is nothing to be afraid of. It's the emptiness that allows the stars to sparkle in the sky. It's the moments of loneliness that make connection more meaningful. Emptiness sits opposed to essence or a permanent sense of self. Being locked into a fixed type of self is hard and not actually true -- again, everything is always changing, including me. I'm not the person who was abandoned or abused anymore. I am here, right now, in a new place and time. Emptiness is the birthplace of everything new.

The causes and the constantly changing conditions of my ever evolving self seems to be flowing more easily now. I have released a lot of the blockages, those pent up heavy emotions around worthlessness, fear, and loneliness that I didn't want to face. Like the Self Compassion program teaches us, looking at these feelings (the big bad) reveals simply a wish to be loved. We all have a wish to be loved. Growing up feeling abandoned, I convinced myself that I didn't need that. I didn't need to be loved, that it was easier on my own. It's amazing that I can admit a wish to be loved so easily now. That's progress all by itself.

Taylor Swift talked about an insecurity she had around songwriting. After so many tortured relationships, she wondered, "What would happen if I'm nurtured? Will the song writing dry up?" I think we have found that the answer is no. I love the Showgirl era for this: what could happen if I made choices to surround myself with people who nurture me? If I walk away with grace from those who don't meet me where I am? How much could I own my own power and sensuality, revenge and rage and capacity for joy, just like the Showgirl in the new album? If I genuinely accepted and celebrated all parts of myself in an album's worth of pop songs of my own making? I'm excited to find out.

Making the turn begins by looking back to spot the wave, then looking around and down the line and setting an intention. Whether or not I can actually surf the wave is irrelevant at the beginning. The intention comes first. All of the work I am doing rests on the intention, the inclination toward freedom. Freeing myself so I am better able to free others. Making the turn means living in the present. I'm not ignoring the past; it's just not relevant in the same way anymore. I'm right here, right now. And right now, I am ok. Most of the time, I am really, deeply, beautifully ok.