Back in the water yesterday on a stormy day! Bucket list item checked: surfing in the rain. I had imagined surfing in the rain to be like a gently falling shower, cleansing our eyes of the salt, as we sat in the soft gray fog of the marine layer. A tender baptism. Yesterday's conditions weren't terribly peaceful, though. Not a gently falling rain washing the salt from our eyes, but a proper blustery day with a small storm passing, choppy waves slapping our faces. No lightning, so we stayed in the water and toughed it out. Surf Sister Ashley wrote later, "Felt kinda badass." LOL. It did. Nice to know I can survive a shipwreck in stormy seas!
I also realized yesterday that I am starting from a much different place. I have improved so much in the past ten months! I could keep my seat on the board despite the choppy water. I caught about three waves and got up to my knees on all of them relatively easily! This summer will be all about getting to my feet instead of taking the interim step of getting to my knees, but I still have some mobility issues making that little pop elusive. (I need some core muscles, sister!) Have signed up for another surf camp in June down at San Onofre. I am intrigued by the long, low, rolling waves -- little gentle bumps that go on for seemingly ever. They will give me time to get up. I am both excited and scared: new waters, new challenges, and I'm not sure if I've got the strength for it yet -- and in my most insecure moments, I wonder if I will have the strength for it at all. I'm not sure this body can do what I want it to do at this point. The thought intrudes: I might just be too old and unfit.
One question that's fun to get asked on our way out with a new instructor is, "Are you regular or goofy?" They are words for which foot you put forward on the board -- surfboard, skateboard, snowboard -- any kind of board apparently. Regulars put their left foot forward; goofy people put their right foot forward. The way you tell which way you are is to stand with both feet together and have a friend push you by surprise from behind. Whichever foot goes out first is the one you want to put forward on your board -- the one that naturally steps forward first. I have been putting my left foot forward: regular. But that's because I literally cannot get my right foot to sweep up under me when I pop up. There is less mobility in my right hip. So, I'm naturally goofy (Was there any doubt?), but I've been surfing regular. My body isn't yet moving how I would like it to move. The way I'm moving isn't a reflection of my naturally healthy body, but a reflection of its limitations right now. And how much am I allowing my limitations to rule these days?
Along with my pop up, I continue to work on Trusting the Universe, letting go, breathing into the tight places in my body that are tensed up from anxiety and a felt need to control. It's odd to "work" on letting go -- seems a contradiction. Last time, I wrote about believing that the waves will always come, how Knowing never fails, and how my future self is pulling me forward. Definitely new challenges. Can I really believe that I can just relax and everything will be alright? Can I really do that? Surf the oceans of emotion and life events gracefully and with ease? Find a genuine equanimity? Am I capable of surfing through the rain and stormy seas with my best foot forward?
One of the quotes from Glennon Doyle's book Untamed that I referenced in the last post was incomplete. The whole quote is, "We lived, for a while, as if life were less precarious than it is, as if people were better than they are, as if our kids were tougher than I believed them to be, and as if 'things generally work themselves out.' It was reckless and ridiculous and irresponsible. Things do not work themselves out. I work things out. I WORK THEM OUT, and if I don’t there is no working out at all. There is just chaos." This quote hit right between the eyes. As Kahlil Gibran said, "Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it." And again, Doyle, "We only control what we don't trust. We can either control ourselves or love ourselves, but we can't do both. Love is the opposite of control. Love demands trust."
Trust. Power. Control. How much do I control? What is in my power? How can I relax when I don't trust? Like my mobility issues impacting my pop up, have I some kind of permanent disability in this area? I am surfing again among the waves of my shadow in hopes of feeling a different way, a more peaceful way. As the hyperachieving, perfectionistic student I once was, I am grasping for answers, trying to think my way there. I am reading books, studying how to be human as if I am an alien from another solar system, instead of allowing grace to step in with its illumination.
But as Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gift from the Sea, "The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach -- waiting for a gift from the sea."
Choiceless as a beach. The waves always come. Pelicans and beautiful friends, seaweed and dolphins, rain and sun. This equanimity all rests on faith, trust. Equanimity requires safety. I can begin to feel a small sense of this squishy lovely peaceful feeling, my belly center easing its grip, and then some voice inside me tenses up and snaps it away. Like Doyle write-screams, "I WORK THEM OUT." Reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson has given me some insight into that voice. She writes about one response to a chaotic household is to be an internalizer.
So now I can add internalizer to hyperachieving perfectionist. Being a perfectionist was not just about good grades -- it was about fighting for worthiness, to be seen. Gibson writes, "Children who try to be good enough to win their parents' love have no way of knowing that unconditional love cannot be bought with conditional behavior."
That unconditional love cannot be bought with conditional behavior.
Unconditional love cannot be bought.
Ouch. I continue to reach for worthiness, attempting to earn that love. I continue to press and hold and squeeze, while what I really need to do is let go and allow the love to come to me. Like clinging to my surfboard in a storm, my grip on control is tight and remains so long after the storm has passed. Morrow wrote, "We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships We leap at the flow of the tide and resist the terror of its ebb. We are afraid it will never return."
In one of the Daily Meditations from Richard Rohr, he wrote:
"On a bird watching trip in Baja, Mexico, theologian Douglas Christie reflected on the need for patience and letting go of control so that we can see in a new way:
What is being asked of us in this moment is patient attention; a willingness to slow down, listen, and look; a willingness to let go of our expectations, to accept the possibility that our efforts may not bear any fruit—or at least not in the way we have been hoping that they will.
The French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (1909–1943) once noted: 'We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.' This idea comes back to me in this moment with new force and meaning. I smile to think of my own impatience, my relative incapacity to wait for much of anything. I wonder what this is about. Why do I put so much stock in my ability to seek and find what I am looking for? . . . Why is it so difficult for me to wait for things to unfold, to reveal themselves? . . .
The idea that what we most deeply desire must ultimately reveal itself to us is not easy to accept. It suggests a relinquishment of control that most of us, if we are being honest, find difficult to practice. There is too much risk, too much vulnerability. Yet the willingness to relinquish control and open ourselves to the mysterious unknown is at the heart of every great spiritual tradition. In the Gospel tradition, it is described as becoming again like a child, or being born anew: learning to see with fresh eyes."
The Buddhists call this Beginner's Mind. Childlike (goofy?), look at the world with fresh eyes and a lack of expectations -- look with wonder and miracles will happen. Grace will happen. I find this wildly uncomfortable, of course. I'm so tied to being an expert -- to knowing in the egoic sense, not the Knowing, Oak Tree pulling me forward sense -- that I have two master's degrees and a PhD. Dudes, I made a living being an expert. So yet another thing to let go of. At one point in my therapy with Buddhist Therapist Guy, he said something about finding happiness by letting go of things instead of accumulating things. I don't need to gain any more knowledge. I need to release most of what I think I know. Just as a stiff hip is preventing my natural right foot from coming forward, goofy, my ego defenses have rendered me regular, regimented, on alert, stiff like soldiers marching toward war.
Mara is visiting again, and I need to invite him in for tea, so whatever it is I'm struggling with can be revealed. Mara is characterized as an evil demon in Buddhism; the Buddha's last barrier to enlightenment. (I suspect this "evil" is knowledge, duality, the same as the snake in the Garden of Eden, but that's for another post.) After a rough night, the Buddha overcame Mara. I am reassured by my Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Mentor, Jake, that Mara continued to visit the Buddha even after he achieved enlightenment. Even after we achieve a nondual, enlightened way of experiencing the world, Mara comes to stay every once in a while. The Buddha saw Mara and understood his nature, so then could be less disturbed by each visit.
So I am in the grip of this right now. I am still greedy and impatient. Greedy for a life that is satisfying and right and impatient to get there. Only a year ago, I was there. So what happened? I am still trying to figure that out. I worry that I will never be satisfied, never rest. I am still greedy to be good enough, to be worthy -- to be seen as regular, an achieving expert at life, instead of being my natural goofy self. Not sure when right now will be enough. When what I already have, what I already am, will be enough. I worry I will never be at peace.
Another one of my spirit guides, author Sue Monk Kidd, in maybe my favorite book ever When the Heart Waits, wrote about beggars. "A beggar must simply trust, moment by moment, that somehow she'll get fed. She lives off hope. She lives not with clenched fists but with palms open, ready to receive." She asks, "How do I open my closed hands?" We come to these "postures of prayer" in rough waters and stormy egoic seas, so it's hard to loosen the grip. "If we're to wait, we must learn the extravagance of grace."
I am again reassured that yesterday, on the water, I did let go. I got up on my board, on my knees, arms spread, palms open, and let go. The waves held me in their beautiful flow, and I coasted gracefully through the sea.
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