The Sea Lion

When I paddled in the other morning to say goodbye to Surf Sister Ashley, I stepped off my board and into a pile of seaweed hiding underwater. After a short scream and awkward squiggle out of the gross, scratchy pile of slimy stuff, I hugged her and paddled back out. I was on my own in the water for the first time in a long time. It was a Wednesday morning with Very Small Waves with a Long Wait in between them, so not many people were out. It was incredibly peaceful. I looked toward Catalina, clear as a bell in the morning light, and sat for awhile, just breathing and feeling the movement of the water beneath me. About ten minutes later, a wave began to materialize, so I turned to paddle for it. As I looked to shore, though I saw something round and brown in the water. Was it the seaweed ball I just stepped in stirred up to the surface from the King Tide? No. I pulled off the wave. It was the massive head of a sea lion. If my whole body was folded up into child's pose, it might equal the size of the head right in front of me. I saw it for just a second, then he went back under water. I pulled my feet up on top of the board and sat there for a moment. He was facing the pier when he surfaced, and I hoped he kept swimming that way, so I just waited a while -- What is the appropriate amount of time to allow a sea lion to pass on his merry way? -- and then paddled myself in for the day, giving that spot a wide berth. Sea lions are not friends with surfers. Best to avoid.

View of Catalina Island from Newport Beach at sunset.

There are lots of sea lions in Newport Beach. They mostly hang out in the harbor, but I have seen one before this swimming in the water at Blackies. From my view from the pier that day, that sea lion's underwater shadowy figure was at least 10-12 feet long and 4-5 feet wide, using other longboards nearby for comparison. Massive shape gliding through the water. They are incredibly graceful. I got close to another one at Doho a long time ago -- it just swam right up close to a group of us. Huge. Scary.

We often encounter wildlife in the water. I've been stung by sting rays twice now. I saw an eagle ray once -- so cool! We have surfed among dolphins several times, close enough to make eye contact. Surf Sister Toni saw a thresher shark once and promptly exited the water; we called it a Canyon Dweller, after the big underwater canyon that is full of Big Scary Fish not far from where we surf. She has also gone in with leopard sharks and thought them "cute." I saw a partially eaten dead dolphin on the beach once and went in for a surf lesson anyway; Surf Sensei guessed the bites were likely from a Mako shark. Little harbor seals are less common, but also around.

There are THINGS beneath us all the time: from sea lions, seals, and dolphins to slippery seaweed that tickles our feet as little fish jump out of the water. As Toni said once, "When I say I love the ocean, I mean I love the SURFACE of the ocean. What goes on underneath is NONE of my BUSINESS."

Well, until it is. The sea lion made himself my business. Not a great idea to ignore him. This whole blog has been about swimming in the depths of my psyche, going beneath the surface to meet and understand my personal canyon dwellers, and we've bumped into another experience that has stirred shit up: bikini modeling. More really crappy thoughts reared their enormous heads and made themselves my business. The process of clearing out the container of my mind continues.

Kailia's Kinis is a bathing suit business owned by a local young woman. The bathing suits are made from recycled materials and Kailia welcomes all bodies to model for her. She put out an all call for models on social media the other week and I volunteered. I thought she might have a hard time finding large women to model, and I don't mind that I am a plus-sized goddess. One of my first entries here in this blog was about the insecurities surfing provoked when I started, and in these past 2 years, nothing has been better for my body positivity than changing out of a wetsuit in a crowded parking lot. Tourists trolling for limited parking spots have gotten an eyeful of various parts of me, and I simply wave and say, "Not leaving." Sexist patriarchy built a very limited box of worthiness for me labeled "Standard American Beauty" a very long time ago, and I have largely stepped outside of it. Or so I thought.

The shoot itself was beautiful. Real women, real bodies: scars and stretch marks, moles, tattoos, uneven tan lines, thick middles and substantial thighs capable of carrying the weight of the world. We bear the scars of our existence and it was beautiful. Out of 21 women, only two ever pulled the classic model poses, trying to be sexy for the internalized male gaze; the rest of us were modeling for other women, looking strong, happy, sassy, having fun. Another example of women supporting women, being encouraging, supportive, and complimentary. I was aware that I was the oldest person there by a number of decades, and the younger women were far less self-conscious than I was. Joyfully showing off their muscles and their soft rolls and imperfections, knowing somehow that all bodies belong, all bodies are beautiful. I left the shoot uplifted, tickled that I had stepped outside of the box that patriarchy had built for me: even 57-year-olds can model bikinis.

The canyon dweller thoughts arrived later. Mindful Self-Compassion talks about backdraft; Brene Brown calls it the vulnerability hangover. I was in the churn of negative thoughts: "Who is going to see these pictures? I hope no one I know. I don't wear thongs, why did I agree to wear a thong for a camera?! Oh my god, my bare ass is going to be on the internet." Shame. Just a double overhead wave of shame. And then fear -- a lot of raw fear untethered to any specific thought. Lots of emotions rose up and were rather overwhelming. I continue to sort them out as I can, but this issue is going to take some time. Pema Chodron wrote, "The elemental struggle is with our feeling of being wrong, with our guilt and shame at what we are. That’s what we have to befriend." Lama Rod Owens wrote, "I am haunted by how we are born into this world beautiful ones and how that beauty gets broken up into little pieces. And then, broken up, we go about trying to collect the little pieces of our beauty while calling the gathering a life. It is the labor of re-membering not being that occupies our living."

The main issue I had was wearing a thong. I was fine in a regular bikini, but the bare bottom was my main concern. I wondered if I really stepped out of the patriarchal box or remained inside of another larger one. The thong, the bikini, the exposed flesh -- it all exists within the patriarchal agenda. Sexy has a definition, I have learned, and it is limited to Perfect Bodies in Very Little Clothing. To think I need to be perfect to wear a thong or am welcoming my imperfection in a thong is to continue wearing a thong: the behavior remains the same, my ass is out there. And men don't have these concerns. Am I really free of patriarchal imperatives if my behind continues to be exposed? Is embracing the beauty of imperfection in this way truly moving a feminist agenda forward? What would be a different question that is truly freeing? How best to disrupt these systems of violence? Men don't wear thongs. Wetsuit companies do not make "cheeky wetsuits" for men. Am I continuing to promote the patriarchal agenda by modeling, simply spreading out the objectification of sexism to a wider range of bodies, or am I breaking out of it by defying that definition? I am genuinely uncertain.

I watched the new Julia Roberts movie the other day, called After the Hunt. One of the main themes of this film is the feminist generation gap as it relates to the Me Too movement. In the film, a young student reported being sexually assaulted, and the older female professor to whom the report was made did not react well; the young student was disappointed with both the support and the advice the professor had to give. The young student had very different ideas of what a response should look like in response to her assault. #MeToo

I have seen this kind of generation gap before. When Marriage Equality was passed, I saw my close gay friends react quite differently depending on their age. If they were under age 30, they were elated and started planning weddings. They unconditionally accepted this new reality and embraced it immediately as something long overdue. If they were over age 45, they may have cried tears of joy, but nothing really changed for them. Hiding in the corners of society, fear, denying themselves -- the societal and familial thoughts imposed on them about their so-called wickedness did not go away with the passage of a law. Somehow, marriage equality was not for them. Their behavior didn't change.

The professor in the movie seemed to give the young student advice from her own experiences, which did not agree with the student's perspective, suffering from a similar generation gap. The professor advised the student to keep her mouth shut. Not press charges. In the film, the student said, "[The professor] had to fight for everything she should have been given, but she can only conceive of progress in the way that she achieved it: by subsuming herself to the abusive patriarchal agenda."

Subsuming herself to the abusive patriarchal agenda.

Wow.

Subsuming her self to the abusive patriarchal agenda. I think: Where is her self? Subsumed. Buried. Long ago, abandoned and buried. It wasn't a voluntary act, exactly. But the younger generation often has no idea about this.

The student, though harsh and fighting with her own issues, was not wrong. How have I been subsumed in the abusive patriarchal agenda? And how is that agenda affecting how I look at modeling a bikini? And how to get myself free of it? Answering this question has taken on an urgency: Kailia can't use the pictures. They didn't turn out well, so she wants to do a re-shoot. I get an opportunity to decide again if I want to participate.

Buddhism sets the idea that I free myself for the benefit of others. The Mahayana sets as its highest calling the Bodhisattva Path: we enter the spiritual path in order to gain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Lama Rod Owens wrote of this aspiration, “I believe that our modern understanding of superheroes is very much in line with the spirit of the Buddhist saint. However, the notion of superpowers is distracting because the ultimate spiritual weapon of the Buddhist saint is not supernatural ability. Rather, the real superpower of the Buddhist saint is giving a shit—giving a shit is an expression of their bodhicitta, or their deep desire to help free people from suffering.”

So what is the most useful and skillful way to benefit all beings in this situation? What is the most freeing, for myself and others? Modeling for this company was an act of perceived generosity on my part. Though I am not comfortable wearing thongs, other women are and they deserve to see themselves depicted in the suits they want to buy. The harsh light of sexism sets limits on the worth of women in general to a measure of beauty, and then sets even smaller limits on what counts as beautiful. Modeling a real and imperfect body softens those limits, has potential to expand the definition of beauty, including more women in the circle of freedom to be themselves as they are. My intention was pure. The decision seemed easy. But the fallout was intense, and prompted some confusion. So, what action now will truly promote freedom?

My process followed its typical path. First, I had to calm down and get out of the shame storm. Second, I learned something new that allowed me to frame the situation in new light. Third, I applied teachings to how to move forward.

You need to calm down.

The priority when trying to see clearly is to identify and manage emotions. I have been taking the Mindful Self-Compassion for Shame course and this experience came immediately after I encountered the class on fierce self-compassion. I escaped from the ten-foot wave of shame through self-compassion, and particularly, the fierce variety. MSC describes two kinds of self-compassion: tender and fierce. Tender is soft, kind, supportive, and soothing; when I was feeling horrible, I started there. Fierce is the strong, protective instinct to defend oneself against harm. Lama Rod wrote, “In the path of the New Saint, the most powerful expression of awakened care is fierceness. Like compassion and wrath, fierceness is the true potency of awakened care because it tells a truth that we don’t want to deal with. Fierceness is the expression of the deepest belief that everyone deserves to be free regardless of who they are or what they have done. It is a posture that says, I deserve a right to exist, to take up space, and to embody my most authentic self, especially when this expression does not harm me or anyone else. Fierceness refuses compromise or negotiation because it is responding to the suffering that comes from not being free. It is so precise and clear that it feels like getting cut by a razor. It says that everything deserves care, and everything deserves to be free, regardless of how you or anyone feels about it.”

Fierce self-compassion has three parts: providing, protecting, and encouraging. Providing for ourselves means to set boundaries, say no to external sources of shame, no to devaluing messages, and no to our internalized inner voices of shame. When the shame storm hit, I recognized the voices in my head were not my own -- those shaming thoughts did not come from me. I did my best to say "wtf?" and stop thinking the thoughts. Protecting ourselves means to nourish ourselves according to our own needs and values, to recognize when we are shaming ourselves and choose a different alternative aligned with care. In this situation, I took care of myself, treated myself with kindness. Encouraging ourselves means to create new habits. See our existing habitual reactions and practice changing them. For me, I noticed that I wanted to quit, to hide, to take those pictures down, and I remembered that I tend to want to disappear when in shame. My invisibility cloak shows up to protect me, but I can protect and encourage myself instead by using tender self-compassion practices, more positive self-talk, and standing up for myself against these internalized abusive and sexist thoughts.

So in the moment, I used tender and fierce self-compassion to come out of the shame storm. It's a great tool for soothing myself back into neutral, but can it help me decide what to do next? What would fierce self-compassion say about the bikini modeling? Would it tell me to do it again? I can see support for both decisions. On the don't do it side, I can set a boundary centered in my values. In my younger years, I exposed my body because I thought it was my only way to be loved. I used beauty as currency. So even in embracing my imperfection now, am I still using my body in a way that may no longer align with my values? I want to live in a world in which no one has to expose their body or feel pressured to do so. I am waking up to the idea that someone could love me for me, no matter what I look like. Does modeling in this way undermine that idea? A bare behind is still a bare behind and exists because men wanted to see bare behinds; it is inherently patriarchal. "Don't participate in your own objectification," says a fierce voice.

On the do it side, I wonder if this a movement toward subjectification? Realizing my own subjectivity, that all of me is welcome as I am. Fierceness would deny old sexist messages and embrace new messages. It would reject old connections with pornography and implications about character. It would reject limitations on beauty in favor of new messages. All bodies are welcome. All bodies are beautiful. One surf sister couldn't bring herself to do the shoot, because she knew people in her life would use her imperfections against her -- she would be ridiculed. I wonder if am I afraid to do it because I feel bullied by internalized sexist messages and want to disappear? Fierceness would say, "Go for it, guuuuurlll. Show those people who's boss!" And more importantly, show women of all shapes out there that they deserve to take up space and see themselves reflected in all kinds of media -- as beautiful and worthy just as they are.

So I am left on the fence. Fierceness goes both ways.

Reframing Through Epistemic Trust

The second idea I bumped into is epistemic trust. Epistemology deals with knowledge and epistemic trust talks about how we develop a sense of trust about the world and ourselves through our relationships. Understanding how the world works and my place in it allows me to feel safe and act with confidence. There are three sources of knowledge about the world: ourselves, our families, and the wider society. When these three sources of information line up, then we develop a trust in ourselves, the people around us, and the wider world to give us accurate information. This reminded me of Robert Stolorow, "For an experience to be transformative, we must be heard, recognized and felt by a significant other and our communications fed back, affectively and meaningfully."

Living as a girl in a sexist world meant for me that these sources of information did not line up. For example, I played baseball with the kids in the neighborhood when I was little. I was the only girl for the most part, yet I wasn't the worst player -- I was decent, somewhere in the middle of the pack. But at some point, all the boys got to try out for Little League. I wanted to try out too -- heck, guys worse than me were trying out, why not me? But this internal source of information met my parents, who said that girls don't play baseball, and the wider society who said the same thing. I was laughed at for wanting to play. My family and the world did not reflect my own logical reasoning and lived experience. So what do I do then?

Cheri Huber wrote, "That’s an example of the conclusion we drew when we first began learning to abandon ourselves. We concluded that the reason we were being rejected was that we had a need, and having a need means you’re bad. If you’re bad, you’re unlovable, and if you’re unlovable you won’t be able to survive. So from that perspective, the bottom line is Don’t Have Needs. Once we turn our attention outward, most of us never address the original unmet need we were traumatized into abandoning. Most of us don’t know that it is that original unmet need that has been controlling our lives. The need? To be loved and accepted exactly as we are."

Trust is developed when we have people around us who we believe have our best interests at heart and who mirror our experiences accurately. Secure attachment is based on trusting the world around us and the people around us to love us and give us accurate information about ourselves and how the world works. Caregivers show care and concern, attention and interest in our lives; they are curious and then reflect back to us how we feel about stuff in a way that helps us understand the world and ourselves more deeply. If our caregivers do not have our best interests at heart, or they do not reflect us accurately, then epistemic trust is challenging. If I have an experience, and my caregivers tell me something about it that differs from my own interpretation, then I have an awful choice: believe them and deny my own agency and ability to trust my own instincts, or believe myself and risk abandonment, which threatens survival.

As I have shared in many ways, my family did not reflect my experiences -- at all, let alone accurately. I was upset when I learned I couldn't try out for Little League. Instead of being seen, reflected, and soothed in my distress, I was ridiculed. In other similar instances, my big emotions were punished (anger) or ignored (sadness). Thus, I developed a mistrust in myself and others. My internal experience was not validated, so I was floundering for a sense of knowledge about the world that felt valid. My agency was deeply compromised. This explains so much. This is why I always want to KNOW. Why I became the expert. This is why I have a really hard time trusting the world and trusting people. And most importantly, trusting myself.

Messages that help us develop this trust come from both our families and from society. Beyond baseball, on the topic of worth, I got messages from my family that I was not worth being cared for. And from society, I got messages that women were worth being cared for only if they were beautiful. On the topic of power, within the family, women often control everything; they manage the household and everyone in it. So, I got the message that women were powerful. But in society, women were purposely left out of positions of power in most areas of life: business, sports, media, etc. This dynamic is changing now, but not much when I grew up. The political backlash resulting in the Trad Wife phenomenon is a response to this burgeoning independence of women. So I have confusing messages that undermine my trust in myself and the world around me about worth and power and beauty. Messages from my family and the society at large agreed on messages about worth, power, and beauty, so my own ideas were dismissed.

Epistemic trust shows me how I have been subsumed in the patriarchal agenda, so my ability to discern the right thing to do in this situation is impaired. I have lots of issues around beauty, worth, and power, AND then sexual harassment and assault issues that are also impacting this decision. There were two groups of thoughts that attacked me in the shame storm. One set of thoughts was just around beauty: who are you to model a bikini? You're not good enough, not pretty enough, not fit enough. The other group was more sinister.

What does it mean about my morality to wear these types of clothes? One of the most insidious messages that rose up from the depths was the "she asked for it" message: that what we wear has had implications for our character. When women dress provocatively, what are they saying about their availability for sex? I grew up in the 1970s, the peak era of Playboy. What kind of a girl wears that kind of thing if they are not "looking for it?" A part of me is terrified to do this again, because it has imagined implications for what kinds of behavior I'm inviting from men. These messages were never true, but they were put in my head by people who had their own interests at heart. I have woken up every day this week overwhelmed by fear -- just the physical sensation of fear without any accompanying thought or remembered dream. It's scary to step out of this box. ABUSIVE patriarchal agenda, indeed.

I remembered another situation in my life where a public display of nudity was welcomed. A long time ago, I sunbathed topless in St. Tropez, France. Stakes were lower: thousands of miles away from home, and Europeans have a much greater acceptance and freedom around bodies and nudity. My internal decision to embrace the freedom of topless sunbathing was reinforced by the local society: everyone was sunbathing topless. There were boobs everywhere and mine were unremarkable. It was normalized. And my traveling companion (my local family on the epistemic trust front) told me it was ok for me to do this. He thought I was beautiful, and that created safety for me. The individualized reinforcement made it ok to do it, saying "this freedom also applies to you."

In this modeling situation, I am fighting a bit on both fronts. I want to do it, but I am experiencing conflicting societal messages: my old baggage (the abusive patriarchal agenda), the freedom of younger women to share their imperfect bodies with confidence (a feminist agenda), and my own suspicions that this new feminist agenda, though possibly not abusive, is still patriarchal in its origin. And I'm fighting on the individual front. Like my old gay buddies, I'm wondering if this new feminism applies to me. Can it possibly work for this body, my body, right now at 57? Can I adjust to this new reality? I've written about this feminist generation gap before. I don't have the individual reinforcement right now in order to overcome this barrier freely. I'm not sure I trust the world to hold me in a way I can tolerate on this. I am still sifting through self-blame and agency. I am still confused and fearful. The abusive patriarchal agenda is a big sea lion that might drive me out of the water.

Applying Psychology and Buddhist Teachings

Finally, I have my Buddhist teachers telling me interesting things about this meditation on beauty and worth. Mark Epstein talked a lot about the movement from object to subject in his book, Open to Desire. I got lots of beautiful messages about going on being, exploring in safety, about the movement from being an object to living as a subject, with more power over my own decisions. Setting boundaries and wanting -- women have not been allowed to want freely in the world -- so wanting itself, following passion is interesting.

I have had a lot of problems understanding my agency and this whole experience is an experiment with agency. But as BTG said, "It's not a closed system." Unlike the "going on being" described by Epstein and Winnicott, I don't have the protective parental envelop in place. I'm on my own here out in the world. It may not be safe to explore. In many ways, being subsumed in the abusive patriarchal agenda prevented the normal development of my agency. I simply cannot see some things clearly, and that affects my actions. My brain literally gets fuzzy when I try to think about this stuff. A fog moves in. I can trust my body to a point: my trust in the world has not been securely developed, so some somatic signaling is off. The fear response is big. Meditation on this experience might allow me to see in a new way if given enough time to process.

I also just heard a great talk on yogacara with William Waldron on Tricycle. Yogacara is a school of Buddhism that talks about our perceptions about the world, that what we experience is dependent upon the causes and conditions of our upbringing and our lives, our cultural influences, and that no one has the entire truth about reality. Sometimes called the Mind-Only School, it looks deeply into cognition and perception and finds emptiness -- that nothing has an independent reality on its own, everything exists in context. In significant ways, reality is a product of our own projections born from a lifetime of STUFF, and we can relax around our definitions of things. Yogacara might provide a way out of this dilemma for me. Lama Rod wrote, "Freedom is remembering that everything fixed and solid is only so in our minds and that we can free ourselves at any time, if we remember." If I was born later, or born in Europe, I might not have any qualms about modeling a thong. Context matters.

Yogachara teaches me that no one has a corner on reality, and I get to redefine things now. That bikinis are constructs, that nudity is a construct, and that even I am a construct. The causes and conditions of my life are different now, so I can respond differently. Maybe the way to respond is to quit judging the experience in terms of right and wrong. Maybe I can just have this experience and see how it informs my values. Maybe moving into a deeper place of vulnerability will free me of some limitations. I won't know until I do it. My intention before this experience was clean and easy, but the outcome of the experience provoked this complex meditation. What will doing it again provoke?

In the Yogacara talk, James Shaheen of Tricycle interviewed Waldron. Shaheen asked, "How deeply can you really go to free yourself of the prison of a way of seeing things?" Waldron answered, "We merely need to recognize that they are in fact constructs. Appearances are constructs. And we don't have to get rid of those appearances in order to be free of them. We just need to see that they are constructs." So what can I see now?

James Hollis wrote, "Adaptive loyalty to what we have received from our environment may prove an unconscious subversion of the integrity of the soul." Taylor Swift sang in one my favorite songs, "I'm combing through the braids of lies." Bikinis, thongs, photo shoots, judgements coming from the internalized male gaze, these are all constructs. Worth, power, beauty, all constructs. Patriarchy and inattentive parents created a blind spot within me. They taught me that everyone was worth taking care of but me. That I was only worthwhile for my brain or my body. Love was conditional and limited. This is why decision-making, subjective being, and agency are difficult for me, and for many women out there: we do not trust the world to give us accurate messages about ourselves. That it is not safe to be ourselves. We were taught to take care of everyone else, to stay in our boxes and serve others. That only a small set of us was beautiful and worthy enough to be seen. All of these are constructed beliefs born from an old set of causes and conditions.

Shaheen asked Waldron, "There are good constructs and bad constructs. There are ones that help us to flourish and destructive ones. How do we develop that discernment?" Waldron said we can see all of these constructs as ultimately empty, but we need to develop "useful constructs" that are skillful and motivated by bodhichitta, the aspiration to become awakened for the benefit of all beings. He said, "So we need to consider what is skillful for the alleviation of suffering, for alleviating illusion."

And what answers this question will be different every time. The question is more finite than "What will lead to liberation?" The question is "What will lead to liberation in this moment?" And I think my Anukampa course has some answers. They talked about agency today and said to think about the outcome of the action -- how did it make you feel? If you feel calm and peaceful or happy, then it was a good decision. My body is my partner now. How did we feel? At the end of the photo shoot, it felt good. It was a lovely day spent in encouraging camaraderie with other women. All the other negative stuff came later.

I can also think about the paramis and more wholesome states of being, values like respect, dignity, honor, and love. Jack Kornfield wrote in his new book, All in This Together, "When we speak of respect, we’re talking about something deeper than manners. True respect is the recognition of another being’s sovereignty—their right to be who they are. It’s a form of love." He talked about the King Arthur story of Gawain, who encountered a "fearsome hag" who told him he would have to marry her unless he found the answer to a question, "What do women want?"

Now, the abusive-patriarchal-agenda-flavored undertones of this story are clear: a fearsome hag is not a desirable life partner, but when the knight came back with an answer to the question, the hag turned into "a radiant woman, freed from her spell." There's just no escaping it. I'll forgive this message about relative beauty in favor of the larger one, as written by Jack.

"[The transformed hag] told [Gawain], 'You have broken the enchantment, for the answer to my question came from your own lips. What do women want? What every human wants: our sovereignty. We wish to be free to choose our own way. We all want to be honored for who we are. What we long for most is respect.'" Jack continues, "In that moment, the story opens into a universal truth. Every being wants to be seen and respected—to live without someone else’s 'you should' or 'you must.' This kind of respect is not sentimental. It’s a courageous act of recognition. It says, I see your wholeness, even when it’s hidden. The Buddha spoke of this as seeing with the eyes of compassion. Ajahn Chah called it bowing to what’s true. However you name it, it’s the foundation of every healthy relationship—with each other, with the earth, and within ourselves. Take a breath and consider: Are you meeting this moment with respect? Are you honoring your own dignity and the dignity of others?"

My own sovereignty. Respect. Honored for who I am. Dignity. I am just getting to know these things -- that these things even exist is news to me. I have been subsumed in the abusive patriarchal agenda. It still lives in me, and experiences like bikini modeling allow me to become aware of it and prune a little more out of the way for the benefit of myself and of all beings. I can see these things, because I now have better sources of information. My surf sisters, my Buddhist teachers, and BTG form a new family, one with my best interests at heart. The world remains as it is, but now I am in it. I am a trustworthy source of information. So this situation allows me to clear out some of the destructive constructs: when I become aware of them, they begin to dissolve, but I'm still not sure who I am under here. If I was able to develop outside of that abusive patriarchal agenda, who would I be? I still don't know. She's still becoming.

In a previous post, I quoted Harriet Learner. Referring to one of her clients, Lerner wrote, "She felt the rage of her buried self but hadn't yet been able to use it in order to make changes." Maybe I'm getting in touch with my rage aided by fierce self-compassion. My abandoned and buried self is resurrecting. Causes and conditions, no self, yogacara, means everything exists in context. I can understand that everything that I learned a rose out of and existed within a different context than exists now. That the causes and conditions that exist now produce different ideas, perhaps equally problematic ideas, but also different ones, and I don't have to be imprisoned by the old ways of being or the new ones but can rely on myself to discern the right move at this time. I am in contact with my feelings and with a more wholesome way of being. My brain is now developing the capacity to trust myself, which renders the world more able to be itself. When I can trust myself, the trustworthiness of the world is irrelevant. At some point, perhaps I will realize that there is no I and no world to trust, that they are constructs, too, but for now, the world and I unfold as we are. And I am better capable of surfing these waves. I am not leaving.

I can go out into the ocean with full knowledge of sea lions and sting rays, sharks and dolphins, and a million other things that dwell in the canyon that I haven't met yet. These realities don't stop me from surfing. When I allow myself to just go with what I love, follow my passion, my values, and my vow to help other people, then I am free, sovereign, honorable. When I allow my natural expression of desire and joy to unfold, everything takes care of itself. How this applies to modeling a thong remains to be seen, but I am awake now. I am awake. I can see now what I couldn't before. My eyes are opened to the abusive patriarchal agenda. I am no longer subsumed in it.

Again, Lama Rod Owens wrote, "I am haunted by how we are born into this world beautiful ones and how that beauty gets broken up into little pieces. And then, broken up, we go about trying to collect the little pieces of our beauty while calling the gathering a life. It is the labor of re-membering not being that occupies our living." Seeing my broken up pieces, how am I collecting them? Fierce self-compassion allows me to come out of the shame storm to a place of rest and security where all of my experiences can be considered. Epistemic trust shows me a new layer of attachment: that old messages are still impacting me in a deep and abiding way that blinds me to my agency. I can look for new voices that affirm my internal sense of worth and understanding, including my own. I can rely on my own evaluation of the world now. Yogacara helps me see through illusions, helps me hold things loosely, and see that perhaps I can just have this experience and see how it informs my values. It helps me see that I don't need to make a decision right now. In a recent article, Joseph Goldstein wrote, "I realized that until I was fully enlightened (and perhaps not even then), I had no way of knowing which perspective was ultimately correct. I simply could not know what final liberation would reveal. Resting in this unknown proved to be a great relief. Rather than causing confusion, it allowed my mind to settle into an openness that fostered further inquiry and exploration of dharma understanding."

But some of my broken pieces might be too far gone. I worry about those blind spots. They spell danger to me. Lama Rod wrote, “The sorrow of the New Saint is the experience of realizing that the work of self and collective liberation is driven by uncomfortable, confusing contradictions that we must embody. The New Saint metabolizes the grief of dealing with these contradictions and realizes that liberation is complex. These contradictions must be tended to by mourning them and offering the discomfort space while experiencing and releasing the sadness.” I can know that the fuzziness in my brain is also me working on things and that will resolve, too, when given enough time and space to rest, all the while feeling really angry that I have to deal with this. More grief, my partner in life.

What will liberation look like? I don't know yet. I'm still sorting things out. The beautiful thing is I don't have to know yet. I have the patience to allow more of these reactions to surface, more time to think about my influences, more time to "forget the self" as Dogen counseled, and then see what I feel in the moment. I haven't yet been asked to do it again; the shoot has not been rescheduled. You and I both can check out Kailia's Kinis in a couple of weeks. I am wildly curious to see what I decide...