The Wild Life

I had the opportunity to apply for a new job the other day. It was a "real" job: one in which I would need to wear "real" clothes and generally button myself up again into some societally acceptable form of "professional" but make real money. I didn't apply. As I walked into the water with my girls at River Jetties the other day, the mysterious fog draped around us, the waves big enough to slap us in the face, water grey and impenetrable to my eyes, I thought, "I never want to go back to normal life." I wrote in my journal that night, "Let me stay wild, please. Let me ride the waves every day with my own self and my wild women. Let me feel the natural rhythms of the world and love everyone and everything with my new wild heart." It has been a long and arduous road to release several layers of domestication. I don't want to go back there. I choose the wild life.

At the San O surf camp last summer, I was infatuated by our surf instructors. Nomadic and wild, riding the waves every day, traveling the world across the year to new places to surf. The beach was deserted most of the time we were there, fog covering us in its softness. The water was big that week. I got held under several times and found the place of peacefulness under the swirling waves. On the beach, the surf instructors built structures out of driftwood to hang their wetsuits and towels during the days. It all had a real Robinson Crusoe feel to it. I loved it. For me, a recovering people-pleasing rule-follower, it felt quite untamed. This whole year has been about dropping my domestication, leveling walls and releasing the conditioning of my early years, and surfing has contributed to that process immensely exactly because it is a trip to the wild side every time I enter the ocean. Every time I survive the conditions, every time I improve, overcome a challenge, I'm showing myself that I can handle this new way to be.

BTG and I have been discussing the spiritual path and living by vow lately. For me, the spiritual path has been about constantly turning inward to deal with my own shit -- the misguided beliefs from the conditioning of my youth. The more I deal with my own trauma and pain, the less I will spread it out into the world. The more I release, the clearer my sight becomes. I can see the world not as threatening but as suffering. Hurt people hurt other people. Thich Nhat Hanh said, “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending." So, when I face my pain, it ceases to spill over as much. When I understand my pain, I can see it more clearly in others and can deal with it more effectively -- both for myself and for them.

However, seeing my pain ever more clearly has had some consequences. In the Mindful Self-Compassion program, it's called backdraft. Backdraft is a word from firefighting. Firefighters enter a burning building carefully - this is why you check a door for warmth before opening it in a fire. If you open a door to a burning room, the fresh oxygen ignites the flames already burning and they explode or super charge the fire. Similarly, early emotional wounds exist in our minds like a smoldering fire in a burning room. Many trauma survivors have walled off their pain in order to cope with it. The pain has been trapped inside of us, suppressed or repressed behind closed doors in order to help us go on with living. When we open those doors, the pain can ignite and become overwhelming.

It's intense.

So, seeing clearly has this downside of facing things long repressed. This parade of unfelt feelings continues to unfold for me. It's rather a vicious cycle of healing. The healthier I get > the more clearly I see the dysfunction of my childhood > the more deeply I see how much I was hurt > the more I feel damaged > the more devastating it feels > the more I feel how long it will take to get healthy. Every step has a bucket of grief and pain with it. And there's no choice but to feel it if I want to get better. The path to wholeness (or "holiness" if you will) is not for the faint of heart. And I think this movement toward job hunting is putting some pressure on this process that has brought out old patterns (again). I think I've been treating healing as another form of perfectionism. As if there will be a point when I'll be "healed" and will be able to interact with others without all my old baggage.

Oh sweetie.

I noticed that I have a deep insecurity around finding a new job in a more professional environment. Will my new self be acceptable there? Feeling damaged raises the old wounds of feeling not good enough, somehow fundamentally flawed, and I immediately feel the need to hide, to become invisible, to sequester myself for the safety of others, as I am not a healthy person yet. I have been searching online for the "effects of childhood trauma," so I can see the list of things that are wrong with me. I've actually written a list of things to look out for as a result of watching random people on YouTube discuss the effects of trauma. I realized the other day that this was me trying to fix or perfect myself into normalcy. If I can't hide, then I can camouflage, pretend to be a normal person. Hide behind that wall of perfection. So, I got to see in current, real time how my efforts to become invisible and perfect played out when I was little. They are still operating -- still my go to strategies for safety.

At least I saw it this time. I could see my walls trying to rebuild themselves, see my little self trying to hide behind them, desperately trying to be good enough. Jon Kabat-Zinn said, "If you wake up to even the slightest way in which you become your own worst enemy and you can recognize that moment before you're about to do again -- that's a real growth experience." Maybe next time, I'll notice it before I fall in the hole.

And what now do I do? Hide again? Button myself up in order to be respectable to potential employers? Privilege safety over my own True Self expression again?

Thankfully, in a recent Substack essay, Elizabeth Gilbert spoke to my current moment. She was looking back a similar moment in her life when she said a similar thing when she was traveling in Italy for her book Eat, Pray, Love, "Eventually I may have to become a more solid citizen again, I’m aware of this. But not yet — please. Not just yet." Gilbert goes on, "Oh, how I wish I could reach back through time and talk to that younger version of myself, and tell her that she’s got it all wrong. I wish I could tell her that the way she was living in that very moment (solitary, free, wandering, creative, curious, deeply inwardly connected) was and would always be the answer. I wish I could tell her that she had already found it — that she had already reached enlightenment. I wish I could tell her that THIS way of life, this stubborn freedom and independence and curiosity, was not only her true nature, it would also constitute her greatest offering to the world. I wish I could tell her that she didn’t owe it to anyone to be 'a solid citizen.'" She wrote, "But instead, Younger Liz was already thinking about how she would eventually have to rein it in, zip herself up, and become normal and respectable once more. Because she still thought that if she was normal and respectable, she would be loved, and she would be safe."

Exactly. Safety is a tempting thing. Do I really believe that I can walk the wild life and still get health insurance? Pay rent? These are realities with which I must contend. I am not financially independent. Seems like enlightenment, in part, depends on supporting oneself in the relative world, I tell myself, trying to negotiate with this reality. I am about to find out if I can keep a measure of this kind of domesticated safety while still retaining some of my wild self. That the only way that I can be acceptable is to button myself up -- at least a little bit. I have been convinced that I am not acceptable as I am, so taking my genuine self, crazy and all, out in the world is another opportunity for rejection, and rejection in this context means I might not be able to keep a roof over my head.

Can I only button myself up half way? Seems like not, if I'm reading people correctly who have previously walked the path. And this feels like an important moment. Brianna Wiest in her new book, The Life That's Waiting, writes, "When the old parts of ourselves that were constructed in response to fear and trauma resist their own alchemy, what rises within us is this sense of panic and disarray, and if we are not careful, it is the very moment where we are most at risk of adopting the most limiting beliefs of all: that what is most familiar to us is most correct for us; that who we have been is who we will always be. It is less important to ask 'Who am I?' than it is to ask: 'Who would I like to be?'"

I brought up these insecurities to BTG. He asked, "What if you take your crazy out into the world and you're accepted?" Not an option I’ve considered. I’ve been too far sequestered behind that particular wall of shame to open up to that possibility. But this is where I'm at on the path: can I trust that the world will show up to my authentic self? Father Richard Rohr writes in Eager to Love, “In this negative frame, the quickest ticket to heaven, enlightenment, or salvation is unworthiness itself, or at least a willingness to face our own smallness and incapacity. Our conscious need for mercy is our only real boarding pass. The ego does not like that very much, but the soul fully understands.”

Wiest again, "“We are, in larger ways than not, of our own making. That is the most empowering notion and also the most terrifying. There is no more defaulting in this acceptance. There is no more looking around and blaming or holding on. There is only the choice of whether we will hurt to stay as we’ve been or hurt to become who we might be. There is no workaround for discomfort, the shadows are rendered by the light. What we get to decide is what we’re going to endure for." I've tried hide and protect before. It didn't fully work, did it? How wild to just throw myself out into the world AS IS and see what happens.

BTG has discussed living by vow several times in sessions during the past year. Living by vow is a different way of conceptualizing living by my own values or the capacity to go my own way, as described by Ami Harbin. Zen Buddhists have the four impossible vows or Bodhisattva Vows: "Creations are numberless, I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them. Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it. The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it." Ever since I read Pema Chodron for the first time and she spoke of the Way of the Bodhisattva, I have framed my path like this, though not in these specific words. It has taken me many years to evolve this understanding, and finally finding a beautiful teacher like BTG has accelerated that process in the past year.

Staying wild is one of my vows. To me, it means to not return to the normal life of valuing the superficial, to think that nice clothes, real money, and big houses mean anything in the long run. I want to go deeper -- maintain my depth and go deeper. Let me not waste this beautiful period of time, wandering in the desert of my former existence, releasing old crap. Let me not button myself up again in the delusion of high heels, professional clothes, make up, and other bullshit that society has concocted, adapting to which deems me acceptable. I have already died to that way of being. Let me stay wild. Let me stay broken and strange in the eyes of those who successfully tamed me in a previous life. Let their disappointment rain down on this flowering life I have chosen and created with hard labor. Let the walls stay crumbled. Let me stay wild.

In Eager to Love, Rohr writes about the renunciation of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare, “Francis and Clare made what most would call the negative or disadvantage shimmer and shine by their delight in what the rest of us ordinarily oppose, deny, and fear: things like being small, poor, disparaged, being outside the system of power and status, weakness in any form, or what Francis generally referred to as minoritas. This is a different world than most of us choose to live in. We all seem invariably to want to join in the “majority” and the admired. Francis and Clare instead make a preemptive strike at both life and death, offering a voluntary assent to Full Reality in all its tragic wonder. They make a loving bow to the very things that defeat, scare, and embitter most of the rest of us. We might call it “dying before we die,” which is always the secret of the saints and the heart of any authentic spiritual initiation.” Rohr suggests we consult the Beatitudes instead of the Ten Commandments for a fuller picture of how to live. Less is more.

Rohr continues, “I suppose there is no more counterintuitive spiritual idea than the possibility that God might actually use and find necessary what we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This is what I mean by the 'integration of the negative.' Yet I believe this is the core of Jesus’ revolutionary Good News, Paul’s deep experience, and the central insight that Francis and Clare lived out with such simple elegance. The integration of the negative still has the power to create 'people who are turning the whole world upside down' (Acts 17: 6).... Now, some therapists call this pattern 'embracing our shadow....' Such surrendering of superiority, or even a need for such superiority, is central to any authentic enlightenment. Without it, we are blind ourselves (John 9: 39–41) and blind guides for others.” Jung said, "Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

Initiation is what this whole process has felt like. The Buddhists call it something like being clarified like a broth; the Christians might call it being "sifted like wheat." Accepting our shadow, integrating the negative, separating from separateness: all traditions say similar things. To become whole, we must accept all of ourselves, all of everything. Oneness with all things, within and without. Rohr says, "Suffering seems to overcome the semipermeable membrane between ourselves, others, and God—and sometimes rather completely. It can overcome all the major splits from reality into which we all enter: the split from our shadow self, the split of mind from body, the split of death from life, and the split into separateness from God and others. Overcoming these foundational splits is what I mean by necessary suffering and is almost the definition of any in-depth spirituality." Wholeness. Wholeheartedness. Integrity. Holiness. No halfsies in this game.

To feel so connected to the core of myself and my own, sometimes searing, pain has connected me to the larger world, to the pain we all endure. Without walls feels very vulnerable and scary. The massive pain of the world is overwhelming. Can I really go out into the world and trust my natural self to be ok? Can I withstand the onslaught of the pain of others and all it makes us do to each other as myself? No protection? A truer version of myself than I've ever let out before, unguarded? I am very nervous to trust the world this way.

Campbell's Monomyth has three stages of this sifting: separation, initiation, and return. Where am I in this process? A long initiation is perhaps about to move to return. I can feel something coming. We are nearing the end of this cycle. Full acceptance of myself is going to be a big challenge. It's a total Harry-fighting-Voldemort at the Battle of Hogwarts kind of moment. And Voldemort is within me.

Don't do it again, I whisper to myself. Don't wall up again. Trust this. Trust this new vision of the world and your place in it.

It's very hard.

What can I do to relax into it? First, I have to deal with the deep-seated shame that exists within me around feeling damaged. There is nothing wrong with me that isn't also wrong with everyone else. Buddhists believe that there is nothing wrong with anything: We are all ok. It is all ok. As it is. We are all just hurting and suffering. Some of us are more aware of it than others, but we are all hurting.

According to her beautiful dictionary of emotions, Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown writes that shame means that "I am bad....The result is feeling flawed and unworthy of love, belonging, and connection." If my root issue is being an unwanted baby, then the root effect of that cause is feeling unwanted, worthless, somehow damaged so irreparably my real self cannot be seen. It must be hidden away, sequestered for the safety of others, or perfected into someone more acceptable. As a child, I didn't know what the flaw was; as an adult, I can see the actual damage inflicted by my childhood, so I have actual effects to deal with. I am not at fault for these effects, but I'm still not healthy -- so the logic of pain goes. I feel quite crazy.

Thankfully, Brown has a wonderful set of strategies for shame resilience. Four steps.

• Recognizing shame and its triggers. I could hear and feel my shame when talking to BTG in session. I saw myself lower my head; I couldn't look at him, even over the zoom screen. I felt the "warm wash of shame" as Brown describes it. I felt caught out, busted; I blushed. I saw my own pain reflected to me and I felt the shame of it. It's heart breaking, actually, to feel shame in that situation instead of compassion. And I know the unworthiness, the feeling of being damaged or not good enough, is the trigger. If I saw that suffering in anyone else, I would feel compassion. In myself, I felt shame. Need to work on that.

• Practicing critical awareness. Can I reality check the messages I'm sending to myself? The surf girls love me. I belong there. My little work team loves me. I have found lots of places to belong and be loved. People show up for me all the time now. I see it all of the time. Do I really want to cut myself off again and live behind walls lost in a story of "I'm not good enough" and "Nobody loves me?" Absolutely not. So, being brave right now is the only alternative. Instead of being judgmental, can I show myself compassion? Can I see and reality check my stories?

• Reaching out. Am I connecting to other people? Yes. I am staying connected to my girls and other friends. In fact, one way I can identify when a shame storm is operating is when I don't want to connect -- the hiding itself is the meditation bell of awareness of suffering.

• Speaking shame. Brown writes, "Silence, secrecy, and judgement fuel shame." So am I talking about it? Yes, ma'am. Right here. That's what this post is about. That's what BTG and I have discussed across two sessions. And I'm heading to a Mindful Self-Compassion retreat next week to learn more and hopefully find a new way to be with my suffering.

The second way I'm dealing with shame is to work with my meditation practice in new ways. One way is to simply focus on relaxing in my practice. I can feel where in my body the shame and anxiety show up, and I breathe into those spaces, linking the relaxing with the tight places -- a different kind of conditioning. I'm taking time to self-regulate through the breath.

Another way is to recognize a new understanding of sitting meditation. While sitting, I'm practicing holding a posture in which I allow everything to unfold. Allowing, not forcing, non-doing. I have understood that observing what is happening, seeing thoughts and emotions, letting thoughts and emotions pass without getting involved, is the liberation of meditation, but now there's an additional aspect of it for me. Previously, allowing thoughts and emotions to come and go has allowed me to not get so attached to them. I know they'll change. Shunryu Suzuki in the classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind writes, "The purpose of our practice is to cut off the karmic spinning mind." Over the years, I've gotten very good at being aware of my thoughts and emotions and letting them pass.

But now, I can apply this disposition to my larger life. Suzuki writes, "Doing something is expressing our own nature. We do not exist for the sake of something else, We exist for the sake of of ourselves." I'm not trying to attain anything. I'm just observing the world, observing my reactions to the world, as BTG says, the inevitable contraction and release of our ongoing reactions. In a recent talk, Jon Kabat-Zinn said, "As long as you're stuck in speech and thought, you're basically screwed. The real revolution of mindfulness is this non-dual way of not trying to get anywhere else, but actually allowing yourself to be not just as you are but who you are in this present moment." Just sitting is allowing it all, making space for it, accepting it all fully, as it is. As I am in that moment.

Kabat-Zinn draws my attention to this non-dual way of being, saying, "The deep non-dual wisdom is that you will never be a better person because there's nothing wrong with you to begin with. There's so much more right with you than wrong with you that to focus on what's wrong with you is exactly part of the problem not part of the liberation. And the who you are is so much bigger than the story of who you are -- the narrative of I, me, mine -- that ultimately when you see into the emptiness of that narrative, there's no place to go, nothing to do, and there's nothing to attain."

Quite a mind shift for a hyperachieving people-pleaser.

I think this is a natural evolution of not planning ahead so much. I'm again reminded of the Three Tenets by Zen Peacemakers. Not knowing, observing reality without prejudice, and just taking the next right step. Present moment is all we have. I have been using this way of being in my personal life for a few months now and am growing more comfortable with it. Moving this practice into a place where I perceive the stakes are higher -- professional life and getting a new job -- is a new level of difficulty. After two master's degrees, a PhD, and a lifetime of planning for classroom teaching months in advance, sitting and allowing the world to unfold is a revolutionary idea for my mind. Totally wild.

In Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice, Kōshō Uchiyama writes, “By 'vow' I mean that you must work and function toward settling everything around you.” This settling in or settling down into the present moment, allowing things to unfold, resting securely in my own true self, requires a trust in the universe, the non-dual, in a new way. Or maybe just a trust in myself to take that next right step and have everything be ok? (I'm still working this out.) Previously, protection was seeking shelter behind walls. Being wild now sets me free under a different kind of protection -- or maybe just a comfort with no protection. That this is what "falling through the air" really means -- no protection. No parachute, but also no ground. How wild. How scary, totally vulnerable, and wild. This might be what that means.

I want to argue with that reality. No way, man. That cannot possibly be true. That's way too hard.

Or is it? Does denying that reality make it less real and more safe? Or is acknowledging that reality the only way to find any sense of security? Maybe all sense of security is an illusion. The only security we have exists in a sense of self. Wholeness. And then releasing that self into the flow of life itself. Co-creating.

This is how surfing works. We work with the conditions we find in the moment. It is definitely not safe. I have a weekly practice of dealing with -- in fact PLAYING with -- no safety. And it's FUN. There is no planning ahead, other than to show up. And once up on that wave, staying up means joining the flow of the energy. Releasing your self, and just going with that flow. Catching a wave requires a thousand micro-adjustments to maintain balance. Intimate connection with the wave is the only way to do it; paying wholehearted attention to it; doing only the next right thing in that moment. Sitting atop of it -- not attached, but intimate, as Roshi Joan wrote. So, I already know what to do. I just need to allow my body to do it.

Next week, I go to a Mindful Self-compassion retreat. I hope to learn how to wrap up my inner self in love and support and kindness -- that same love, support, and kindness I tend to give everyone else. To feel in my body -- really know in a deep, inner knowing kind of way -- that I am inherently worthy of inclusion, not separation. Chris Germer said, "We can't hold intense and disturbing emotions in mindful awareness until we can hold ourselves in loving awareness." This is the next step for me. Perhaps when I can really treat myself with love, the world will feel more safe, and it will be easier to allow my true self to run wild.

I already have a good model for a safer world: the Sisterhood. As I have grown in my own self-awareness and self-love, I began to see differently and the world itself changed. “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are,” said Anaïs Nin. Lisa Delpit said, "We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs." The sisterhood is THE model of wholesomeness and wholeheartedness. I wonder if I could have seen them in a previous life? They offer a wild and loving inclusion, generosity, and support. The Sisterhood includes all of us — we are all welcome and our whole selves are welcome. We are the picture of generosity itself — love is given freely and not dependent on performance or being a certain kind of way. We delight in our diversity and different strengths and styles. We continue to provide unwavering support — we see what’s needed unselfishly. We think of other people and speak with joy to build each other up. Not attached but intimate. So, I already know what to do. I just need to allow my self to do this for myself.

I can learn to give that kind of love and compassion to the little kid who still lives inside of me and gets nervous, feels damaged, and wants to hide and perfect herself into acceptability. Loving that kid unconditionally means loving her without boundaries or walls. Without conditions, without the limits of her conditioning. No separation from her true self expression. Loving her as is. Her full undomesticated self. Unconditioned, unconditional = wild. 

This is perhaps the only real protection there is. Walls limit and separate us; keep us lonely. It is an illusion of safety born of unworthiness. The walls are neither natural nor real -- within us or between us. A more natural flowing love is the only real protection we have, for ourselves and each other.

Pretty wild.