Unsurfable Waves

Big south swell from storms traveling across the wide Pacific arrived at the shores of SoCal in mid June bringing huge waves to all of our surf breaks. Famously, the Wedge in Newport Beach absorbs these swells with 18-20 foot neck-breaking waves that crash near shore in very shallow water. It is a popular boogie boarding break for the most part, but there are also surfers out there -- highly skilled surfers who take on these ridiculously big swells. Even the beach is incredibly dangerous at these times -- sneaker waves travel onshore intermittently and can suck you into the surf by surprise. Part of surfing is figuring out which conditions help me grow and improve, which conditions to avoid entirely, and which conditions to handle with care. The overall message is: it's ok not to go out sometimes. Staying on the beach or in your bed is sometimes the right choice.

Messy waves in Newport Beach

Before the big south swell arrived, there was a weekend of big wind early in the morning. I met some surf sisters at Bolsa Chica and they had decided not to go in. Water was super choppy. Waves were not well formed and came from multiple directions, almost canceling each other out or bumping into each other awkwardly. Trying to ride a wave in these conditions would feel like sitting in the back of an old pick up truck driving down a gravel road. It was cold and gloomy. There were a couple of surfers in the water, but they weren't catching much and they didn't stay on any wave they did catch for long. Not going out was a good decision. Sometimes waves are unsurfable and you sit on shore and watch. Nothing else you can do. Sometimes, we decide not to try.

I've been really struggling lately. Coming to terms with the sometimes unsurfable human condition is difficult for me. I am tired of surfing my own history, the feelings that automatically come. I tend to chase unavailable people. I stick with people when they obviously aren't sticking with me well beyond anything reasonable. I believe this is a by-product of my upbringing -- constantly trying to get care from people who just could not provide it was a condition of my childhood. I couldn't give up on them, though, as a child. I was stuck there, vulnerable, needing care, and persisted in trying to get it. This habit of continuing to search for care and companionship from people who cannot provide what I need has come with me well into adulthood. I continue to make things work, even when they haven't worked in a long time. This letting go of Sisterhood is difficult.

An article in Tricycle by Sarah Conover describes the devastating loss of her family when she was a baby: most of her family was lost at sea. She wrote, "When I disclose that I lost my parents at 18 months, people inevitably, and with great relief, say: 'Oh, then you couldn’t have really known them.' Research on early-childhood loss clearly contradicts this notion. The feral desolation that began to erupt in my forties without warning contradicts it. Though we may try, the howl of our deepest griefs cannot fit the confines of a narrative but inscribes itself in our bodies—even causing heritable changes in gene expression. As the poet Claudia Rankine writes in Citizen: An American Lyric, 'The world is wrong. You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard.' Within every orphan there is a cellular memory of Before and After. Even if the adults say you were too young to remember. Even if you convinced yourself for decades along with them."

The past turns your flesh into its own cupboard. Yes. I need to clean out that cupboard. I need to recognize when conditions are unsurfable and stop trying to go in and surf. Why is it so hard to choose myself? To put myself first? It feels like a failure to put myself first. Why is that? Perhaps my cupboard is so full of messages that I did not matter to anyone that it is a betrayal of my upbringing to put myself first, or simply not something I know how to do. I've never done it before; I don't have any strategies. It feels wrong to do it. James Hollis wrote, "Adaptive loyalty to what we have received from our environment may prove an unconscious subversion of the integrity of the soul." I have some reclaiming to do.

There is also a moral injury to deal with. The moral injury of not getting emotional care from the people who should have given it has turned into a moral imperative to never do that to someone else. BTG said, "We become the moral vanguard" for others. I so many ways, I learned too early that we live in an amoral universe. People are horrible to one another. I've been trying to give everyone else what I didn't get: support, love, witness, belonging, protection. I never want to exclude anyone; never want to see someone suffering on their own if I can throw them a lifesaver. I reach out to everyone, try to include everyone, because the pain of being left out, of being forgotten or left alone to suffer is unbearable to me. This is, of course, unsustainable, the ultimate unsurfable wave. I can't be sacrificing my own life anymore; I can't keep trying to save people as a way of relating. That's not compassion; it's condescension. It feels like desperation born of fear instead of actual strength.

I'm seeing how the past comes in for all of us these days. In these waning days of Sisterhood, I am seeing how we have all brought our childhoods to the water. We are all living in "history's unmade bed," as Hollis wrote. I have been feeling so badly that I might have misconstrued the meaning of the group in the first place -- overestimating people's investment in friendship. Feeling badly that I can't seem to overcome the feeling of abandonment from my childhood when I sense the barest whisper of not being included. Feeling badly that my sense of emptiness seems to take over and I can feel nothing but fear and anxiety and grief that even the loveliest of people can't seem to stop hurting each other. I fall into a deep and heavy chasm of despair. It lasts for weeks. I've been here awhile.

Some people are unsurfable waves. They have their moment -- no wave lasts for long. Different conditions arise that make a wave unsurfable; those people fall away. Winds carry them in different directions. Awhile back, I wrote an entry called Wave Selection. In that missive, I was really concerned with finding the red and green flags of relationship, choosing the right people based on some set of characteristics -- their characteristics, not mine. I really wanted to protect myself from the pain of rejection, of unsurfable waves. In these intervening months, I've accepted that hurt is part of this life on earth. And I've figured out that maybe it's not them that need the work.

So a different kind of unsurfable wave appears initially. How do I start behaving differently? What do I do with the relationships that I have now that are no longer satisfying? Like the early days of surfing, I can't recognize a good wave to surf. I don't know what to do. The wave of depression, sadness, melancholy, the deep, dark den of loneliness sets in with this not knowing. And I can watch it happening now with a little bit of that observer presence cultivated in meditation, but it is no less painful. The shame of not being included. The disappointment of people not showing up, continually not showing up. The repeated exhausting pattern of me trying to get people to show up. And remembering how good it was and why isn't it good anymore? The confusion. Unsurfable waves of dark feeling. I just sit on the shore and watch them. The powerlessness of it all consumes me.

And I worry, finally, that I am an unsurfable wave. Somehow, people don't stay. People don't abide with me. That these relationships that were so good at one point have been lost. What was good about them was the ease, the consistency, that people just showed up, that I didn't have to worry about whether or not I was welcome or I belonged. I could just be with them. Wasn't my job to keep us together. I wasn't managing anybody else. I wasn't even managing myself. We could all just be together, a spontaneous and fully present being, and it was so lovely. It's gone now, and I don't know why. And I'm left with this feeling that... somehow... I am to blame, that I did something wrong. That I am unsurfable, that no one's willing to come with me on my journey. Or very few. So I just want to quit people. There's been a lot of sitting on shore lately. A lot of watching everything fall apart. A lot of watching other people with my same history manage to find relationships and stick with them. And I haven't managed to do that. And I don't know why. Am I the unsurfable wave?

Going deep inside these feelings and thoughts is the essence of the path. It isn't pretty. Or heroic. It's a mess. Unsurfable waves lately include my own recurring depression. I am beached on my bed watching a huge wave of darkness crash repeatedly over my head. I am powerless to stop it. My body gets heavy and cannot move out of the way. Now, though, I sink into it. I don't fight it, don't even try -- like the ocean waves, my puny body is nothing against it. Best to just go with it, get swept along, and see what happens. I'll come out of it eventually. Full acceptance of the darkness tends to make the wave pass by faster. If I can dive into it, feel it fully, practice self-compassion, and listen to the voice within it speaking to me from a place far below my ordinary awareness, then I come out of it like I do a big wave that spins me in the water: my feet find the ground automatically, my eyes sense the light, and I surface, clear the saltwater from my eyes and breathe. But there is no shortcut around this process.

Including myself in my own circle of compassion and care is the new task. I've been ignoring my own needs in favor of helping others; I've got to find a way to do both. I am someone worthy of care too. Perhaps we can't really be in true service to others without first serving ourselves. Including myself in the circle of compassion.

I have been doing all of that lately. Taking good care of myself. And that care has meant not going surfing with this group that has become so confusing to me. Listening to myself deeply; giving myself the witness I always wanted. Belonging only to myself for awhile. Only hanging out with safe people who do have caring relationships with me. That deep care has had an interesting result. After diving into my darkness, listening to and fully feeling the shame, allowing it all, anger sprang up the other day and I was grateful for it. It got me out of bed. Something deep within was recognized and aired out, and there is a clean openness where the emptiness used to be. It allows me to see things more clearly. A clean anger. I raged at my parents, raged at the group, raged at BTG. Aloud. It was good. BTG said it was the "rage of personhood" rising up to defend myself. Good clean anger. Felt like fire. Perhaps staying out of the water allowed that to finally arise.

I was never allowed to be angry; anger was punished in my house, so this is quite a thing, let me tell you. Frank Yeomans said, "We all have aggressive drives. When your own aggressive drives get hijacked by images of monsters who are unbelievably abusive then you can't experience your own aggression without thinking you yourself are a monster." Expressing anger is fraught for me. It brings power and clarity, and then a crashing 18 foot wave of guilt and shame. It has been a constant tug of war with this monster lately.

Conover wrote, "Over the subsequent decades, those of us left behind found ourselves unwittingly reenacting the loss, abandoning others as we had been abandoned, drowning through alcohol or drugs or within the bunkered dissociation of grief. All of us, child or adult, reacted to the disaster as orphans, exiling ourselves from our own suffering as well as from one another. We wanted what Keats, who lost his father at the age of 9, describes: The feel of not to feel it / When there is none to heal it." Anger is an emotion that I have not been allowed to feel. And not allowing anger was blinding me to parts of reality: I wasn't listening to myself, because I didn't see myself as real or capable. The anger is my inner knowing screaming to get my attention. If I just listen to my intuition, my embodied knowing, then the four-alarm fire of emotions can calm down. I don't need to be reactive, I just need to listen. The message is clean and clear, right there, for me to hear, when I recognize myself as the knower. See myself as real and capable. No need for anger then. Anger is an expression of the injustice of not being seen and heard. If I can do that for myself now -- see and hear myself, listen very carefully -- then the 4-alarm fire just doesn't get lit. I hear the message without the emergency.

Within Sisterhood, we are all reenacting our losses in a tragic ballet of suffering. Our karma rubbing together negatively like billiard balls on a pool table, and I'm sitting in the middle of the table getting pummeled. It's pain. My anger sent a clear message: this is bullshit. So I abandon them now as I was abandoned. Walk away from relationships that no longer serve me, are no longer mutual. See what is actually happening now, not what it once was, not what I want it to be -- what it is now. And what it is now is not great. So I get to choose to stay and work with it or go. For now, I'm choosing to leave it behind, to not subject my inner orphan to this type of suffering anymore.

Conover continues, "And then there is the inner orphaning. Many hours on a meditation cushion have spotlighted the subtler psychologies of exiling myself from myself. Before I realize what’s happening, I’m driving away some unwanted emotion that arises, or judging my memories, ideas, and actions. I realize I’m relating to myself as an enemy, an object to be fixed into some ideal notion of who I should be. It’s apt that Ajahn Sumedho, a major figure in the Thai Forest tradition, calls the thoughts and feelings that we shame into the dark corners 'orphans of consciousness.' I have many of them. So do we all." Diving into my darkness and emptiness has allowed me to see myself in a new way, but without the anger, perhaps those orphans didn't feel like it was safe to come out. Now I have this strength. Anger helps me feel solid, it comes to my own defense. I acknowledge those orphans of consciousness within me, and they are more willing to come with me now. We rise to the surface together more whole. I am finally recognizing my own agency and personhood. My invisible self made visible. I am real.

James Hollis, “When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give me what I want; only I can," then we are free to celebrate a relationship for what it can give.” But I can give myself what I need only from this place of wholeness, and I have achieved some measure of wholeness because of community. We are all built on a solid foundation of healthy community. My family of origin was a community that saw me, or didn't see me, in a particular way and I internalize some very unhealthy messages. New, healthier communities have given me a different view of my self and the world.

Last time, I wrote about being held within a beautiful community, about the untouchable Pakati who needed community to show her something new about herself. The Sisterhood was that community for me three years ago. They showed me a whole new way to be and I internalized it. Like Pakati, I have a role to play, too; autonomy and community interact, both are essential to growth. Once held in this new place of community, Pakati's work moves inward. She couldn't grow on her own, she needed a healthy community. Only within the safety of community could she find the space to pay attention to her inner life. With others seeing her humanity, she could finally see her humanity too. That beautiful version of Sisterhood has faded and I no longer see myself in that mirror.

As a fuller version of myself, the first thing I can do on my own now is to stop abandoning myself. Stop berating myself, stop the self-blame, the looking at others to solve my problems, looking to others to abandon or not abandon me. I need to stop the continued harm I'm doing to myself. Am I abandoning others as I was abandoned? Or have I found some other way to be? Instead of listing red and green flags in the behaviors of others, I look inward. I find my own sense of self, my own values, and I decide, consciously, to move forward with those who share my values. Unfortunately, I'm finding after these few years, that most of my Sisters don't share my values.

I went for a hike with surf sister Sherri the other day. She filled me in on some group events that she had experienced recently. Sherri is trying really hard to keep the group together. Her intentions are pure. She recently tried to speak with another member of the group who had separated out into that subchat in an effort to bring everyone back together. Unfortunately, that other person shared the conversation with the others in that separated part of the group and there was backlash. I wasn't involved in either conversation, so I don't know how skillfully these people approached them. I don't know what exactly was said or how statements were interpreted, whether info was shared with the relish of gossip or with the intention to repair. Sherri said another member of that separated group attacked her via text message a few days later for a comment that was made. It was ugly. This has now devolved to place of bickering, gossip, and high school cliques. I am enormously saddened by this news. This is an unsurfable wave. I'm out.

When there is so much ill feeling, and no equal partners to participate in resolution, then the wave is unsurfable. In another Tricycle article, Barry Magid wrote, "The relationship of a student with a teacher, between members of a sangha, between friends, and among community members—all help us to develop in ways we couldn’t on our own. Some aspects of ourselves don’t develop except under the right circumstances." There were right circumstances that helped me develop a whole new side to myself at the beginning of this surfing adventure in community. Now, conditions have changed. The right circumstances do not exist to practice repair here, but the right conditions for my own individuation have arrived. It is so ironic to me that the very people who helped me see myself are now those who help me see that I have been abandoning myself. Their presence gave me presence; their abandonment shows me my self-abandonment and allows me to stand in my own presence.

I woke up this morning seeing things from a broader perspective, the cupboards of our flesh holding our pasts and how we all enact them. Sherri trying to bring people together, often ignoring her own feelings in order to make a welcoming space for all no matter what they've done or how they act. Another person, perhaps sharing gossip, enjoying stirring up trouble. Yet another woman allowing her anger to vent hurtfully. I wonder how she was treated as a kid as I watch her reactions: so much hostility. I often see myself in her -- as BTG calls me sometimes, "a hurt kid." So much unconscious behavior, reenacting scripts written long ago. Imposing an old paradigm, an old set of behaviors onto a new situation blindly, turning each other into our failed parents. Perhaps this time, we hope unconsciously, it will turn out better. It never does.

My typical reaction to such a terrible situation would be to run away in shame. Somehow, it was my fault. Somehow, I should have saved it. Somehow, it could have been different if only.... Self-blame an automatic reaction, an appeal to control. I'd rather have it be my fault than to have it be out of my control, the powerlessness the driving, unbearable pain. Today, I am reacting differently. I am just seeing it. Seeing it all play out. How we all do this. The various ways it happens, the pain of our storylines intersecting in real time. How initially, the intersection was so smooth -- beautiful and joyful and loving -- and how now, the intersection is rough -- ugly and painful and resentful. How things come together and then fall apart. Conditions constantly changing. How some waves are simply unsurfable. It is an observation from a position of equanimity. Equanimity feels everything, but isn't destroyed by it. It's sitting on the shore and making a decision from a solid place -- do I participate or not?

Equanimity says: It is not my fault and not mine to fix. I am a contributor to it, a part of it, and a bystander in a hall of mirrors watching all of us not truly see each other. I am a part of it and not a part of it. How it is personal and absolutely not personal. The waves of causes and conditions in each of our individual lives rolling up on one another's, crashing into one another awkwardly, sometimes canceling each other out.

I am unsurfable to some people. And for the first time, I'm really ok with that. I also realize that some people are unsurfable to me. Hollis again, "The paradox of individuation is that we best serve intimate relationship by becoming sufficiently developed in ourselves that we do not need to feed off others.” And then, “To become a person does not necessarily mean to be well adjusted, well adapted, approved of by others. It means to become who you are. We are meant to become more eccentric, more peculiar, more odd. We are not meant just to fit in. We are here to be different. We are here to be the individual.”

As Sarah Conover wrote, "Dharma practice is not an escape: It’s an intimate meeting with the discomfort and suffering of the first noble truth. Life contains suffering." This situation has allowed me to see my own suffering with a clarity I've never had before, and see the suffering of others as well. How we're all trying to cope with the causes and conditions of our lives in community, while controlling very little of it. I am merely one surfer on one wave; I can control very little, and only things within my own self. Maybe I control only my own awareness and how it can help me behave differently, more graciously, less defensively. And there is a whole ocean of waves out there. Sometimes conditions just get rough.

Roshi Joan Halifax wrote of the enactment approach to reality, "This perspective suggests that we do not simply receive information from a world already waiting for us, nor do we merely construct private mental models of reality. Rather, we participate in the continual bringing forth of a world through our embodied activity. Meaning does not exist independently of us, waiting to be discovered. Meaning emerges through relationship—through perception, action, feeling, attention, and engagement with others and with the living world."

We can not know ourselves and our world in isolation. Just like in the ocean, a wave emerges from a complex interplay of conditions: winds, storms, swells, reef, beach. "From this perspective, cognition is not something that occurs solely inside the head. Mind is not confined to the brain. Knowing arises through the intimate interplay of body, mind, environment, and culture. We are constantly shaping and being shaped by the worlds we inhabit. In this sense, perception itself is participatory." We are enacting our complex histories within a context. Our interacting histories gave birth to the context in which we grew up, and then we give birth to new contexts with every breath in collaboration with all of the others in our midst. Each piece of the puzzle, an individual born of many causes, interacts with every other individual, also born of many causes, to create an intricate net of conditions. Some of those conditions are more surfable than others depending on the surfer. What kind of world do I want to co-create?

First, I feel more solid in myself. The surf girls were among the first people in my life to really see me as a human being, so I could see myself as a human being. Mother Ocean helped me feel into my body, helped me feel real. BTG and Surf Sensei provided constant support and curiosity about my inner world, so I got to know my inner world and that it was worthy of curiosity. All of these people pouring into me, I finally feel that emptiness within me diminish. I am more solid. My spine stronger. I want to do that for others. I want to serve the world in this way -- with as much presence, as much loving awareness and witness as I can.

Second, I'm carrying with me a new set of values. I value a deeper friendship. Society may tell us that many followers are the key to happiness, but I'm looking for a smaller circle drenched and dripping with deep engagement. I'm agreeing with my body here: me and my body, we feel comfortable when we know we can trust people. When there is mutual investment and interest. When people show up, with their bodies, consistently, joyfully, over time. When a loving presence is there, full of kindness, compassion, and curiosity about our lives. An ability to be with and ask about what's important. To sit with feelings -- all of them. I give this to others all the time. More shallow relationships are not satisfying to me, so I will spend my time and energy with those who match my values. I will always offer this kind of relationship. Now, I will pay better attention to who can give it back. If someone can't, then that's ok. It's not rejection; just not a good fit. Pablo Neruda wrote, "Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us."

This is an affirmative decision, empowered. I'm not running away anymore. It's confusing a little: I'm making the same decision (to walk away, to leave this group) as I've done before, but the reasons and the feeling within me are quite different. It's ok to sit this one out. To go back into an exile of my choosing. I've had a huge experience with these women -- a massive expansion, so much growth. Now I go into a period of contraction to process and heal some more, await what comes next. The Sisterhood taught me so much by arriving into my life, and the lessons are even larger as they depart.

Hermann Hesse said, "Your soul has fallen to bits and pieces. Good. Rearrange them to suit yourself." This is great -- yes. This is today's project, but it is not the end. Suiting myself is not the end goal. Serving others from a position of equanimity is the end goal. When I am more solid and secure, I can reach out and encompass more. I might be sitting on the beach for awhile, observing the conditions, but I'll be back in the water soon. We don't heal for ourselves only, but so we can better serve the world. I have vows to keep, my friends. Vows to keep.