EMOTIONAL SURFING
How has your emotional surfboard been bearing up this past year? Is it bearing you adequately? The waters have been fairly choppy. And the waves a lot bigger than any of us could have expected….
The direction of this surfer’s gaze appears fixed on the portal through the centre of the wave. Through the tumbling waters that, despite dramatic appearances, offer her the ability to surf only because of their powerful currents. And, just like electric current, the bulb cannot illuminate without it.
The surf board we all get in life was never designed to fulfil its function on dry land. In order to know what it can do - what we can do - we have to take to the water and learn to balance ourselves upon it. To be prepared to get wet, and be okay with getting wet, before getting back on in order to recognise the beauty, power, and our potential, in the next wave.
As I discussed in the chapter ‘The Difference Between Emotions and Feelings’ in my book, ‘Wake Up - What Are Your Emotions Really Telling You?’, the word emotion comes from the old French word ‘emouvoir’ meaning to excite, to stir up, to move. I therefore like to view the word emotion as energy-in-motion. If we keep our surfboard safely on dry land we never get to witness its true abilities to support us. Without being stirred up by the waves, our own energy remains dormant, unlit, unknown.
The problem is that our ego doesn’t want us to get wet. It wants the waves to stop. For the sea to remain like a still, predictable millpond so we can merely float as oppose to surf. But without the current of moving waters, we are not driven forward. We have no chance to test our spiritual muscle as we do our best to stay balanced on our boards. Only then can we channel the current to illuminate our inner light. Surrendering to the existential reality that we cannot stop the waves, but we can learn how to surf.
I don’t know about you but occasionally I doubt the buoyancy power of my own surfboard. I compare mine with others and wonder why those others appear to be able to stay upright more often than I can!
At times like these I want to trade in my board for another model. When my ego wins the day it convinces me that I’ve just not got enough balancing power to ride the emotional waves that come my way. I even get tempted to want to ask someone for surfing lessons, so that I don’t have to rely on the supporting potential of my own spiritual muscle. But without the work out, without the stirring, I never get to trust my own navigational skills through the portal of opportunity which always opens up in every wave. And without the wave there is no portal….
In the third chapter of my book ‘Judging How We Feel’ I refer to how we can identify so strongly with our emotions that we believe that we are them. If we tripped up over our words reading aloud to our classmates in school, the embarrassment we felt can, over time, lead us to assume that our very essence is inadequate and shameful. If we are worried about a close friend who is ill, we may identify so strongly with the worried feeling that we too become unwell. When the waters of the emotional waves wet us, we come to believe that we are our saturated clothes. And not the wearer of them. No wave is either good or bad. They are merely waves of experiences, given meaning through our unique reactions to them.
Whether we employ our ego muscle, which wants to repel the tide in ‘King Canute’ style, or our spiritual muscle which accepts that the waves are part of the flow of LIFE, the ultimate reality is that we are Living In Flowing Existence. And that our surfboard is the one that we ordered before we got to go swimming. The one perfectly matched to us. Have you made friends with yours yet?
If we attempt to be our own King Canute, and try to stop the sea from moving the sand beneath us, the waves become our enemies. That which is intended to wash and renew becomes only a source of drowning. What is meant merely to move, to stir, to inspire us into being creative; into developing a spiritual sense of balance and acceptance, moves us into a defensive, fearful state. A state which tells us that we need the water to become predictable, manipulable and consequently stagnant and lifeless, in order to feel ‘safe’.
“When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water because, if you do, you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” Alan Watts - English philosopher, speaker and Zen theologist.
Experience doesn’t happen to us. It happens for us. It is meant to stretch us. To move us to the unexplored corners of our potential. If we can allow it to flow through us it can do its job of reminding us that we, and life, are in a constant state of flux, of growth, of movement. It is only when we attach unhelpful stories to that experience which we then use to deprecate ourselves; to run an inner conversation that is not kind and that we would not dream of holding with someone we cared about; to cast doubt on the vehicular surfboard we were teamed up with to take on the flow of life, that we block the waves from their purpose of informing but not defining. Of shaping but not overwhelming. Of wetting but not drowning.
When we remember that we were designed to be channels of experience, of the universal flow, our emotions show us what parts of our selves we need to work on. To accept. To honour. To love. To question where and why we have difficulty in validating ourselves, when ego insists that it is not getting the validation that it needs to sustain itself from others.
Perhaps that is the whole point of this energy-in-motion planet that we have contracted to come down to have a ride on. To bravely take to our surfboards and know that they were specifically designed for us to see the beauty in all of the waves. For they are all run by the same current. And they all get one chance to uniquely express themselves before returning to the same vast ocean of energy….
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