I (Brian Basham) am hosting another Emotional Surfing cohort.
I’m looking for 12-14 people to join a ten week cohort, meeting weekly on Thursday evenings in the East Bay, from March 5th to May 28th.
In one short phrase: Waking up and cleaning up in community.
WAKING UP
To me, waking up means living from an expanded sense of awareness. Having an ongoing awareness of the sensations of my body and how I’m reacting to them. Awareness of my surroundings, awareness of how my attention is being pulled in different directions, awareness of what implicit beliefs I’m bringing into a situation and the stories I’m telling about them.
Some other words you might use could be: awareness, presence, self energy, flow, spontaneity, freedom, lucidity, spaciousness, connection to spirit, sacredness. Waking up is learning to live more and more from that (whatever you call it) on an ongoing basis, in more and more situations.
CLEANING UP
We all have emotional baggage and old familiar habits of thinking and feeling. We can call it trauma, karma, limiting beliefs, relational wounding, resisted emotions, triggers, however we want to relate to it. These can be almost always-on patterns or can be evoked by particular situations. In either case, our reaction to this material is what takes us out of presence.
Cleaning up is about working with specific thought patterns and triggers, so that they lose their magnetic pull that takes us out of presence.
COMMUNITY
Our woundings and patternings are developed in relationship, by getting feedback from those around us (at first our parents) about which ways of being are OK and which are not OK.
These patterns are most easily seen and unwound in relationship as well.
In addition, it’s much easier to develop new habits and see your own blind spots in a community, with a supportive structure of others around us on the same path.
In early buddhist scriptures, Ananda had this realization about the importance of friendship on the spiritual path that he shared with the Buddha:
“Venerable sir, this is half of the holy life – that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship”
The Buddha responded: “Not so Ananda! This is the entire holy life, Ananda – that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.”
The Buddha knew what was up. The path is better with friends.
Emotional Surfing