Essential Lessons for Lasting Serenity
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Acceptance
Chapter 2: Take the Elevator Downstairs
Chapter 3: Surf the Waves
Chapter 4: You Can’t Do It Wrong
Chapter 5: Simple, but not Easy
Chapter 6: Befriend your Nemesis
Chapter 7: Mental Aikido
Chapter 8: The Compulsion Cure
Chapter 9: The Order of Things
Chapter 10: Stress Test
Chapter 11: Fairy Matching
Chapter 12: The Right People
Chapter 13: Stumbling Blocks
Chapter 14: Curioser and Curioser
Chapter 15: Name That Attunement
Chapter 16: Sexpression
Chapter 17: Cockroach Wisdom
Chapter 18: Volcano Time
Introduction
For me, serenity was never particularly appealing. Peace of mind seemed, well, boring. I wanted to grab life by the horns. I wanted to leap with joy and wail with grief. I wanted to fight the good fight. I wanted, in the words of Dylan Thomas, to “rage against the dying of the light.”
At the same time, I always sensed something missing in my approach. I wondered if it was possible to experience peace of mind and outrageous passion. I read ancient sages who counseled combining complete involvement with total detachment. Their ideas spoke to me, but I had no clue how to put them into practice.
Okay, that’s not exactly true. Early on I realized that a life both exciting and peaceful could only come from looking within. I explored therapy, meditation, and an eclectic blend of healing techniques. Still, my inner world remained stormy. Anything but serene.
Then I discovered surfing. Not the kind with a board on the ocean, but not that different either. I learned how to surf my emotions, how to ride their wild waves instead of girding against them or getting sucked under. With this new skill came a new kind of serenity, as bracing as it was soothing.
Once I knew how to surf my inner sea, I could then find peace anywhere, anytime, no matter what was happening within or around me. I grew more powerful and successful while expending lesseffort. I remained balanced, clear, even while buffeted from one challenge to the next. Amid those very challenges, I also found a way to free my mind, to silence its endless tirades and channel its creative energy.
Not surprisingly, I set out to share my good fortune. I wrote four books. I traveled the world giving lectures and leading workshops. Wherever I went, people always asked, “Which of your books is the best place to start? Is there one that distills the essence of you and your message?
Till now, there wasn’t. That’s why I wrote Surfing Your Inner Sea, and why I’m so delighted you’ve chosen to read it. I view the book as a conversation, a chance for us to sit with one another as if by a warm fire, to feel safe enough that our deepest truths can surface.
I hope the time we spend together will stir you up, fill you with questions, and increase your sense of what’s possible. I hope this vibrant vision of serenity is enticing enough for you to experiment with right away.
In my heart, I view that as already happening. I see you thriving at all times, in both calm and blustery waters. I see you uplifted by all tides, flowing with them wherever they lead. I see you, at this moment and ever more, calling forth the greatest possible future through your oneness with whatever comes.
Chaper 11 – Fairy Matching
The Japanese are wizards at serenity. Think of the tea ceremony and Zen rock gardens. What these placid products of Japan have in common is a high degree of order. Every element fits in its perfect place, and doing so harmonizes with every other element. There’s lots of space, too. The sips of tea come with such deliberateness that each moment of repose, before and after, feels as important as the activity itself. The rake creates its graceful sand patterns as if following invisible, previously etched grooves.
All this serenity is critical for the Japanese because the rest of their society is so frenetic. They live crammed together on teeming islands. Their cities overwhelm the senses with a neon-drenched cacophony. You might say that the meditative aspects of Japan are an attempt to bring balance to a lifestyle that would otherwise be totally out of balance. And this begs the question—what would a lifestyle look like that was serene by its very nature?
In contrast to Japan’s extremes, consider the long, steady life of a redwood tree. A redwood can live for over 2,000 years and grow almost 400 feet tall. With leaves high above the forest floor, it’s relatively impervious to the otherwise deadly ravages of insects, fire, and flood. It just grows and grows, serenely, a little at a time over a long stretch of time.
Yet, a redwood tree is profoundly limited in its adaptive capacity. It can only live on one small stretch of earth. It can only produce one type of leaf and grow in only one direction. If its environment becomes inhospitable, a redwood is literally stuck in the mud, unable to pick up and travel to friendlier surroundings. Therefore, while inspiring to behold, this mighty tree doesn’t offer us much instruction for serene survival amid today’s fast, furious, unprecedented change.
But my niece Beatrix does. Beatrix is about to turn seven, and she’s an ace at the card game Concentration. She doesn’t play with the usual deck. Instead, she uses one that features pairs of fairies. There are flower fairies, midnight fairies, river fairies—twenty duos in all. Beatrix calls this game Fairy Matching, and she beats me at it every time.
With uncanny accuracy, Beatrix keeps track of which fairy goes with which. She doesn’t just remember but also intuits. You may think I’m deluded by pride but I swear it’s true: I’ve seen Beatrix successfully select four sets of fairies in a row without ever having seen them turned over beforehand.
How does she do it? I’m not sure. But clearly, she has an uncanny knack for knowing what belongs together, and also when. She doesn’t just turn on this supra-rational skill haphazardly. She saves it for those rare moments when I seem to be mounting a challenge, when I might for once actually win.
Now what can Beatrix’s fairy matching teach us about serenity? The same thing, more or less, that was taught by Ecclesiastes. “There is a time for every purpose under heaven.” Remember, in the last chapter, when I suggested that in each moment there’s only one thing you need to do? I described how understanding this principle allows you to heed each moment’s call. What I didn’t yet describe is exactly how the call comes. Most of the time, it’s through energy.
Energy, the kind of subtle, intuitive flow I’m referring to, is a controversial subject prone to lots of grandiose claims and confusion. Yet every one of us has a “sixth sense” and has felt it countless times. Whether we heeded it is another matter. Beatrix heeds her sixth sense continuously because she hasn’t yet been talked out of it.
Heeding your own sixth sense in relation to the call of the moment means recognizing whatever energy is present. While there are endless types of energy, most of us encounter just a handful each day. There’s to-do list energy, for instance, when suddenly you notice an increased ability to “take care of business.” There’s also communication energy, when suddenly it’s right to talk things over. In addition there’s contemplation energy, playful energy, and even house cleaning energy.
When we align ourselves with the energy of the moment, our capacity to thrive increases by leaps and bounds. When we disregard that energy, and try to accomplish something out of synch, it becomes as difficult as it is unpleasant.
I bet you already know this. Haven’t you forced yourself to clean house at least once when housecleaning energy was nowhere to be found? The chores were grueling and seemingly endless, right? But how about when you cleaned house with recognition that Now is the time to clean! Didn’t everything go quickly and smoothly, as if the wind were at your back?
Every once in a while, the demands of everyday life make it impossible to match our actions with the energies we perceive. Our kids suddenly need us when it’s time to relax, for example. Or, we get a clear message to nurture ourselves right before a big work deadline. At those times, tuning in, we realize that the wind can’tbe at our sails, and that resisting that truth would only amount to misreading the entirety of the moment.
More often, though, we don’t actually have to misalign with the energy that’s present but do so anyway because it doesn’t fit our plans. We try to impose our will on the moment, in spite of our sixth sense, due to plain old stubbornness. We want what we want when we want it. And the cost of that stubbornness is—by now it should be obvious—our serenity.
Every moment, fortunately, provides a new opportunity to get that serenity back. The fastest, most efficient way is to tune in, and then match that moment’s specific purpose under heaven. Once you do, it’s not just wind that appears at your back. Sometimes it’s also fairies.