The Art of the Clean Waveform

As a surfer, I appreciate and celebrate anything that incorporates our Mother Ocean as a metaphor ...

From Paloma Vita at Momentum Magazine:

Next time the weather is nice enough to fully enjoy a good bike ride, do yourself a favour and ponder the following: not only is riding a bicycle a wonderful pollution-free way to get around, it can also be made into a nifty spiritual metaphor. Let me explain: clearly visualize yourself booting down the road all while leaving not a single trace of nastiness behind you… what you get is a perfect analogy for being a clean waveform.

The concept of being a clean waveform is something I picked up in a book I read a couple of years ago, Surfers of the Zuvuya by José Argüelles of Dreamspell Mayan Calendar fame. As a matter of fact, that was the best part of the book – which is written in a semi-fictional style that did not quite appeal to me. Here is how it goes:

As we move through life and travel around our little corner of the spacetime continuum, we often create what Argüelles calls “psychic lint;” an energetic residue composed of negative imprints such as our self-doubts, stale judgements – toward ourselves and others – and/or neurotic attachments to painful or traumatic past events, to name a few. All these less-than-happy emotions and thoughts end up creating a swirl of linty debris that brings us out of sync with our present moment in our incarnation by creating drag in spacetime. This often leads to unhappiness, feelings of futility, and/or states of “dis-ease(s).” Imagine having innumerable strands of hefty lint hanging from you and your bike as you ride around; dodging cars, dogs, and pedestrians. Right!

But do not despair! Argüelles also offers a simple and effective analogy to help us become cleaner waveforms. Take a quartz crystal, he advises; often, it is its flaws that make it so beautiful. The layers, fissures, and textures revealed therein are what make it interesting; otherwise it would look like a modest piece of glass. When we place such crystals in sunlight, it is also those very flaws that refract rainbows at us and fill us with an irrepressible joy. Well, argues Argüelles, the same can be said for us. Once we expose our “flaws” to the “sunlight” of our acceptance, they too refract the light of our soul and become a source of rainbows. This also implies that our so-called flaws are what gives us substance and texture. This analogy does go a long way in showing us how to eliminate the psychic lint we drag around as we travel on our timeline. Just accept yourself.

Taking it further ... imagine all that day-to-day nastiness as little fuzzies and stringies on your riding or running gear; a stray thread here, a little grey "pill" there, inexplicable schmutz. After a few miles, concentrating on your task, your goal for the day, you've shaken them off. They've dropped by the wayside, and you didn't even notice where or when. The burden was so slight, that the lessening was inconsequential - and far from dramatic.

I run first thing in the morning, so I don't have the daily build-up of stress to deal with like my "post-work work-out" friends do ... but don't think that I don't carry the stresses of Monday overnight into Tuesday morning. Sure, I may not feel them - they may not always manifest themselves as a sleepless night - but they're there, and need to be dealt with. Even if I don't know it.

My morning run clears off whatever bad vibes haven't been resolved from sleepytime or dreaminess and gives me something fresh to start with.

A Karmic lint brush.