Surfacing: Ascending our Inner Being for Mind Renewal

Out on the west coast of Portugal, in the tiny coastal town of Nazaré, Earth has conjured the largest, wildest waves in the world. Surfing paradise for the adrenaline junkies, poetic magic for the nature lovers, and, if you’re me, a form of moving meditation.

Leviathan walls of water rise with elegant grace, crash like thunder, and sprinkle the wind with shining spray like a salt-sprinkled blizzard of sea-snow.

These waves don’t appear by accident. Behind them all, hidden in the ocean’s depths, is Nazaré Canyon: an undersea trench that plummets almost 5,000 meters below the surface. There, in that dark, silent pressure, currents are drawn and energy gathers until the ocean literally has no choice but to rise.

The rising is not a mistake—it’s not a fluke, a random outburst of force. It’s the surface expression of something much deeper, vast, and powerful, moving invisibly beneath.

This, my friends, is what our lives are like too.

If we only live at the surface, we only see the tip of the iceberg. We skim across the water, dodging and splashing as we try to keep our heads above the endless sea of to-do lists, emails, meetings, social media, and digital dopamine hits.

But if we stop, even for a minute, take a breath, stretch our legs, and step outside, we start to notice something else. A gentle pull, an invisible tug from below that we can almost feel in our bones.

Active Zen: The Practice of Surfing the Mind

Mindful motion, wild awareness, and yogic movement are not methods of running away. They are ropes we can grab to dive inward and descend toward the quiet work happening way beneath the surface.

The more we explore these practices, the more we realize that what surfaces up—that feeling of joy, insight, and mind renewal—was never random, accidental, or separate from us. It was, and is, being formed all the time in the silent depths of our invisible canyon.

This is what I call Active Zen Living. Living awake, present, and fully alive, even while still in motion.

The Invisible Art Project

In the great oceans of our mind, there is an engine. A mechanism so beautiful and complex that if you took all your precious “smart” devices and threw them in the bin, you still could not come close to replicating it.

This engine gathers the chaos of our experiences—the pressure of our struggles, the sparks of our inspiration, the crackling charge of our questions, the heat of our emotions, the shimmer of our fascinations—and combines them.

Slowly, invisibly, it starts to move the waters in the inner world. First, just the smallest pressure, barely a sensation in the depths.

This, I propose, is the art project our inner being is constantly working on: a silent piece no one sees until it hits the surface, rising and breaking into stunning revelation and mind renewal.

As Lao Tzu reminds us,

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“Be still like a mountain, and flow like a great river.”

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This is the swell of active Zen: the inside being shaped in silence, in stillness, waiting to come to the surface at the perfect time.

The Hidden Code: Surfing

If you have ever seen a surfer take to the waves—really watch them, and not just as passive onlookers, but with the breathless fascination of someone who has also fallen in love with that graceful power—you know the sacredness and beauty of being in the flow.

The great surfers don’t conquer the waves. They yield to them. They know to trust the energy beneath because it will move in their favor, if only they can relax and flow.

It’s like magic.

It's that moment of complete flow when we’re finally moving in sync with our inner energy; we can surf anything. It’s the same feeling we find on a long trail climb when the rhythm clicks and breath, earth, and motion merge into one pulse.

We move through switchbacks like currents, over roots and rocks like rolling waves, our feet tracing the wild terrain the way water traces the shore. In those moments, the trail becomes our ocean and the forest our surf — we are both the rider and the tide, flowing in wild harmony with the world itself.

Rising Softly

Before a wave begins to breakthrough, there is a silent teacher: softness. The gentleness that is water. The wild power of being quiet, and yielding, and so, so patient.

One of the most fundamental things the ancient Yogis understood is that water moves differently than rocks, and the human being moves differently than a tree.

We’re soft. And like the highest peaks and most magnificent swells are formed, that softness can become power. Not muscle-bound, muscle-flexing, striving-to-be-forceful power. But the wild grace of water. That’s what the power of the deep is made of.

So watch, breathe, sit with, and explore this in your own life. Start surfing the swells that rise from the inner canyon, and let them take you where they need to.

The Rest is Surfing

When we finally let our inner being rise, without control, without forcing, without overdoing, something miraculous happens: the right things find their way to the surface at the perfect time.

So don’t spend another day splashing about at the surface, frantically trying to make things appear the way they are supposed to.

Trust that the work is happening, that the inner artist is at it, that your inner being is surfacing slowly, steadily. For every period of pause is a period of potential. A surge of momentum waiting to happen. A swell of being ready to be born.

Once the time is right, that swell will rise, without you having to do a single thing.

Let’s make sure we’re ready to ride it.

Cheers!

Kether

Spunky Mind

“The whole moon and the

entire sky are reflected in one

dewdrop on the grass.”

— Dōgen Zenji

Spunky Mind Field Notes—

Surfacing our Inner Waves

Nature Insight—The waves at Nazaré don’t rise by accident. They gather their power in silence, deep in the unseen canyon below. We’re like that too—so much of our strength builds quietly under the surface until one day it rises, full and ready, without us forcing a thing.

Trail Wisdom—When we stop splashing at the surface and let ourselves soften, we start feeling the deeper currents moving us. Our inner canyon knows when to rise. When we trust that timing—when we glide instead of grind—life lines up like a perfect set rolling in.

Pockets of Nature Practice

• Step outside and notice something moving softly—wind, cloud, leaf, water ripple.

• Let your breath follow that gentleness for a few moments.

• Feel where your body is tight and imagine it softening like water rounding a rock.

• Think of one inner swell rising quietly in your own life.

• Let yourself trust its timing, even if you can’t see it yet.

  
  

Field Note Prompt—Where in your life are you trying to splash at the surface, and where could you trust the deeper swell that’s already building inside you?

Spunky Mind Field Notes: Surfacing

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