Gabriola Island

January 2025

I park my car by the Malaspina Galleries trailhead. Tucked between two active construction projects, it is easy to miss. The small signpost which marks its existence blends in with the surrounding signage, and for a second I imagine what it would be like to build a home right on the edge of something so precious. The trail is closed in by hedges on either side before it opens up to grassy bluff, covered in dizzyingly beautiful geometric patterns formed by thousands of tafoni, and surrounded by Arbutus trees and Garry Oaks - a classic Gulf Island view. The first thing I hear when I get out of the car is a loud honk I can’t immediately identify. As I start walking down the trail, the honking becomes louder and more frequent. It sounds like dozens of seagulls with indigestion screaming at once. It’s LOUD. It’s not seagulls. I pick up the pace and shuffle to the end of the trail as fast as I can, making half-assed attempts at taking in all the beauty rushing past me. By the time I get to the bluff, the cacophony has drowned out the mechanical whirring of the incoming ferry and the dozens of other small boats heading up the Strait of Georgia. The perpetrators, however, seem totally unfazed by the explosive chaos they’ve produced. In fact, once I spot them, it seems impossible that all that noise is coming from them. They are perched at the very end of the bluff, perfectly still, the folds of their globulous bodies shining in the sun. Their noses face the sky and their eyes are closed: the universal vision of utter, boundless, bliss. These blobby friends are gathered here today due to an unusually early herring run. I feel lucky I got to witness this apparently rare sight, the very first day after buying a fancy new camera lens. Glorious ocean slugs. 

I settle in for the show and try to take a mental picture of all the different ways my senses are being stimulated - the smell of saltwater; the sounds of the sealions, the boats, the waves; the coolness of the rock beneath my bum and the heat of the sun on my face. I am so deeply content. I bathe in that contentness for a while, but it’s not long before I’m dragged out of the moment and deep into my own mind. What seems to be an innocuous thought at first quickly takes over, and: whumpf - before I even recognize that it’s happening, I’m tangled in a complex web of papancha that I’ve been weaving for nearly a year now. For the next two days, this is all I am fixated on. I’m writing this on day four of my Gabriola trip, and there has been some resolution. But it was a long road, and I don’t know how to condense it all. A helpful starting point might be to look a little more closely at how I experienced the depths of papancha, while walking through a forest of ancient coastal cedars.

This trip came right after I completed the Boundless Heart retreat H sent me. It was helpful in so many different ways, but one way that is perhaps most relevant for now is that it helped me understand what it feels like to open my heart. I have become much more attuned to the moments my heart contracts - usually in response to an uncomfortable thought or sensation. When I notice it happening, focusing my attention towards opening my heart through that moment helps that discomfort dissipate. It’s been helpful during moments when I feel fearful. I notice the contraction, focus on opening the heart around it instead, and can feel that discomfort dissipate and give way to love. Sometimes it feels like I’m pushing or piercing through the discomfort. Sometimes it feels like I’m tuning into a particular frequency; I am able to see the love already present in the moment, in the texture or energy of the moment, and tune into that. However it happens, it brings with it a feeling of steady strength and confidence, supported by a foundation of love (sometimes deep, sometimes breezy, sometimes playful, always gentle). That creating of space around a thought or sensation seems to give way to a broadening of the view - in fact, I’m not sure they can be separated from one another. I’m not sure I can broaden my view without also opening the heart, without melting the fear, without creating space for other views. When the heart is open, when there is space, the suffering loses its heaviness. “Suffering ripens in a contracted mind-state.” (Think that’s an exact quote from the Loving Kindness retreat, possibly the Bodhisattva talk, but need to check - it was something along those lines anyway.)

All that to say: I love forests, and yet they can make you feel closed in. They are dank. Moldy. RIPE. Or perhaps I experienced it that way because I was Ready to Ruminate (truly my version of R&R..). And oh man did I ruminate. I got so tangled. My mind went around in circles as I ambled over gnarled and knotted roots. Sometimes, I’d hear woodpeckers, hammering the same point of a tree tunk over and over and over. Ravens watched over the forest, warding off outsiders with those unique crackling calls. Forests can feel insular, like a pressure cooker for your thoughts.

As I walked through the forest, though, I started seeing that at the root of this ruminating was deep attachment to a certain interpretation of the situation; a certain way of looking. After a bit of sifting, I was able to identify a few nuggets of fabrication I am finding particularly difficult to let go of. I tried to parse that attachment; lift it up to the light and examine it. That can be helpful up to a point, after which it just breeds further entanglement. The big breakthrough was the realization that I could not bring myself to see the emptiness of the attachment. I could not see the ruminating as papancha. It all felt, in the moment, like important discernment was taking place. That letting go was akin to suppressing. That ruminating was akin to resolving. That if I just thought about it enough, I would figure out the most ethical, authentic and painless solution to The (very real, very unfabricated) Problem. That unwillingness to see emptiness is due to attachment, and understanding what sustains the attachment is helpful. Directing loving kindness towards the attachment is helpful. However, what is really needed is a profound grasping of the emptiness of all things - because how can I truly experience the emptiness of one thing, while still believing in the inherent existence of others?

A few days before this trip, I spent a sleepless night on the wooden floor of our study, sobbing as I let all my thoughts and feelings about ‘the thing’ spring up like mushrooms. Guilt, uncertainty, insecurity, self-loathing. As I watched each of them pop up, I started noticing a little bit of resistance towards these restrictive viewpoints. It’s understandable I feel guilty - but aren’t my actions, and the thought and consideration I am giving to the situation, not suggestive of a more complex picture? Maybe the thing is real, but does it undermine or take away from the beauty and depth of the other relationships in my life? Am I the thoughts? If so, which thoughts are ‘me’, and which aren’t? How can I identify with two separate contradictory thoughts simultaneously?

And so, the view widens, the heart softens, and the self dissolves.

And then, days later, the view shrinks again - the vignetting so subtle that I forget that the view is restricted in the first place.

There are so many lessons in all of this, but the truest lesson might be that each and every single one of them is empty, and ready to be let go of. Why do I cling?

I am no longer on that study floor, and that dank forest walk was followed by watching the sunset on an expansive and sandy beach. And so the cycle goes: I contract and open; cling and let go. Each time, that particular mind-state feels like the true one; the most authentic expression of my inner self. It is in seeing that fabrication, that liberation comes.