​​​​​​THE WAVES
MEDITATING WITH VIRGINIA WOOLF
A 10-Week Summer Reading & Meditation Course
led by Lindsay Sanwald, MDiv
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MAY 27th - JULY 29th
Tuesday Evenings 7:30-9pm ET on Zoom
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Weekly Kriya Meditation Labs (recorded)
Wednesday Mornings at 9:30 ET on Zoom
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“I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy - to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order.”
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This course, open to all, is one part Summer Book Club and one part Kriya Meditation Initiation.
Over the daydreamy summer months we will carefully chart our way across the sensual and philosophical introspection of Virginia Woolf’s wondrous masterpiece of a novel, The Waves.
Alongside our literal reading practice (~30-45 pages/week) we will also endeavor to train ourselves how to regularly sit in our own endless interior musings (~30-45 minutes of guided meditation/week).
It is not always easy to catch Woolf’s ecstatic waves on the page… To reap the wonderful rewards of her luminous writing, the reader must first learn how to sit rapt and surrender to the constant flow of thoughts (citta vritti - waves of consciousness). Those willing to hold posture with her poetry for a sustained period of guided time will inevitably learn the art of meditation.
TOPICS WE WILL LIKELY TOUCH UPON
Absorption, samadhi, surfing, Yogic philosophy, becoming the seer, utter simplicity, being and non-being, the Buddhist concept of bhavanga-citta, the Bardo, liminal states, thresholds, transparency, consciousness, collectives, creativity, death, writing, memory, childhood, friendship, the ecstasy and exhaustion of being alive, literary reincarnation, the eternal sunrise…
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“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
“But when we sit together, close… we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.”
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CLASS RITUALS
TUESDAY SATSANG
Our intimate group will meet every Tuesday evening from 7:30-9pm EST in the monastery of Zoom for ten consecutive weeks. In this regular refuge called satsang (a gathering for devotional instruction) we will discuss our reading of the text and practice basic Kriya meditation techniques (asana, pranayama, visualization, mantra).
KRIYA MEDITATION LAB
Additionally, students are invited to attend a weekly Kriya Meditation Lab to practice a fuller exploration of yogic concentration, either in real time on Zoom (Wednesday mornings at 9:30am ET) or on their own time via a recording.
FULL MOON SUNRISE SURF FIELD TRIP
Our course will conclude with a field trip to Rockaway Beach NYC to watch the 6am sunrise on the sand and maybe catch some waves before sharing breakfast together. Exact details TBD.
TEXT
Ahead of class, I ask that all students secure a physical tree-page copy of The Waves by Virginia Woolf (i’m reading this one, but any edition will do), plus a personal journal to practice daily Morning Pages.
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INVESTMENT​​
Make and honor a three-month commitment to practice reading and meditation
(charged end of May, June, July)
$88/month
for disciplines of divinity alums, current/former students, clients, and patrons
$108/month
for new students
FULL PROGRAM
$444/month
*includes weekly 1-on-1 dharma talks and private meditation instruction*
*limited to six students*
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($49 to drop in on a single class)
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Commit to the Voyage Out!
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CLASS & READING SCHEDULE
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WEEK 1- Tuesday 5/27
Introduction & Class Intentions
BEFORE CLASS: SECURE TEXT
EXTRA MERIT READING:
EXCERPTS FROM MOMENTS OF BEING (10p) + “PSYCHEDELIC YOGI POETS” ESSAY
WEEK 2 - Tuesday 6/3
The sun had not yet risen (7-28)
WEEK 3 - Tuesday 6/10
The sun rose higher (29-72)
WEEK 4 - Tuesday 6/17
The sun rose (73-108)
WEEK 5 - Tuesday 6/24
The sun, risen (108-147)
WEEK 6 - Tuesday 7/1
The sun had risen to its full height (148-164)
WEEK 7 - Tuesday 7/8
The sun no longer stood in the middle of the sky (165-181)
WEEK 8 - Tuesday 7/15
The sun had now sunk lower in the sky (182-206)
WEEK 9 - Tuesday 7/22
The sun was sinking (207-235)
WEEK 10 - Tuesday 7/29
Now the sun had sunk (236-297)
SUNRISE SURF FIELD TRIP
Saturday 8/9 (Full Moon in Aquarius)
Exact Details TBD​​​​​​
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Virginia Woolf described The Waves as a beginning, not a culmination—yet it is both. It is a book of genesis told through a collective collaboration of creative consciousness. In its pages, six yogi poets write an exquisite corpse poem on the psychedelic experience of being alive.
I call them yogis because their inner voices do the work of contemplative meditation: the watching of spontaneous thoughts come and go while wrestling with the present.
Meditation is a practice that seeks relief from the suffering caused by desire, aversion, and being separated from one’s true nature. Yoga is the state of communion in which one is reunited with the divine self.
The Sanskrit word is derived from the root yuj—to join together. As these six minds meditate in unison—in yoga—their collaborative poetry dissolves the ego, expands consciousness, heightens the senses, bends times, and blurs the shoreline of the soul—all features of the psychedelic experience.
Woolf wants us to recognize the altered states—the divine states—the diverse and divergent creative states that make up life, reading, and writing. She instructs us to witness the mystical power of what is said in silence to one’s own shadow.
What do we privately observe? Clocks and doors and suns and shores… The telling of time. Waves, threads, phrases… an ongoing story—inherited and resurrected—to be passed like a baton in a relay race that never ends.
It is the writer and the reader who do the work of reincarnation. Theirs is the study of the liminal space—the eternal recycling of voices crossing back and forth between being and non-being, hallucinated on a page.
In exploring the edges of existence and annihilation, The Waves becomes a psychedelic yoga poem that assembles and asks the ultimate questions: What is the Self? What is death? Will I endure? Woolf is writing and rooting for us to roar on.