As usual, I started at the seashore, on the beach studded with shells and seagrass. I could see the beginning of the path up into the forest. But first I turned to the sea, and spoke to it wordlessly, trying to comprehend its vastness and majesty. I became aware that swimming in the water near my feet were several cone jellies, a harmless type of jellyfish shaped vaguely like a torpedo or a swimming cucumber with rippling lines down its sides that luminesce in the dark. I reached out with my heart and greeted them. One of them spoke to me, and as I admired it, it invited me to join with it and swim in the limitless sea.
I didn't follow it it body, but accompanied it in spirit into the deep sea, sometimes watching it and it's fellows flow effortlessly in the water, sometimes seeming to be a cone jelly myself. With a transparent almost formless body that seems hardly different from the sea itself, with the sea always flowing within and through it, I felt that the jellies do not feel themselves to be solid beings who move through the water, but to be embodiments of the water. As if they are the sea itself dreaming a form for its thoughts.
I sometimes have a fear of the deep ocean, terrified of falling forever in the blackness, not knowing which way was up, nothing solid to grasp. How can these creatures bear to swim in this bottomless ocean, with no reference points? It spoke to me and comforted my fears. There is no down, there is no up. There is nothing we are falling towards, there is not place we are going to, and nothing we are fleeing. We simply ARE. Immersed in the sea, fed by the sea, made of the sea, what can we fear? What could we desire? Let go, just BE. The universe will sustain you, if you relax and let it happen. If you live in the moment, you cannot get lost. If you are not going anywhere, you don't have to worry about not getting there.
I released my fears, opened my heart, and relaxed. My frenzied thrashing stopped, and for a brief while I knew what it was to simply exist, floating the middle of the all-sustaining void, with no needs or fears. I will try and carry this peace and perspective with me into my life.
I thanked the jellies for the teaching, and returned to the beach. In a later post, I will tell about the rest of my journey, and my meeting with the Green Master.
I didn't follow it it body, but accompanied it in spirit into the deep sea, sometimes watching it and it's fellows flow effortlessly in the water, sometimes seeming to be a cone jelly myself. With a transparent almost formless body that seems hardly different from the sea itself, with the sea always flowing within and through it, I felt that the jellies do not feel themselves to be solid beings who move through the water, but to be embodiments of the water. As if they are the sea itself dreaming a form for its thoughts.
I sometimes have a fear of the deep ocean, terrified of falling forever in the blackness, not knowing which way was up, nothing solid to grasp. How can these creatures bear to swim in this bottomless ocean, with no reference points? It spoke to me and comforted my fears. There is no down, there is no up. There is nothing we are falling towards, there is not place we are going to, and nothing we are fleeing. We simply ARE. Immersed in the sea, fed by the sea, made of the sea, what can we fear? What could we desire? Let go, just BE. The universe will sustain you, if you relax and let it happen. If you live in the moment, you cannot get lost. If you are not going anywhere, you don't have to worry about not getting there.
I released my fears, opened my heart, and relaxed. My frenzied thrashing stopped, and for a brief while I knew what it was to simply exist, floating the middle of the all-sustaining void, with no needs or fears. I will try and carry this peace and perspective with me into my life.
I thanked the jellies for the teaching, and returned to the beach. In a later post, I will tell about the rest of my journey, and my meeting with the Green Master.
No comments:
Post a Comment