I Love the Sea – A Reflection

I love the sea. My restless soul tells me it’s time to step into the wide open spaces, water and sunshine. It’s time to pay a visit to my friend, the sea. I know some don’t care for sand in their shoes or squishing up between their toes. It is true that sand doesn’t mix well with practical matters, or normal day to day lifestyle, but at the beach?  I personally find it impossible not to get lost in the delicate sensations that are called forth from somewhere deep inside of me when walking along the shoreline, the rise and fall of the sea flirting with my every step.

RHYTHM of the Sea

There’s a rhythm to the ocean that lulls me, calls me, and rocks me gently, insistently into my soul place. Drifting away from the mundane without effort, I get lost in the magnitude of the sea’s ever present ebbing and flowing, rising and falling, expanding and retracting. It beckons me let go, allowing our spirits to meld, to listen and learn to what lessons it has to teach me. How can we not  grow in our understanding that we too rise and fall, expand and contract, ebb and flow?

We are not rigid, consistent, structured, orderly creatures, we human beings. So why do we try so desperately to be so? Endlessly we seem driven to tame our spirits into submission, to create a reliable, solid, predictable foundation upon which to stand, immobile, unflinching. In doing so we contradict our very life force, a force that must breathe, must rise and fall, must know loud expression and silence, bold action and inaction, dancing wildly and praying softly.

Our spirit longs to soar to the highest heights, to fade away into nothingness. When we remember that we are like the sea we become more flexible in our dealings with life, more resilient, more graceful, more soul driven, buoyed by our connection to all that is, resting in the knowledge that we are not alone.

A MEDITATION

Close your eyes and imagine the sea. Smell the salty air, the breeze on your face as it cools your skin, the sound of the waves as they roll closer and closer, reaching, stretching, longing to touch your toes; then…listen to the release as each wave relents in its effort to come to shore, falling away, the sound growing fainter and fainter until it is gone.  Are the waves sorrowful when they do not reach you? Do you yearn to run after them, to reach out and take hold of their force and power? Just notice what you are feeling. Don’t think.

Continue to breathe in with the rise of each wave and breathe out as they fall. Feel your body swell like the waves with each inhale. Then, release your breath. Allow the air as it is released to co-mingle with each receding wave. Notice your breath as it ebbs and flows. Release your stress, your sadness, your striving, give it over to the receding wave and feel it wash out into the sea. Release what does not serve you, give it over to the tides. Lean into the ebb and flow of your imaginary ocean. Notice that you hold the same expansiveness within you, the same ability to release and let go. Take in, let go. Take in and let go.

MEDITATIONS ON PEACE

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