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.
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I would always feel relaxed and refreshed when I went to the beach, or just the shore, to watch the waves rolling in and the sound as each broke upon sand or rocks of the shoreline. The lonely sound of a gull would often accentuate the feeling of calm that I would acquire while at the shore. Thank you so much for this post.
to share such moments with you would be heaven!
For sure. <3
I love that photo, Dorothy. So many shades of blue, white, tan, and grey.
I too love the beach and have scheduled three visits to the beach this summer!
Thanks for sharing some serenity here. I get the same pleasure from the mountains in the desert sands of Arizona. Some prefer sea; some mountains, whatever it is that calms our soul and brings us peace is a blessing. 🙂
Some day I will make a pilgrimage to Arizona! I’d love to see it. I’m sure it would be thrilling in its own way.