Tides | Scenes From the Lily Pad

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

~John F. Kennedy

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I went on a personal “walkabout” on Highway 101 down the Oregon Coast last week. My job is demanding and I craved quiet, solitary peace. As usual, my soul migrates to flowing water for a sense of peace.

As I watched the runner on the beach, and the children making a sand castle, or the man sitting in meditation on a log in front of the crashing waves, it occurred to me that the beach bums have it right all along. We humans are born with more than half of our body made of water. Water and ego. Our ego immediately sets off to find how we mean something to the universe by our very existence. We form tribes and set goals, reinforcing our personal value by the checking off of lists. We hop on this rat wheel, churning goals and collections of things like homes and events and experiences to validate that we mean something. We go to churches and synagogues and embrace creeds that tell us we are God’s children, of import. We engage in deal making with deities and then strictly adhere to it so we can know that our god is behind us and this makes us feel relevant.

Time passes. We buy more things to enhance our value. We seek platitudes from others as we go round and round the wheel. We ignore or try to deny that gravity and time is affecting us.

All of this feeds ego. All of it creates tension. The satisfied ego brings immediate and fleeting peace. But embracing our water side is where the Still exists. It is what it is. There are no lists and no bills and no expectations and no promises of life after life or threats of temporal or eternal consequence. It is. We ebb and flow. We roll with the tides and the moon. And when enough time has passed, we will cease to exist and our water side evaporates, and our ego dissipates. Our experience energy is absorbed back into whence it came. I wonder and hope my energy is positive enough to feed abundant life when I pass on.

Understanding this brings acceptance. We can simply and realistically honor our position within our universe. As Carl Sagan points out, “We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us.”

This is what I learned by walking along the ocean last week.