water for the soul
“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
I felt almost like a young child being dropped into a pool of water for the first time, frantically trying to figure out how to lift my head out of the water just enough to take a single breath. I was struggling a lot more than what was necessary — blindly flailing around, kicking and thrashing, convincing myself that my clearly exhausting and ineffective technique was working for me. Trying and failing to grasp and hold onto liquid, not being able to see how impossible and ridiculous this was.
It took me a good chunk of time and energy to realise that what I was doing was counterproductive. All I needed to do was flip over, be still, and surrender — the body naturally floats effortlessly. I had been fighting the forces that were there waiting to support me.
I finally stopped and allowed myself to surrender to these forces operating around me — and I saw that all the chaos and disorder that I was experiencing was less to do with the state of my surroundings, and more to do with my inner reality.
I realised the water wasn’t frantic, it had always been calm. What I needed was a shift in perspective, a change in pace.
So,
I took myself off, down to my local creek — the one that opens so perfectly to the pathway, a portal into the heart of Mother Nature. I sat in Her space, beneath the rich canopy of trees — a collage of leaves that dance to the soft brush of the wind, that scatter the light of the warm sun to sprinkle the water with a golden shimmer. The natural interplay of light and shadow in constant harmony. Exposed interlacing tree roots weave through the soil, a layer of dark green moss softens the edges of large stone platforms that seem to have been put together like almost-fitting pieces from random jigsaws. I watch as dragonflies zig-zag through the air, occasionally skimming off the water, hovering in front of me for a split second before darting off with such fluid speed. And I was surrounded by the sounds of a hidden choir of birds, whose music echoed downstream.
Immersed in this space where plant and animal life thrived freely, untouched by the hand of man, I felt a sense of calmness and trust in the continuous flow of life. The wind that brushes through the leaves is the same air that we breathe. The constant stream that trickles gently over the rocks contains the same water that fills and nourishes our body. The synergy between the elements of the natural world is the same harmony that exists within ourselves. When we observe the purity of the untouched natural world, we can see that it is at peace and in a state of constant flow. If we understand that we ourselves are equally part of the rhythm of this earth, we can find comfort in our own deep purity. Nothing separates us from Mother Nature, we can choose to believe it or deny it, but it doesn’t change this truth.
When we damage the earth, we are damaging ourselves. We are not victim to the natural forces of the earth, but in co-creation with them. As humans with this awareness, we can choose to work with or against the direction of the stream — to thrash around madly in a state of chaos, or to try something different when things aren’t working: to see that all we need to do in flip over and adopt the calm pace of the natural world.
“You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.”
