I am a Wave on the Ocean

I am a wave on the ocean. I am uniquely me, but at the same time connected and one with the ocean. I have a strong sense of knowingness in this connectedness. I feel father/mother ocean supporting, me, nurturing me - knowing itself through me. I celebrate my isness as a wave, knowing this to be a state of impermanence, one of many that emanate from father/mother ocean. I see the love and nurturing that father/mother ocean has for all creatures, all things as it breathes life, that like me, ebbs and flows - impermanent.

I feel my shape and form: the crest of my form - frothy and surging - advancing into the realm of air and sky, embracing it's yin to my yang, frothing bubbles of it into my isness at my leading edge. It is play, it is joy, it is a holy embrace of our oneness as framed in our differences. I feel that part of my waveness that lies just behind the froth: the leading edge. It is solidly me, the purest form of my impermanent self. It is all the unique qualities that I have chosen to be as an expression of father/mother ocean. This uniqueness that I have shaped through my connectedness with father/mother ocean is the self force that pulls my chosen attributes forward, from my wave based connection with the ocean, up through my wave form and even out to the ying/yang dance of foamy sea and sky. I feel the base of my wave form, anchored to the eternal father/mother ocean. It connects down, down, down, to the dark primordial depths, to the sea floor, to the earth, to the universe. Worlds within worlds within worlds, like a hall of mirrors; like the Buddhist endless knot that comes back to its beginning: the alpha - the omega. My wave base, my connection to father/mother ocean holds limitless possibilities that I am empowered to pick and choose from to create the art form of my waveness. Yet, even in this empowered, impermanent state I realize my love connection with father/mother ocean and, even though I have the power to self create, I invite father/mother ocean to play with me in this realm of base wave possibilities and to dance with me. Joining in movement and rhythm of form and formless, opening my awareness to realizations and connectedness that I, myself, am not capable of alone, but that in our oneness brings delight and recognition of new forms and ways of being that are co-created in this dance. The subtleties of the connectedness to all that is, becomes tactilely apparent through this co-creative dance of wave and ocean. I can connect with the trees, deep in the forests of the world where the essence of this water-based existence flows through the fibrous structures of these earth serving life forms. I can reach out, knowingly to the small desert lizzard that buries itself in the sand to escape the hot sun, finding sustenance even in this environment. All of these water based life forms are connected to father/mother ocean, whose transformational forms of cloud, rain, and ice; of gas, liquid and solid extend its reach across continents to embrace the heart of this earth: this life infused marble spinning in space. It is all so lovely, so connected, so changing and impermanent. And yet, lying at the base of all of this, the connectedness of my waveness senses eternity - peace - stillness so profound. My gift to this world and to all that it embraces is the gift of mirroring the truth of the connectedness - even as we appear to live in a divisive world, even as life ebbs and surges, even as our own impermanent existence seems to take precedence, we are each a part of something much bigger. This lovely ancient world; this dream space of life, born of the womb of matter and energy is yet one more dance - one more world, in the worlds within worlds within worlds. I am a wave on the ocean, and yet I am much more.

As a wave I serve father/mother ocean: as a surface conduit of life; spreading the sea based particulates; and aerating its mass. I am a part of the rippling skin of this giant microcosm. I am semi-permeable in nature: while some matter sinks to the deeper reaches, other matter is driven ashore, tossed up on land for air and sun and wind to deal with. I am a play thing for shimmering masses of fish, graceful whales, dolphins, and flying rays. These sea creatures momentarily become one with the joy of my leading edge, before falling back into their watery world. How bright and light this place is at the edge of sea and sky. How different and exciting, risky and thrilling, for they cannot live here long, and yet that foamy realm at the edge of their world invites that which knows itself to be greater than it is; to play and to momentarily experience the unfulfilled potential of self contained existence.

I am beauty and power and grace embodied. I am fierce and nurturing and driven. I am a flash of brilliance in a sea of sparkling waves, all unique, all the same. I am one step: a simple pirouette in the dance of matter to energy, energy to matter. I am a wave, uniquely one in a play of never ending self realization that is relational, father/mother ocean and wave...worlds within worlds within worlds.

Can We All Get Along?

 

"Can we all get along?"   This question, posed by Rodney King, continues to stump us.  In all fairness this failure to all get along goes back to the origins of man.  Survival, or the sense that survival depends on specific conflicting outcomes, certainly fuels not getting along.  What I'm speaking of here, is not about those kinds of choices.  What I'm speaking about here is how we've distorted our differences into the art of using differences to self justify.  Our politicians do it, our special interest groups do it, and we do it.  This approach is evidenced in bullying, and in us and them thinking.  So let's look at the countermeasure for this faulty thinking...common ground...that's right...common ground.  So here's my story that lead me here.  I have been challenged with how different I was from one of our leaders at work for years, absolutely years.  It has been a contentious relationship at best, and downright antagonistic at worst.  The conflict has almost cost me my job along the way.  Then something happened.  He and I made a mind boggling discovery: we were different, we communicated differently and understood differently.  Even more astounding was the discovery that this condition wasn't a deal breaker: we could be different and still get along.  For myself, I was amazed to find out that he wasn't intentionally trying to get on my last nerve, and that he did want to connect in meaningful ways in order to enrich each of our lives.  In truth, he discovered the same thing about me.  We had, up until that moment, been of the belief that we were each out to make the others life a living hell.  We found out that we were very wrong about each other.  This discovery occurred because he attended a Communication Skills Class that I was facilitating, and we came face to face with our challenge in the middle of the class.  What we discovered is that it took a caring "village" to work through our differences.  As this person and I were starting to spin out of control in our habitual non-getting along behavior, a young engineer in the class called a time out on us, and shared his observation that we just didn't get each other.  He then, miraculously, translated what I was trying to say into a format that this leader could understand and, VOILA! for maybe the first time in a long time we finally got each other.  Even more importantly, we read in each other's faces and body language that this was something that we had collectively never considered.  From that point forward we were each more willing to give the other the space and grace to be different, and instead of going at each other's throat, we got that we simply didn't get each other.  We learned to slow down and not judge, but to give the benefit of the doubt and seek to understand.  It made all the difference in the world.  Just today, this self same person, who I would have framed as my nemesis not that long ago, came to my defense and had my back.  WOW!  So when I face Rodney's question of, "Can we all get along?"  I am inspired to say, it certainly is possible, but it's going to take a collective effort and a willingness to accept differences, and assume good intentions, and then slowly and carefully explore where communication and understanding may be getting off track.  Finding the common ground amidst the differences provides a point of alignment to start developing understanding.  Identifying common ground and common understanding is the key to evolving a sense of connectedness and a sense of "getting" each other.  Focusing on our differences isn't going to get us there.