The sea in me…

You know that feeling you get when you stand at the beach and look out at the ocean? A vast body of water and a far-distant line dividing sea from sky… an expanse of surface with waves rising and falling and breaking… constantly, constantly. And as you stand there at the place where the ocean bows to kiss the sandy shoreline, you touch upon the infinite. Awe-struck. And humble. And whole.

As one would expect to be when met by the mystery.

I once had a dream in which I (very matter-of-factly) told a woman that if I lived away from the sea, I would die. The dramatic nature of my pronouncement was largely undermined by the quiet conviction I felt in my statement. This wasn’t hyperbole. It was just simply the truth.

Well, at least as it pertained to the dreamtime. It’s now been 15 months since we moved away from our harbour home by the sea; my daily view of the little dilapidated lighthouse swept away from me as the tide carried me away from that apartment to another. This one, inland, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city, where the buses pass by my window every few minutes causing the floor beneath my feet to rumble with the vibrations of their movement… this one that is far from the sea, far from the water, far from the waves that would keep bringing me back to me.

And, I’m pleased to report that my distance from the sea has not killed me yet!

But it has helped me to realise something important – that this great expanse of water with more surface that my eye is capable of beholding, and greater depths than I can comprehend, is mirrored back through the sea in me. Often the ocean is considered a symbol for the collective unconscious – the mystery outwith. And yet, within the body, we encounter the personal unconscious – the mystery within.

And just as we may find ourselves craving an encounter with the mystery – that which is greater than ourselves and which brings perspective, peace, potency – we can find that closer to home in the very bone and sinew of our physical substance. Our bodies *are* the mystery enfleshed. Our skin only gesturing towards the hidden depths and darkness and unknowable places of organ and artery, just as the ocean’s surface is all that we can see when we stand upon that shoreline.

When we bring a seashell to our ear, is it the sea that we hear, or is it the sounds of breath and pulse?

Perhaps it is both. Because maybe they are not as dissimilar as we might have believed.

So, do I miss my home that overlooked the wide mouth of the River Forth as it opened up to swallow the cold cold waters of the North Sea? Yes. Yes, I do. And I can pretend that I don’t. But I do. However, in the midst of that missing, I also can’t ignore that I have made a new connection, a deeper connection, to the mystery as it is held within. The sea in me…. and that has been a great gift indeed.