On my last day in Maui, I stepped into the salty warm water of the ocean, consciously feeling the gift of this sea. She comes alive for me, this earth, particularly in the way that the ocean can hold you, embrace you, rock you, invade your every senses…Often I feel my deepest awareness of God here as I allow myself to float and be carried gently, the sun shining on my face, another magnificent reminder of our Creator and the Divine all around us.
Yet, in Maui, after spending a lot of time in the ocean, and getting pummeled a time or two, one is also acutely aware of how the ocean can sweep you up and knock you down (over and over). Sometimes this is rhythmic, soothing, and refining, resulting in fine sand underneath your toes. Other times the violent waves of the pulsing sea carve huge crevices and jagged edges into stones you thought invincible. Even in the mellow ocean we play in while here, we have learned to attune to the wave sets, first gentle, gentle, then often surprisingly looming requiring quick thought and action.
On this last day, as I lay in savasana, floating on a wave, I open my heart to God, opening to my final message from Maui.
It filled my heart and came flowing so clearly:
This powerful ocean, source of joy and devastation, source of life and death, source of stirring up, refining and healing, reflects the polarities of our existence. Dance with life in all of its transforming, the way you do the gentle swells and the crashing waves. Embrace that it is all there, all part of the Divine, all part of the journey. Acceptance, Acceptance, Acceptance.
And as you do, let yourself surrender, the way you do here in this ocean, releasing the tension and fear that keeps you constricted, and resting joyfully in knowing you will be carried, knowing I will carry you.
My mind drifts to the anxiety I feel at times when Lucas and Maya are in the ocean with Sean, and I onshore see a big wave coming. Fear, momentary panic of a mother’s heart… yet over and over again they not only learn to ride it, play with it, and sometimes they get pummeled. Yet in a nanosecond, they are back up, ready to go, to play with the waves again. Me not so much, I let the fear of one big wave, hold me back sometimes… in the same way we fear the unknown in life, or we hold on to the painful past, fearful it may repeated.
God reminds me here: see how they play, how they trust, and lack fear. There, that’s it,
God in this ocean, reminds me to ride the wave of life in this way and more; to embrace it all, to see it all as a continuous whole, all rises and falls, all complexities, all twists and turns necessary, to be the breathtaking and often exquisitely joyful ride that it is.
I think about how differently we can view conflicts; sibling rivalry is not a “problem” but a wave crashing that is necessary to learn conflict resolution, speaking up for self and to accept what is. All of which could be said of conflicts in any relationship (more on this later). It is all a wave…there are crescendos great and sometimes fierce, but they are momentary and part of the greater wisdom. Surrender, surrender, surrender…TRUST.
Consciously accepting and opening to the big picture and the truth of Divine connection in each moment, cracks my heart open a little wider as I float, the sea playfully splashing water in my sun warmed face, filling me with wordless, indescribable awe for this journey of life.…as vast, beautiful and mighty as the sea.