Like Water, Like Water - BLOG 5 SK 05/05/2017

Water kept seeping into my awareness this week and I felt it was an appropriate symbol to focus on in my final blog at the very beginning of this journey. As I was reading through research articles for a term paper exploring contemplative pedagogy, the paragraph jumped into explaining the example of how we'd approach the topic of water. I took a pause in my research, and went into the practice it was explaining as a possible approach.

Let us think about water, the great spectrum of reflected on a still body of water versus moving water (there is the smooth flow and there is also the thunderous crashing of waves). There is the feeling of wetness. One can submerge them self fully into it. We cannot live without water, we are hydrated by it, cleansed by it.

As I read through the book of symbols for the exploration of water, a particular piece stood out to me in exploring the symbolic nature of the ocean: "Their convulsive shocks give birth to seismic sea waves that rise up like gigantic renegade tides, overrunning the coastal habitations that form the tenuous boundary between sea and land. Lethal storm waves lashed by hurricane winds to borne up by storm tides invade the "ordered world" and batter it into chaos."

Order. Disorder. Re-order.

“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” - Terence McKenna

I had a dream this week where I watched a person drop straight into the water. It was a large, deep body of water, what I assumed was an ocean. It was an interesting sight though, it was not a dive, or a fall, the person stood straight, there didn’t seem much of an emotion or accident. I was unsure whether they had drowned, yet it didn't seem like that would be the ending or the 'death' per se. I contemplated on this for some time, and it mostly brings me to think about the symbolic nature of water as the unconscious. Am I going in, submerging myself into the pool of my unconscious?

This has certainly been a time of quite a heavy load of chaos for me, chaos in my external world, but chaos too in my internal world. I have worked my best to stay aware and respond with healthy and investigative practices. Yet my emotions and thoughts have been of a fairly chaotic nature nonetheless. I think this class has allowed me to find a structured journey of moving into exploring the unconscious. As I better understand the ways of identifying, engaging with, and building on symbols that arise all around in my waking and sleeping life, I feel better prepared and confident in my curiosities of delving deeper.  

Water is flexible, it takes form of the object or surfaces in which it fills. Water is all connected - and because of this, when one area is contaminated, all of it becomes so as well. Without disorder, however, there cannot be a re-ordering. I am transforming. As I swim under water I become more aware and more light, I have not yet figured out the destination (although, there never really is a final destination), but water is teaching me to dive deep and find parts of me I do not recognize. When water is clear, you can see all that is there - I am finding clarity, but to do that I must open my sees and see all of it, not just the parts I wish to see or want to believe.

It is interesting, I have always told people I have the greatest fear of animals that live in the water. I despise the feeling of not knowing what is under the surface of the water. What if it touches me, hurts me? I fear what I do not know, I fear what I cannot control or watch. Perhaps it is time to surrender, let go, and let it flow.

Crossing the Water

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

Sylvia Plath