Dive Into the Ocean.
{Photo credit: Jemima House}
The wind is up. The dark clouds are skidding across the sky.
The sun is nowhere to be seen and the crashing of tons of water hitting the shore fills your head as you stand chest high in the swirling, icy waves. There is a split second of noticing the enormousness of an oncoming wave as it slowly and resolutely rolls toward you. No time to consider the outcome; only a deep, internal knowledge that you will be firmly and completely wiped out by it.
Contraction of the whole body in preparation for flight (there is no fight big enough for this) means you can activate your muscles and retreat for the shoreline.
But in retreat there is sadness. The empty place of dashed potential, like turning your head to see something precious fly from your car window and flutter into the wind while you speed onward — not even a chance to cry out. Just gone.
As the waves of the sea unstoppably kiss the soft mouth of the shore — violently, roughly with a never-ending passion, today, I choose to stay.
I am wrenched open from the inside. Pulling, tensing, staying, struggling, pushing, contorted and tearful until ultimately I am cracked open. Light begins to appear. Layers are peeled. I become the wave. I am taken.
How could I hope that my small body could contain this fearsome noise? I do not try to hold on. I surrender to the rolling turmoil, as its chaotic beauty takes me from terrified paralysis to breathtaking flow. I am open. I feel like I’m flying. I feel free.
To everyone weighted, suffocated by despair, depression, some arresting sadness that takes you by the throat and squeezes — know this. That it is too big for your body to hold. And in holding you become consumed, your edges straining, seams ripping until eventually your body is so battered, so exhausted in loyal service that it will fail you. It will have no choice.
A remedy? Seek out every contracted, closed, tightened space within you. Go on a manhunt.
Do not stop until you know in your heart that you have nothing left to hide. Take in breath and push it into the cracks. Open your joints, release your muscles, stretch and gasp, let the pain seep out. Feel it. Wring your body out thoroughly and vigorously with complete, detailed attention until you feel afloat, liquid, metamorphosed. Let your body become an open, smooth vessel so nothing can get stuck. Everything you experience washes in with full force, then washes right back out again.
Who you are becomes defined not by the stale residue of your memories, lifeless as a faded, crumbling photograph, but by your ability to open and receive life into all of your being. Stop holding yourself so tightly, afraid to spill over the edges. Shake the container. Get covered, rinse your insides with your dark, oily sorrow, wallow and peer in the corners, be immersed. Pick the scabs and watch the fresh blood flow. Know that nothing lasts forever.
All the exquisite, delicious, shivering pleasure, all the aching, echoing sadness. Washing in. Washing out.
We have such a short time. Be immersed. Feel every single thing. Suck it up, let it in, then let it all back out. Flow. Life is flow and you are alive.
“Don’t wait any longer.
Dive in the ocean,
Leave and let the sea be you.” ~ Rumi
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Jemima House is a yogini and writer who experiences regular bouts of unbearable lightness and needs to be upside down a lot. Walking the tightrope between angelically mellow and devilishly stubborn, she is a wandering star with a big heart. Also the owner of Positive Living UK, a unique network supporting and inspiring people in living their passion.
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