Finding Peace in the Midst of a Stormy Ocean...

Image credit to Matt Paul Catalano, Unsplash

Imagine yourself at the shoreline of an ocean. Sometimes huge waves sweep over you, washing away and scattering everything familiar. At other times, the ocean recedes for a while and you have a moment to breath. What if the world-wide challenges that we have been collectively experiencing, especially in the past year and a half were this ocean?
 
It can feel like an endless cycle, the washing in and out of these huge waves. And each time the waves recede, it's easy to try settle back into the way it was before, but this is not to be. The only certainty is that another wave is coming. And yet, there is a deeper certainty. The truth that there is a way to find your footing even in the midst of crashing waves....

Down Deep image from my 2020 art journal-Riding the Waves

What if we are living in a collective undertow?
 
To continue with this metaphor, the waves of challenge seem to be getting larger, to the point that the risk of getting swept away in an undertow seems imminent.* 
We are literally out of our depth. What to do then? It is so easy to grab onto seeming certainties in a swiftly changing world. Easy to try to build complicated protective structures, ways of acting or being that might save us. There are so many different directions we can go in, so many potential strategies for coping and many of them are probably just fine. But if these strategies are not grounded and connected to our beings in a meaningful way, they will collapse and be swept away if there is an undertow. Things are changing too quickly. 
 
How do we find certainty in the midst of constantly shifting ground? 
 
What is needed is a certainty that isn’t grounded in things outside of us, that isn't grounded in outward structures or scaffolding. But instead, a way of starting from within ourselves, as a way to look at the world around us in a way that creates space for huge shifts in reality. A flexibility that allows us to bend and pivot, rather than stand rigidly on tightly gripped feet. How to do this? Difficult as it might seem, it helps to turn inward, to find an inner spaciousness and timelessness, where we have access to creative thinking.
 
Pause

It helps to be able to release into a sense of a being stronger than yourself. Yet, even if you don’t have a belief a being greater than yourself, it still helps to take time for a for pause. When nothing seems to be working in the world around you and when there seems to be very little certainty, it helps to pause and take stock. Two of my mentors, Sandra Ingerman and Tara Brach, recently posted about using the “pause” of the recent lockdown as a time to reevaluate their priorities. They both were inspired by the large-scale “pause” of the pandemic, to choose time for themselves to care for themselves, psychologically and spiritually, to let themselves have quiet time.
 
In order to do this, they are cutting in half their public programs and turning down engagements. This made me think about the impulse to find certainty in the midst of the waves of recent changes. Maybe you can't find certainty, but you can use the times in-between each crashing wave as a chance to reevaluate your life and see what needs to stay and what can be left out. In this way, the time you have seems more precious. In a way, it feels like a wake-up call to alertness and presence. 
 
A wake-up call to alertness and presence
 
Maybe it helps to see the pandemic and other scary things in the world right now as waves that are waking you up. To see these waves from a broader perspective, as tragic and painful experience but also as a wake-up call, a reminder to pay attention. They remind you to wake up to spaciousness and inner stillness. And they remind you that you have within you a still, small voice that can guide you step by step.

Or, if you don't yet have access to that inner voice, you can start with   simply taking time to breath, to connect to the inner wisdom of your body, when the waves of the ocean get too large and scary. And if you are interested in exploring a way of accessing this inner guide, consider joining in the Befriending Our Shadow course which begins in October. See here for more information. 
 
*credit to this undertow idea to Sandra Ingerman and Renee Baribeau’s recent podcast about the Undertow
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