A Wave to God

Sitting on the beach last week, watching the waves rise and fall, rise and fall. The tide rolling in, receding. Clouds building, abating. Birds (and humans) coming, going.

Any or all of it a perfect metaphor for life, for existence itself. Little wonder that the mystics so often use the ocean and its waves to explain the IDEA of a self.

My infinitely patient teachers are forever reminding me that I am OF the ocean, not separate or apart from it. That you and I and our neighbors APPEAR to rise up out of its depths (birth), spend a brief period of time scooting across its surface (life), before merging back into it (death).

The mind mistakes the journey as a thing called ‘me’ and ‘my life.’ Yet upon investigation no such entity or phenomenon can be found.

Thoughts, yes. A physical body, yes. But thoughts arise and abate like the clouds above our heads. And the body is of – and returns to – other elements which are themselves of other elements and so on for eternity. None of it has any substance unto itself.

Yet this remarkable illusion (or dream, if you prefer) persists.

One of those teachers recently shared this with me. Its wisdom profound and so easily overlooked.

Before the cloud appeared, the conditions were there for that cloud – the moisture and the air and the wind – and the eyes to see that cloud.

Cloud does not have a new existence – a separate existence which begins and ends – it is only a formation of something that already exists. Yet we think of the cloud as a “thing” and we give it independence when it really never had any. 

If we apply that to anything in the universe, if we walk that process back, we find that there never was a real beginning of existence to any “thing.” Something IS – and from that all “things” appear and disappear. All “things” ARE THAT, in essence, whatever THAT IS. We might say THAT, that ESSENCE, is pure existence – pure Being – formless – pure potential to BE any “thing.” 

To me, the key passage here is “the eyes to see that cloud.” Here is where the dream begins, the illusion forms, the me is born. Any of us can see that a cloud is formed of wind and moisture, that it is of other things. But we overlook that so too are the eyes ‘seeing’ the cloud, the mind processing that image, the self supposedly lurking in that mind and the experience of seeing a cloud.

We spend (waste) this temporary existence attempting to improve these bodies, these imaginary lives. But instead of celebrating and agonizing with the rise and fall of our little wave, why not inquire into the ocean from which we supposedly appear?

Yes, just another thought….