Water is earth's eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature
--Henry David Thoreau
I had an opportunity to attend a wonderful forum not long ago. We were assigned a short writing exercise which opened my heart and brought me to tears at times as I listened to the participants share their writings. We had been asked to write about water, about our feelings, our understanding of water, our soul poetry and our heart-songs about water.
The exercise offered complete freedom except for one detail. We were required to begin and end the writing with the declaration, "I am water" and continue to tell what we know about water from the first person perspective. At one point in my essay I wrote, " I am water. I nourish the seeds of a million potentials and support the flourishing of new life as I flow with ease." That sounded somewhat poetic. But there was more. My essay contained at least 10 new, dramatic, poetic truths about water. And each one had affected my emotions as they took life on my paper. I am water... I am the reflection of a multi-dimensional ever-expanding micro universe. I experience order and chaos as the same energy. I dissolve and transform. I am spirit and I am form showing my face in whatever manifestation of me serves the greatest good of all ...
I connected deeply with the consciousness of water as I wrote my treatise. And so did each person in the room. What reduced me to tears was the profound realization that every person who read their short essay expressed ideas about water that were equally deep, personal, and unique to their understandings of water. Water, I learned in that room, was a longing, a protector, a friend, a giver of wisdom, a cleanser, a mother, and the omnipresent God in all its forms. 20 people collectively had hundreds of different and original concepts of water and each person's concept was valid and profound in its own way. If water can be so many things to so many people, can it be the matrix that touches all life and reminds us of our bonds with each other - EACH OTHER!
The "Other" we seldom remember are the smaller creatures who share the biosphere with us and imbue their consciousness in the flowing water. With each trip to the river to drink, or the drop of rain that collects in a leafy canopy, we share life with ALL these miscroscopic others, and while it may appear that we are separated from the salmon or plankton, or the bear, the hawk or the worm, we all share water. We share the very same water as every living being on the planet and have done so for millions of years. How is it that we have forgotten about each other? How could anyone ever believe we stand alone when we close and lock our front doors? If you breathe, drink, bathe, swim you are not alone. EVER! Billions of species are doing the same thing with you right now, and now....and now and humans are sharing that matrix soup of wisdom. Thinking about our connection to life is the gateway to feeling it -- remembering it. Once we remember that we are single cells in a complex universe, the idea of living interdependently becomes a felt sensation and the idea that we stand alone becomes utter nonsense.
Since we obviously do not stand alone on the Earth, can we humans continue to pollute the water and yet ignore the fact that we are polluting our "Other" and ultimately ourselves? Can we allow corporate commodification of water knowing when we allow anyone to control water for any reason, we are limiting ourselves from the vital matrix of life? There are two sides to a piece of paper and we cannot take only one side. We get them both. When we fail to allow clean drinking water to disadvantaged people on Earth who have no money to pay for it, we are ultimately setting up a complex morphogenic field in which clean drinking water will only be available to the rich and this soon becomes an understanding carried by mass consciousness. Water becomes something to steal, fight wars for and die for.
The other side is more optimistic. Can we use water to touch the lives of all beings on the planet and send messages of hope, love, joy, etc.? Of course we can, and the results would be that we are reaching into our Buddha nature and touching the matrix which touches all living beings. One single touch carries a charge between cells and sets up a resonant field of understanding. While I may be a human cell, the fish cell is part of the body to which I belong and so is the rock cell and the tree cell. These cells are all influenced by the resonance I initiate. My resonance travels at the speed of light. With our big oversized human brains one would think all humans would have figured this out millennia ago. But, alas, millions of years ago, humans knew this, and today, we have mostly forgotten because we got distracted and failed to pay attention.
That wonderful exercise I mentioned earlier, writing about water, took a surprising turn at the close of the seminar, when our facilitator instructed us to look once again at our essays and now replace "I am water" with our own names. "I am Shara," I read. "I nourish the seeds of a million potentials and support the flourishing of new life as I flow with ease." That was the part that brought me to tears... tears that flowed with ease. Of course I am water. How could I have ever forgotten it?