How many times during these past 50+ years did I wake up and catch myself surfing the waves of the next best thing or idea? How often do I forget that waves crash and it is the deep currents that have true staying power? How often do I also get caught up wading in the shallows, fearful of the depth and the darkness that holds the deep currents that are always calling me to ‘go deeper still?’
In addition to waves and shallows, I also experience being in whirlpools. What others do and think and say can quickly suck me into their vortex. I am so busy riding waves, wading in the shallows or swirling in whirlpools that I become lost. More than lost, I am in danger of disconnecting from my soul, from ‘entheos’ (the spirit that animates us and provides us with our life-breath) – that part of me that can only be accessed from the depths of my being.
When I am lost this way I know I must re-find my soul, my sustaining spirit. I know I must leave the waves, the shallows, the whirlpools and dive into the depths. Here, in the solitude I am able to renew so I can reenter refreshed and reinvigorated. The deep currents are patient and as they slowly and powerfully move along they continuously call me to go deeper still.
The water nourishes and cleanses and purifies. There is, for me, another option – a balance, if you will.
The other option I have is to go, not into the deep currents (the depth), but into the desert, to enter into the wilderness (the negative side of the wilderness is the wasteland – and I have certainly spent time there also). I enter the desert in order to be still. To reconnect with the divine within. To listen for the whisper of the spirit that guides and sustains me. It is hard for me to hear the soft whisper when I am distracted by all of the noise, my internal noise, and when I am distracted by all of my ‘doings,’ my busyness. Like so many of us in our Culture, I am not only distracted by my inner noise and external busyness I am also addicted to both. I am also, like so many of us in our Culture, addicted to the ‘waves’ and to ‘speed.’
Noise, distractions, busyness and speed hinder, if not directly prohibit, my/our going into either the deep currents or seeking solitude in the desert. Our mantra seems to be: Give us the waves to ride!
Searcher-Seeker 