Glory be to the Ocean!

Don’t drink at the water’s edge, throw yourself in.Become the water.Only then will your thirst be quenched.

~Jeanette Berson

Greetings to our friends & community,

This is the summer I rediscovered swimming in the ocean. Oh, there have been plenty of long beach walks—some, workouts pounding the sand; some, languorous sunset strolls. There has been cavorting and playing with poodles at the water’s edge, but one day this summer a call came. A siren’s call. I answered it leaving the poodles to hold down the couches.I arrived at the beach in T shirt and shorts, and walked to the edge of sand and sea, and then I just kept walking until I was submersed. Glory be! My sandy, sun kissed, salty childhood rushed back. I stayed until I was water logged and fingers and toes turned to prunes.

My “swimming” looks more like “mermaiding” or “dolphining” punctuated by periods of floating, or as I now think of it—water savasana. Out beyond the surf break, floating on my back, eyes closed, weightless as the ocean supported and gently rocked me, I felt the ocean itself supported by the land. All those spiritual metaphors used by many spiritual teachers, especially of the Advaita or non-dual persuasion, of ocean and waves and drops of water tickled my brain and I giggled as I was ocean, wave and drop.

It isn’t by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves. ~Ken Kesey

Blessed are the sandy, sun-kissed, salty days of summer, warm pacific waters…Teresa, spirit of Thule, Tucker, Huxley and all at Paradise Found