The Ocean

Whenever anyone is at sea for any length of time, or even just looking out into its vast expanse, they are changed in some way, although perhaps imperceptibly. This is because the surface reflection of the water is a mirror which is cosmic in origin. As a consequence, the mind tends to become more still and able to be at ease for a longer period than usual. The ocean is where we come from and where at death we return. The power of the ocean is the wave of continuity which, in its majestic primordial motion, represents the embryonic flow of the psyche from the womb to the dissolution of form.

Most people take great pleasure in swimming in the sea, or even to immerse themselves in a tub or shower. Water is the cleansing element of the planet and is purifying to mind, body and spirit. The great oceans have a deep spiritual significance for many people who recognise, within the depths of their being, the importance of ensuring that the seas remain sustainable for the life forms and free from the impurities of the pollution of the world. But, at best, all that can be done is a temporary slowing down of the appalling waste of human excess, which every day adds to the degradation of the oceans of the world. This, together with the overall effects of climate change, is changing the way that life on earth will take for generations to come.

In evolutionary terms, the pounding surf over millennia eroded the rock and land mass from where the first microbes emerged and where, in time, our physical bodies evolved. But this sensory evolution was paralleled inwardly through a universal intelligence which governed the climacteric changes that would see the emergence of Homo sapiens as sovereigns of the earth. Water is incipient emotion and our bodies, we are told, comprise at least eighty percent water. That may be so at the physical level, for science is focused exclusively on the cosmetic objective world and not the cosmic power which is the inner source of life.

The sea has often been used as a symbol of the unconscious and the hidden depths of the psyche with its dark inner mystery. Who hasn’t felt a chill of fear, perhaps as a child, when looking into the black abyss of a deep still pool of water? The fear of the unknown arises in the first instance from the concept of death, which attaches the mind and emotions more overtly to the materialism of the world. To confront death without turning away is, for most, too awful a prospect while alive. To compensate, the focus of intelligence becomes identified with the forms of life and movement of objects in sensory space. This speeds up the mind which, supported by the emotional body, results in fatigue, mood swings, irritability and the inability to pause between actions in the world.

The spiritual impulse to return to the ocean exerts a magnetic pull on many people, particularly later in life when the drive into existence has been reduced and there’s a need to reflect on something more real and enduring. The truth is that we are cosmic in nature as our essential beings of the earth. Our material existence is finite and a drop in the ocean as far as reality is concerned, which is immortal life everlasting.