Finding Calm in the Depths

I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t swim because every summer’s Sundays were spent with my extended family at the lake. I took to the water like a fish. By the time I was fifteen I was on the Underwater Search and Rescue Team for our town’s Fire Department. I loved the surface of the water but being underwater was the best space of quiet, mystery and calmness for me. It was breathing in the underwater depths that I found my True Self.

As the years went by I traded the depth of Being that underlined everything for an over-reliance on the surface world. This led to the ongoing experience of life seeming always to be disturbed and choppy compared to the calm and quiet of the deep. I lost the flow I’d experienced in the depth of the soulful waters to find the disorientation and choppy waters of contrasting currents and turbulence. It wasn’t until my mid twenties that I again found the depth on top of a mountain.

Surprisingly these two extremes helped me see that life’s greatest blessings are found in the depths and heights. Both allow seeing the unseeable from vantage points that most people seem not to explore deeply over time. It takes real presence to truly ‘see’ into the depths of any moment. It takes focus and desire to live where there are no roads and trails. It takes courage and dedication to explore areas within and without that seem foreign and uncontrollable.

The world’s depth mostly remains out of view whether it’s underwater, on top of a mountain, in a flower or in the human heart. It’s an invisible vibration that ‘shimmers’ as an underlying energy presence animating everything. How often have you consciously experienced this subtle energy? Like light, this underlying energy naturally fills all openings. It can however be pinched off by our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual constrictions and we do pinch it off.

What’s required is a conscious opening from within, an open receptivity to align ourselves to this cosmic shimmering presence. It’s always present. We are not. We allow ourselves to be wrapped up in the surface turbulence, the choppy waters, the cross currents of our lives and those of others. We get lost in the noise and the haste; the dramas that bombard us daily. Without the silence and calm of the deep we get lost and forget who we truly are.

As we forget our divinity in our humanity we travel between moments of expansion and contraction, between the surface turbulence and the depths of quiet comfort. It’s our task then to find the depths within every situation, every moment of life. Meister Eckart, one of the greatest spiritual teachers of all time directs us to ‘Remain within while going out.’ This is the challenge of awakening to the shimmering depths of infinite presence. It’s an endless practice.

• Reflect on the blessings of the shimmering depths within. Recall a time when you experienced this and relax back into the presence of it again. Feel the unconditional love in this space.
• Today, consciously remain within this depth. Notice how you are continually drawn from the depths onto the surface of life. Let your breath draw you deeper within again and again . . .
• When you feel contraction today relax into the calm at the end of a deep breath. Ahhhh . . .