Floating in the Ocean | Oneness

I walk toward the water’s edge, my feet pushing into the soft sand underfoot. My gaze is out towards the horizon, the space where the ocean and sky meet, blending into a nearly seamless blueish gray.

It’s a warm day, maybe some would comment on the sand that burns the delicate arches of your feet if you linger too long. But it’s not too much, not too cool; it’s just what is.

As I enter the water, ankles and shins, there’s an immediate felt connection that rises over my body. All at once, I’m both here and everywhere the ocean reaches.

I’m in my body, water rising to my knees and thighs covered by the skirt of my swimsuit. And I’m connected to the edges of the land I left behind months ago, on the other side of the world, where rain drizzles on the cold, salty waters of the Salish Sea.

It’s like I’m part of an ancient electrical grid, connected to the energy moving instantaneously through all the ocean waters all at once, energy moving at the speed of light. There’s no dwell time, no electron to pinpoint in space – only an immediate felt connection to it all.

My skirt starts to float around me as the water rises to my belly and ribs. I begin to float too, effortlessly, eyes gently toward the horizon.

It’s a calm sea. Waves lap at the shore, but I don’t feel exposed here. Light currents, often gently pushing me towards the west, guide the water. Tender waves rise and fall.

While a pufferfish might wash up on shore occasionally, I haven’t yet seen anything more than schools of little fish in the water, never felt a jellyfish sting here. The water is…almost a non-temperature. There’s no gasp response, no bracing. You just enter.

The water envelops you. And in that instant, you’re all of it.

It’s not knowledge; it’s a knowing.

All Of It and Imperfection

In many ways, it’s not an idyllic beach. No palm roofed cabanas line the shore.

Instead, it’s mostly bordered by a huge mostly deserted lot that separates the beach from an unused sidestreet and the main highway beyond. The only features are a lone, modern mansion compound, looking a little out of place in the deserted lot, and angular seawall blocks of a golf course that’s now home to a bustling metropolis of crabs, seasnails, and other sealife.

After the weekends, the higher sands are speckled with bamboo skewers and maybe some plastic cups or wrappers, leftovers from the BBQs and picnics.

There are often tire tracks cutting lines deep in the sand, left by the drivers who unwittingly traded the grounding tickling sensations of sand in their toes for the triumph of 4x4ing through the small dunes.

The beach is near the international airport runway. Commercial flights roar overhead every so often, their direction depending on the wind. As they do, I wonder if the pilot sees the tiny speck of human floating with her arms and legs spread out wide in the water below or if I’m too small, too insignificant to notice as they intently approach or depart the city.

Feeling small makes me smile. Like I could be swallowed up whole by this vast ocean and no one would ever know, in the best way possible.

None of this imperfect reality takes away from the experience. To the contrary, having a remarkable experience in what could be called an unremarkable place highlights the lesson.

Oneness

Being there on the edges of the city floating on my back in the ocean is the closest thing I’ve experienced to what yogis call oneness.

It’s not an out-of-body experience. It’s not manufactured bliss carefully curated at a retreat. It’s not a feeling of orgasmic rapture that takes the breath away. It’s not a delusional vision of colors painted across my eyes. It’s not God speaking to me.

It’s dropping into the feeling – the knowing – that I am here and everywhere all at once. That we all are, from us floating humans to the tiniest water bear and the largest whale.

It’s a subtle smile of contentment of seeing how everything just is. What a miraculous thing to be here on this earth! Me, this little floating speck, gets to experience all this.

It’s not dramatic or overwhelming. It’s like a homecoming that feels both secure, soft and vulnerably open at the same time, knowing that it’s all supposed to be exactly as it is, imperfectly perfect – or is it perfectly imperfect?

The Other Side, the Same Side

As I write this, I’m on the other side of the world from that beach, distant from the warm waters, away from the crab metropolis remaking a human intervention along the shore. I’m up the hill from the cold, salty waters of the Salish Sea where I likely won’t be floating today – though maybe I should.

I look out the window into a temperate forest that’s reviving from winter. The fiddleheads just started to unfurl en masse, the trilliums bloom in whites and rarer purples, and the vine maple leaves are beginning to open. The wetland is filled and spilling into full streams that run down into the river and on to the sea below.

It couldn’t be a starker contrast from the tropical, desert beach on the other side of the world. And yet, it feels like a part of it.

When I drop my fingers into the pond’s waters, I at once connect to the same flow, to all of the oceans around the world, to the feeling of all of it again.

The Real Work

At any time we can remember this deeper connection. The real work is not tapping into this reality when we’re in nature, totally immersed in the experience.

The real work is maintaining and honoring this connection throughout the days of our life – or at least remembering to return to it. In this regard, I’m a work in progress.

But the real work isn’t work at all – it’s already the reality if we stop to notice it.

Yet I’m probably less likely to smile and playfully stick out my tongue when someone interrupts my deep focus as I work, as I am likely to sigh and attempt to shoo them off as I impatiently try to refocus.

I’m more likely to race toward the front of a line than saunter to its end.

I’m more likely to remember an achievement than any part of the path to get there.

More often than not, I will completely forget any oneness feeling as I instead focus on how important whatever I’m doing must be and actively combat whatever slows it down.

I’m not alone in this tendency.

This habit is a part of many yoga classes that, if noticed, might offer a bigger lesson than the class itself: the part when students race to the studio (Get outta my way! I’ve gotta do yoga!) or protectively claim their spot (Hey! That’s where I always practice) or when the class ends and they rush to the next thing (Move it! I have things to do!).

Quarantining the yoga – the yoke, the union – to the mat while living the rest of life in the same pressured patterns is just like floating in the ocean only to step back on the shore to follow the same habituated thinking you left.

The real work is knowing it’s all ocean, all stream, already.

Off the Mat, Out of the Ocean

So much of my life is unnecessarily spent frantically treading water when deep down I know, I’ve experienced, how the world will hold me. Maybe you can relate.

Arms and legs outstretched, floating on my back, I’m held and connected to it all. There is no time or space. It’s all and everything.

A jet roars overhead. I float.

A wave unexpectedly splashes my face. I float.

Something skims my skirt underwater. I float.

No matter what arises, the task is simply to return to floating, to the union. It’s not an effortful task – it’s simply noticing. Have you been there?

What would this look like in the real world?

It rains. You float. Maybe it rains on your picnic, parade, or wedding day. You float. Maybe you smile. Maybe you dance in the rain.

A car honks. You float. You decide if and how you should respond. Maybe you move ahead. Maybe you switch lanes to let them pass. Maybe you do nothing.

Someone makes a comment that triggers something inside you. Maybe it’s rude or hurtful. Maybe they really meant it. You float. Maybe you thank it for bringing up something lodged within, something you’re now invited to let go, if you want to.

You lose someone close to you. Someone you deeply love. You float. You grieve. Your tears join the ocean. Maybe you thank them for the time you had together, to know what love is, to know what loss is, to have this human experience in all its fullness.

These moments of profound connectedness exist not so we rush back to the place, the set-up, the experience that invited them. It’s not something to save up for, so you can attend the next retreat, buy the next book, or finally get that next chunk of time off.

These moments are glimpses of what is available to us at all times because it’s the deeper reality. It’s not an escape from living, but an immersive experience in living more aware.

For me, it’s the ocean. What’s your reminder to return home?

Image credits: Ievgeniia Ghiglione, Robert Bottman, Iwona Castiello d Antonio, Jonny Clow, Peter Schmidt, Josiah Zacharias, Timon Studler, Shoeib Abolhassani, and Aleksandra Sapozhnikova. Thank you!