Tidepool Transformations

Upon entering the hushed room, she began sobbing. She began wailing and emotionally releasing so much anger, sadness, disgust, devastation and empathy. Her heart wept, and everyone nearby came up to hold her through her grieving. For the next hour, she was held by an entire room of friends and allies, as she processed her grief through tears, weeping into a bowl filled with crystals. Her allies came and held her body, laid their body next to hers, simply to hold her through the intense release of energy. Today was a day like any other, but for her it was a day of transformation. A day of grieving and working through her deep subconscious emotional body, to process and clear her emotional energy body, to allow for a greater level of clarity to open.In the wake of her grieving, as I sat and held space surrounded by a half dozen allies holding space in silence through her weeping convulsions, I had a realization. In moments such as these, it seems as though the most subtle of actions can have a reaction in someone else's emotional energetic process. In certain moments, as I went into deep meditation and simultaneously elevated both a fork full of food, and a vision of her bright eyed face in my vision, she began another wave of weeping. In certain moments, it's possible to feel an invisible psychic thread weaving one unrelated event - the event of a fork moving through the air, with the event of her emotional body releasing. The timing; simultaneous - and as the fork lifted, a bunch of sage was burnt and released into the room. And in silence, the room of allies looked through each other's eyes and felt the heaviness and purification that she was going through, that we were all simultaneously supporting through her healing journey.In such moments, I ask myself - does the fork being lifted towards my mouth create the emotional release, does the sage smoke being released have that effect, am I fully in power here and creating this situation, or......? And then it hit me. The realization that in the realms of human psychic dynamics, our emotional & psychic energy bodies are affected much like a tidepool ecosystem. In a tidepool, you will find a diversity of creatures and life forms; sea anenomes, seaweeds, starfish, sea urchins, mussels, plankton and brine beyond our eyes. And with every coming swell of oceanic pulse, the tidepool swells with water. The mussels come alive and open their crevices, breathing brine through their bodies. The seaweeds undulate - everything moves and is affected by the incoming tidal pulse washing through them. And then as the tide recedes, the water evacuates and everything closes back in and returns to silence - waiting for the next rush of the wave pulsing through. Life is just like that. It's not that my fork affected her emotional body process, it's that my subconscious was attuned to the unseen emotional energy washing through the space and responding intuitively to the flow of psychic energy being released simultaneously as her waves were crashing.As a human, we can stand on the edge of shore and see very clearly when the next wave is about to crash into the tidepools, and we can watch very clearly as the waves recede. We humans have a more clear vision of the in-flow and out-flow of the brine breezing through the bodies of the tidepool creatures. But imagining oneself in the tidepool, imagining you are the starfish or sea urchin - you cannot see the coming wave. You can only feel it as it is on top of you, crashing on top of your body and swelling around you. And in the tidepool all are affected simultaneously as the wave swells around all the inhabitants. If they had keen enough eyes, they could all brace for impact and know when the next impacts were to happen. But all one can do is feel and wait patiently, knowing inherently that the next wave will move through. It matters not to know when, but to know how to feel the churning vibration moving through the earth beneath, so that we can be attuned to the pulse.Human psychic dynamics are so similar to the movings of a tidepool ecosystem, in the sense that an event occurs and everyone is simultaneously affected - although all beings and creatures are uniquely affected in each ecosystem. But in the moment of our friend grieving, we were all affected by the the intense energy that was unleashed in the space and was allowed to move through. It became obvious to me that her grieving and healing process was a huge part of the reason why she came to our sanctuary here - to be held in her moment, to be allowed to grieve. We all need that sense of refuge - that space where when our vulnerabilities overwhelm our sense of strength and stability, we can just be held. Simply Held, listened to, & received.In the moment of a tidepool ecosystem all are simultaneously affected - and likewise, with humans - all beings are deeply affected simultaneously in the wake of an intense tragedy, catastrophe, disaster, devastation, death or divorce. And this has been a doozy of a year for personal transformations. I have not met one person this year that has gone unaffected by the transformational energies unleashed upon our lives. Whether that transformation comes in the form of an old relationship ending and transforming, someone being diagnosed with cancer and going through surgery, moving across the country to heal from chronic illness; the list is endless. I have seen every person I know go through a challenging and transformational year, and in my own life experience this year, I have gone through one heart-wrenching challenge after another. This has easily been the least easy year of my life, and I have been forced to step up and become stronger through meeting the challenges, and have been completely transformed in the process of doing so. Even though I have gone through the hardest year of my life, I still have a strong sense of direction, purpose, strength, vitality and inner equanimity and peacefulness that has shown me that I have the ability to be at peace with any reality I find myself in, even if it challenges me to the core.The eyes of the human in the tidepool scenario are the eyes of the prophet or visionary, whose eyes are set to the horizon. It becomes obvious from the eyes of the prophet that the next wave is about to crash, but from the eyes of the sea urchin, it is difficult to discern the next moment of wave. Likewise, in our culture at this time, the eyes of many prophets are set to the horizon, and have glimpsed visions of many waves crashing upon us. The waves of transformation; and all are being affected. The time of denial is long gone, the time has come where many concur that we are all going through a massive transformational process on Planet Earth, one that will undoubtedly rock humanity to the core over the coming decades and will unveil a new human economy on our planet that will show us how much like a Tidepool we humans are. That we are all in it together and that every wave will affect us and our neighbors, and that it is in our best interests to support each other with as much compassion as is possible - because we are all going to need to find the arms of refuge soon enough to hold us as we are being rocked. And sometimes it will be our time to be held, and sometimes it will be our time to hold those who are going through it.I feel fully that the universe has amazing things in store for us as a planet and as a species, but that we will be going through a rollercoaster ride of transformation in order to get there. I feel that we will be forced to release so much of what is stagnant, what is "Old Paradigm", and what is no longer serving us. I feel that we are being asked to step up in a new way and move through and beyond our subconscious programming into a new level of awakening of our divine union as a humanity. The only way through the portal is Together! And that means that we have to begin seeing every person as a medicine person, as a divinely inspired person, fully listening and integrating their intution in every moment to the best of their ability. We must support and encourage ourselves and each other to see each other as medicine men and women, embodiments of divine consciousness - gods and goddesses, source in flesh. Trusting in that divine perfection, which is sometimes a divine imperfection - a wabi sabi kind of perfection, the kind of perfect beauty that is completely molded over and dilapidated and fallen apart, but still in every way completely perfect. We are all making mistakes over and over again, unconsciously choosing to shoot ourselves in the foot in cyclical pattern, and we are all perfect at doing that, because it is exactly what we are programmed to do and need to do. But there comes a time when patterns want to be changed, when we want to reprogram ourcellves so that we can make choices that will help align us with a greater flow of happiness, peacefulness and abundance.So much of the work we have to do as a humanity is heal our emotional energy bodies. This is the most necessary layer of work that is asked of us as we move upwards on the ascension process. This requires so much dedication to healing ourselves, towards full mindfulness and awareness of our unconscious patternings, towards loving ourselves, towards cultivating self-forgiveness, towards aligning ourselves with our truth, with our hearts, towards making choices that are going to inspire us to be grounded embodiments of our highest potential. We will never get anywhere as a species until we pull off the cloaks of stoicism and emotional denial and detachment that has enslaved us as a species for far too long. The "Old Paradigm" patriarchal patterning of recent years has been to completely disconnect from the emotional body because it was deemed that "getting the work done" was more important to daily business than was being fully integrated and awakened in ones full emotional body authenticity, in every moment.Of course, in civilizations based on economies of hierarchy, enslavement and suppression - those very energy patterns have been stuck within every citizen's subconscious. We have all been hard wired in our subconscious to be disconnected from our hearts, from ourselves, and from each other. And that is why there has been a disconcerting pattern erupting from the hands of Western civilizations to basically not give a shit when others are suffering, or to take pleasure in the slaughter or forced subjugation of those that they deem as lower on their hierarchy ladder. But soon will come a time when it becomes impossible to ignore the suffering of others and not give a shit when our neighbors lives are threatened.The tidepool is getting smaller, our tidepools are growing closer together, our lives are becoming so much more enmeshed in each others, and we have to begin learning how to grow and live together as a human species, with our decisions erupting out of our need to support, hold, love and offer compassion and nurturing to each other. I believe we will have no choice in the matter, because everyone's hearts are soon to be cracked open. It is simply what I see as I set my eyes on the horizon.(Written in Nov. 2009 - Making It Public in Jan. 2010; In Retrospect of the Haitian Earthquake, this takes on a particularly interesting read.)