On Water's Identity: A step in the spiritual direction
There’s been a terrifying truth, just outside the corner of my awareness. An unnerved shiver has typically signaled the brief submission of my attention to its chilling edges. Inside is a sense that I’ve always know the heart of this truth, but I’ve kept the accompanying felt impact of this truth away from my heart. Yet again and again it seeps into the smallest cracks of my awareness and for moments I consider letting the flood embrace me, but then the terror and doubt encourages me to plug up the leaks with distracting illusions. In fairness, I have been trained well to believe that I cannot breathe underneath water. If I welcome the stormy truth, what air would be left to continue my everyday routines? I safe myself from change by embracing illusions and leaping away from the knowing heart of it all.
In the quiet, a thought beckons my attention, “What occurrence of water would Water recognize as itself?” In other words, how would Water identify itself? Given the blatant size of bodies of water, would it attach “I” to oceans, an ocean, any embodied water? Is each body a different Water? A discrete species with many members within it?
But if one were to single out the Pacific ocean, wouldn’t it be fair to call the “boundaries” between it and the Indian Ocean an illusion? And between the Atlantic, another illusion! Should not the point that a human insists the Pacific stop calling itself the Pacific at the tip of Southern South America be viewed as arbitrary to the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, waves of itself has always experienced “the Atlantic side” and vice versa. So it’s all ocean. The labels of different ocean bodies don’t stick. It’s all water.
So is that it? The totality of the Earth’s water embodies the identity of Water? But why should Water limit itself to Earth-bound water? All Earth-bound water once came from off Earth. Further, it seems that labeling the “alien” water ancestral water is as arbitrary and human-centered as illusions of separate oceans. Then, could Water include a universe’s vastness?
What of lakes, rivers, glaciers, rain drops, water vapor, clouds, cups of water, and water within human bodies. If it is “separated” by human bodies and cups and land from its “original universe-Earth spanning oceanic source” is it all Water. Are these then the separate members of the water species? But is the separateness an illusion? Glaciers are ever melting and freezing, rain drops ever dropping, rivers ever running and seeping and evaporating. Heck, creatures are ever peeing and drinking! This is water just moving across states, distances, and times. It seems to be. Wherever it are. Ever moving, growing, changing, being? But remaining all Water.
However, although in many places and time, Water is not every thing. It is one/multiple(?) of many other things. But, it appears that for only an impossible (ie. Delusional) snapshot of time and space, could Water mistakenly find itself to be discrete, stable, essential. An “I.” A discrete collection of personality characteristics. A limited, bordered, experience. It’s no thing ness! It is is-ing without having an “it.”
Its’ potential is failed by human language.
“My” mind suggests the truth that pulls at my attention requires engaging this above Water exercise with the construct of “a sentient” or… “my self.”
In the quiet, a thought beckons my attention, “What occurrence of water would Water recognize as itself?” In other words, how would Water identify itself? Given the blatant size of bodies of water, would it attach “I” to oceans, an ocean, any embodied water? Is each body a different Water? A discrete species with many members within it?
But if one were to single out the Pacific ocean, wouldn’t it be fair to call the “boundaries” between it and the Indian Ocean an illusion? And between the Atlantic, another illusion! Should not the point that a human insists the Pacific stop calling itself the Pacific at the tip of Southern South America be viewed as arbitrary to the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, waves of itself has always experienced “the Atlantic side” and vice versa. So it’s all ocean. The labels of different ocean bodies don’t stick. It’s all water.
So is that it? The totality of the Earth’s water embodies the identity of Water? But why should Water limit itself to Earth-bound water? All Earth-bound water once came from off Earth. Further, it seems that labeling the “alien” water ancestral water is as arbitrary and human-centered as illusions of separate oceans. Then, could Water include a universe’s vastness?
What of lakes, rivers, glaciers, rain drops, water vapor, clouds, cups of water, and water within human bodies. If it is “separated” by human bodies and cups and land from its “original universe-Earth spanning oceanic source” is it all Water. Are these then the separate members of the water species? But is the separateness an illusion? Glaciers are ever melting and freezing, rain drops ever dropping, rivers ever running and seeping and evaporating. Heck, creatures are ever peeing and drinking! This is water just moving across states, distances, and times. It seems to be. Wherever it are. Ever moving, growing, changing, being? But remaining all Water.
However, although in many places and time, Water is not every thing. It is one/multiple(?) of many other things. But, it appears that for only an impossible (ie. Delusional) snapshot of time and space, could Water mistakenly find itself to be discrete, stable, essential. An “I.” A discrete collection of personality characteristics. A limited, bordered, experience. It’s no thing ness! It is is-ing without having an “it.”
Its’ potential is failed by human language.
“My” mind suggests the truth that pulls at my attention requires engaging this above Water exercise with the construct of “a sentient” or… “my self.”