We all know what it is like to be ungrounded. To feel out of sorts and out of control of some aspect of our lives or of other people. We all know the suffering of having our emotions throw us into a state of chaos, or to be so shut down and be so separate from others that we are an island of isolation. When Leonard Cohen says, “If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be sick every day,” the sickness he is referring to is the ungrounded heart-sickness we experience when the focus of our energy is too internal. When we believe we are the center of the universe – that our suffering, our thoughts, our chaos is The Everything. What Leonard speaks to is the need to expand our awareness. To not confuse one drop in the ocean (i.e., ourselves) with the entire ocean itself. What is called for is a sense of self that includes others as well as the Something Bigger. When we understand that we are not alone in this Great Adventure we call life, when we know our place in the world is simply a small part, we do not have to make such a big deal of our lives. We don’t confuse the drop for the ocean. We belong to a Something Greater – we are one among millions that actually are the Something Greater.
There are many ways to cultivate being the Ocean. We can, in the midst of our internal chaos, look around when we are in public. We can see others around us and remember that they also think the world revolves around them. And yet, here you are together in the soup called life, none of you orchestrating traffic, or your DMV experience, or whatever experience you might be having. Each of us is creating the experience by doing our one part. No one person is creating or orchestrating it. We are simply participants. Drops of the Ocean.
If we are in our own space, then we can imagine others who are also in their own space, imagining the world revolves around them and their thoughts, family, chaos, etc. All of us operating under the illusion that the world is small and revolves around us. Then we remember the world, or humanity as a whole, or the planet , or any other way we choose to conceptualize the Something Bigger. And in becoming the ocean, in the awareness that we are a part of the Something Bigger, the intensity of our suffering softens. We relinquish the illusion that this emotional state we have is such a very big deal, because we are all having emotional states that transition from one moment to the next, like ocean currents, just one part of the larger whole.
Sabrina Santa Clara
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