Stillness 7-15: When we go through a sea change, we’ go through something major. Our perspective is dramatically altered because of it. It’s huge as death, as long as the word “death” is seen not as an ending but as a metaphor for transformation.
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange…
The fact is we are all in the midst of a sea change just now. We are in the center of a dense pyramid—or in the belly of a great whale—and when we emerge after this initiation, we’ll feel very differently. We’re all in a state of enormous change, whether that change has to do with meaningful work, family decisions, illness, home, a relationship lost or discovered, treasure lost or discovered, exhaustion, or revelation. We have entered a portal that leads to a different dimension than the one we were in not all that long ago.
This global shift in our world that so starkly reveals our interconnectedness, our responsibility to each other, our care and compassion, our loneliness and togetherness, has never happened before with such ferocity and clarity. Regardless of how we are each coping, it feels important to take some time to sense this planetary sea change. As we move through this liminal space into the next dimension of our existence, let’s grow in awareness. Let’s try to move into the next era consciously, bravely, compassionately, and with greater kindness and love. When we emerge, we may find ourselves in the same place and surrounded by the same people, but we ourselves will never be the same.
An old Sufi tale goes something like this: One day a young boy ventures into his favorite place in the forest where he likes to play. It’s a clearing with a rock in its center. There he discovers a very old stranger seated on the rock. Politely, the boy asks whether there’s anything he can do for him (even though what he really wants is for him to leave). The stranger asks for a glass of water. So the boy speeds off back home to fetch a glass of water, but as he crosses the river, the bridge collapses and he’s swept downstream for many miles. He ends up in a town where he’s cared for by strangers but before he can find his way back home, a rival tribe invades the town and he’s forced to escape on a boat that takes him across the sea to a different country. There he meets a woman and falls in love. They marry and have many children. He becomes a wealthy merchant, and travels all over the world, looking for silks, spices, and beautiful things, and over the years he completely forgets who he originally was or where he came from.
Many years later, he is sailing up a river that looks vaguely familiar. He knows this will be his last trip because he is so old now. He peers around with hazy recollection and interest. At a certain point he asks the captain to stop the boat because he feels drawn to see something. He walks slowly along a path and eventually comes to a clearing with a rock in its center. As though in a dream, he has found the place he had for so long forgotten. And there, just where he had left him so many decades earlier, sits the same stranger.
The stranger looks at him and asks, “What took you so long to bring my glass of water?”