Finding myself on the Beach
Do you feel the emptiness, like a yearning for something that you cannot name? That is the universe calling to you. That is the Consciousness of which we are all a part reaching out, yearning for you, trying to penetrate the veil between itself and what you — we — have been molded into by the world we live in. You wonder, “How do I respond to this call? There is so much in this world that demands my attention, that calls me to do anything but expand my consciousness beyond the three dimensional world. How can I even begin to fill that hole in my belly?”
The answer begins with your own variation of what I am doing right now. Tonight I’ve walked away from that demanding insistent world for a time. I’m outdoors, alone, in quiet darkness on an ocean beach. I came here just after the lowest tide, onto a flat rippled sandbar below where the beach slopes up to dry land.
I walk to the edge of the black water. I see lights on channel markers and the islands to the east, and sparkling reflections on the water. I listen and watch as waves break and hiss on the sand in long bright lines, illuminated by other lights in the houses behind me. There is no moon, and the stars are brilliant above me.
The tide has turned. I see that the rise has begun. As the water creeps over the bar, each wave wets a new strip of sand. I wonder whether I will have to take my shoes off to wade when the sand bar becomes a shrinking island.
Here I feel the yearning in my soul filled by the darkness, the sandbar, the water, and the comfortable knowing that time and the tide will not wait for me as they do not and have never waited for anyone. Alone in nature I find my soul, and in finding my soul I connect timelessly with all that is. The breaking waves, the beach, the lights — these help me know that my consciousness is held within a great Consciousness in which I know that I am loved and that I matter.
I say thank you to the water, the beach, the quiet dark. When I come back to my warm bright home, I am better for my brief time there.
