Waves Of The Sea

For days now she has been having strong waves. All kinds of waves. Waves rough and mighty that make you weak and vulnerable. Waves gentle and flowy that invite you to be joyful and playful. And then again, waves of confusion and chaos that leave you breathless and desperate.

She reached her sigh across the horizon to see who caused all these waves. Was is the fault of the wind blowing from far? – it is usually the wind, right?- Was it the heavy rain purring down for days? Was it the
massive migration of the birds flying over her for weeks? Or was it the people who have wounded her deeply? Oh, how much she would like to blame all those for the waves! But she knew it wasn’t any of them- unfortunately.

This was not the first time she has had those waves. In fact, they come and go from time to time, reminding her of their existence. Most of the time they come unexpectedly and uninvited, as if they exist in the darkness, desperately waiting for a crack. And they do exist in the darkness. They rest forgotten in the deepest bottom of her existence where she very carefully hided them in the past. But one day, under some circumstances, they begin to whirl and stir, roar and scratch. On the surface usually one sees nothing, but in the bottom
there is chaos. Will she listen to them now? If she does not, out of rage and despair from her ignorance, they will rise in the surface as the biggest possible waves. There is no way to hide them then. If pushed down once more, they will invisibly lift themselves up in the air and find another way to be seen, becoming the tears of the sky.

So, they call for her attention louder and louder until she turns to them, until she sinks down in the darkness and treats them as a great friend: the one you want to sit next to for hours, the one you want to listen carefully, the one you want to embrace fully. Then they melt, they dissolve into a soft white sand that decorates the shore and nestles the birds.

For days now she has been having strong waves. All kinds of waves. But being a woman (or a human), her intuition tells her the exact location of these waves in her heart. She hesitates not once to be vulnerable. So she breaks and kneels and descends without a fear. With tears in her eyes she befriends all her emotions. They don’t speak right away, they need their time and her trust. So she is patient and silent. She listens deeply. She has images and insights and break throughs and ideas and visions. And then, the emotions soften, become tranquil and sweet and she goes on stronger. For she now knows that life is a circle and waves of emotions come and go endlessly and she needs to patiently listen. And if she ever forgets, the great waves of the sea will always remind her.

Eleni Michail

Spring Equinox: From Winter To Spring, From Death To Rebirth

Today is the Spring Equinox. This means that the daytime and nighttime are of approximately equal duration all over the planet. Our ancestors, living fully in nature could eavesdrop this moment of shift from longer nighttime to longer daytime. But we notice it too, don’t we? Don’t we feel that the sun rises earlier and sets later? Don’t we sense the change in the temperature? Or the swallows in the sky? The song of the birds loud and cheerful? The flowers blooming massively? The sweetness of the air? We may not calculate the exact moment of the equinox, but we feel it when it’s here, because we are nature too.

The equinox signals the beginning of the Spring. Our ancestors used to celebrate and honor this moment, as the transition from Winter to Spring, from Darkness to Light, from Death to Rebirth, from Melancholy to Joy, Slow rhythm existence to Fast rhythm existence, Introspection to Outward-spection, Imagination to Creation.

Nature rebirths itself and for thousands of years is not afraid to go through this transformation, to go through the darkness and cold of the Winter, to slow down its pace, to stay still, to allow some unnecessary parts to get rotten and decomposed. Well why do we human hesitate to do the same? I have this feeling that we desperately push away “death”, postponing and postponing it. I am not talking about the physical death here. I am talking about the transformation the psycho-spiritual death provides.

Michael Meade (author, mythologists and story-teller) says that in order to fully live we don’t need to die, but a part of us needs to die. And this parts of us is something that keeps us behind from our own (and thus collective) growth: a bad habit, a well-established behavior pattern that doesn’t serve us or our community, an immature way of thinking, a rotten believe, the painful way we see ourselves, the malign way we see the others, etc.

When we allow this part of ours to die, we then rebirth, we enter again the light, we grow, we feel the joy, we bloom, we root ourselves even more, we speed up and we put our wildest dreams into practice. Of course,
this process will be repeated again and again, but every year – just like in nature- we achieve evolution.

We are nature too. Even if we don’t follow exactly the seasons’ cycle, there will be moments in which a psycho-spiritual Winter will come upon us. Perhaps we are living one right now? Perhaps we are given an
invitation to stop, slow down, listen to ourselves, reflect on what does not serve us and let those parts of ourselves which do not serve our souls die. Then I believe, we will have a collective human Equinox.

In the meantime, let’s celebrate the current Equinox. I celebrated it last night by singing dozens of times the song “Wild mountain thyme”. How are you planning to celebrate it?

Above a photo of our pomegranate tree which is entering the Spring.

Eleni Michail