Dissolve into Wholeness

I’m in my favorite bay, swimming with my aquatic family, the spinner dolphins. I look below me and I see a cluster of white feathery specks.

My first thought is that a dolphin must have just lost his lunch, and it’s little fish bones that are floating beneath me. But the specks begin to take shape, and I realize I’m looking down on the speckled head of a humpback whale.

I let the dolphins pass, as I hover motionless above the whale.

Her pectoral fins are outstretched, and I move my arms out to match her. I do this without thought. Rather, it’s as if she’s locked into my circuitry and is controlling my body from below. I don’t mind. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good in my life.

Something begins to happen. Unlike the dolphins’ sonar that has an audible clicking sound, whatever is happening now is silent. Or at least out of my hearing range. But something is definitely happening.

I feel these slow-wave, seismic pulses of what I can only describe as love. Not human love. Not even dolphin love. This is an ancient, primal, deeply penetrating love. I can feel my cells rearranging in its presence. My heart pounding itself open.

Then, slowly, the whale begins to rise just to the right of me. The dolphins swirl playfully all around her head as she nimbly maneuvers herself into a vertical position, twirling, dancing upwards. I can see her white striped belly undulating as she rises, and I’m taken with how a being so massive can move with such grace and precision.

She surfaces right in front of me, gently splashing me with a soft, playful flick of her tail.

I don’t quite know what to do with myself, so I find the dolphins and swim alongside them for awhile, thinking these might be the only beings that understand how I feel.  

About 20 minutes later, as I’m peering into the blue to spot the spinners, I see this beautiful knobby nose coming towards me. The whale’s back. She comes within a few feet of me and hovers again, so we are nose to nose. I feel my arms outstretch themselves as if to embrace her, or whatever it is she is sending in my direction.

Once again I’m paralyzed on top of the water, my heart fluttering, my voice uttering the occasional moan of ecstasy.

I’m so captivated by this new emotion flooding my system that I begin to lose touch with the cells of my body. It’s as if the molecules that are Claire are mingling with the molecules that are the ocean and that are the whale. I lose my sense of separateness. In fact, I can’t even find a focal point to call “me” anymore.

After several minutes, the whale surfaces, dives deep, and I’m left as a smattering of molecules floating on the surface.

I collect myself as best I can and swim the mile back to shore.

I climb up the familiar rocky shore, but it feels different.

I feel different.

Later that night, I sit down on my meditation cushion and begin a process I call “running energy”— a technique for releasing the stresses of the day and clearing the mind.

I’ve been doing this each day for over 20 years, but today I can’t get it to work. It’s as if this well-worn path is blocked. Or broken. Instead, my heart begins pounding out its own seismic waves of love.

The pounding intensifies, as do the resulting waves. And then, just like in the water, I begin to lose my sense of self. To dissolve into the beauty of the experience.

It’s as if the whale has somehow transmitted some of her medicine to me.

As I attempt to wrap my mind around what seems to have occurred, I hear:

“This gift is for you, but not about you, Claire.”

I nod in acknowledgment of what feels like quite a hefty assignment — to somehow share this heart-pounding, self-dissolving whale wisdom with the world.

And then I giggle, because a sliver of the cosmic joke has just dawned on me.

Or rather, two slivers:
1 – I don’t need to be face to face with a whale to dissolve (and neither do you)

2 – The more I dissolve, the more whole I feel

One of the great illusions of Earthly life is that we as humans are not whole. We feel less-than, not-enough, unworthy, undeserving, and in many ways, broken.

None of us is immune to this dis-ease.

We give up who we are — in our relationships, careers, with our families, and we even hide the truth from ourselves.

The first time I recognized this illusion was during my inaugural swim with the spinner dolphins. As they held my gaze, it felt as if they were looking directly into my soul, showing me what I had been blinded to for so many years — that I am OK just as I am.

This dolphin wisdom of enoughness has defined my work now for two decades.

And today, the whale has given me the next step.

By dissolving the boundaries by which I define myself, she showed me that while I am enough just as I am, the wholeness we all seek is not an individual wholeness. Rather, it’s a longing for oneness. An ancient memory that, when it surfaces, reminds us that we are only truly whole together. As one.

When I remember that I am not separate from the whale…

Or the ocean…

Or you…

Then I don’t fight my own disappearance.

I simply relax.

And dissolve into wholeness.