Non-dualist perspectives that say ‘We are all one’ are often elusive and can feel like abstract concepts. What we perceive with our physical senses indicates the complete opposite. These ideas can therefore feel like spiritual principles that we refer to but do not deeply understand. To understand them more intuitively we use metaphors that can provide a gleaming of illumination into these concepts.

Thich Nhat Hanh says ‘Enlightenment is when a wave realize it is the ocean’. You, me and everything we see around us has been created by the self same ocean of forces, energy and matter particles. A sea of potential that has shifted and reformed in different configurations and waves until it formed into the wave of us and the world existing now. This wave form is temporary and eventually our individual wave configuration will merge back into the great existential ocean and reform. But even while our wave is holding its form as us it is not static and separate, rather it demonstrates a dynamic, interactive relationship to the sea around it; taking in sustenance from the outer matrix to sustain itself as we eat and breathe, transforming the outer ocean into our inner ocean as we grow new cells, our inner ocean into the outer ocean as we excrete redundant atoms. Inside pulses out and outside pulses in. Atomic recycling.

When we think we are just a wave the outer sea can be threatening, huge and terrifying. When we remember we ARE the ocean we come home to the vastness of ourselves and find our home in the life around us.

Through dialogue and connecting, spiritual practice and sharing space together we can release our tendency to be a wave and instead connect to our collective identity as ocean.

Photo by @wave_gyp_sea