More Water, Please

Tirta Empul Temple, Bali, a temple to water

My anger is getting way too consuming, and I’m sure I’m not alone but I can feel it doing damage to my body and spirit and mind at this point. So…

I’m a Scorpio. For most of my life, I’ve thought I was a fire sign. I know… whatever. I can be dense.

I sure can ACT like a fire sign. I can be assertive ((cough)). I don’t fear debate or argument. If I feel like someone is being treated unfairly, I come in with guns blazing. I’m protective of people and animals. I want JUSTICE. I don’t hesitate to burn something down that is no longer serving me.

And yet… most of that? Makes me uncomfortable if I am being honest, which I am, because I am. ((ha))

There are too many reasons to get into that explain WHY I am like this but this Fire Me is not my truest self and thus the discomfort.

I am, after all, a WATER sign.

Even if you don’t like the astrology stuff, I am connected to water and always have been.

I’ve had two near drownings but still go back in.

I taught myself to swim in an Olympic sized (and very busy) pool when I was barely six years old and had no adult supervision.

I live on a great lake and visit her multiple times a week. I think about moving but can never get past the idea of not having this giant water presence in my life.

There is this soft, gentle body of water inside my own body that wants very much to be set free. I built a damn around that part of myself long ago — or experiences helped create that dam — and then I set a ring of fire ablaze around all of it.

Right now, as I seem to live and breathe toxic anger and rage over this government, this president, and then this awful handling of this awful virus, I finally feel like I am hitting my tolerance point for heat. I finally can feel that that fire is depriving me of oxygen.

So what to do? Firstly, to release this fiery anger self and second, to welcome back the flow of water.

Even if you haven’t long lived with this kind of destructive anger, you might be feeling it now, and so I thought I’d share some resources I’ll be using to work with water.

Primarily, of course, I’ll be doing things at the lake. Sitting with her, meditating on her beaches, and doing ablution practices when it gets warmer.

But here’s a WATER SALUTATION that I found. Yep, there is one! Who knew!?

I invited the Hindu Goddess Kali into my life many years ago and I wasn’t sorry for it (some people call on her and get a bit more than they bargained for). I’m going to consciously start working with her again. Here’s a decent article that includes some background about Kali and a starter sort of ritual (just writing and meditating) at the end. I approve of the follow up dancing.

And here’s a great pagan sort of simple spell that includes (if possible) a visit to a body of water.

Finally, this is a Sanskrit mantra to the healing powers of water.

I’d love to hear if you try any of this or if you create your own ways of calling forth your water nature.

Anger

The lake was crazy today when we took a walk to see her. LOUD and VIOLENT in her waves and churning. The kind of water action that changes whole coastlines in amazingly short lengths of time.

She was mesmerizing.

And I kept thinking she was reminding me of Kali, the Hindu goddess that brings about death to make room for rebirth.

She’s a goddess that I have spent a lot of time with over the last six years.

I feel her rage inside of me, but unlike our lake or mother nature in general, I don’t feel like I have anywhere to put that sort of rage. I don’t have a coastline that I can recut.

Another title for Kali, though, is liberator of souls.

We can only be liberated once what is keeping us imprisoned is destroyed.

Right now, we’re in this strange, extremely uncomfortable (to put it mildly), frustrating, STUCK place, but it’s in these sorts of liminal spaces where it seems nothing is happening that everything is happening.

More people than ever are, for example, waking up to the fact that the way our current culture is structured is not working. People are dying from lack of healthcare and food. What about that is in any way civilized?

But we have, for too long, walked beside that fact, averting our eyes because it wasn’t touching us. Now it is or the possibility is more present than ever and that is enough to stir more than usual critical thinking.

People are waking up to the fact that a few people owning most of the world’s resources is maybe not only unfair but just, well, not longterm functional.

Raging, churning, screaming…

It’s a right and good rage. It’s a necessary churning. It’s a relief to be screaming and to finally be heard, even just a bit.

I have no answers. I have no idea where we’re headed or how to get there. It’s the nature of this space we’re in. All I have is feeling and observation, and for now, that has to be enough no matter how much I don’t like it.

Quiet...

I’ve always spent a lot of time at our Peninsula here on this Great Lake, and so going there to “blow the stink off,” as my Nana always said, is a natural reflex for me during this time of social isolation.

What’s surprising is the way we walk past each other with our guard up… swerving a bit as if to say, “there you go… there’s your six feet.”

We’re just generally… shyer with each other, aren’t we?

And because so many people are mainly staying at home, the other surprise is the QUIET. It’s that kind of quiet that you normally only hear on these paths during the winter months. Deep and thick with beauty and mystery. You hear your own breath and every sound that the trees and land around you have to offer, from subtle crackling of leaves to the bird calls beckoning from the summer that is still to come.

I don’t like why this gift has presented itself, but I will not turn this gift away.

When I’m walking along the lapping shore, I no longer bother with headphones and podcasts. When I’m walking, I’m no longer aiming to go faster and cover more ground.

When I’m walking, I’m just walking.