Ocean Meditation

This week I spent three days at the Maine coast. We rented a room with a view of the ocean and a lighthouse. The first night we shared a meal with my sister and her husband, who had driven up from the Boston area. It was a beautiful time with warm September weather in the seventies but without all busyness of the summer tourist season.  

The best part of the trip was walking the beach. There is something about being near the ocean that is deeply spiritual. I think it has to do with our evolutionary heritage. While in Maine I was reading a novel entitled The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler and came across this quote:  

"We came from the ocean, and we only survive by carrying salt water with us all our lives — in our blood, in our cells. The sea is our true home. This is why we find the shore so calming: we stand where the waves break, like exiles returning home." 

 

The same is true of us and God. We come from God and return to God. We only survive by carrying God with us all our lives – in our blood, in our cells, in our hearts. God is within us. God is our true home. This is why humans have such a strong religious instinct. Knowing God is like returning home. 

 

I am reminded of a passage from the Upanishads in which a father is teaching his son about the Divine Self, which is the Presence of God within us. 

 

“Please, Father, tell me more about this Self.” 

“Yes, dear one, I will,” the father said. “Place this salt in water and bring it here tomorrow morning.” 

The boy did. ”Where is that salt?” his father asked. 

“I do not see it.” 

“Sip here. How does it taste?” 

“Salty, Father.” 

“And here? And there?” 

“I taste salt everywhere.” 

“It is everywhere, though we see it not. Just so, dear one, the Self is everywhere, Within all things, although we see him not. There is nothing that does not come from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self. He is the truth; he is the Self supreme. You are that, son; you are that.” 

 

Like salt fills the ocean and every cell of my body, so does God fill me. There is no division between God and me. This the experience of oneness that Jesus prayed that we might know as he knows. He knelt in Gethsemane and prayed for us: “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one — as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me." 

 

Those who do not know this oneness seek to drive a wedge between us and God, as well as between us and each other. Then they offer to bridge the gap with their complex theological and ecclesiastical schemes. But those who have tasted God are not deceived. All we need to do is follow the advice of the psalmist: "Taste and see that the Lord is good."