My parents used to swear I was a fish in a past life. Growing up with frequent time on the beach, all I knew was the at-one-ment I felt there. I emersed in the water until my mom would declare if I spent one more second in the water I would grow gills.
At 12 I was caught in a strong raging under-toe. I was a jr. Life guard, accomplished and strong swimmer but I couldn’t compete with this under-toe. It dragged me down the beach and out to the ocean. I can recall the terror I had knowing I had no control. My mind was in fight mode; I swam as hard as I could, making no progress out of the under-toe until I was exhausted.
There wasn’t anything else for me to do but try to float, and I could barely manage that. I had been yelling and the sensation of salt water in the back of my mouth was overwhelming. I thought yuck, is this what fish taste? My focus and attention on the taste of salt water in the back of my mouth was highly inappropriate given my circumstances, but I am convinced it saved my life.
I felt myself being bumped like when I washed up against the side of the pool when I was floating on a raft and my brothers were doing cannonballs next to me to piss me off. The cannonballs always shoved me, protected by the padding of the raft into the pool wall and I would change direction.
I looked around and could see nothing-but I was exhausted and my looking was brief. There was the bump again. And Again. Gross this salt-water taste is awful; I need to focus on keeping my head above the waves. Bump again. Now I feel like I am moving solidly in a direction. I am content to not care, exhausted I have one job: trying to keep more of the salt water from going down the back of my throat and experiencing that awful taste. I remember thinking how I might be having a priority issue. It was very strange the awful taste of salt water was my focus, because it wasn’t like I didn’t know I was going to die-and soon. Dying, not so bad. The taste-eeeeww. Strange I thought.
I find myself in the surf, I can’t really get my legs under me try as I might. I manage to let out a few loud and impressive screams for help. I collapse, feel myself go under the wave and I remember thinking of the irony of drowning so close to shore.
With in seconds big strong arms were lifting me up, up high above the waves, I was being asked if I was okay, if I was attacked by a shark, where was I hurt?
None of the questions made any sense. No I wasn’t okay, I almost died, but had no strength to really talk, spitting up and spitting out what felt like volumes of seawater from my lungs and throat.
The man with the strong arms said he saw me going out farther and farther and was very upset because he didn’t know who my parents were and couldn’t tell them the transgression against good judgment he felt I had made for swimming out that far. He said he saw fins all around me, he saw me coming back into shore, heard me shouting and ran to me to help.
That night I dreamed I was being carried by dolphins. I was being transported to unknown locations, but wherever they were taking me I was fine with it. In the morning it all made sense, the questions from the man, what the bumps were, angels with blowholes. For years I had been wearing a dolphin necklace. I never took it off. I lost it in the water that day. I felt it was the homage I paid. The acknowledgment of my debit to the dolphins.
What changed on that day was clear: I wasn’t a fish and the love of my life could easily kill me. The ocean was no more my home than the top of a tree. The world didn’t make sense any more.
I began healing with an uneasy truce with nature. I’d bargain; I won’t go into the water again. Okay, I’ll only go in up to my knees. Finally I settled on I’d only go into the water up to my chest and it wouldn’t kill me.
I got over the experience, became enamored with the seas once again, took to surfing and sail boarding but with a watchful eye and cautious demeanor. I didn’t heal from the experience until I had a change in perception. What ACIM deems a miracle: I stopped thinking of myself as someone who needed to fear, someone who almost died.
I read a story about a man who was very ill, recovered and then was involved in a car accident, recovered and then was stabbed in a robbery and died.
I realized that if it was your time, it was your time. That somehow the struggle was not how you died, but how you lived. It wasn’t my time, clearly. I’ve had other not-my-time experiences since this one in the ocean. Somewhere between the tension of surrender and the power of a miracle I needed to live my life.With each not-my-time experience I have felt the uncontrollable urge to fight, fight and fight some more when I thought I’d had no fight left. In each one of the experiences, when I finally surrendered to what is, all the help my frantic nature was pushing away now was available.
I also noticed that the focus on something else that will not kill you, like the bad taste of salt water in your mouth is what helps save us. I am sure I would have stayed frantic until I couldn’t float without that focus.
I notice too, that whatever our distraction is during the crisis, we need have none in the healing if we are to genuinely heal.
In the end, the overcoming is accomplished because we take everything on the outside and bring it in.
We bring the Outside In. Past the defenses. Past the guarded gates of ‘how the world works’ and into our inner sanctuary.Into us, where we can deal with and face the fears we encounter in our life.
I have never seen healing when the Outside fear remains outside. In fact, the most dangerous place for the fear is on the outside where we can continue to make it a bigger and bigger beast. On the inside, it is met with understanding of it’s rightful place in the pantheon of life lessons.
Outside In morphs into Inside Out.
It’s the fuel for any good thing that ever happens –happens from the inside out.
Whatever the fear, remember the first step is Outside In.
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