I caught myself wondering
what it is like
being water.
Not what it would be like.
And then I realized
I was explaining—
or something was,
and has been for a while—
explaining
what it is like being water.
Someone invisible
has been coaching me.
I’ve been a good student
listening so carefully because
I need to know.
Something at my core
yearns for this.
Water wants me to know
what it is
and
that I am THAT too.
Look, it says
like a swimming coach
This is water.
This is what it is like
to be water.
Just drop all of
your preconceived ideas
about what and who you are.
Water comes closer to what you are.
It comes closer
than any other thing
animate or inanimate.
You try to soak in
other limited images
of the highest good
most often it’s other people
that you seek to learn from.
There are many people
on the earth
on the path
toward infinite Love.
Yet even they—many of them—
have their blockages,
as you call them.
They too can be rivers
wanting to take their rocks,
their twigs, their branches and leaves
with them
rather than slide by them
Seek to
be-with those beautiful
and substantial rocks
those slippery, impossible-to-hold rocks
as you pass by
don’t hang on to them.
Watch this wonderful water—
flowing wildly,
falling over precipices,
floating down as wispy flakes,
pelting down
or misting in the air,
squishing inside of a fruit,
vegetable
or your own Body.
You feel it
flow down your throat,
you feel it
splash over your boot
seep onto your ankles
douse your bare feet
you
delight to hear it crackle
when you tap your toe
on that just-forming layer
of thin ice on that puddle.
You’ve been watching it
for years.
Everyone has.
You watch
you study
water is hinting
at your possibilities.
Notice your fear:
fear of a wrong turn,
You remember when
wrong ideas
took up decades
of your life
alienated those you loved
Be that large pool
of water,
that ocean of awareness
that notices and holds that fear.
Call on the Most High
to show you
your path down this hill
He will, and is,
showing you
your next right step.
Those steps come faster now
or seem to.
Don’t worry
there is no end in sight.
You are on the infinite path.
Transformation your one goal
as the lyrics put it.
Transformation your one goal.
Elizabeth Morana
Oh to allow myself to be the water that I am! And then I get to experience how everything else flows in me and through me. I love the sense of that. Kevin
I like that, Kevin, “…to be the water that I am…” and that we could experience “how everything else flows in me and through me…” That’s how this experience helps me too, to let things flow through me, and maybe also I continue flowing past the things that would usually block my ‘flow’ through my resistance to what each ‘obstruction’ represents to me….I would much rather relax and let my natural energies continue flowing….in fact, this has something to do with “it is what it is”….rather than fight it, see that it is there, and continue to live, and to stay in touch with my own life that wishes to move forward….
This is just so beautiful. I read it already after it was published and wanted it to do what it wants to do in me. This morning when I woke up I just realised: the whole poem is like a water that is so softly and tenderly touching all parts of mine. It reminds me of my own experience how I can let the Love in me to search every part of me, not like a billow but like a warm, safe water on the beautiful beach where I can just wash my feet, my body in a gently running water.
Still to continue…and the picture gives me a fresh, life forward feeling. I need both of them – the warm beach water and the fresh, flowing water.
Beautiful Elizabeth – this image is amazing!! Especially when the wrong ideas are named as rocks, the creative times are the rushing brooks and the peaceful times the lakes……
Maria, All you have written has the effect in me of making the power of the What Water Wants even stronger in me. It feels even more true after hearing that others sense that Water has something to teach us about ourselves. And about the power of love, too. That it always finds its way past obstacles.
From,
Elizabeth…. who wishes to be more like water, who realizes she CAN BE more like Water! Who realizes she IS like water!
Thank you for this, Kit….that the rocks (and twigs, etc) are ‘wrong ideas’…..the ideas and the patterned ideas that we have trouble letting go of…..and it has been occurring to me that grabbing those old patterns and dragging them along only creates a ‘dam’ of our natural flow of creativity, of creative, new ideas, of our life force!
Yes, the rushing brooks is me-moving-forward….and better yet: the rushing brook is the life force within me, always seeking its way forward.
And the Lakes, the ponds, the large bodies of still water, yes, when we’re peaceful, when we are able to receive and reflect peace and wisdom.
with gratitude for sharing this living-seeking-knowing,
elizabeth
My friend Terry Adler, who attended our Wholebody Focusing retreat in Barrie, ON, in August, shared the What Water Wants poem on FaceBook and one of her FB friends, Sylvia Holland, commented and her words were so beautiful, so insightful, I asked if I could share them here and she has given me her permission. I hope you love her ideas and images as much as I do! Water is still teaching me, too.
Sylvia wrote:
“When navigating really rocky places within large systems, with many people hardened into positions of stone….. I used to feel my shoulders rise towards my ears and I could feel my own muscles tense too. And then I would think, “Water always finds a way through, even when we can barely see any space at all between boulders” and “Water can carve huge new spaces”—and sure enough, there was always an open space in which “flow” could happen. Water is still teaching me!”