Musings & Meditation on the Beach
“When we pay attention to nature's
music,
we find that everything on the Earth
contributes to its harmony”
— Hazrat Inayat Khan
First off, I
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a prolific writer, a spiritual guru and was trained in the Sufi tradition. He was
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Why and
How I Do Beach Meditation:
For me
immersion in nature is one of the best ways to meditate and cleanse my
spirit. I live a four and a half hour
drive from the beach and try and go to the beach a minimum of two to three
times a year for a couple days. I
drive to the panhandle of Florida, to the Gulf Islands National Seashore Santa
Rosa Area. This eight mile stretch of
beach has no commercialization and is just beautiful raw beach like the picture
above. And if you go in the off season
and walk a couple hundred yards down the beach from one of the many small
parking lots, you can be guaranteed to see very few people.
I go very
minimalistic. Quart of water, boiled
egg, piece of fruit, a white cotton sheet, light camping towel, no phone, no
music, no chair. And I always take my
frisbee, because I like to play frisbee by myself throwing the frisbee into the
wind and catching it.
Then I will
sit in the sand and meditate, walk up and down the beach, swim and play
frisbee. Maybe say a few words to a
few of the passersby.
And I know
sand is not everyone’s thing. You can
also do this type of thing at other sacred spots, like the mountains or the
desert. The idea is to get fully remote
and do a Zen thing with nature.
My ideal
weather is sunny, 15ºc or 60ºf, low to moderate winds. In this weather I can just be in a bathing
suit all day with maximum exposure to the elements. I usually stay about 4 to 5 hours on the
beach itself, that is about as much full exposure as I can handle. That much time bare-skinned in the elements
is surprisingly exhausting.
What I love most
about the beach is the overwhelming number of natural cleansing elements that
are at play simultaneously in this pristine environment!
We have the four
elements:
Sun - fire element – power, strength, vitality
Wind - air element – mind, spirit, breath, lightness
Ocean - water element – emotion, fluidity, nurturing
Sand – earth element – solidity, shape shifting, grounding
When we
combine everything that is going on, the cleansing factor is high. We have the sun warming us. The sun literally
giving us vitality. We have the wind
blowing across our skin. Cooling us, but
also feeling the force of the wind, its continuous slight pressure pushing on
our body. Blowing past our ears, the
sound cleansing our minds. The ocean.
The water in the ocean is old, deep, and powerful in its movement of waves and
tides. Also, it is salty, which creates
buoyancy and a refreshing mouth rinse.
Also moving water in general, but specifically ocean water, has a deep
cleansing ability. It literally will suck
out the traumatic energetic experiences we hold in our bodies. The sand. A handful of beach sand contains approximately
10,000 quartz and feldspar crystals that are made from eroded weathered rock
and shells. So, when we walk on the beach,
we are walking across trillions of crystals that have taken millions of years
to be ground down. The wind and the water continuously changing the landscape
of the sandy beach.
So, five
hours of being on the beach, virtually alone, is an elemental cacophony of
sensual stimuli. Our visual, audio,
olfactory, touch and taste senses are all being activated and focused.
We walk on the ever-shifting squeaky sand, we lay in the sand and conform it to our bodies, we feel the sun drying and warming our skin, the sound of the wind howling, the sound of the ocean (the ocean makes a multitude of sounds depending on whether a wave is crashing or the ocean is swooshing up and receding from the beach), the wind blowing in our hair. Swimming in the ocean in fall, winter and spring, we get the cryogenic nature of the water on our bodies. Cryogenics brings down inflammation. If you stay in the cold ocean long enough, the oil on your skin literally gets waxy. Then the movement of the waves as we ride up and down floating in the ocean, the buoyancy, the freedom of no gravity. Literally you can stand in the ocean up to your waist and your lower trunk can be cold and your upper trunk can be hot. The nature. You see dolphins, sandpipers working the beach with their beaks for food, gulls walking and flying. You can watch how they all communicate and work as teams.
And then one
of my favorites, the pelicans. Their
beaks are prehistoric, they plunge from 50 and 60 feet at forty miles an hour into
the ocean to snatch a fish. The force of
their plunge is unbelievable. All these
animals communicating and helping each other survive and coexist. And the botanical dune grasses, like sea oats,
that anchor the sand dunes. And the
visuals, as the sun shines on the water that recedes to and from the
beach. The sun’s movement from sunrise
to sunset changing the visual effect on the glistening water, sand, sky and clouds. And breathing in the smell of the ocean,
revitalizing our pnuema.
I could go
on and on, but I am stopping here.
The point is
if we can sit in the magnificent quiet of all these beautifully orchestrated sensations
and acknowledge The Great Spirit which animates us, we can feel the power and
symmetry of all of creation. We can
hear the quiet voice inside of us. The
call to participate in the dance of creation.
We are creators, because we our animated by the breath of The Great
Creator.
If we stay
quiet long enough, we can touch the silent dark energy we were created out of
and which sustains us.
Beach
Musings:
As I sat on
the beach for hours and days in the last two weeks, I thought. Whatever has created something this
beautifully complex and loving must be capable of much more than this. And that thought blew my mind. What
else is out there. Much more than we
care to imagine.
How little
we understand, while being in these bodies, as we stay focused on the minutiae of
our world, our personal dramas and our survival.
One day we
will create like this, but not until we can fully embrace our greatness and our
journey.
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Be mindful,
aware and enjoy our journey ……. Live a SageLife
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Namaste, the Divine in me honors the Divine in you!
Much love bill
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