Waves on the Ocean and Worlds in the Sea

It is a most interesting thing the way people will use different terms to say the same thing and then believe they are being contradicted by the other. I’ve always been amused by arguments about what cannot be defined due to the subjective experience of what is beyond the senses. I seldom can be attracted into these sorts of debates, primarily because it never leads to anything.

It was fun sometimes when I was younger and new experiences were part and parcel of my day. I realize now that I was just as often caught up in the vanity of my reasoning skills as much as I was sincere about understanding anything. It was just another way of playing ping pong. It’s always satisfying when you are ‘on’ and making those great moves. Sooner or later the games end and the paddles and the ball sit on the table; just two paddles and a ball, a net and a table with a few white lines.

When we strip away all of our self identification with our words and actions, what is left is what we should be looking at. All over the world people spend their lives remarking on the waves, calculating their measurements, predicting outcomes based on their measurements, buying and selling the information, betting on the outcome, theorizing on the movements and attributing meaning to them. But they’re just waves and they will go on behaving as they do for as long as there is a force to set them into motion.

People talk about the wind and make more wind. They talk about the currents and the tides. They speak of depth and coastlines. Along the way all sorts of understandings have come and sciences have emerged that make possible a greater use of the waves. It’s not the waves though. It’s the ocean and the waves are only a portion of the nature of the ocean. We see the waves but we don’t see the ocean. The waves are the part of the ocean that is shown to us but there is a lot more to it.

Life is the same thing. I could begin to talk now about how the fishes in the ocean are so much like the thoughts in our minds and how the behavior of the fish are very similar to the situations caused by our desires. Big fish eat little fish. Many little fish eat a big fish. Small things attach themselves to big fish and behave like parasites. The intricate ecology of coral reefs and the deep unseen conditions of the ocean’s deep are all worlds unto themselves and yet all of these worlds are in the same ocean. There are other oceans. The sky is an ocean and it has its own system of operations and organization. It too can remind us of ourselves. Then there is the land. There is the weather which comes forth from the interaction of the three and the effect of other influences... on and on it goes.

Our senses operate within limited bandwidths. We speculate what might lie beyond these information gathering and measuring devices. Science shows us that forces and things exist outside our operating bandwidth and individuals with awakened siddhis have told us about what they have seen. Mystics from many a different time and tradition have agreed upon the similarity of things and conditions that exist beyond ordinary bandwidths.

In many different cultures, separated by significant time and distance there have evolved similar symbols and architectures for similar purposes. Many professions are devoted to study of inexhaustible minutiae. What lies at the very heart of the smallest particle of matter? What penetrates all time and space? Something does, even science in its ponderous plodding way has told us that something does. What lies beyond the furthest distance of this universe? Is it some immense curve that doubles back, no matter what direction you go in? Does it just keep pressing outward forever? What is it pressing outward against? Is there something beyond that and that and that? Does the relative symmetry between what is found at the deepest within and the furthest without mean something? Does the distance between magnetized particles within matter reflect similar distances to the heavenly bodies?

There seems to be some kind of remarkable order to it all. People dispute this. They talk about chaos theory and all manner of things. It seems that matter moves in one direction toward unimaginable density turning into black holes. Obviously it also moves toward a lesser and lesser density beyond the senses. Is this permeated by something as dense and pervasive after another fashion? Is our world interpenetrated by worlds of increasingly finer substance? Would that explain Heaven and conversely... Hell?

Here we are in the mix. It appears that there may be technologies and laws of operation far beyond anything we have seen and it could be that they all adhere to laws of nature we have yet to discover. Each life decides the meaning of its life according to how much it understands... then the life is gone. Where did that life go?

It seems that a person could never acquire all of the knowledge that is available. They could never acquire all of the goods, or the land or the space. Something acts as a limiter and it could be that the limiter is there to point out the reality that by knowing just one simple thing all other knowledge and information is rendered secondary.

I have toyed with many sciences and religions; philosophies and practices both general and arcane. It’s possible that I have been doing this for much longer than this lifetime and the same may be true of you. Maybe I gained something by all of this probing and seeking. I am more gratified that I spent my time doing this than making money or becoming important in a temporary period of time. However, none of these things are important to me any more. They seem like highways ‘around’ something. All of these words and thoughts, all this speculation seems like waves on an enormous ocean. They don’t have much to do with what lies beneath. It seems that the deeper one goes into the ocean the less likely they are to speak; not so easy with your mouth full of water (grin).

My words... your words... waves on the ocean. Waves can speak of the ocean and waves can speak only of waves. However deep or superficial they may be in their statements they are still both composed of water. Waves are some kind of temporary identity that the ocean takes to say one thing or another, millions of ways every minute of every day and the ocean has made itself into seven separate oceans that are all the same ocean.

Our lives are like a wave on the ocean. We rise from and fall back into the water. There are a million things we can talk about and do within the parameters of a wave among millions of waves but it is hard to imagine that it means anything. It’s more than this of course. I’m just painting a picture to try and make a point but I’ll fall short. I’m only a wave after all.

Everyone has a philosophy, one way or another. They have some passion or predisposition that orders the course of their ship in this ocean of time and the unending phenomena of the waves. I suspect that some ships are more seaworthy and it might just be because one is more able to sail under a particular set of sails.

What I have come to find is that all of the words and arguments and wonders of existence count for nothing in terms of personal effect as a wave upon an unfathomable ocean. Speaking only for myself, I have come to believe that everything is under control and that that control is conscious. If that is so then it indicates to me that whatever that might be it is quite conscious of who I am and where I am; from whence I am come and to where I am bound and that the best thing for me is to have an attitude of listening and a desire for cooperation with it.

I have discovered that the only problem I have is me when I am not listening and not cooperating and when I want more than I have which is everything already. This is not to say that one should not search and reach and study by whatever means one may possess. This is only to say that I suspect one will forever sail under a cloud of unknowing on an unpredictable sea. I am hoping I get invited to dine at the Captain’s Table once I have come to understand how profoundly little I know.

Visible sings: ♫ It's Changing ♫
'It's Changing' is track no. 5 of 12 on Visible's 2007 album 'Color Ball'
Lyrics (pops up)