Bubbles In The Sea Of Consciousness

    Consciousness is a vast sea upon and in which we float in these vessels we call our bodies.  Though at first glance, at the same time that we experience the ocean as one, and cannot distinguish one drop from another, we know that each drop is different.  So it is that we exist at the same time and in the same place both as individuals and as elements of the greater whole. How do we experience this individuality and this wholeness?  The ways are infinite just as the variations are infinite.  Though it would seem that there are a finite number of leaves, of grains of sand, of stars, of cells, of persons, yes, indeed, of drops of water, more are coming into being at any moment and we cannot know if this flow is limited in any way.

    We see the waves, feel the spray on our faces, sometimes stinging, sometimes refreshing. We are carried sometimes on gentle swells, sometimes tossed about by raging storms.  And at times we drift serenely on calm waters.

I    It is at these times, when we drift serenely, that we can meditate on the mysterious nature of our lives, reflect on its beauty, begin to have hints of the divinity of which we all partake... of which we are but bubbles... in a vast, unknown, limitless sea.

     Nevertheless, no matter how clear the water seems,  as we stand -- outside, apart, above -- and look into the depths the view becomes murkier and murkier. We only see more clearly when we are immersed, but now we notice a different quality of light. The rays are refracted, deflected, in this medium.

    Before time began to be measured, in very ancient times, we dwelt totally in those depths and only gradually emerged to know and savor the sunlight. Made of the same substance as the sea itself, we, like the world growing about us, became more differentiated.  

    We, as people of the West, tend to call that which we see and share in the world of clocks and rifles, flowers and frauds, rubies and cormorants: consciousness, and that which we experience in dream, imagining, and myth, the unconscious.

    For the purposes of the following poems, let's assume that for the contents of our minds, this distinction is unnecessary and only useful for the purpose of fulfilling contracts and let us see our selves and the contents of our minds as bubbles in this vast, roiling, nurturing, lifegiving, sea of consciousness.