Actually Water

The other day in the car it suddenly occurred to me that having a preference that it not rain is incredible evidence of our disconnection from what sustains our lives, what our lives are literally, physically made of.

I want to be clear this is no shade to anyone having any not-rain preferences (I hope this is obvious!). I have had all kinds of preferences about the weather, forever! But suddenly it appeared to me as an indication of our collective state, and as very, very strange.

If I’m thinking I don’t want it to rain, I’m forgetting that I am a recipient of water. We’ve created a situation where we don’t see where our water comes from when it comes from the tap, so whether it is raining or not appears to only affect our plans for whether our bodies are inside our outside, or whether our emotions are happy or sad. I was explaining this realization to a wise friend and she clarified: not only are we recipients of water, we literally are water.

We are water.

I’m not being spiritual here. This is not a lofty philosophical concept. It’s a scientific fact. What is in our view (in my place, anyway, a house, with a faucet) is a separation, a forgetting of this fact. So we have opinions about the rain as if rain is an aesthetic, a lifestyle preference.

Seeing this helped me feel a kind of wonder, and release, and joy. To witness my preference about the weather get absorbed into a bigger context which is that: what gives me life is my life.

It feels so life-giving to remember I am water, therefore rain is me. I am rain. Life is rain and I am life and rain is my life. Stuff like that. Bowing in gratitude for what appears to be an inconvenience which is instead god offering me life, over and over, right here and now.

Remembering this allows my opinions and preferences to recede into the location that is more accurate, more right-sized.

Allowing my opinions and preferences to be enveloped, held, rocked to sleep, by the gorgeous loving space that is the Wholeness of Life Itself.

It’s not that these preferences are nothing, or unimportant. They really are! But they are less important than knowing what gives me life, and doing what I can to receive what gives me actual life. Opinions and preferences are not what give me actual life. And very often they interfere with my seeing of what gives me actual life. What a relief! I have a waterfall inside my house! And sometimes outside my house in the form of rain! It feels like the opposite of existential despair to reconnect (RIGHT NOW) with prioritizing receiving the life that is rain with open arms, with remembering that it is the thing that gives me (and everything and everyone I love) life.

I offer this for your consideration! Again, not related to doubt at all, but what felt like pressing news hahahahaha.