Message from My Aqua Self

When I was swimming last night and managed to get into that zen state they talk about where you're just going back and forth, staring at the ceiling, I received a psychic message. When I started swimming, my brain was all wound up with its usual preoccupations: "I'm alone I'm alone I'm alone. What can I do to not be alone? Where is he? How can I meet him? I'm not doing enough to meet him! What if I never meet him? I want what I had before. Why did he leave me alone?" etc etc, plus also the stressy situation at work that I was right in the middle of.

But the laps and the view of the beams in the concrete ceiling passing by, one by one, calmed me down enough that I could receive this psychic message: "You philosophers, you're always thinking. You always believe you can work things out, purely by reason. You need to just be quiet, and wait, and listen."

Isn't that a wise message? Sure didn't come from my usual brain, it would never think of something that calm and wise - and non-verbal - on its own. I won't say it came from some extra-corporeal source like God or an angel or whatever. In fact, if it was spoken in any voice, from the sound as I thought of it inside my head, it was in my own voice. My very wise Aqua Self.

I've been trying it today. Tonight after doing my current favourite Friday night thing of going and hanging out in the Starbucks at the Barnes & Noble and losing myself in a chai latte and a book (David Sedaris this time), I drove home when it was just starting to snow. A Christmas Eve kind of snow, not sticking yet and not yet slick on the roads at the intersections. Just beautiful. Someone asked me today if I missed Sydney summers, and I told him actually when I was there I missed the snowy weather. And here it is. So, per instructions from my Aqua Self's voice, I just looked at it, and appreciated the moment, and didn't think about what was or what I'm supposed to make be.