The Dance of the Dolphin

As I was going through my last few boxes I came across a book I had purchased many years ago. A book that has been sitting on my bookshelf unopened, untouched for probably 10 years. Yet something a decade ago drew me to the book ... "The Dance of the Dolphins: Finding prayer, perspective and meaning in the stories of our lives" by Karyn Kedar.  Swimming with wild dolphins last July changed my life. Without a doubt my astrologer Pat was right when she said that 2010 was going to be the biggest wake-up call I was going to have. As I opened up the book to the first few pages, they touched my soul:

"The dolphins dances because to survive she must live simultaneously in two elements that are seemingly incompatible. She must live in both water and air, and she must dance between the two.  She dances because she is commanded to from the moment of her creation. She dances because her instincts are pure genius and they are the source of her survival ... she dances, and we learn ... we must learn the dance because life at its best is the seamless integration of all aspects of self: worlds seen and worlds experienced, the world of doing and the world of being ....."

"The dance of the dolphin, as it gracefully navigates water and air, tells me to find a balance because life is a mystery of contradictions, worlds I know and those I don't, realities I can see and those I can only sense. We live with paradox and ambiguity. We live in our minds and in our souls. We live in our world and the in the world of all. And all the while we dance, sometimes with grace, and sometimes not."

and then in one of the latter chapters titled "Shema: Listening is the language of the Soul." [Shema means "hear" and is an important Jewish prayer] .... she writes about the importance of listening. How many of us really, really listen? How many of us fill our lives with noise, distractions, and the hustle and bustle? How many of us are afraid to stop, to slow down? What will happen if we do? What will happen if we remove all the ways we escape from simply being with ourselves?

She writes ... "Words are the language of the mind; silence is the language of the spirit. Sometimes to hear the language of the spirit, we must silence the language of the mind .... goodness, beauty and love are not experienced by reason. Divine stirrings do not reside in the realm of the logic. We have forgotten to listen because listening has lost its value in our world. To be busy is to be productive. To be active is to be healthy."

I have been loving my new home. It has become my safe haven - a place to be wholly me. A place to witness and learn from angels sent to me through the bodies of my 3 beautiful furkids. I am discovering how much I simply love to be at home and how I don't have to fill up all my time with activities. Doing nothing. I am learning how much I enjoy it. And in that space of nothing I am learning to listen more ... to my true voice, to God, to the Universe.

May we all be filled with the spirit, love and healing energy of the dolphins and other angels that come to us in so many different forms. May we learn to find balance in a life often filled with mystery and contradictions. And may we welcome silence, if only for a moment, to allow our spirit to be heard.