I want to tell you about an ocean metaphor that can help increase our personal resilience.
Metaphors can create space for us to see the world in a different way, and the ocean metaphor has the potential to do that.
But before I tell you about this metaphor, I invite you to imagine four scenarios that are different but share an underlying similarity.
Imagine . . .
Imagine that you are a child riding your bike through your neighborhood with your friends. It’s a warm and breezy June evening.
Twilight and fireflies flicker just ahead of you on your bike as you ride down the street. You feel a deep sense of connection with your friends and the world around you.
Drawing and painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
Imagine that you are at a stadium concert with thousands of people, singing and dancing to the music of your favorite music star.
You feel ecstatic and lifted to a higher plane of happiness. You feel deeply connected with everyone around you–even people you don’t know–and have a deep sense of joy and peace.
Imagine that you have just hiked up a steep hill at a nature preserve in the fall, and you step out into a clearing that looks out over a valley.
Drawing and painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
A blue sky is above you, and a valley filled with autumn trees–their leaves a menagerie of scarlet, lime, gold, and orange–is below you.
The sight is breathtaking, and you feel a deep sense of peace and goodness all around you that connects with something good, solid, and stable within you.
Imagine you are sitting quietly in your room.
All is peaceful without and within you. You feel a deep sense of tranquility, connection, and loving kindness for the world around you.
Transcendent Moments
The experiences I just described probably sound familiar to you
Most of us experience such vivid, beautiful moments like this at some point in our lives.
In such moments, we feel as though we temporarily rise above our normal life and experience something deep and magical.
And such moments often make us feel like we move beyond our normal, narrow sense of self and connect with something beautiful in the world around us.
They make us feel like we are floating in a big, beautiful ocean.
Believe it or not, such moments are such a common part of human existence, people have been writing about them all throughout history.
They are often referred to as experiences of transcendence.
For instance, modern psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, note that transcendence is an aspect of all people’s personality, an expression of the general character strength of spirituality.
They write,
The common theme running through these strengths of transcendence is that each allows individuals to forge a connection to the larger universe and thereby provide meaning to our lives… The prototype of this strength category is spirituality, variously defined but always referring to a belief in and commitment to the transcendent (non-material) aspects of life–whether they be called universal, ideal, sacred, or divine… [1]
Drawing by Shelly P. Johnson.
They further note that emotions like appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, and even humor and play are all effective ways that people connect to transcendence.[2]
Abraham Maslow and Transcendent Experiences
Seligman and Peterson write in a long tradition of psychologists who have noted the human ability to experience transcendence.
Drawing and painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
For instance, in the 60’s, psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote about something he called B-Cognition and Peak Experiences, which are transcendent experiences.
Maslow notes that instead of engaging in B-cognition which leads to transcendence, most people regularly use a form of thinking called D-cognition, which he also refers to as rubricizing.[3]
When we think in D-cognition, or in a rubricizing manner, we treat the world as though we are organizing it into filing cabinets.
Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
This kind of thinking can certainly be useful sometimes.
However, when we think only in a rubricizing manner, it causes anxiety and even contributes to depression.
That’s because such thinking focuses on our isolated, individual worries. Thus, it contributes to a shrunken existence.
On the other hand, Maslow argues that B-cognition cultivates an oceanic awareness of connection with the world around us.
As such, it enhances positive emotional states like love, awe, and joy.
When we use B-cognition, Maslow argues, we become “so absorbed and ‘poured into’ the object that the self, in a very real sense, disappears”.[4]
And these experiences, he writes further, can catalyze feelings of “awe, wonder, amazement, humility an even reverence, exaltation and piety”[5]
For Maslow, B-Cognition is transcendence, like that which Seligman and Peterson talk about.
Research in transcendence suggests that this state of awareness strengthens our mental health.
That’s because transcendent moments remind us we are not alone
They remind us that we can connect (and are already connected) with something larger than ourselves.
In such moments, we understand that we are the ocean, not just a wave.
Drawing and Painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
You can read more here and here about how transcendence improves our mental health.
Meditation, Yoga, and Transcendence
You have probably practiced transcendence even if you didn’t realize it.
For example, if you have ever practiced meditation or yoga, you have probably practiced focusing on your breath and on the present moment.
In doing so, you may have experienced a sense in which your heart rate slowed, you merged into the present moment, and your normal worries at least softened, if not melted away.
In that moment, you may have felt a deep connection to the world around you.
I have had similar experiences all my life.
Growing up in the Quaker tradition, I learned at an early age that Quakers believed every person possesses an inner light—the light of God.
And I learned that we can connect to our inner light at any time.
In my Quaker church services, we regularly had a period of silence in our service in which we practiced connecting to our inner light.
Drawing and painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
And as a teenager, I spent a lot of time in my room practicing this.
I would sit and breathe slowly; listen to the silence; and connect with the light of God inside of me. (I still regularly practice silence like this even as an adult.)
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was practicing a form of meditation and transcendence.
In those moments, I often felt like I connected with an ocean of love inside of me and all around me.
Those beautiful, oceanic moments felt magical and empowering.
When I got older, I discovered that other people had similar experiences to my magical moments.
For example, one of my favorite authors is the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, who lived a lot of his life in Kentucky, where I live.
Merton, both a Catholic and a student of Zen Buddhist philosophy, spent a lot of time in contemplative silence and prayer.
As such, he regularly practiced transcendence, which lead to vivid, magical moments like the ones I experienced growing up.
For example, one day Merton was walking down the street of Louisville, and he had a transcendent moment marked by a vivid sense of love. He writes,
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people,
that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world . . .[6]
Drawing and painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
As another example, Bede Griffith was a Catholic monk who spent a lot of time in India and practiced various forms of meditation and yoga.
As such, he spent a lot of time studying Hinduism, a religion and philosophy common in India.
In Hindu philosophy, there is a Big Self—Atman—which is God. And there is a little self—our ego.
The small self (ego) is contained in Big Self (Atman, God), but the small self often forgets the Big Self.
In Hindu philosophy, enlightenment is directly related to the small self, coming to recognize its true essence is the Big Self.
It’s a transcendental awakening.
Bede Griffith’s exploration of the connection between Christian and Hindu thought often gave him a deep insight into transcendent experiences of God’s love.
He writes,
This is the great discovery of Indian thought, the discovery of the Self, the Atman, the Ground of personal being, which is one with the Brahman, the Ground of universal being.
Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In this quote, Bede Griffith’s experienced a transcendental awakening to the larger, beautiful reality of which we are all a part.
Now, at the beginning of this post, I said that I wanted to discuss an ocean metaphor that I use to build personal resilience.
We are in a great position now to do that.
So, let me invite you to use your imagination again.
Ocean Imagination
Imagine that one day you suddenly realize that you are a wave in a big, beautiful ocean. As you realize this, you are still aware of your individual existence as a wave on one level. But you also realize that your individual existence is part of an ocean of goodness. You realize that you are connected to every other wave in the ocean and that you are the same stuff. And you realize that the big, beautiful ocean is what you really are and that you can never lose your connection to this big, beautiful ocean of which you are a part.
Take a moment and read back over the ocean imagination.
Really try to imagine the ocean I describe in your mind’s eye and to feel your connection with the ocean I describe in this imagination.
Drawing and painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
The Wave, the Ocean, and You
How did you feel as you read over the ocean imagination, especially the second time, and imagined yourself as a part of a big ocean?
You may have felt the edges of your consciousness and thinking soften and your breath slow down.
And you may have felt like something inside of you merged with something big and beautiful around you.
If you didn’t have these feelings, don’t worry. It’s okay.
But if you think back to the beginning of this post, you might remember that I asked you to imagine some beautiful experiences like riding your bike at twilight with your friends.
Or dancing with thousands of people to music you love at a concert.
I also mentioned hiking up a hill in nature and looking out at the beautiful scenery surrounding you.
Or sitting quietly in your room.
Take a moment and picture one of these scenes, perhaps remembering a time when you have had such an experience.
Take a moment . . .
How did it feel?
Whether it was doing the ocean imagination above;
or whether it was imagining yourself riding your bikes or dancing at a concert or hiking or sitting peacefully;
Drawing and painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
or whether it was just experiencing a beautiful awe-filled moment in your life like a moment of rapturous love or the birth of your child;
I can almost guarantee you had an experience in which the edges of your individual self softened, and you merged with something bigger than yourself.
And that moment felt beautiful, good, magical, whole, connected.
That’s because in such moments we connect with the ocean aspect of ourselves, which is in fact, the foundation of reality.
I like to think of it as love.
Whenever we connect with this ocean of love, we feel more real.
Drawing and Painting by Shelly P. Johnson.
Such magical moments of connection with love can feel rare. But we can, in fact, cultivate such moments any time we desire to do so.
The problem is that many of us go about our lives, whether we realize it or not, only thinking of ourselves as an individual wave.
For example, many of us go through our lives focusing on our individual lives.
This is especially common in cultures that encourage people to focus more on the individual (the wave), rather than connection (the ocean).
And the individual is important.
But as we have seen, it is not the whole story (or even most of the story).
So if we only focus on the wave aspect of us . . .
We long to be more than we are.
For instance, maybe we feel a longing for some type of depth to our lives and for greatness.
But when we just focus on our individual selves, we feel cut off from the more and the deeper we long for.
As such, all we can see is our imperfections and limitations.
We feel lonely, isolated, and shrunken.
And the reason we feel this way is because we have forgotten the ocean part of us.
On the other hand, when we connect to the ocean part of us, we remember that . . .
We are never alone.
And we always have more resources for goodness, wisdom, and beauty at our fingertips.
Plus, the setbacks, disappointments, losses, and failures of our life are never our whole story.
The whole story is that we are connected to an ocean of goodness and love.
And we can connect with the ocean whenever we need to and find comfort, help, and confidence.
That makes us Resilient and More.
You might also like this post: Computer vs. Tree: New Metaphors, More Resilience
*****
