Throwing Sand Isn’t Always A Bad Idea

I got in touch with an old pattern tonight. One I hadn’t thought about in a while. One that I’ve spent a lot of time with in the past. So I guess we could say I got reacquainted with it tonight.

At first I felt fine about it…

It was like talking about the weather.

Kind of matter of fact.

Yes. This happened when I was little and that’s when the pattern was established…

Yes. The pattern can be found all throughout my life…

Here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

And yes. Here, here, here, here, here.

But then…

About 20 minutes after I did some work with that pattern, it was as if the pattern had won.

I became scared. Very scared. I felt small. I didn’t know who I could talk to. I felt like my partner was a stranger. I didn’t feel comforted by him. I felt really out of shape – as in sick and fat and like a big blob. I felt helpless. I felt like crying and no tears came out. I felt very alone. It was as if I was a little girl who was standing at a door and all that could be seen was pitch blackness. I felt nervous. I felt jittery. I chewed my fingernails. I pulled the covers up high on the futon. I would say that I was not doing well…

I was thinking of just going and curling up in a ball in my bed and falling to sleep – just trusting that I would feel better in the morning. But I didn’t have that kind of faith at the time…

Instead, I went to the beach with my neighbors for a late night adventure because I actually thought I’d feel safer outside by the ocean. I thought that maybe the waves would help me come back to myself or something poetic like that.

So we got in the silver Mini-Cooper. We zipped over to the beach.

This was after I chowed down on some watermelon outside their house and had it dripping all over my face, chin and hands. A highly recommended activity if you’re feeling funky in the slightest way. Especially if it’s dark and you can’t really see what you’re doing.

Down by the beach there were people out and about in their Saturday-night-party-outfits and I watched them through the back seat window. I was bundled up in my long-sleeved pink striped tee, light blue v-neck sweater, and big orange windbreaker.  Oh, and my size-too-big jeans, belt and sneakers. I was lookin’ goooooood.

This particular Mini-Cooper had lights inside that could change color around the interior. We flipped through all of them and then settled on pink.

We got out to the beach and it was very windy. And very dark.

I was grateful I wore 3 layers of multi-colored clothes. They supported me in feeling safe and cared for while I was at the beach in the vulnerable state I was in.

The waves were BIG! Loud too. I liked it.

As I stood there watching the waves crash up on the sand I thought about how strong and transformative they are. They can turn super sharp glass into super smooth stone that even kids can play with. Stone Glass or Stoned Glass is what my family called it when I was growing up.

So if the ocean could turn that sharp glass into something smooth and fun, the certainly it could turn my yucky feeling from my pattern into something smooth and comfortable too, right?

I walked gently up to where the waves were washing up and I leaned over and scooped up a big snowball style wad of wet sand. I imagined that it was all my yucky stuff that I’d been feeling and thinking about and then I waited for my “just right wave”.

I wanted a big strong one…

And then it came…and I hurled my sandy snowball of yuckiness into the big white crashing wave and it was intantly transformed.

Instead of it being wadded up in a big tight ball as I’d made it into…

It dispersed into bits like glitter that would gently float down to the ocean floor.

I threw several more handfuls of sand into the waves as if I were a pitcher on a major league baseball team.

Then I wrote in the sand with a piece of plastic kiddie shovel that I found: I am confident and I can do anything!

This was the new empowered message that I was choosing to experience in my life instead of the old pattern that was depressing and limiting.

I started feeling better.

I was in the fresh air. I was warm. I was with friends. I saw other people playing in the dark and in the waves. I was at the beach. I was on the edge of California. And I LOVE thinking about being on the edge of maps when I’m at a beach somewhere.

Ahhh.

As I was standing on the edge of the California map and I was staring out into the deep dark Pacific ocean at almost midnight I shifted my view point…

Instead of continuing to look *out* from standing on the shore of CA, I pictured myself looking *in* from space and looking toward ME.

Like this picture of the Earthrise which was taken from the moon back in 1968:

When I mentally shifted from seeing life through my eyes (standing on California soil), and I instead saw through the eyes of someone looking at me from space…

That’s what I looked like. I looked like the whole earth. That was me.

So I saw me from a new perspective. Not me with my big orange windbreaker on as I look down and see my feet on the sand…

But me, seeing me from space, where all that’s visible is my “planetary face”. The face of the earth.

I was a beautiful orb of blue and white…rising up in a big field of darkness. I was the light rising into space.

I took in a nice deeeeep breath and sighed it out.

What I was feeling and had been feeling was okay. I knew this because the planet was there.  I could feel it under my feet. I could see the waves breathing on the planet as the waves crashed and then went back out. The planet was alive and that meant I was alive.

I looked at my note to myself and to the universe that I’d written in the sand: “I am confident and I can do anything!”

My friends and I put our arms around each other and walked back to the Mini-Cooper.

I sat in front on the way home.