Promise of Spring and the Way of Water

Promise of spring and the way of water

As I sat on the tatami mat floor in the little apartment that I share with one of my cousins in Okinawa, there was a feeling in the air like this year is a celebration for the books, even though it's only just turned spring. It was my birthday and I was marveling at a pen a cousin gifted me earlier that evening, turning it over and over in my hands to take in every detail. The pen was personalized with my name printed on the side and to my delight, the end/top was a red ink stamp of my Japanese name. A pen with my many names (ok just 2 but still, it was very cool)! The stamp was of a kanji I wasn't familiar with and so I wondered out loud if there were other ways still to spell my name? Another cousin in the other room heard me and immediately started researching, his eyes widened and quickly presented me with 2 new ways, which felt like a special gift, same as the pen. Since you're in Okinawa this one makes sense.. he said. It was almost like seeing something emerge from the ordinary everyday for the first time, like discovering the petals of a certain beloved wild flower becoming the shape they've always been, electric magenta hearts. I knew the individual characters well, they stood for peaceful ocean.

Looking at the kanji, the new name, got me thinking about this photo shoot from last fall, the one that sort of happened on its own and helped me to stretch way past many of my comfort zones. Mostly it helped me to remember my first true love, that good-for-the-soul exhilarating unease that is the creative process. and what led up to it was finishing up a busy and exciting year of in-person sessions welcoming people to Okinawa for the first time (including one of my students from NYC!), while teaching and keeping up with my regular schedule of clients and virtual clinics and Reiki tea ceremony offerings; it was a lot and it was glorious. So this felt like Reiki patting me on the back and saying, good now go forth and make art! And it also reminded me that one of the reasons I love Reiki so much is that it helps me with my art because it brings me closer to my essence or voice.

For example, this photo shoot started with a Reiki session. A month or so prior a vision or image popped into my mind while I was giving a Reiki session to a client, it was me dancing in the ocean. It felt like one of those grand scenes from a movie, and I DID just watch A little mermaid earlier in the year so there was that under the sea theme already in my mind. Anyway, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

As the days passed I found myself automatically beginning to search for local underwater photographers, just to see. And when I didn't have any luck I let the idea go. Until one day one popped up in my feed and it felt right, I knew i had to go with it. There was movement happening, an undercurrent if you will, and it was really scary. I was half hoping that something wouldn't work out with the scheduling or the weather or the roads would be closed because of a recent typhoon and that would have been just fine. I could blame it not working out on the weather! But the other half of me already knew that the thing with stretching past our comfort zones is that we also must be brave. And so I kept challenging myself to be like a child enamoured by adventure because to me that's when I feel my bravest. and bit by bit everything somehow worked out. When the shoot day eventually arrived I got into the taxi that was waiting for me outside like the enchanted carriage that it was and off we went, the driver and I, to find an obscure beach neither of us had been to before on a smaller island covered in sugarcane fields and little else. As we drove over the long bridge that connects it to the main island, the endless expanse of turquoise water on either side of the car made it feel like we were floating or flying above the ocean, it felt like crossing over into another time.

The waves were rough that day and after an initial dip I was so exhausted and all doubts came rushing at me like angry bees, how would I make it through the next couple of hours? I've never done this before I'm not prepared, what was I thinking?! But as I rested on the shore under the luxurious shade of an adan tree, completely done for, I also thought about how far I'd come, and not just the hour in the taxi but farther, and how the sun was really bright and welcoming, and how I'd made it to a new place and was doing something i'd never done before, and also there were no taxis just driving around out here (I was taking the bus back), so I made a deal with myself: I'd try for one good shot. And that was all that was needed. Moving forward with bravery even if it's one baby step thought at a time is always rewarded.

Shortly after the photographer arrived and we got started, I could feel the creative process taking hold in all the familiar ways I dearly missed from my photography and dance and theater days, and so slowly and gradually I came back to life. I felt more and more at home in the water like I was remembering it again, like a mermaid or a Sebastian might, this warmth, this water world. And as my trust in it all grew, feeling safe in the water and the process of the creative flow, I swear the water held me like a mother. Surprisingly my fears turned into laughter, wild laughter (not literally)! My word, I was having fun!

That's how I found myself dancing in the Pacific Ocean thrilled that I had made it, that i saw this little project through from vision to dance. It's one of the most memorable experiences I've had here (also because there are photos) about not giving up in the face of the impossible. There have been many impossbile experiences here now that i think about it, another was teaching Reiki to Okinawan women IN JAPANESE. not once or twice, but three blessed times. Each time I learned how to become a better communicator by speaking from the heart. Another was welcoming people who had never been to Okinawa before for a group session while also teaching a Reiki 2 class virtually to students in the U.S.. It was like watching my capacity expand before my very eyes, thrilling! Fear will make us want to shy away from hard things but our hearts, our wise good friend, will hasten us towards them because it knows how wonderful life can be and wants that for us.

Also swimming and having a ball in the ocean that day brought back to me all the ways i've been learning from water, since i've been here, and also for a while now. I seem to be drawn to rivers wherever I go, from the Savannah River in Georgia where I grew up, to loving Mark Twain's Mississippi River in his Huckleberry Finn novels, to the Amazon River in Peru where I met the esteemed Maestra Olivia, to the Ganges River in Haridwar and Rishikesh where I bathed and shouted "hare hare Gangeee" like a man roaring it out loud into the wind over and over again whenever it was asked of me, to the Tiber River in Rome before I went to Napoli, when I wondered if I should go to Napoli for my birthday, and my possible favorite the Hudson River. In fact when I was having a hard time deciding whether to come to Japan or not I sat by the Hudson River one afternoon in upstate New York and asked. And what I heard was "life always moves forward and it flows fast and so must you!" I cried and cried because I already knew. And as I swam around in the ocean with my eyes open and because I wasn't wearing contacts all i could see was a very blurry blue water world and i felt delivered here. Gosh I thought all rivers really do yearn for the ocean.

I knew something special was presenting itself every time I was with water like i was deepening my ability to commune with it. like when I did Japanese tea ceremony, went to the onsen, prayed and bowed my head at water shrines, made healing sprays and waters for my clients, offered Reiki tea ceremonies in Okinawa and virtually in the U.S., sent Reiki to my own water, and also when I did the laundry, washed dishes and prepared rice, I'm not kidding! Everytime it was new. like the japanese principle i learned from Japanese tea ceremony ichi go ichi e which means a once in a lifetime experience, but every time.

in Okinawa water is sacred and even holy in a way that's different from traditional Japanese culture. Though there are some similarities like the ritual of bathing is the same or similar. Bathing isn't just to cleanse the body but also to cleanse one's spirit, to become clean again. And before entering Japanese temples there's always a water fountain right at the entrance. not for drinking but for washing our hands before entering sacred space. In Okinawa however nature, the entire land is a temple and everything that's natural is a god. Ancient springs and even wells are considered cultural heritage sites oftentimes with official signs from the local municipality in front of them, fiercely protected from modern development. These water shrines are considered power spots or places where the gods dwell allowing us to commune and pay our respects to the water and to listen to what it has to say. Here where the land is surrounded by beautiful blue oceans, water is a mighty god, the mightiest gifter and destroyer of life (there's an entire season of back to back typhoons). So it commands our respect but as we come to respect the water more and more it teaches us in kind how to respect ourselves too.

Water has limitless capacity to hold, guide and teach all at once. The ultimate way of water is peace. This is its utimate teaching and offering and peace is always granted to those who seek it with their whole heart. Here are a few other (impossible) things I've learned from water in Okinawa: Trust life to carry you, move with bravery, and love everybody. I say impossible because like I spoke to earlier the mind, or perhaps better put the ego, can't fathom what it can't control and will tell us whatever feels scary is impossible. But water is all heart and guides us toward the unfathomable.

What helped me to feel comfortable enough with all my fears being in the rough waters, was actually experiencing that even though the waves were big and scary on the surface, underwater it was serene and steady, like a stable hand. it imparted to me a sense of strength I forgot was already mine. It reminded me of what it feels like to give and receive Reiki, to have perfect peace in mind, body and soul. I was reminded that someone like me who has lived through some harsh and starless times who only really knows meanness and fighting can still know what it's like to be deeply loved. Even if it's just for a moment at a time each reminder is like a seed planted in our consciousness. and everytime we connect to that memory we have it all over again.

and i wondered if all the rivers knew if they could see me as a young girl seeking peace desperately yearning for it especially when another, bigger, challenge followed the next like a never ending spiral watching me grow into a young woman moving through the world on my own, i wondered if they all knew I was indeed getting somewhere good whispering to me soon soon, my dear, soon, keep going.

and when i arrived in okinawa from new york city by myself and a suitcase like a weary spiritual vagabond about to collapse from an impossibly long journey, i wonder if all the rivers were with me even then, holding me up gently, whispering good. now keep going. because since then everyday has felt like in some new way a stretching, something deep inside being challenged, albeit gently and gradually while surrounded by sunshine and a culture of calm and kindness, at times appearing like nothing at all is happening, all while also being held lovingly and cared for in ways i always needed and now being given to me left and right like tissues or candy. i recognize it's a little tounge in cheek but i remember watching the movie The Karate Kid with all my jewish cousins and aunts and uncles in our little house in north carolina on a little 13 inch tv my dad wheeled out from the other room, because everyone could relate to it. my dad's family were all from the valley like Ralph Macchio's character Daniel-san and my mom was from Okinawa like Mr. Miyagi. it was literally my family's movie. and now that i find myself here on my own decades later i believe that movie was also a river. and i have become Daniel san and Mr. Miyagi has been Reiki and all of Okinawa. So my journey here has been its own sort of movie that we might call the Reiki Kid because i've had to start over and unlearn everything i thought i knew about myself, start again from a kind and clean heart and not from meanness. I believe that's the next step or level after Reiki Master, becoming a child of Reiki.

Now i'd like to bring into focus the very kind and magical Okinawan people. And I say 'very kind' because it's all I can offer. There are no words really in English to describe the kind of kindness I've witnessed and received. Very kind as in not random acts of kindness, that my American psyche can comprehend, but something entirely new and different, an entire culture that believes in kindness passionately and deliberately like it's a god. Like how water is a god, so is kindness. Water and kindness go hand in hand, they love each other, they are best friends. And the people here through the centuries and countless generations have naturally come to embody what they see everyday what surrounds them, the oceans, the peace. Indeed, I have been surrounded by peaceful oceans.

Again, I don't know this kindness. my upbringing was surrounded by fighting and anger and varying degrees of oppression, since birth. this is what i know well. So essentially I'm being presented with a new way of being alive that doesn't involve being ruled by fear. Like i've been given another chance at growing up again. It would make more sense to say I'm almost 5 years old (the amount of time I've been here thus far) than to say I'm 40 something!

If I could offer my report of findings as a sort of anthropological experiment of what happens when we grow up with kindness as a role model I can say with a certain degree of esteem that I have become softer in my movements and thinking, gentler in my communciation, swifter in my responses, sharper in general, and overall.. dare I say.. happier... like a bright light is always on within me. The only days I haven't laughed wildly are when i'm sequestered away on my writing retreats.

I've learned and am learning still to treat my body, the ocean within me, with increasing respect, to have self-respect, which is the meaning of peace for me.

And because I genuinely want to know, I've asked the water, How can the people here who still remember the atrocities of war like it was yesterday and who have to be reminded of it every time they pass a base or hear a jet fighter booming shattering the skies overhead remain warm, loving and tenderly open hearted to everyone? Wouldn't it be ok for them to hate, even a little? and what immediately comes to mind are two phrases in the old Okinawan language (not Japanese) that's still spoken from time to time like a motto of pride, I've also seen them written on peace poles throughout the main island. the answers to every query about Okinawan culture and how the people can live so long and remain healthy and vital, again so simple it's hard to hear exactly what they mean at first.

One phrase means even if we meet just once we are brothers and sisters for life, ichariba chode. Not parent and child or some other assemblage, but siblings. Love everybody like siblings. there it is, the way of water which leads to peace. there is a profound strength in this phrase, wild laughter even, a truth, that dares us to try it and see. and the other phrase means life is a treasure, nuchi du takara. They are ancient understandings that all the gods and nature spirits know, that we too know, within our tenderness is our true power, and within this power there is an elixir of joy. and to live from this joy produces more joy, and strength and vitality of the spirit. it's an act of bravery because it's easy to forget and difficult to remember. to live like this is to be yasashii kokoro, the Okinawan kind of kindness, and at the same time is an offering of profound peace to our children and our ancestors.

So another report of findings would have to include what i've learned about having a kind heart, yasashii kokoro, the Okinawan kind of kindness that I can only describe in Japanese because again there aren't the words that capture its depth in English. Even though I've never experienced it I also know it to be true because of how I feel. I feel first all my meanness comes to light, which makes me feel both vastly ashamed and apologetic but also honored to be able to see how my personality was mostly created from my conditions and not from my heart, and to experience true kindness is to feel all heart. It's like the kindness is so powerful it pushes out all the meanness. In the presence of true kindness or yasashii kokoro there's a degree and depth of mental and emotional self control that's so precise in its practice like it's been honed and worked on since childhood, and surely it has, like an indoctrination of kindness. my god, can you imagine it for a western mind? People have varying levels of self control of course but the culture itself demands at the very least to always say hello, thank you and i'm sorry and even thank you for your hard work at the end of a work day even if you don't mean any of it. which is all to say there's a general level of respect that's given to everyone automatically. again..can you imagine what this does emotionally to the giver and receiver?? It's a culture of caring for each other's feelings, not out of pity or obligation, but because there's no other way to behave.

again i have to interject as someone who was raised witnessing violence of all the kinds that it's the only way i know how to be, especially towards myself. i break my own heart! but here, i have witnessed wide eyed and in continual disbelief and also humbling acceptance instead a raging commitment to peace that turns unhinged grief into a declaration of "I'll do better" without skipping the time needed for psychological processing or rest or self care for full recovery. because the commitment to kindness includes it all so what we might call integrating or processing happens quickly, so it feels more utopian than real. But even so, living from within the culture has broken down my intellect and cut me down to size forcing a release of what I thought I knew, giving more fuel to something deeper, something more of the dream world, a less rigid dimension where everyday is maleable and inspiring. That place where we know truth when we hear it, where we know love when we feel it. It's not of the world but we all have access to it. That's the teaching of the way of water, that to access peace for you you must learn to love and revere everyone like brothers and sisters (and no you don't have to like them - but to simply cherish the life within them, to shine some light into their water) and then see what it does for you. is a considerable act of continual bravery if you think about it.

When I arrived here I thought that as an American, and a healer, I was given a once in a lifetime chance to heal the rift between my 2 races in the place where my parents met and where my mother is from. I had always thought of my mom as oppressed, and a victim, because that's how it was, but when I look around and see where she's from, I see only strength and power, and perhaps she's only forgotten who she is and where she's from. But the American side, oh the blessed American side has truly taken over my mind and body for so long and I could see more clearly than ever before that 2 distinct sides exist within me so what am i to do? I'm tired of hating, myself.

So I began by honoring my American side, the side that needs the most care and attention. I imagined my dad here as a young man, and how I've come here too crossing a long bridge into another time, and how we're here at the same time together. and it helps me to understand him, and me, more. and i imagine my parents meeting in love and it helps my own spine to straightnen up a little bit. And I imagine the lifetime of fighting within my body turning around, both sides beginning to exist in harmony, learning that it's possible anyway. And I think of the people here and I have a better understanding of who exactly holds the key to harmony. And my young teenage spine that was pulled so aggressively in 2 opposite directions like a massive tug of war that put me promptly in the OR at the local military hospital, this is a matter of life or death! they said, the surgeons who would visit me to check on my healing, the ones who wore long white coats over their army fatigues combat boots. no other surgeons could know what i was dealing with, no other surgeons would do. But after they installed all the hardware, the true healing was up to me. And now as if it's all coming to an end now, at last, the good fight, I'd put a hand to my heart and soothe all my weary ancestors and welcome peace into my body and spine, and I understand I hold the key to harmony and I love both sides like we are all the same family now, and they let me go now because that has always been my lesson to learn, to find my own peace. All the tension throughout my body finally resolves and is replaced by the promise of spring, that it comes eventually.

So being here as an American and healer, and a child of both worlds, has become both an apology and an offering of healing and self-respect. and in return I've been given a new name, a new challenge perhaps but a lighter one, a way forward. Which is to say are just questions for now.. Can we be and be moved by oceanic peace? Can we believe that the universe, or loving multiverse which feels more my jam, has written an epic story for us with a pen covered with our many names? And and, all we have to do is be led towards its unfolding? Ooo that stretch!!

So one could say later, much later, I was a child of war and grew up to be a woman of peace. And so much has helped me because to come so far on one's own is simply not humanly possible..the promise of spring helped me and following the way of water like a mighty teacher helped me, and seeing my dad as a young man helped me, and the yasashii kokoro or kind heartedness of the Okinawan people and honoring my ancestors helped me, my art has helped me, and i believe the greatest masterpiece of all has become my body as a body of peace. I've learned and am still learning how to take my sorrow and rage and chaos and turn it around, and let it make me kind, truly kind, like the Okinawan kind.

And the way of water carries us and gives us everything we need, it has given me love like I never thought was possible, it has given me love like i've always needed and i have become satisfied and full and well-loved. and I turn it around and love well and deep, all the ways I ever needed, I love everyone that way now. because i've learned that within everyone's perfect water body, an elixir is developing, a promise of oceanic peace, that like spring, it comes eventually.

After the photo shoot ended and the sun started making its way down I gathered my things and began my long walk towards the bus stop. I heard the parking lot attendants chatting disconcertingly amongst themselves as if i possibly swallowed too much sea water and sat too long in the sun, does she know where she's going, also where is she going? they were confused that i was walking and not driving away. i do believe they have never seen a beach goer come in a taxi and then leave walking out into the sugarcane fields. i gently turned around and bowed and said thank you for today! with a smile to reassure them i had all my faculties in order and as i turned back around i noticed on my left what i didn't see before, a water shrine for a sacred spring. Wow! was all that was running through my head at that point. I walked up to it slowly in half-belief that it was really there. maybe i did swallow too much sea water?? I was filled with a kind of excitement that i can only equate with seeing disneyland with a vip private pass with the park all to yourself. not that that's ever happened to me, but it was definitely another wonderland moment appearing out of nowhere with only me standing there. . i stopped at the water's edge and gently put my hands together in the prayer position and bowed my head and said the same thing i always say in my heart to every nature shrine i've ever found which isn't really a prayer so much as a statement of gratitude and reflection on the journey getting there, which is often preludedby some sort of adventure journey, some sort of stretching, some sort of putting one brave foot in front of the other. the water was the reward. it turns all our memories into gold somehow it shines its light into us and we are loved just a little more than ever before. i said, thank you for bringing me here today. and then i opened my eyes and looked into the water for a moment seeing my reflection with the pink umbrella hallo around my head, some golden leaves floating at my feet and lots of god-dwelling trees and sky and the beyond behind me. it was a reflection of self-discovery and a moment of undivided peace.