Working with the Water Element
How do we relate to water as an elemental energy? Let’s start with what do we know about water …
Feminine, emotion, movement, transforms, cleanses, creates, sculpts, holds, supports, quenches, rocks, crashes, carries, reflects … all words that describe ways we experience water.
We often think about water as soft and yielding, we envision it in its feminine nature. We see it reflecting back what is, much like a mirror, helping us to better see our true nature, our true colors. We feel it holding us afloat, gently lolling on warm waves as we relax in its embrace. We imagine it, as we feel life force energy moving through us, much like a river of light, vibrant and alive. We relate to water quite naturally as a metaphor for many good and soothing aspects of life. Now we are learning to also understand water as a powerful teacher as we stretch our minds a bit and get to know water more intimately as an elemental energy.
As we ponder the seed question, what do we know about water, answers spring forth easily and begin to translate into the lessons the water element is here to teach us …
Water transforms, we experience water as the great shapeshifter … from a drop of rain into a rivulet, then stream, flows into river, joins with the ocean or great lakes, perhaps becomes ice somewhere along the way, eventually rising as steam, forming into clouds, cascading down once again upon the earth, an endless cycle. How do I relate to this as a teaching? Where do I need to let go, change form, become more malleable, more adaptable to the variables that are at play in a given situation? Where do I need to soften and flow … Or, where do I need to let go of the expectation of sameness, and be open to remembering that this form is only temporary, or that this is merely one aspect of the journey?
Water moves around obstacles as if they were nothing … water knows no obstacles. What lessons does water have to teach you / are you ready to learn from water? Be open to the questions that come … breathe into a meditative state, contemplate the energy and essence of water and journal the answers that come.
Water is fluid, water is in motion. Water nourishes life as long as it is in motion. Water that sits still, stagnates and grows putrid. Water is the element we relate to as our emotional body from ancient traditions. Emotions are energy in motion: we know that if we attempt to stuff our emotions, to ignore them and not express them in some form (talking, crying, singing, dancing, etc) that they, like water, become stuck energy which can take the form of depression, or physical pain or illness. With water as your teacher here, imagine water in different forms - rain, waterfall, ocean spray, waves … and let it guide you into emotional expression, perhaps in a new range of ways.
Water as a sculptor … we see how the rock changes form over time as the constant or chronic flow of water plays over the surface and creates new grooves, as in a waterfall, or eventually shifts the form entirely, as the waves create new shoreline, depending on the dynamic of the interplay. Feel into the water element as sculptor / creator … let the lessons flow … where do I need to be persistent and patient, trusting that my constancy will create the change in the solid structure that is needed (like a waterfall). Or where do I need to get huge and thrash about and change the dynamic entirely (like the ocean waves breaking down and changing the shoreline in a storm)? … Breathe into this dynamic, imagine other ways that water interplays with land over time, and be open to the lessons that water whispers to you.
We know that in the beginning, from various cosmology stories, water was one of, if not the very first, element from which all life springs. Therefore water is a giver of life, a requirement for life: life cannot come into being without the presence of the water element. We and our earth are more water than anything else. Our earliest experience, even beyond conscious memories for many, is being held by, and floating in, water, as we floated in our mothers’ wombs. Water is the first element we came to know, as it gently cradled us and held us.
Water is one of the four elemental energies or primary elements from which all of life is created, along with fire, air and earth. Getting to know water as your teacher is a great way to begin to work with water as an elemental energy. Basically, water becomes a healing agent anytime our sincere intent is set to use the essence of water as such. If you would like more information about working with the other elemental energies, please see our November and December blogs for details.
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~ Namaste, The light within us, honors the light that is in you.