The Ocean

“We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body—a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature." This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.”

“Don’t you dare come into my world and tell me what color the ocean is! It’s black. Black as midnight. Black and awful!”

“I drink from a small spring, my thirst exceeds the ocean.”

“Whatever be the qualities of the man with whom a woman is united according to the law, such qualities even she assumes, like a river, united with the ocean.”

“I sail on the ocean of possibilities with the wind of hope and the current of desires moving me to the shore of uncertainty.”

“If you love another person, you have to become a no-self, a nothing. When you love, you have to become a nobody. When you are a nobody, love happens. If you remain somebody, love never happens.One becomes afraid of love, because love opens the inner emptiness.Love is not an effort. If love is an effort, it is not love.It is the same case with the ultimate experience, it happens when you do not make an effort. Then you can simply float with the river to the Ocean.”

“Being by the ocean is the greatest thing.”

“Jump in the ocean of loveto die and to save at the same time.”

“The ocean drummed as loud as pulsating blood, eroding the sand, rushing the beach as if it had a point to prove. And like many things, it receded, was gone, and was replaced anew.”

“Meditation expands our inner being. The inner being is like a small, individual river flowering towards the Ocean. In meditation, I feel how my inner being expands into an inner ocean, which is part of everything, which is one with Existence. Through the inner being, we come in contact with the inner ocean, the undefined and boundless within ourselves, where we are one with life. We realize that God is part of life. We realize that God is not a person, but the consciousness that is part of everything. We find God in a flower, in a tree, in the eyes of a child or in a playful dog. Through discovering our inner being, we discover that we are also part of the flower, the child or the dog. We realize that God is everywhere.”

“A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.”

“You will love the ocean. It makes you feel so... I don't know. Small, but not in a bad way. Small because you realize you're part of something bigger.”

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”

“The desert and the ocean are realms of desolation on the surface.The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.Inside out and outside in. These are worlds of things that implode or explode, and the only catalyst that determines the direction of eco-movement is the balance of water.Both worlds are deceptive, dangerous. Both, seething with hidden life.The only veil that stands between perception of what is underneath the desolate surface is your courage.Dare to breach the surface and sink.”

“You cannot stop an Islamist tsunami by building a small island somewhere in the ocean.”

“As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything we did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.”

“As long as there's a body of water nearby, I'm happy. Pools don't count. I like diving into the ocean and coming out refreshed.”

“I grew up next to the ocean, on the coast, and would dance the salsa all day, so I just learned those rhythms and knew how to move my body when I was very little.”

“Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.”

“There are so many influencers out there and I'm just a drop in the ocean but we all have a shared duty to be responsible.”