A Water Blessing
Let’s pause for a few breaths and become still.
Still, like the water in our glass.
Let’s allow the breath to clear the mind of any chatter, like waves washing the shore clean, until our minds are clear like this water in our glass.
Settle your eyes gently into the center of this small body of water before you, with a soft focus. And as you gaze into this little liquid life form, become aware that the water is gazing back at you. She is subtly perceiving you. Subtly observing your presence, your energy, your countenance. Take a moment to say hello.
But this is not the first time you’ve met this water, not your first hello. For you are also a body of water, born of a watershed. The water in your body was once in a spring, a river, a cloud. And in the vast history of this great earth that was once covered in water, chances are, the water that's in your body, the water you call “myself” was once comingled with the water in your glass. Perhaps those waters still remember each other. Perhaps this is a reunion. Take a moment to welcome this water back into union.
Thank you, water, for eternally reminding us of this oneness. May we be disciples of your clear embodiment of Unity, in awareness of our interrelationship.
Water, today I witnessed you in the form of a frangipani flower. A body of water, like me. Water, today I witnessed you in the form of my brothers and sisters, bodies of water like me. Every living being we see is a body of water. Is there any difference between the water in them and the water in us? None.
The liquid body of consciousness is arrayed in infinite phases of incarnation, various cymatic expressions of aquatic vibrations.
A river once taught me that there is no such thing as time. The river is equally embodied at the springsource, at the waterfall, at the mouth of the river, at the ocean outlet, low on the coast and high on the mountain. The water isn’t aware of divisions, shadows of past or present, nor labels for it’s phases. It’s all ONE water.
Just like the water in this glass is equally aware of being the water within you. Within me. Within we. It is equally present to it’s life as the grass. As the clouds. In your mother. A moth. A bear. A boy. Water doesn’t see divisions as we do, it simply lives as all of life, right now, existing as one body of conscious vivacity, thriving us alive.
Water, we thank you for teaching us to see with eyes of love, without division, the unity of all life.
As you gaze into this glass of water, take a moment to see the face of someone you love dearly with all your heart reflected in the clarity of it’s meniscus. Fill your heart with love of this dear one, and pour that love into the water, knowing that, as it touches the timeless and spaceless heart of water’s oneness, this love is reaching that person.
There’s a story about how the Gods were unsure where to hide the secrets of life and the power of the universe. They tried hiding it high, they tried hiding it low. Yet they knew that humans, with all their ingenuity and boundless curiosity, would surely find it on any mountaintop, in any stone. So they decided to hide it in the one place humans would never think to look. Inside the people themselves!
Water, we pray you will awaken humanity to the awareness that we are 70% water volumetrically, and 99.9% water molecularly. We are indeed created of the most powerful force in the Universe, the most magnificent mystery is hidden within us. The secret of life hums within each of our molecules. We were made in the image of the creator, water, the creative life force who creates canyons from stone, and births stars, and cools planets. Water, who creatively forms and fills and fuels every cell of every being.
Who gracefully lives as the intermediary between the manifest and unmanifest. Between the human and the heavenly. Between the profound and the profane. Both Great Spirit and water take the shape of every living being, and inhabit the spaces between them, weaving all together in the fluid nature of oneness.
Water, you coy crystalline fractal antenna, keeping your secrets so enigmatically shrouded in simplicity. You powerful supercomputer capable of infinite information storage and incredible quantum feats, we see you. We see you, you source of free energy for all of mama nature.
We stand in awe. This is the quantum secret hidden in our very molecules. This is the beauty of the mystery bathing itself in the glass between your palms. This is the natural, supernatural, weaver of the web of life whom I invite you, now, to sip.
Sip her sensuously. Savor her slowly. See if you can just rest one single drop of water on the tip of your tongue. Tich Naht Hanh said, “englightenment is when the drop realizes it is the ocean.” See if you can now taste the ocean in this drop. There is. No. Separation. He also said, “I only know that I was once a cloud because I am still a cloud.” See if you can taste that cloud on your tongue.
As Alan Watts said, “My death will only be a disappearance of a certain pattern of water.” When we pass away, our water will return to the hydrological cycle. Even now, as we live and breathe, we are a unified part of this hydrological cycle. We are just one phase of it’s patterns within our watershed. One of the many simultaneous incarnations of water’s body. Let us always remember this. Let us always allow water to reflect us back to nature, and nature back to us, deftly harmonizing it all into Unifiction. Quenching our souls as they thirst for union, cleansing our illusions of separation. And may all beings, in recognizing they are oceans contained in skin, be happy, hydrated, free, and united. Same source. Same destiny. One water, many watersheds. Thank you.
Isabel Friend is an international ambassador of Water, public speaker, and educator. As a student, servant, and steward of Water, she seamlessly blends science and spirit into a comprehensive cosmology of Water wisdom. Spanning the practical insights of health, hydration and biology, to empowering tactics for Watershed guardianship and ecological activism, to the esoteric and subtle insights of ancient indigenous Water wisdom, to the heady scientific discoveries of cutting edge Water research, Isabel's offerings are as multifaceted as Water itself. She has taught about Water throughout the US, Canada, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Bali, Mexico and Thailand. She is currently semi-nomadic, and enjoys spending her time fire-dancing, hiking, riding her motorcycle, and geeking out like a mad scientist in her laboratory. Most importantly, Isabel is deeply devoted to helping YOU embody the empowerment that is inherent in being a body of Water, living on a body of Water. Because Water is life, and life is sacred.