A Spiritual Healing

September 28, 2007

Rev. Regina Maria Cross

What is it about collecting shells upon the ocean’s edge? You’ll notice it’s mostly women who walk the beach solitarily that do so as if caretakers of the ancient wisdom travelers who have landed upon their shores and they, the women, reaching for them, choosing them and taking them home acknowledge their history, beauty, stories, the ocean, beginnings and continuings as if keeping alive their family, our family, the lineage of humanity and all Oneness with God.

After the passing of our dear friend and student of five years Mary Dougherty, my heart needed to rest and grieve. Mary had taught us all so much and shared her private journey through the challenges of cancer since last November’s diagnosis leading to her pathway of death and dying on August 23 of this year. She shared intimately each day her joys, fears and sorrows. The Reiki Angels, who cared for Mary weekly and in the end daily along with her other wonderful friends and family, were created because of Mary. Personally I had never experienced the death of a student. I’d never before closed the chakras of the hands I had attuned to Reiki. I needed one on one with God and I heard the ocean whisper. What follows is but an excerpt of what it taught me.

The ocean is ready to accept the tragedy of my grief and sorrow and give back in waves the reality of present moment me, Venus rising from the waters of eternity. I stand on the edge as if unworthy and yet she calls, “Come and feel love, know thyself. Letting go doesn’t have to be all at once. It can be one wave at a time releasing what needs releasing to rest on the shore of forever and other washing into long gone never to be forgotten.”

I heard myself cry “Sometimes I feel if I truly let it all go I shall die.” The ocean answered; “With all death there is a rebirth, a resurrection into new life.”

Walking the shoreline I feel the resistance between my body as it shuffles through the waters edge. The ocean says; “Stand still. Allow me, life, experiences to wash by, around, over you and just be. It is then you can stand and walk on, through me as if all is you and you all of All. Be still. Allow. Then you will see, experience, know the many multi design patterned dance you call life. Be the observer of all around and in you.”

I imagined it to be just like the creatures shell I plucked from the ocean. I saw it’s perfect form, a small couch shell glimmering through the water. I thought how lucky I am to have found it in that moment of that time. I raised it up in my hand thinking, “It’s heavier than I imagined it to be. It houses a creature! It’s home is perfect. My home is perfect.” It retreats in fear, defense, from experience, from stories told of those who may harm it, closing itself off completely from what may be. Laying in my lap slowly and with discernment it peeks, suns itself and becomes vulnerable to all experiences outside itself.

It stretches beyond its fetal cocoon reaching for the unknown possibilities of existence, unlimited experience and enlightenment on the level of its capturing understanding. So it is with me, humanity, nature, the ant and the ocean with God. Don’t force, just allow. Trust and be trustworthy. The shell is perfect no matter the form.

There is sand, and grit, a working off or through and maybe even a carrying along in the learning of life’s wisdom. Once wisdom, the sand, the grit can be let go upon the shore. Each grain a life experience of another, no greater, no smaller, none more or less meaningful than your own.

Still the creature waits for its perfect timing of arrival, exposure to the world, the environment which in turn waits, holds the most perfect time opened as a travel vortex just for the beginnings, the moment of birth, the first breath of incarnation of this small perfect wondrous crustation of creation. And for a timeless moment All of All is in awe of its courage, it’s strength, it’s cluelessness and it’s wisdom of unveiling itself as it has chosen to be this time.

A seagull waits, paces behind me in possible anticipation of breakfast on the fly. Holding this small perfect hermit crab in my hand unknowing of its life intention, the itinerary of its voyage, and how my play in it by plucking it from the ocean edge may have changed everything I question; do I throw it back into the love of continuous life the ocean to begin from there again today and forever more? Do I place it on the shoreline where I found it and watch as the patient gull retrieve it for its deserved nourishment?

Either way I have again changed its course of existence, destiny and fate. We all do, in all time, in ways sometimes, somehow unknown, as we meet change each other’s existence. And so it is this early morning in linear time and no time, as I release this perfect creature in its perfect house back into the perfect ocean. As I release one wave at a time layers of my grieving for a Soul that so changed who I am in this life time. I too am released unto myself in my perfect house back into the abyss of humanity, as a spiritual being having an earthly experience.

And God will always know exactly where we all are, Mary, Sebastian and me.

“Releasing happens slowly, as each wave of life comes and goes. See it as such. Your life is as perfect as God’s ocean. It comes and goes. Experiences come and go. Beloveds come and go. You come and go. And in all spaces there God is and will be. Amen.”

The ocean taught me all this and more that early morn upon its shore. In dedication to all I learned from Mary Dougherty I pass it now to you as a Spiritual Healing as It Is Just A Thought of who we are and how we are together.
Learn more about Spiritual Healing October 6 & 7 at Light Paths, Centre For The Healing Arts and The Sophia School of Wisdom. For more details see Light Paths Up & Comin’s article below as well as check our website at www.light-paths.org. To learn more about and contribute to The Mary Dougherty Scholarship Fund call us at 410-758-3589 or e-mail us at info@light-paths.org.