The water was cold and clear as I swam downward during my meditation tonight.  I found myself descending into a crystal stream that was translucent and chilled me to my bones.  I had never been this way before and I felt rather intimidated.  Actually I would say the word would be more along the lines of claustrophobia actually, although there seemed to be no boundary anywhere around me.  I felt as if I were a goldfish in a huge glass bowl who had no idea she was actually a pet in a confined space, and I wasn’t really sure where to swim to leave this rather creepy place.

I felt very exposed and vulnerable, not to mention freezing to my soul and it seemed there was no up or down, much less forward or back, to find my way out of this crystal cage.  I began to feel fear, but I wasn’t sure what I was actually afraid of since there was no threat of any kind in sight.  I found myself curling into a fetal position and breathing rapidly and felt my mind freezing into inaction.  I tried to focus on solutions and breathe through my fear, but it seemed I couldn’t grasp even what my situation was, much less how to get out and why I was there in the first place.

I hung there in the clearness for what seemed to be an eternity, and finally forced myself to take a breath and flex a finger to see if I was still alive, but  I felt more like a crystal statue than a living creature.  The confusing part of it all was that there was no visible cage around me and I really couldn’t feel any walls or structures preventing my movement, yet all I could do was hang in this clear nothingness and feel paralyzed at being confined in openness.  It was a totally new and bizarre sensation that made me so afraid that I had to remind myself to keep breathing,  but finally I moved one hand a bit and found that I could breathe and blink if I chose.  I felt no pain or stricture around me and began to flex my arms and legs a bit, and I finally was able to stretch completely out and attempt to breathe normally.  Where was I and what was happening to me?  How could one be confined in open space that had no apparent boundaries and why was it so cold there?

I saw no snow as I had in my usual journeys, and none of my guides were anywhere to be found.  I was swimming in some clear watery substance but could breathe as if I were in air, so I made my way downward into the darker depths led by some instinct I couldn’t name.  I soon found myself in a watery crystal cave where I saw what seemed to be the bottom of this ocean.  There was no blue, green, no creatures or ocean plants as I had expected to find here in the watery depths, but instead a crystalline bottom to the waters I swam through.

I swam slowly closer hoping I would get some clues as to what this place was and why I felt so confused and fearful in a place to obviously transparent and open, but all I could see was the clear bottom ahead.  I swam down to it and peered through the water to the crystal floor of the cave, and as I drew closer I saw there was a moving shape apparently under the floor.  My heart raced as I approached it and I even had a moment of my previous fearful paralysis, but I knew I had to see what was moving in order to understand where I was and how to leave the invisible cage I found myself in.

I swam down and leaned close as my heart pounded so hard I thought I would pass out, but when I looked directly into the clear waters all I saw was my reflection staring back at me.  I saw nothing and no one else anywhere around, and then I realized where I was with a start.  I had the wonderful opportunity to look deep inside myself and see my deepest fears to find clarity, but the knowledge I would find there was only available after I uncurled myself and decided to follow my instincts and become willing to see whatever was down in the quiet depths.  The word that popped into my head was a simple, “ohhh”, and I smiled at how I had found clarity deep inside myself when I put aside my fears.  How interesting it is that with all the time I have spent searching for answers through sometimes murky waters the clearest reflection was inside myself the whole time.

As I peered at myself I realized that sometimes what seems like a cage is really home and safety, and that what feels scary and unfamiliar can really be simply an interpretation of our own truth filtered through our fears.  When we can remove the filters we can see with clarity what we weren’t able to see before, and I really didn’t look like what I usually see in the mirror when the  waters were stilled so the view was clear.  Fear distorts who we are, but when we let the waters become still and see our real reflection we break free and see our truth.  It is definitely worth uncurling ourselves and swimming in the cold for awhile.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 12:14 am and is filed under Journeys, Meditations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.