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Here’s the scenario. You find yourself in a failing marriage, you hate your job and where you live, you are in poor health, bill collectors are calling and you feel cornered and stuck. In an attempt to get out, you tell your spouse that it’s over. You want to quit your job, move to another city, and get a boob job and tummy tuck. You want to get out and you just don’t know how.

Location changes, job changes, even boob changes, cannot get you out of the corner as the only remedy. Now you ask the question, “How can I get out of this situation?”

Be still. Be in it, just for a moment. Let it settle in. We’re not talking, sit and play in it to the point of depression. Just become aware of it. If you stand still for a moment you will realize that all the stuff happening all around you, seemingly consuming, is just stuff. Like the winds flying around in the outer bands of a hurricane.

In this stillness, you can begin to see the situation for what it is. You begin to see other things as well. Some of the things for which you are grateful, your adorable children, a safe home, play time, laughter, and music. You begin to see the situation is not as dire as you once thought. Soon you begin to see options. Ways out of the corner. You begin to attract to you friends and resources that can help you. You realize that you are enfolded in love and peace and harmony.

Finally, you take the first active step out of the situation because you have experienced grace.

I love going to the beach. I love it because it represents the most infinite I can be. If I’m at a good spot I could look clear across and see nothing but water. Nothing inhibiting it. So when I meditate I often visualize the ocean. If not the ocean, then water in its different states. Here’s something that I do with my ocean analogy to deepen my awareness.

First, I imagine that I am the wave. Just on top bouncing around, oblivious to what is beneath. I can see other waves on top. They seem to be made of the same stuff, but they all appear different. When I express this mode of awareness in my life, I feel as though I am in competition with others. Sometimes I resonate with a few, but mostly it’s me against them. I don’t like living like that. When I find myself shifting into this mode, I quickly see what I can of myself in the other person.

Next in meditation, I take a look down, deeper. I realize that I am connected to something. Alas! It’s the ocean. The infinity that I see on the top, I realize I am connected to if I go just a bit deeper. When I’m walking around in my daily life in this mode of awareness, I feel in sync. I’m smiling and cheerful. I let stuff roll of at this point. I’m in a neutral place. A bit more productive, but most of the benefit comes from being unphased.

Going a bit deeper, I realize that I am not just connected to the ocean, but it is expressing through me. I am an individualized expression of it. My logic kicks in and I conclude that those other waves on top must be expressing also. When I am out of meditation and going about my daily life, this is the mode of awareness that I operate at most of the time. In this mode, answers come quickly. I get more productive AND I’m cheerful. Life is humming along. At one point, I thought this was the jackpot.

One day I realized that things go even deeper than that. I allowed my self to just sink into the ocean and let go of the border that was defining me individually. Interestingly, I began to see other possibilities, infinite possibilities and ways of expressing. Not only that, but all the resources of the ocean became available to me as a wave at that point and I was aware of it. Ideas started flowing out with methods to implement them. It was up to me to put them into action. As I followed through step after step, my life began to unfold and change. In this mode of awareness, sychronicities abound. Results are manifested much faster. In an instant, solutions are found. Rather than the months they may have taken to manifest in productive mode, they start to come about in days, sometimes hours.

Beyond this mode of awareness, there is another that is expressed by mystics. Realizing that the ocean is all that there is. I read about this mode of awareness all the time. However, I must admit that it is one to which I aspire. I can only imagine the immediate incarnation of anything that is conceived at in this mode. A fluid exchange between what is seemingly myself and all the other waves around me. I want to play in that sandbox!