Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless—like water …
Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
—bruce lee
Watering the Garden:
Finding the Source
Few things are more essential to life and growth than water. We use water for purifying, cleaning, and sustaining. Many dreams fill with water to reveal the emotions and the spiritual state of being. In mountain villages like Moustiers, fountains pour crystalline water out of cliffs into worn stone basins for drinking. In Antibes, a perpetual fountain runs in a hidden area near the cathedral and the art galleries. It pours into the lavoir, a series of stone basins where women once washed their clothes by hand long before machines did the work.
Water holds a deeply spiritual meaning. Posing on the edge of the stone behind the wall that separated this spot from the sea, I thought back to water in Indiana, where I grew up. It lay in still ponds and stood in rain barrels collected by my grandmother in the country. But it rarely ran clear and free like this. Before waterlines brought the source to our door, finding a well required locating someone who had the gift of dowsing or “well-witching.” My grandpa, a dark-haired, dark-skinned, exotic-looking man with bifocals, possessed it. He’d acquired a reputation, a high hit rate, and never accepted anything more than simple thanks in return.
“When can you come and find water for me?” A farmer building a new house in Indiana had just jumped out of his pickup truck to the chorus of Mickey, the barking black dog; a beagle; and Grandma’s curious goose, Gabby, who waddled around honking. Grandpa shook the man’s hand and invited him for a smoke. He loved his old pipe. Just like his father, Grandpa knew how to take a tree limb and divine where the source lay underground. For new homebuilders his gift filled a crucial need. Grandpa hooked a thumb in his suspenders. His dark eyes twinkled behind black-rimmed glasses.
“I’ll come on Saturday,” he said.
On Saturday we walked into the woods under the young dogwood trees not yet in bloom, and Grandpa found a forked branch on a tree and turned it into a “divining rod.” The farmer wanted to build his house where no one believed he’d find water. “We’ll see,” Grandpa said. He took out his rod, held one end of the forked branch in each hand, and walked around the property. After about twenty minutes he honed in on a spot and walked out and back tracing a grid over it. Each time he arrived at a certain spot, the rod visibly bent to the ground in the direction of the source.
“Wow,” I said in my ten-year-old voice. Something mystical happened right before my eyes. It didn’t involve machines, scientific instruments, or calculations, but relied entirely on intuition.
“Try it,” he said.
I held the forked stick and started a few yards away. When I walked close to the spot, I felt the tug toward the source too, as if it wanted to be discovered. When the farmer dug down about twenty feet, a gush of water poured out. Once they set the well, the water rose with such intense pressure the first days that the farmer couldn’t close the faucets in his new house. He let it flow like the mountain fountains in France and Switzerland.
Diviners often say that “anyone can do it.” But others say it’s a gift. Maybe we all have the ability to be diviners of spiritual waters when we search deep enough. It’s like the universe senses our seeking, and mystical avenues and synchronicities open up to respond. We meet a teacher; something resonates with a chord of inner truth; an understanding arises, and we strike deep into the source.
A few years after the well-witching with Grandpa, when I turned fifteen, I doubled over writhing in pain on the ground. My stomach felt like claws ripped at the lining. Waiting tables at a local restaurant combined with the stresses of dating and a tense family environment brought the acid in my stomach to eat at my insides. The resulting pain left me shocked into the precocious realities of life as a teen. X-rays confirmed it. I had an ulcer. The doctor sent me home with a bottle of Maalox antacid, a list of bland foods to eat and others to avoid, and a bottle of tranquilizers (no Zantac yet). After a few days of taking sedatives and floating a foot above the ground, I threw them away and decided to heal myself.
I knew from somewhere deep inside that my mind had caused the problem and I had the power to heal it. Every day for half an hour I sat down, closed my eyes, and meditated. No one in my family meditated. No one had inclinations to Eastern religions. But I knew to sit quietly, close my eyes, and still my mind. Within a month, the gnawing pain stopped. Meditation opened up an inner fountain that cooled the mind and put out the stressful fires. Tapping into the inner well of spiritual energy is not unlike dowsing for water. Water, that fluid, spiritual element, flows up and gives life to everything. But in order to let it flow and remove the block and negativity that caused pain and illness, the mind needed to be trained. The next x-ray proved it; the ulcer had healed. An inner source of calm and wisdom rescued me.
I’m not quite sure how I knew meditation would work. An inner voice said, “Sit down and meditate.” I obeyed. This experience convinced me that much of the time we know what ails us and how to heal it. The answers to our physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual problems often arise from within. If we take the time to listen, pay attention, and act on what our better Self tells us, and take responsibility, we’ll have a much happier, more meaningful, and well-balanced life.
The experience revealed the power of meditation, but when my life improved I forgot it again. When the crises hit later and I made the leap of faith out of corporate life, I returned to meditation as a way to bring spiritual waters back into my secret garden and keep it vibrant and alive. Without meditation and the spiritual energy it raised, I couldn’t grow. I needed the inner spiritual waters that arose in meditation to allow the seeds of love, peace, and compassion to take root. This signaled a return to the intuitive wisdom I’d had as a teenager.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears, and that’s when I met the Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher who led me deeper. “Keep your back straight like a stack of gold coins piled one on top of the other,” she said. We shivered in coats in a spacious tent at an auspicious site in the hills behind Montpellier. The Mistral wind blew rain through open cracks. The teacher liked to keep the fresh air circulating and didn’t seem to mind the chill. I suppose compared to Tibet, where she grew up, this retreat in the mountains in the South of France must have seemed balmy. We chanted Om and sat in silence, ruffled only by the sound of the howling wind. I hovered as close to the electric radiators as I could get without getting burned. Hundreds of us sat silently to experience what the teacher termed the “nature of mind.” She struck a brass gong and we took a break from the intense concentration to stretch and relax. Meditation can be hard work!
In a study group with others at the three-week retreat, we discussed what it meant to achieve the “nature of mind.”
“The more I meditate, the more polluted the inner waters appear,” I said. I thought that spiritual practice and meditation would wash it away. I also thought that I’d done quite enough digging up junk and doing inner work, thank you!
“It’s got to surface before it can be flushed out,” Eileen, the wise group leader, said.
“So what does that mean, the ‘nature of mind’?” a man asked.
“It’s a state of bliss. Some people say it’s like orgasm,” Eileen said. “Only more permanent.” I snickered and others guffawed. In spiritual retreats you’re supposed to be above thinking about mundane things like sex. “Some people know when they have achieved it and some don’t,” Eileen added. When we asked for clarification later, the teacher said, “And some fake it.” That elusive state of mind meant a place of no mind where all shined brilliant and self-luminous, the teacher said. But unless you experience it, it’s just a bunch of empty words. I felt far from attaining any kind of illumination. I just wanted my mind to be still and stop chattering long enough to feel at peace.
At the end of that retreat, the group leader asked me to address the teacher in the customary closing ceremony of gratitude. In front of the crowd my knees shook from nerves and the cold mountain air. The rains ceased and the sun’s warmth penetrated the big white tent. It finally started to warm up and feel like June. Someone handed me the microphone as I stood at the teacher’s feet. “I came here expecting to clean out a small pool of pollution, but I discovered I need a spiritual equivalent of a waste treatment plant for the toxic waste I’ve found. Thank you,” I said and hesitated. “I think.” The crowd laughed. They found it funny, but I knew much, much more work awaited. Inviting in the energy that arrives through meditation brings waves of change not unlike the way a flood reshapes the banks of a river.
As I became more familiar and comfortable with this spiritual energy, I found myself getting very comfortable with this spiritual element—not only diving, but also being able to walk, speak, and even work underwater in dreams. At first the waters appeared polluted, then as I cleaned up my thoughts and aligned my actions with elevated values, they became less murky, until finally the dreams revealed pristine seawaters where I snorkeled and could see colorful, tropical fish for long distances. All of the dream symbols of water spoke to the growing spiritual energy as it rose in meditation. And of course I lived by the sea, a most powerful spiritual symbol of merging with the Divine. But it takes time to learn to navigate in this new element or else you drown. At this stage of practice, when the first joys of meditation and the peace begin to make themselves apparent, one can be easily consumed with wanting to go there and stay for many, many hours at a time. Keeping a balance felt essential.
At the same time, I’d appreciated the Buddhist teachings but wanted more, something that would take me deeper and touch my heart, something that included love. Love didn’t come up in these teachings; only a form of it, compassion, surfaced. The Buddhist teachings appealed to my intellect, but I yearned for something that would touch my heart and break open the thick armor I felt there. While the teacher’s help deepened my meditation practice, I wanted to go deeper, higher, further, and find that gusher well of spiritual energy, to divine it, and let it flow like the faucets in the farmer’s house where Grandpa dowsed for water.
I continued to meditate at the same place and same time every day, and sometimes two or three times a day. Meditation acted to prime the pump and start the water flowing. It seemed I’d found the tip of a well, a small source, and it started to flow. With a taste of the peace it could bring, I hungered for more. The lessons from the Buddhist teacher opened my heart and mind to wisdom and experience from different sources. But I kept my soul’s divining rod out, searching and waiting for it to tug and spin me in the right direction to a bigger source, one that would flow ceaselessly. Most of the time my mind raged like a fire in a drought-stricken forest and left me no peace. I needed a rush of cooling inner waters brought by meditation to soothe it and put the fire out.
I also returned to my Christian upbringing and sought more understanding there. Jesus’ acts of compassion, love, and nonviolence in a world where he was misunderstood and surrounded by hatred touched me deeply. In meditation while contemplating him, I smelled the scent of lilies and felt his divine presence. But later when seeking answers in the Bible on how to live, I sensed confusion, contradiction, and a language of men seeking power and control. Christian theology provided no gentle place for a woman. It blames us for the fall of man and associates our bodies with sin.
My heart couldn’t come to grips with Jesus’ compassion juxtaposed with the low place of the feminine in religious teachings. I sought other places, read a lot, and needed more. The meditations continued, but I felt spiritually thirsty for deeper wisdom and understanding. When it seemed hopeless and like the water flow to my secret garden had slowed to less than a trickle, I dipped into desperation. The plants in my inner garden suffered; the inner trees wilted. That’s when the divine teacher felt my yearning and called me to visit his Abode of Infinite Peace halfway around the world.
Tapping into Your Spiritual Source
Meditation acts like cool water to cool the fire of mental agitation. While sitting in the tent with the Buddhist teacher, she reminded me to let the thoughts flow past like a leaf down a river. “Stand on the riverbank and become the observer,” she said. Thoughts are like leaves or logs that flow past. Don’t follow them. Instead, stay put on the riverbank and let them go. This is a practice of non-attachment to the thoughts. Don’t become fascinated or frightened by the thoughts. Let them move. Don’t block them, stop them, or try to grab onto them. Instead, watch for the space between the thoughts. Focus on that space and expand it.
Observation and expansion are two elements of meditation. While a teacher may guide you to have the right posture and give instructions on following the breath, no one can teach you about the experience. It comes through practice and patience. Only then can you realize the sense of peace and contentment that accompanies the quiet mind. Some people begin a meditation practice by watching the breath or they focus on a candle flame, a sacred image, or a white wall. Some friends find that walking labyrinths or simply walking and focusing on the breath allows them more inner quiet than sitting. Another friend hikes up to a mountain lake and spends hours dangling his fishing line in a mirrored lake and enters into meditation there. Another finds meditation in surfing.
Explore your practice and find what works for you. If you have a sitting meditation, remember to keep your back straight, surround yourself with a protective prayer or light, and stick to a regular schedule. Meditating at the same time and in the same place every day will begin to make it natural and easier. It is like committing to an athletic training. It literally trains the mind to focus. When you get into a regular rhythm, your soul knows that you’ll be there listening at that moment. This creates a space and time that aligns you with your spirit.
Finding the Source within your secret garden and connecting with it opens up an incredible, creative flow of energy. Meditation becomes a way to access this, but some people find other ways through art, sports, or service to others, for example. Take a moment to reflect on a time when you have felt “in the flow” and in harmony with your environment and the work or actions you’re doing. Can you describe the feeling? What were the conditions when this happened?
When the energy moves freely through you, it brings a feeling of natural joy and contentment. How can you cultivate this experience more often in your life? To connect more with this energy you may wish to write about how you perceive the element of water and how it relates to your secret garden. Making images of it in some way will help you to connect with your psyche and add this symbol as a part of your language. It may then appear more readily in dreams and in symbolic ways in your life.