Guest Post by Dennis Ernst
I have a friend who is finishing up the last of her adventures in this life and will be leaving us soon. I wrote a poem for her, her caregivers, family, and friends that I would like to share with others.
While being a deeply spiritual person, she was not the least bit religious about it, and I wanted to hit the right note that everyone could understand and enjoy. Most of this came from my dreams.
The Drop and the Ocean
Stand here with me on this beach that breathes paradise— sun pouring its warmth like honey, the smallest whisper of wind, water so still it mirrors heaven, white sand receiving each gentle wave as if this moment were the only moment that ever was.
Look around. Everything feels too beautiful to be real.
Bend down now. Press your finger into the water— feel how it welcomes you, how its warmth becomes your warmth, how you cannot tell where ocean ends, and you begin.
Lift your finger. Watch the water gather itself, sliding down your skin, collecting at the tip— a single drop trembling there, suspended between two worlds.
The drop knows it is ocean. The ocean knows the drop is itself.
It grows heavy with knowing, swells with the weight of separation, and then— release— falls.
A few ripples spread outward like whispered secrets, and the drop is no more.
The ocean, once again, is whole.
They were always the same stuff. The illusion of apartness changed nothing— not their essence, not their nature.
The Ocean has always been Ocean, even when for one shimmering moment it played with being something smaller.
This is us.
This is the story of every human lifetime: We are the Ocean. Have always been. Will always be.
Beingness itself allows us this magic— to take form, to wear flesh like costume, to forget ourselves so completely we can truly experience what it means to be the drop.
But we are still Ocean. We carry all our experiences like salt in our waters.
Soul learns by becoming.
To know hunger, Soul becomes the hungry. To know joy, Soul is joy. To understand heartbreak, Soul must be the breaking heart.
This is learning in present tense— no distance between the lesson and the living.
Our human lives are Soul’s grand becoming.
Becoming happens when Soul forgets it is the Ocean, when it believes itself only the drop, suspended, separate, singular.
But when the drop falls— when this life releases its grip and merges back— everything Soul learned, every tear and triumph, every becoming and unbecoming, dissolves back into the infinite.
The Ocean holds it all. Every Soul’s journey. Every possibility. Every version of love ever lived.
Hear this truth:
You are never alone. Never separate. Never anything but Ocean pretending to be small.
One day will come— whether in this lifetime or lifetimes hence— when Soul no longer needs the costume of the drop, when all it requires is to be the Ocean and know itself as Ocean.
Fully complete. Fully knowing. Fully wise. Fully loving. Fully compassionate.
This was always the Creator’s Dream: love expressing itself through endless forms, love finding its way back to love imbued with experience.
The drop falls.
The Ocean receives.
And nothing was ever lost.
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Dennis Ernst is a retired Professional Land Surveyor who now devotes his time to sharing the natural beauty he finds on his many treks through photography, blogs, and poetry. Please visit his website, Dennis Ernst Photography, for a glimpse into his fascinating world.