Sailing is like life...

Sailing is simple and easy, until the winds pick up, then like stress in life, it becomes difficult and dangerous, unless one masters the piloting and navigating of one's own ship (being). Ron Alexander 

Good dream, thanks EileenWorkman😎

Eileen Workman

Yesterday at 9:01am · 

I woke up from a dream this morning in which I perceived every living person's body as a ship sailing on the cosmic ocean of life. Each person's consciousness served as their personal ship's navigator.

As I watched all these different ships moving about on the ocean, I noted how frequently people abandoned their own ships to go "helpfully" try and control someone else's floundering ship. Pretty soon, a bunch of ships were floundering and crashing into each other, causing one another all sorts of problems, because their navigators were so busy trying to forcibly correct or control the sailing patterns of others that they lost sight of what was happening to their own ship.

And it occurred to me that if everyone just stayed on their own ships and practiced navigating them masterfully, we would all suffer far fewer accidents and mishaps. Of course, the ocean has its own rhythms and tides, so sharing what we know about the ocean, as well as sharing general tips about how to sail when another asks us, can be useful and collectively beneficial. But to leave our own ship in order to take control of another vessel?

Nobody knows my own ship like I do. Nobody is more qualified to steer my ship than I am. And I am supremely unqualified to steer anyone's ship but my own. Nor does my ship deserve to be abandoned by me while I try and correct the course that another is choosing.

If I stay put on my ship and I learn how to master it artfully, why does it matter what other ships' captains are choosing? I can navigate around them, away from them, behind them, ahead of them, in the opposite direction, or alongside them...depending upon where I am determined to go.

The more masterfully I learn how to steer my own ship, the less worry I feel about how all others are steering. Yet the only way I can learn to master my own ship is to stay ON it, and focus on paying attention to what I am doing in response to whatever arises.

Comments

Dale Langley: My ship sank. Drowning, I surrendered and was suddenly merged with an ever-present, sublime, spacious, undercurrent that was a natural flowing in/to this infinite, vast, unfathomable yet fathomable sea of 'Knowing'. Interestingly, the ship sank but the lifeboat was still there. 'It' Is enough.