I am the water

When did I first realize that one of my passions in life was to clean up the water? I think it was when I first started selling the software that I used to write. I am a career software developer of scientific programs. For perhaps 15 years of my career I programmed simulation software that predicted the behavior of electrolytes in water. Then, in 2004, I found myself selling this software to the chemical engineers who had challenges related to water in their chemical processes.

After a few months of the work of selling this software I began to realize that I was passionate about my clients' end product - a scheme to reuse water, or remediate water, reclaim it, and so on. I realized that my spiritual practice and my work life had finally merged: I found a way to love my clients and to foster ways to assist them in their mission - 'cleaning up the water.' I found myself picturing water pollution and "my" software saving the day not only for my clients, but for the water. I listened to stories about water scarcity and found myself wanting to help my clients, and the water.

Part of stepping into being a shaman is to move your source of energy from the land of your birth place, to sourcing from a mountain that you choose (or that chooses you!). There is a ceremony where you leave behind the land of your birth and instead claim your new source of energy as a shaman. My shaman mentor suggested that for me, it might make sense to claim my source from the water, rather than source from a mountain. What would that be like? The idea resonated so much for me! After all, I was already adept at helping my clients clean up the water. I already had such a close relationship with water. I found a particular place along the Jersey Coast that I love, and my ceremony was finished in the ocean there. I proudly claimed my new energy source, "I Source from the Water."

In my professional life, I became increasingly concerned about the water of Lake Titicaca, elevation , the lake on top of the world at 12,500 feet in the Andes between Peru and Bolivia, which has become polluted through untreated sewage and illegal gold mining. Levels of lead and mercury are toxic. Frogs are dying. The simulation software that I sold would be able to help assess how to clean up this lake, and I became convinced this was my job to facilitate. There are groups working to clean up Lake Titicaca, I needed to find my way into these groups.

I made friends with a Peruvian chemical engineer living in Canada who proposed to help me do exactly this. Interestingly, however, as we planned out each step, there were no 'green lights.' At every turn we seemed to encounter difficulty, from something as simple as a bout of altitude sickness I had in Colorado (at only 5,000 feet above sea level) to a trip cancelled twice, once by my husband's planned surgery and another time by an unforeseen accident that my friend's daughter had.

In a crescendo of frustration as I was despairing fulfilling my mission for the lake on the top of the world, I heard a small voice say softly and kindly, "you ARE the water."

I pondered this "I am the water" even as I could feel something deep inside relaxing and putting down my agitation at my lack of success with my cleanup project. I suddenly could see that what was feeling so far away from me was actually inside me. That the affinity and the flowing of the water in my energy had been with me for some time, and I could rest in that, and carry that, and expect that this congruency of my energy with the water would lead me where I needed to go.

I remember the days leading up to Mother's Day two years ago where I realized that I regarded the ocean as my mother. That startled me. It reminded me of something I read on a homeopathy site about the remedy Nat Mur, a remedy for those children who "have the ocean for their mother." The gist of the article was that the ocean is a harsh mother, chill and aloof, forbidding and with a relentless strictness and discipline. Hmmm, the ocean is a harsh mother?

That Mother's Day, and for many days since, I have thought of my Ocean Mother so tenderly. I do not mind the harshness or the relentlessness. How could I? I am the Water.