Hello Friends!

I  gave another dolphin talk Tuesday night. It's always a joy for me to give this talk - I get to share my love of these incredible beings with complete abandon!  I learn more each time I do it, from both my own experience and that of others.

This time I had a powerful realization.

I was talking about the process I went through in anticipation of my first wild dolphin swim. I was in Hawaii visiting my friend LiLi (hi LiLi!) and during my visit there I kept hearing people's stories about awesome dolphin encounters. I didn't go to Hawaii to swim with dolphins, it wasn't on my agenda. But as I listened to these incredible accounts, I realized it was something I wanted to do.

So swimming with dolphins became the top priority. We spent every morning visiting the bays they frequented. To no avail. There were zippo dolphins, and I went through all kinds of emotions. But my desire grew. I had gotten in touch with something, a yearning within me.

By the end of the week, after days of looking and not finding, I was feeling  sad, angry, confused and frustrated. I was in the middle of a spiritual crisis. Why the hell couldn't I have what I wanted? What was wrong? What was going on? I was doing all sorts of bargaining with God, all to no avail. Then one night, as I lay out in my sleeping bag talking to the stars, it hit me. I realized why I felt so discombobulated, so ineffectual and out of sorts. I had been hedging my bet. I had been blocking the full depth of my desire, to protect myself from dissapointment in case it didn't happen.

I knew this was the reason for my pain. It wasn't the lack of dolphins, it was the blocking of my full desire. And so I opened my self fully to this desire, and out poured a yearning that was huge. It scared me, it was so big. It ran deeper than I knew myself to be. It was big and powerful, and made all my prior desiring and wanting wane in comparison. I mean, this yearning was HUGE!

Well, I stayed in freefall for awhile, the full force of this raging  through my body. I was scared by it's intensity, afraid it would sweep me away. It did, and took me to places inside myself I hadn't been in a very long time. When it was over, I found myself alive and well and... comforted. I had totally surrendered to it, and it healed me. I felt no more loss, no more deprivation. I had no more worries or self doubts. I felt whole and complete, and it didn't matter whether I swam with any dolphins or not. I went to sleep feeling blessed, and woke the next morning still feeling the same.

The full depth of this experience came to me tuesday night. I really got how important it is to fully honor one's yearning. We all yearn for something. Whether our yearning is for dolphins, a certain kind of relationship, a great job, next month's rent, it is really our yearning for God, for the divine. How healing to give ourselves fully to it.

I bet you can imagine the next chapter of that story. Sure enough, that very morning, I had my first dolphin encounter. And it was truly divine.