Faith In The Path

I think it is fair to say, that over the last week or so, I have been suffering doubt. I have called into question my path and I have asked myself whether what I am doing, is truly the one path that I have been seeking?  Do I truly walk in the light, or have I convinced myself of this fact?  In essence, is everything I believe in and everything that I have written nothing more than one great falsehood, deceiving not only myself, but others as well?  Could that be the truth?

Everyone, and I mean everyone, suffers from doubt.  Look at the most confident person you know, a person who struts around boldly, head held high, never seeming to flinch under the stresses or strains of life, and it is easy to imagine that they are infallible, that they are blessed with a suit of armour that deflects away all negativity, that lets doubt and fear slide easily away, without so much as leaving a dent or a scratch.  The truth is that not one person has ever existed on this planet who did not have a moment of doubt, a moment of self-reflection where a shoot of negativity threatened to engulf them and pull them below, into the icy waters of darkness.  It happens to everyone.  Period.

I had returned to Costa Rica from a one week vacation in Nicaragua with a female friend of mine.  The vacation was enjoyable, but it left me with a sense of rejection.  Here was someone I found attractive, whose heart and soul I had gotten to know through our shared writing, and who comprehensively told me on several occasions that they were not interested in me in that way.  Not that I wanted to do anything to spoil a friendship, I have too much respect and integrity not only for my friend, but also for myself, and to be honest, I was not entirely convinced of the plausibility of getting together anyway.  And besides this, my heart is the deciding factor, always has and always will be.  By being told over and again that nothing could happen, that there was no chance, seemed to damage my ego and touched that place in my soul that is so full of negativity and self-doubt about myself.  That is a place that broils and smoulders like the lava of a volcano that awaits its release, so that it can flow free and unhindered.  That is a place, that I fight hard to avoid, less I should be drawn down too far, and never make my way back to the sunlight once more.  Although it was not rejection in the truest sense, since I had made no advances and it was never really a possibility, it nonetheless came over to me as such and I took it that way.

Since my return to work from this vacation, I have been working flat out, crazy, long days.  In my work as a scuba diving instructor, I am contractually meant to have one day off every five days, but the reality is that I am lucky if I get one day off each week.  If there are things to be done, then my boss expects his staff to work, even if a day off was overdue.  Often, it is possible to work eight, nine or even ten days straight, and then receive just a singe day free.  Not knowing when your day off will come means that it is impossible to make any plans with your time, since you are never sure if you are free the next day, until 8pm or so of the evening before.  The days can be long and physically demanding, and here in Costa Rica, there is the heat and humidity of each day that saps at you.  Some days, you don't get a chance for a break, having to eat lunch on the go.  Some days, we start at 6:30am and don't get done until 5pm.  It can be brutal and it is not for the faint hearted, nor for those seeking an easy life.

But of course, the boss is grateful for all of the things that you do, that essentially keeps his business running and him enjoying the profits, right?  Wrong.  In the 20 months that I have worked at this one job, the boss has uttered the words "thank you" only once.  Not once has he offered to buy the staff a beer for a hard days grafting - not even on Christmas Day, when we also have to work a full day.  He demands loyalty of his staff, but gives nothing in return.  And the pay?  That must be the reward for all this effort, surely?  This is not a job you do for the financial rewards.  If that is what you seek, then consider another career path.

It is no small wonder that I began to question my path.  Is scuba diving really my passion?  Aren't I getting too old to do this now?  Should I continue to stay away from England, from my parents, my brother and sister?  Is it my transient lifestyle that prevents me from finding the love in another soul that I seek?  Am I truly happy doing what I am doing, living overseas, always changing my home, my friends, my job? Why can I not find love?  What is wrong with me, that I seem to suffer constant rejection?  Doubts.  Tendrils of darkness, creeping in to consume my soul.

And then the light comes again.  A brilliant whiteness that obliterates everything that stands before it.  Nothing can resist it.  It burns away all darkness, it takes despair and turns it to joy, it casts away doubt, crushes it, sweeps it aside, an unrelenting force, like the breakers that crash into the shore, driven on by the winds of a ferocious storm.  What has happened to so completely turn around my thinking?

Under the ocean, I find my home, my peace, my tranquility.  In the depths, I find life.  And it is that life, that fills me with such joy and passion for what it is that I do.  Blessed with seeing two giant manta rays, blessed with watching white tip reef sharks, blessed with witnessing huge schools of fish, blessed with casting my eyes on an abundance of life, blessed with being allowed to fill my soul with life, with miracles and in so doing, with joy.  A deep sensation of utter, complete joy at life and not only life, but love.  Love for what I do.  Love for where I am.  Love for who I am.  Love for daring to dream.  Love for daring to walk and to take that first step.  Love for all those who have shared my journey and my path.  Love for England, for my mother, my father, my brother and my sister, without whom I could not be here.  Love.

Then more than this.  A pretty girl at the hotel smiles at me and our eyes meet.  In a single moment, an insignificant moment of time, something significant transpires.  An energy transfers from her to me and from me to her.  A few days later, we meet again and I boldly ask her to go for a drink. Carpe diem.  It is my way.  She agrees.  I knew she would.  I never doubted it.  I can't explain why.  I just knew it.  We meet the next evening, we talk, and as I gaze into one of the most beautiful faces that I have ever had the pleasure of sharing conversation with, I know.  I know that here and now, I could fall in love and become utterly lost.  Drawn in by those eyes, drawn in by the passion that is so evident in her face as she speaks of her love of dancing, of her love of teaching.  I am lost.  We kiss.  It is enough.  My soul and my heart believe once more.  I know that somewhere out there, if I am daring enough, if I have belief in myself, I will find the one for which I have spent my entire life seeking.

I rediscovered my faith.  I found again that I am on the right path.  There is no denying that I love what I do.  There can be no denying that I love the life that I have made for myself, because it is the life that I chose, that I carved into the history of time.  The problem is not what I do, the problem is only where I do it.  Choosing to suffer needlessly when I could choose to move on, if I so wished.  But I love the ocean life here.  It is rich and it is what fills my soul with life and love.  I have faith once more that I will find the love in another heart and soul.  I know it.  I do truly believe it.  Until that day, I will have faith in my path.  I will continue to walk my path, in my own way and I will continue to bask in the light that comes from my heart.  Because that light, is the light of love, and, as I have said many times before, love is all there really ever is.

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Reading The Signs Of Life

Life is full of signs.  Learning to see them, to recognise them and to understand them is a necessary part of the learning process of the walk along the path.  Heeding the signs, that is probably the hardest thing of all.  But heed the signs we must if we are to be rewarded with the miracles of life that lie along our path, waiting for us to discover them.  The other day, life showed me two signs and by reading them, and more importantly, by heeding them, I discovered two miracles.

Life is truly full of signs.  Some of them are simple, like seeing dark, heavy and threatening clouds on the horizon, usually means that rain is surely on the way.  When the leaves begin to change colour and fall from the branches of trees, then we know winter is coming.  These are two very simple examples of the signs of life, but they are signs sent to us by nature and therefore by the Creator of all things.  We know them and we trust them.

In the ocean the other day, during the first dive of the morning, I was leading my divers around the north end of the rock formation and dive site known as Los Sombreros.  The visibility in the water was very good for this area of the Pacific, around 15m (50 feet) and coming around the north end, there lots of schools of fish to be seen in the water.  The north end of Sombreros is always an interesting dive because here, the ocean floor drops down to 23m (75 feet) and the currents coming around the rock attract large number of fish.  Due to those conditions, this dive site offers some great surprises and this day would prove to be no different.  As I passed to the side of one such large school of grunts, suddenly and as one body, all of the fish darted away.  Something had got them very spooked and that could only mean one thing - a large predator.  Immediately, I swam out towards the fish.  My instinct told me that there was something out there, lurking out in the deeper water.  My instincts were not wrong.

As I scanned out through the water and across the sand bottom, cruising into my view came a large shark.  My initial shock led to surprise, which led to disbelief.  We have sharks here in the waters around Playa Flamingo and those are usually white tip reef sharks and nurse sharks.  White tips are easy to distinguish by their, well, white tips on the top of their dorsal fin and tail and by their overall shape and size.  This was no white tip.  Nurse sharks tend to hide away during the day time, preferring to seek refuge and sanctuary in holes under rocks and in sheltered channels.  To the best of my knowledge, neither of these sharks is usually a direct threat to so many fish and cause the panicked reaction that had occurred.  I noted the shape and the tail of this shark.  It was large, possibly 8 - 10 feet in length.  It never came close enough for me to get a great look, but I had seen enough of it to know that it was something out of the ordinary.  My gut feeling is that this was a bull shark.  The reaction of the fish leads me to this conclusion, as does the tail shape and the general view that I was given of it.  Bull shark sightings here are very rare.  This was a privilege to witness.

The second dive was at a rock pinnacle known as Dirty Rock.  Here, there is a large population of king angel fish, that act as cleaners for the manta rays, when the manta rays are in season (December - March).  The angel fish pick off the parasites that live on the manta rays and essentially, clean them.  On this particular day, as the group of divers came around the rock, I saw that there was a small group of angel fish on the wrong side - they always tend to be on the sheltered side of the rock pinnacle, and this is where the manta rays come for their cleaning.  Almost at the moment that I noted that to myself, this group of angel fish swam passed me, clearly with some intent.  I turned around and there behind me was an almost entirely dark grey/black manta ray, probably 10 - 12 feet in wing span.  A second miracle of the morning had occurred.

This blog post is not meant to be a post about scuba diving and the joys that this activity brings to my life.  I used these two examples to illustrate only how life places the signs before our eyes.  Instead, what is important are the signs of life and the ability to read them and to understand them.  You see, life shows us the way.  Whether that is in the oceans, the forests, or the deserts, the signs of life are there for you to see.  Learning to read see the signs, to read them and to comprehend their meaning, is a necessary part of the journey that we all make along our one true path.

I believe that the signs that you need to discover are littered throughout your journey.  If you pass one by and fail to see it, then it will come again later on.  Perhaps not exactly the same sign, perhaps not exactly in the same way.  A sign might be an overheard conversation, it might involve the meeting with someone new and an exchange of information, it could be as simple as the shape of a cloud drifting slowly above you head.  The signs are there, they always have been and always will be.  I know that the Big Guy gave me many signs on my own journey and by being able to read them, I moved my life on.  I was able to evolve my spirit, to learn the lessons that I needed to learn.  I'm also sure that I have misread or even missed completely other signs and I know that these will come again, when I am ready for them.

If you travel along the path too quickly, always in a rush to be some place, you will miss the signs that have been laid out for you.  Rather, take your time, look about you, see the world for that which it truly is and as you do so, then so too will the signs begin to appear.  And how do you know when the sign is the right one for you?  You hearts tells it.  And your heart is the best reader of the signs that there can ever be. Trust it. Listen to it.  Follow it.  Your path, your one true path is out there, just waiting for you.  But then, you knew that already.

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