Swimming With Wild Dolphins

On January 20, 2009, I wasn't planning on swimming with dolphins. I also wasn't planning on watching Obama's first inauguration in the lobby of the historic Manago Hotel in Captain Cook, Hawaii. I had simply wanted to escape the confines of the land-locked work trade I'd drifted into at South Point, the most southerly point in the entire 50 states. Somehow I, a passionate ocean lover, had found myself without a car, far from the water pulling weeds and painting two-by-fours at a retreat center that could only be accessed by driving through a cow pasture. There was a bull, too, which made walking out to the road even more intimidating.

Saying I "found myself there" is slightly misleading, like many turns of phrase we use to cover up situations and choices we don't want to take full responsibility for. It implies something is beyond our control, when actually I was living in this land-locked oasis because I had almost no money and needed to trade for a place to live. If there was a work-trade on the beach I most certainly would have chosen that. I was used to taking what was offered so I could live without a lot of money, working as needed to stay afloat. I was kind of like a stray cat or dog. It wasn't always comfortable, but there was freedom and adventure, which was a greater lure to me than staying home and working a job that would provide me with the money to pay for a hotel or eat in a restaurant.

At the time I would have said my goals were simple; now I can see they were limited by what I thought I was worth.

I don't know how I got out to the road on my day off from pulling weeds to start hitchhiking up the coast where I'd heard there was easier water access. I'm amazed at how many details in my life as a traveler are fuzzy. You might say this is a result of growing older, but I have another idea I'd like to float, which is that I don't remember a lot of details because most of me actually wasn't in my body. I don't know who was, but I know it was only a fraction of who I am now, and that swimming with the wild spinner dolphins of Kona was the key that unlocked the door into this more embodied person that is writing to you now, a woman whose outer life pretty much matches what's going on inside, when before I felt like an impostor.

Blurry details, or often the inability to remember any at all, are common of trauma survivors. Many trauma survivors, including me, experience recovered memory syndrome; an event in the present, often linked to a powerful emotion, opens up a window to the past where one can watch what happened that was too painful to live with when it occurred. Often, as in my case, these memories come through as random images without a lot of context to give them narrative coherence. It's hard to believe they could be true; self-doubt and confusion can follow such a revelatory experience, but somehow, if we let the body have its way with us, if we follow its guidance to move or shake or cry, the pain of the past moves through us and we find ourselves on the other side of it, more whole. More present. More available to connect with others and see them with compassionate eyes, less prone to judgment.

The human brain is truly marvelous. You could say we are programmed to survive, but even if it's just bio-mechanical, I'm in awe of the program that caused my brain to step in and block out events my developing ego-self could not process.

What's the point of this? For me, survival strategies like cognitive dissonance and dissociation are as much gifts from the gods, grace you may call it, as much as they are functions of the brain to protect the organism. By tucking those painful memories away I was able to develop the strength to begin to process and integrate them. Only then, when my heart began to open through first love, did they return to me, almost like lost relatives, welcoming me back to the truth that my body had never forgotten.

In case you are wondering if this is going to be a story about my traumas, it's not. This is a reflection on how trauma is a path to spiritual growth and soul embodiment. We may not like it, but pain seems to be one of the ways we learn on Earth. We all experience trauma, and if we live, we are all survivors, and it's my belief our traumas are not limited to just what we experience in this lifetime. They go back generations and are transmitted through the cellular memory of our ancestors to our current bodies. If you believe in reincarnation and past lives, this adds another layer to the traumas that must be excavated in order to be whole.

What happens if we look at our traumas and the suffering they create through the soul's eyes? It's my belief that the soul does not judge experience in the same way the personality or ego does. Pain, in the soul's eyes, is an advanced opportunity for growth. It deepens us. Although we push it away, resistance is futile. Pain and grief will come for us because that is how the soul roots itself in a body, and through the body to Earth.

These are opinions of course. You may be someone who requires scientific proof to believe. You may not even believe in the soul. If you are one of those people, I invite you to try to look at your body through the soul's eyes and see if you hear a different story than the ones you've learned from doctors or professors. I'm not saying their stories aren't true, only that stories are like onions, there is always another layer to unpeel and by the end you'll most likely be tearing up when you really look at the beauty and magnificence of all your body has endured in order to keep you here on Earth. Who you are, is another question asking for another exploratory mission in prose beyond the confines of this one. For now, let's go back to me with my thumb out on the road north.

A few rides later from faces I don't remember I find myself at the entrance to The Manago Hotel. There's a restaurant in the back. I hear the clink of old china and smell coffee and toast, most likely bacon or sausage, though to be honest I don't remember. It was a bacon and eggs kind of place I'm trying to say. Old-fashioned. There is a front parlor with over-stuffed chairs and since nobody at the front desk seems to protest my presence, I take a seat and am front and center for the inauguration of America's first black president, a former citizen of Hawaii who embodied the new vision of America so many longed for.

This may not seem relevant, but what I'm getting to is that sometimes the dreams we have seem so unattainable or impossible that we forget them, pushing them under the bed or hiding them in the closet so we don't have to think about how we aren't worthy of them, or how we've failed, or how the world has failed us in ways too numerous to count. I'm sure many others that day never believed we'd see a black president in our lifetime. Yet, the dream came true. A lot has happened since that day that would make it seem as if we're going backwards, that Obama was just a fluke, but I'd like to propose a different narrative. What if the Obama presidency was simply the future moving towards us to give us some encouragement to believe that anything is possible? Remember those campaign posters with his face and the one word- hope?

Although it may seem fixed in space and time, the body dwells in past, present and future simultaneously. Imagine this-Obama came from the future so we could have a vision of hope that would sustain us through the years of shadow work we will have to do in order to make the choices that will enable us to co-create a way of living that is truly founded on equal rights and respect for all life regardless of race, class, and gender. I include animals, plants, trees, crystals, volcanoes, all bodies of water, and everything we label nature in that vision as well, because I know that everything is sentient, even though most of us can't perceive that yet. Sometimes we just have to let go of the rational and let our ancestral memory rise up through our blood and bones and sing the truth out.

In the past four years under President Trump, the shadows have come out. I mean really out, as in they are blatantly obvious. We are having a massive collective recovered memory experience right now. It is impossible to sweep the legacies of the atrocities the United States was founded on under the carpet. Slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, the exploitation of Earth, have all left bloody tracks we are beginning to follow back to the source. Us. We are all participants in the collective drama. What role are you playing? Are you willing to consider your soul chose it for you?

In order to live the impossible dream we must look clearly at our individual and collective traumas. We must let go of blame and begin the work of forgiveness. This does not mean justice will not be served, only that if we truly want to create a more just, and yes, beautiful world, we need to acknowledge the soul's role in choosing how it wants to be expressed through the human ego, and to treat everyone, whether they are judged guilty or innocent in a court of law, with compassion.

I wasn't thinking these things as I hitched a ride away from the Manago Hotel back south toward Ho'okena, where my ride told me there was a beach great for swimming. I wasn't thinking about dolphins either. In fact, I hadn't thought of them for years, although for a period in my youth I'd been totally obsessed with them to the point where I was affectionately mocked by my classmates. That's why it was all the more wonderful when drifting in the warm blue ocean, I looked through my mask and saw one floating right next to me, looking straight into my eyes and not swimming away in fear as most wild animals do. All of my childhood dreams and longing to be connected to dolphins flooded back. I was awash in wonder and spent the next hour with them. Diving and swimming, breathing at the surface, and holding my breath when I went under, entraining to a primal rhythm my body knew. If you had to measure an experience by how much it changed your life, this was my Everest, my journey to the moon. I was utterly transformed.

Dolphins don't care if you're traumatized. They don't care if you're confused and ashamed. They don't care if you have low self-esteem or if nobody likes you or if you're lazy or failed chemistry or voted for Donald Trump. They don't care if you are Donald Trump. Dolphins are not confused. They love. Unconditionally. It doesn't matter how deep you can dive. If you can only float on the surface, they will come up to you, and if you're too afraid to swim in the water, they'll spin right next to your kayak, meeting you in the air. These are things I've witnessed. This is truth.

I escaped South Point and moved to Captain Cook, not far from the Manago Hotel, and with a new friend, Renate, swam with the dolphins as often as we could. Grace, in every sense returned to my body.

Grace, the unexpected and unearned gift from a higher power, is possible for us all.

In that magical encounter with the wild spinner dolphins of Kona, my forgotten dream came back and found me. It had never died. It was just waiting for me in the future until I was ready to meet it half-way. It gave me hope. Then came the work.

This essay is part 1 of a series exploring trauma from the soul's perspective through my personal journey. If you enjoyed it please let me know, consider leaving a tip, and share it with your friends and networks.

And please check back for installment 2!