the blue hole

This weekend I watched a tv documentary about the Bahamas. It covered a variety of topics but one in particular caught my fascination…..Dean’s Blue Hole on Long Island. It plunges 202 metres (663 ft) and pretty much triples in diameter as you descend.

Ok, first of all, isn’t it beautiful!!?? Almost a study on the color blue. Secondly, isn’t it mysterious!!?? Don’t you want to know what it is like down there inside it? Doesn’t it make you want to take a dive, even just to peek into it with goggles?  That’s about my speed….goggles. I’m not a skin diver, and don’t have much desire to become one. Yes, I’m basically chicken. But I do have a desire to plunge into the depths of other things….equally beautiful and mysterious.

Enter: my third point. This mysterious and beautiful blue hole works for me as a metaphor. Is there a hole like this that breaks through the surface of who I am…who I portray myself to be…and enters a mysteriously part of me that has been rarely explored? A place that widens into a much bigger and deeper place that appears on the surface? A place of quiet, of wonder, of mystery, of fascination, of peace and tranquility?

The tv doc also highlighted William Trubridge, a guy who broke a free-diving world record in the blue hole reaching a depth of 92 metres (302 ft) without the use of fins and in one breath of air. Truly amazing! Needless to say, he wasn’t a just a random tourist who was fascinated enough to take a dive one day to see how deep he could go. No, evidently, he has trained himself, his mind and his body to explore these depths.

There ARE unexplored deep holes in you. You don’t just go there on a whim. You have to train yourself. You have to work at it. It does take time. But it is worth it. It is equally beautiful and mysterious.

I love what John O’Donohue says in the opening pages of his classic book,  Anam ċara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World…

“A world lives within you. No-one else can bring you news from this inner world….If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together. No-one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of an inner world.“

I’ve been swimming around my blue hole with goggles on for years. Taking a peek in from time to time. I will give myself credit that I have at least discovered it is there. But I’m ready “undertake this task for myself”…to start training myself to enter in deeper….to learn to stay longer…to explore the mystery that is there. I think it will bring a depth and expansive dimension to the rest of my world. I would welcome any friends who desire to embark on their own similar adventure. I think we will need support from each other.

“You must find the place in you that will live beyond death and start living there now” – Cynthia Bourgeault, quoting her teacher before he died.