Deeper water

unpacking my morning practices

Paul Kelly’s Deeper Water is an iconic ‘cycle of life’ song with a gut wrenching finale. It’s been a favourite for many years because it feels to me that whatever life teaches me, and wherever I think I am on the journey, the rips of life keep drawing me into ‘deeper water’. In the finale of the song, Paul Kelly sings the paradox -that the water is calmer the deeper you go.

And so it has been. The deeper I have gone into my inner world, the less turbulent the outer world appears. The world is, of course anything but calm. After decades of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), we now live in brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible (BANI) societies. I am therefore leaning less on what is happening in my outer world for how I think, sense, imagine and feel.

To navigate deeper into my psyche and soul I’ve had to find new guides, those for whom pathways in these domains are well travelled. Via his book SoulCraft, Bill Plotkin has introduced me to some (for me) new ways to navigate the terrain, as well as giving me ways to go deeper in more familiar practices such as journalling. As a relative newcomer to this inner landscape, I’m wary of some of the pathways - especially those that facilitate altered states of consciousness, but there have been many insights that have illuminated practices with which I’m already comfortable.

So for example, I am appreciating the distinction between spiritual practice, activity and ceremony and how they function differently in inner development work. I’m conscious of the variety of ways to ‘know’ something and therefore to be intentional about sensing, thinking, imagining and feeling. Over the last few years I have become acutely more aware of my natural surroundings; Plotkin’s guidance on how to engage or commune with [what he calls] non-human others, has been very good for me. His framing of spiritual health (connecting with a bigger whole), psychological health (understanding deep incentives and motivations), and soulcraft (disconnecting from a life centred in society and centering in my soul) has also been helpful.

One of the struggles for me has been associated with (part of) my morning practice being in a public space … so the people and dynamics are unpredictable on any given day. The nuances I’m learning are giving me helpful frames, and so I’m now thinking about my morning practice in four separate but connected parts.

Part 1: Meditations and stretching

A number of years ago I set out to journal every day about things that happened that unsettled me deep in my psyche and soul. I had to dig deep over a long period of time to discern patterns. These gave rise to a number of affirmations and meditations that I still start my days with. These centre me, and remind me first thing everyday about what will help me live with no regrets and keep me alert to triggers that threaten my integrity, the alignment between how I want to be in the world and how I actually am.

I also stretch and do some very basic strength floor exercises to prepare my body for what comes next.

Part 2: Walking or jogging

Three and a half years ago, as an experiment, I committed not to use my car during winter to get to the beach for my daily swim. I got through that winter and have kept up the commitment. For the first year or two, I would give my knees a rest from running by riding my bike, but that gave way to walking, because this part of the morning ritual has become the way I engage my natural surroundings. When I jog or walk, apart from being warmer when I arrive at the beach, I greet the magpies, listen to the wind in the trees, feel the rain on my face and the crisp morning air on my legs.

The first practice is in a controlled environment - it’s just me and my body. This second practice goes out a level and engages the outdoors, whatever the conditions. The circle expands.

Part 3: Ocean dipping

The ocean temperature in southern Victoria ranges from about 20° (ish) at the end of summer, to 9° in the depths of winter. It’s mostly in the 12-17° range. It’s always cold, sometimes it’s freezing. It’s rarely pleasant. But my swimming friends don’t do it for pleasantness. For me, the bodyful jolt of being in the cold salt water everyday - facilitates an intimacy with the natural environment that was out of reach for me in my domesticated lifestyle. This intimacy is one of the ways I nudge my urbanly civilised self to greater connection with the earth.

I’ve written elsewhere about the different forms of swimming that shape our little ocean loving community. The relevance here is that when I arrive at the beach my personal practice starts to include others with their own motivations, energies and joys. I have a swim buddy with whom I share most morning dips with peculiar ease. And there is an ‘early crew’ who turn up with varying degrees of regularity. Our shared love of being in the sea pre-dawn in any and all conditions offers a special bond.

It’s now me, plus the environment, plus my swimming friends.

Part 4: Coffee

When we arrive at coffee, we encounter people who have not plunged their bodies and souls into the cold morning water. For me, it can be an unsettling transition. I find myself now in the broader community which I have come to love, and within which I belong. The conversation evolves from the ocean experience to the joys and traumas and ordinariness of our lives. The table around which we sit is our confessional, our celebratory alter and our communion table. We sit there as simple and complicated, imperfect and sometimes annoying humans, all trying to make sense of our lives as best we can.

And so my morning practice has taken me from the sanctuary of the floor in my office to the community. And there are layers before and after too. There is what goes on in my unconscious sleep and dreams. Afterwards there is what happens when I move from the oasis of my morning practices to the BANI-ness of real life. But instead of being pummelled by the increasing weirdness and the unravelling of things that seemed bedrock, my morning practice helps me experience the ‘calm’ that Paul Kelly speaks of, out in the deeper water.