The human experience mirrors the ocean’s nature – we are mostly water, just as Earth’s surface is mostly water. When we witness waves crashing or feel energy moving through us, these are temporary surface phenomena, while the vast ocean of our being remains infinitely deeper than any passing wave.

Living from this deeper awareness means recognizing when we’ve been caught up in surface-level experiences. Our daily thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, though they dominate our attention, are still happening at the surface of who we truly are. The deeper essence is our self-awareness itself – not the thoughts and feelings we experience, but the awareness that perceives them. When we create space between ourselves and our experiences, we gain the ability to breathe, to see differently, to recognize that thoughts and feelings are like waves passing through us rather than defining us.

We naturally resonate with some thoughts and feelings more than others, and through habit we become more likely to choose certain patterns of thinking. Like a surfer who starts with small waves and gradually learns to ride bigger ones before finding the perfect waves for their skill level, each person has their own capacity for experiencing life according to their unique circumstances. Yet all of these individual experiences connect back to the same ocean that connects all waves, all surfers, all swimmers.

Anyone who has been in the ocean knows the feeling of water on their face, the power of a strong wave, or that moment underwater when struggling gives way to surrender. There’s a letting go of fighting, a reclaiming of inner strength, security, and peace. This space of surrender doesn’t require any specific timeline – it’s available right now. This is the gift offered by wisdom traditions, heartfelt advice from friends, and modern therapeutic approaches that integrate various paths of insight and self-inquiry.

These practices invite us to explore fundamental questions: Who am I? What are thoughts? Why am I here? How am I connected to something greater than myself, my family, or community? How am I connected to everyone on Earth, to all of nature, to this small planet spinning in space within the vastness of the Milky Way and the entire universe? What exists beyond physical creation, and how are we connected to that?

In exploring these questions, we recognize that while we’re having a human experience, there’s something beyond our human identity. Even in dreams, we don’t necessarily have a physical body – we’re simply experiencing whatever surrounds us. The quality of that experience depends on our level of awareness. We can become lucid in dreams, aware that we’re dreaming, able to change the dream, recognizing that the entire process is somehow self-generated while also being connected to something greater than individual mind or brain.

There’s a recognition that the sum total of all minds in the universe is one – that whatever awareness we’re each experiencing individually is somehow connected. While we each have our unique perspective of being ourselves, the collective totality of all our experiences is interconnected. There’s a mutual recognition that consciousness is like looking through an eye – we use our eye to see, knowing the eye is an instrument for awareness, and we each experience having eyes. In this collective knowing of shared experience, there’s oneness.

This is the ocean – the collectiveness of our individual drops that seem distinct but are actually one giant drop, or one collection of infinite drops. As Rumi expressed, we are not drops in the ocean but the ocean in a drop. The smallest ocean is a single drop.

When we remember to live from the ocean’s perspective, seeing our ideas and self-identifications as drops and feeling our thoughts and emotions as waves, we recognize the underlying ocean of experience that allows all surface phenomena to arise. Recognizing the surface for what it is while feeling the depth, calmness, stillness, and vastness below, we become less disturbed by surface events. We feel more connected to the bigger picture.

This perspective shift brings freedom. Over time, while becoming increasingly connected to the wholeness of the ocean, we still enjoy the waves and drops, still experience the world from our individual subjective perspective. Now we have the experience of relating to our individual perspective from another perspective – one that’s universal, interconnected, and accessible to each of us.

In reclaiming this universal interconnected awareness, we feel life’s preciousness more deeply. We feel the value of relationships, the value of people in general, the gem-like quality of our experience, the preciousness of every person. Because we’re social creatures and interact relationally, this is where life’s joy emerges. When we’re less focused on individual waves and drops, more centered in awareness of being the ocean itself, we expand into new dimensions and horizons that give us life beyond what we thought possible.

We allow ourselves to live beyond ourselves, for the whole, for the collective, in a way that creates lasting legacy and meaningful connections, fostering growth for ourselves and others. We recognize we’re all in this together. At whatever stage of life we find ourselves, defining ourselves as individuals in relation to the collective, we feel the importance of being the whole – being the ocean in the drop.