We associate our emotional life with water. Without our world of emotions, we are stranded in a dry blazing desert, the world of one-sided mind. Logical thinking has its place but is often over emphasized in modern culture. Water flows together: our emotional life unites things. When cleansed, it is nourishing. Without water, no life is possible.
Water is able to flow around an obstruction and flow on. It fills up the empty space and takes on its shape: it adapts. Water reflects light. When we are able to relate to our emotional life, we are better able to reflect upon ourselves and our lives. Mourning forms a central aspect of the process of self-acceptance. Grief allows the old life to become compost for the new.
Water is the solvent: old structures, depleted of their content, may be dissolved in water. After a period of drought, rain brings a feeling of release, of relief of tension. When a pregnant woman’s water breaks, birth is imminent. Creation myths often tell us that water was the source from which everything originated.
‘The waters’ have been associated with the Great Mother symbolism since ancient times: the place of the waters is the Great Mother, and the place from which we might be reborn, renewed. Creation myths tell us about upper and lower waters. The waterfall connects the waters of above with the waters of below, it connects the higher values with the everyday world. The tree and the fountain likewise connect upper and lower; it draws up the water from below, the water of the earth, the well-springs of life, wisdom, and make it available to everyone who will delve down deep enough within her/himself.
A more conscious integrated perspective on life brings the possibility of compassion that is objectively contained, water with shape, also sometimes called Eros.
