Flying
“I didn’t plan it, but I’m on my way…higher and higher…feels like I’m flying but I’m sure to crash if I don’t find a way to come down, Damn you gravity, I’d do better if you weren’t around.” Hussy Hicks, Flying
Many years ago I heard a little voice say, Take a dive class. Say what, I said. Sign up for a dive class, it replied. Whatever…I ignored it. But I kept hearing it and kept ignoring it until one day I was driving down the street and the ‘voice’ was so loud I pulled into a parking spot, looked up a dive shop and called to schedule the class. Satisfied? I said into thin air.
Of course, that changed my life. Diving became a spiritual practice after the learning curve of gauges, partial pressures, theoretical compartmental off-gasing, and everything else that goes with staying alive and healthy while breathing compressed air under the pressure of water. I became more at home underwater than I felt walking around on two legs. I loved the beauty, feeling of weightlessness, communion—utter communion—with a magical realm so amazing I could scarcely be away from it.
When I first learned to dive, a dear friend…a pilot and a diver…told me that diving was as close to flying as we can get because of the weightlessness. Once, when diving in a cave in Mexico that had a ceiling probably three stories tall, I totally understood what Hans meant. The water was so crystal clear that it took concentration to not get dizzy from the ‘height.’ I was flying. Seriously…flying underwater.
A few weeks ago, I was walking the spiral labyrinth and glanced down as I neared the center. I wonder what that would look like from the air? I didn’t think much about it and continued. The next day…and the next…and well, you know…I kept hearing that question. And then I began pondering flight and how seeing different perspectives can change life. Diving did that for me…completely changed my life for the better. Flying? I have never wanted to be a pilot. Oh…but drones…that’s doable.
The inner dialogue continued, I argued with and dismissed the ideas that began interacting with me. But the ‘voice’ wouldn’t shut up. So, I emailed a couple of drone-flying friends, started reading about unmanned do-hickeys called drones and the FAA rules. Finally, I recalled that voice that prompted me (okay…it nagged me) to sign up for a scuba class and so I decided…what the heck!
I ordered the drone and registered it with the FAA and ordered two different prep courses to take the exam for remote pilot. I didn’t want to be a commercial pilot but if I use any drone footage or images for promoting my work or if I traded images for a place to fly or for anything, I would be, in the eyes of the FAA and the state of NC, a commercial remote pilot. So I spent a few weeks studying, took the exam at an airport near Gatlinburg, and passed. WOO HOO!
Meanwhile, I watched YouTube videos on the drone I purchased and put it in beginner mode to limit the height and distance from the home point and finally, after a bit of shaking and fretting, started flying.
The entire process brought back similar feelings I had when I first started learning to cave dive. Of course, it was not as physically intense but the emotions that arose were surprising. There was fear of flying into a tree or my home or the drone deciding to act goofy and fly off, never to be found. I think I read too much of the drone forum I joined.
I tracked the emotions…aside from the anxiety of financial loss if I lost the drone or had it stuck in the top of a tree…and found that familiar experience of TRUST and SURRENDER playing out once more. As a diver, but especially a cave diver, I had to learn to trust myself on a very deep level and along with trust, I had to learn to surrender. Not a fatalistic kind of surrender, rather an empowered surrender that comes when I prepare and learn and have done everything I can to prepare…and then I just have to do it. Let go. Plunge in. Leap up.
I say diving changed my life because it led me to a deeper experience of being alive. It showed me old fears, new fears…gave a perspective I had never known. What is it like to be underwater, on a coral reef, in an underwater cave, in the inner cave of my psyche? How could I know unless I went there—unless I trusted myself to take the journey to underwater caves and my own inner depths. And so it is with this new experience of flying.
What is it like to leap up, to expand into the vastness of space? And even though it’s not me physically flying, I am controlling a device that is totally dependent on me navigating the sky safely.
I guess the biggest idea to consider is that the things that call us are not necessarily calling us to a career or to earning ga-zillions of dollars. Perhaps they call us to step into unchartered soulscape and expand our journey inward. Thankfully, I have come to know this truth on a deep level in my life. Perhaps it’s not a new career but another way to learn to trust myself, to surrender to that voice that calls me to new adventures within myself. Or perhaps it just comes down to…dive deep, then…fly high.
I view life as a pilgrimage and from the perspective of a journey interweaving inner and outer landscapes. I know the terrain of adventure and have treaded those unknown soul-scapes interweaving outdoor adventure with personal reflection and deepening. I do this with courage and profound awe at what Nature teaches me about my soul journey.
The inner journey to wholeness mirrors so perfectly the journeys of outer exploration to wild, unchartered landscapes. When we leave the familiar and known and take the great adventure of life, we feel the risks and uncertainty. Our task then is to build a bridge from the known to the vast and rich expanse of the unknown, inner realms. These inner realms are fertile soil that is rich and alive with potential and possibility.
“Feels like I’m flying….I didn’t plan it, but I’m on my way higher and higher…Feels like I’m flying.” Hussy Hicks
It’s been ten years today.
After documenting the oil spill for a year on the Alabama Gulf Coast, I thought it would be the wake-up event that would shake the world. I was wrong. Completely wrong. As soon as the well was capped…which wasn’t soon–85 days, 16 hours and 25 minutes–that mile-deep gusher polluted the Gulf of Mexico.
Chemical dispersants were used that made the spill MUCH worse than letting the oil float to the surface for removal. I watched tide pools of fizzing oily water along the beach and witnessed the destruction first-hand.
My heart broke open. I felt grief beyond anything I had known. I felt anger. I felt shame at being human and part of the problem. And now, ten years later, I feel rather hopeless because there wasn’t an awakening…for some of us, sure. But overall…now regulations are fewer and more lax thanks to the current USA administration…worse than before the spill.
We have an even greater opportunity to awaken on a worldwide level with a tiny virus making a huge impact. My greatest fear is we will not take advantage of this opportunity to make major changes that will improve the health of all life on planet Earth…and that would be the saddest of all outcomes. With such a high death toll my prayer is that it will fuel a world-wide awakening to positive change so these deaths will not have been in vain.
I wasn’t going to write about the oil spill disaster today but how could I not? It was an awakening for me and I will never be the same. Which is a good thing because I won’t go back to sleep…ever.
P.S. I don’t know why I tasted oil in the air that night in Curacao but I suspect on some level I sensed what happened. We are One, connected to all life. Perhaps my cetacean self got the message loud and clear.
We’re in a time now where the system is damaged. We’ve known it hasn’t been working for quite a while. So during this time of pause we have the opportunity to choose what we will input once things are up and running again. And so the question comes, What kind of world do we want?
Do we want more time at home with family? Do we want to do more things that enrich our life? Do we want to feel more compassion, more connection, more Oneness? Everything is up for renewal, rebooting.
So in this time of pause, the gift we are given is the choice to make changes that will steer us into a new direction. It’s easier to go back to what we’ve known but will we have the courage to make life-enhancing choices? Every one of us is being given the opportunity to choose…What kind of world do you want?
The other day I reflected on survival resources. Not outer ones that address our physical needs but inner ‘resources’ that help us find our way back…home, to balance, to sanity.
For the most part I’m handling this time with calm, groundedness. There are moments where tears come for the suffering of the world, where I take a journey down the bumpy ‘what-if’ road but I find my way back. So I questioned myself…how do I find my way back to that place of calm, grounded, peace?
As I asked the question I started seeing scenes from underwater caves…of my first dive into a high-flow cave system, of a dive in Mexico when one of our team members had light failure in all three lights, when a guy leading our group out of a cave took a wrong turn (but we quickly steered him back to the correct line)…of one of my first open water dives as a newly certified diver diving with two guys I didn’t know and coming up in a maelstrom and them leaving me to my own devices underwater to find my way back to the boat or the shark dive that had the entire hungry shark cast coming to me as I struggled against the current (also a newish diver and left by my dive buddy).
Those scary times and more all gave me experiences in problem-solving, working together, learning to remain calm when things around me were stressful. Those times prepared me for this time we are all experiencing now. I have successfully navigated situations that required me to momentarily suspend the fear and make a plan to make it through to completion of the experience.
As that newly certified diver surfacing in six foot seas and lightning popping all around, the first thing I thought was, OH SHIT! The next thing I thought was…Stop, breathe, think, act.I stopped, looked around. A boat was close enough to swim to even though it wasn’t the boat I was a guest on. I took some deep breaths and then decided to swim to that boat to rest. Even though they didn’t want me to board their boat because I wasn’t a paying guest, I not-so-politely told them to get out of my way and let me board to rest. I rested, calmed myself even more and then made a plan with their dive master and the boat crew which I had to swim back to. I got my compass out, took a heading, dropped back down underneath the six foot seas and made that lonely, hard, against-the-current swim back to the boat.
When we find ourselves spinning with anxiety we can practice good self-care by developing strategies that will lead us back home to our self. Call upon all of who you are and all the past experiences where you learned vital life skills and coping mechanisms….and if you never learned them celebrate the opportunity to learn them now.
The other day as I was walking up the mountain in my solitary reverie, the idea of time arose as I wondered what day it was. Many humorous comments have been recently made by individuals suddenly removed from daily schedules about not knowing what day it is. I found myself not caring whether it was Monday or Thursday, April or March or May. I have never liked schedules or boxes as I call them. If I am free to follow the sun and stars, the weather, the chill or warmth of the air, I am most happy. Following the ebb and flow of tides, the changing of seasons seems a more natural way to be in the world. Plug me into a schedule that defies natural rhythm and I begin to get weird and jittery.
During my walking contemplation, I felt my body attune to the rhythm of Nature–spring…morning light…blooms…moving water…cool air…unfurling leaves. During this experience where the entire world has slowed down, I find myself relieved and hopeful. Perhaps we, as a collective, will remember the rhythms of Nature and open to the truth that we are part of the whole and will be happier and healthier by paying closer attention to these sacred rhythms.