Humpback Whales Archives - Page 8 of 13 -

This is Love

By Simone Lipscomb | June 3, 2016

Trying to communicate love isn’t always easy. The word has so many different meanings. For some, it means sex. For others it may mean possession. Others might think of love as obligation. Everyone has a personal spin on what it means resultant of their own experience of relationship.

When you tell someone you love them, their filters of personal experience can possibly change what your intention was. And then things get messy and people might respond as if you are the one who originally taught them about love in relationship. Painful experiences can follow us throughout our lives and we expect love to bring the gut-wrenching punch we first felt when someone we loved acted in an unloving way. It can be confusing.

Dion Fortune, one of my favorite writers, wrote this, “The personality must be healed so the power can come through clear.” This has been my quest for decades now…heal my personality flaws so that I can be a clearer channel for love. This isn’t easy. It’s not a path for the faint of heart. We must be willing to open ourselves completely and make horrible fools of ourselves when, in our openness, we stumble. But if we have the courage to be that open, to be that vulnerable and to feel so deeply to clear our personality flaws, then only good will result.

When I say, I love you, think of the chimpanzee hugging Jane Goodall when he is released after she rescued him (see video above). That’s just pure love without expectation or labels. It’s the nameless experience of unconditional positive regard…light manifested through action. The monkey isn’t asking Jane for anything. He is simply allowing an energy of pure love to move through his open heart with nothing attached, nothing expected.

Romantic love doesn’t interest me nor does possession of anyone or expectation of anyone. I want to live in the space of open-hearted communication and communion with the world. To those that mean the most to me I wish to be able to clearly show love without it being misconstrued as something it’s not. We can’t control how others receive the love we express so the only thing I know to do is to keep loving…purely, without expectation and with my whole heart.

I think animals are such channels for love because they don’t live in the past. They simply allow their open hearts to bring forth the magic of light manifested through action. When I watched mother humpback whales and their calves interact this past February it was crystal clear that love was guiding them. It was the most exquisite expression of love I’ve ever seen.

Perhaps this is why I have always appreciated animals so much. We understand each other without thinking about it or wondering what it means….I love you….and you….and you….and you…….I love you.

Cosmic Whale

By Simone Lipscomb | May 10, 2016

Sometimes…..words are not necessary.

Whale Time

By Simone Lipscomb | April 25, 2016

As I floated weightless with humpback whales below, I had never felt more present. Extended quiet moments floating in the peaceful sea offered an expansion of time as my mind opened to their minds.

I am forever changed, my DNA rewired into something different than before I entered whale time.

Gratitude expanded within my heart and I knew in those moments the true meaning of receiving…the gift…of the present.

The Bliss of Peace

By Simone Lipscomb | April 15, 2016

I floated above the 45 foot long mother and calf in complete awe. It was my first humpback whale trip. And it was an in-water encounter. There was inner questioning…How will I react? What will I feel? Will I be afraid?

After witnessing the gentle cuddling and caressing of the baby by her very large mother, I floated in complete peace. I remember thinking as I floated in saltwater blue, So this is what deep peace feels like.

There have been amazing experiences I have somehow been lucky enough to have in my life…but humpback whale peace….it still lives within me. Every. Single. Day.

Thank you Joseph Campbell

By Simone Lipscomb | April 5, 2016

It was a spectacular spring day for cycling. The backcountry trail in Gulf Shores resounded with bird song. Flowers bloomed alongside the trail creating never-ending color accenting the live oak forest, swamp and sandy dunes. As is so often the case, cycling in the woods provided an opportunity to connect with nature in a beautiful way.

As I pedaled, a sort of unwinding occurred and I puzzled over why I had been having difficulty ‘going inside’ lately. I attributed it to a rebound effect after being so open and deeply…profoundly…connected with humpback whales while snorkeling with them in late February. How can sitting meditation in my home compare with floating mediation in the water with humpback whales just twenty feet from me in their contemplative stillness?

It hasn’t been easy making the adjustment from doing moonlight yoga on deck with whales all around just before sunrise to yoga in my courtyard or in a room. Opening to the stars, moon, sea and whales during my practice was off-the-scale amazing. Just being moored 90 miles offshore for a week created the strongest connection with nature, with Spirit…with myself…imaginable. One week with the sea, whales and salt water opened the door to profound Oneness and healing. Coming back to land…no whale snot coating my sunglasses, no moonlight yoga and no salt water mediations…..created a collapse of the expanded state in which I had found myself.

Lately every time I’ve attempted to touch that deep place of Oneness I’ve felt resistance. My mind immediately pulls me away with the usual monkey business.

As I was cycling I affirmed, I am willing to listen with my heart. And so I just listened as I pedaled and soaked up spring’s beauty.

The next day in yoga, my teacher Augusta’s theme was cultivating a listening heart. Don’t you just love it when the Universe gives confirmation that you’re on the right track?

Integrating peak experiences into life isn’t easy. I feel so changed, so amazingly renewed and open after powerful encounters with ocean life. Then I return to an alien world of everyday life where nobody understands the wild gaze in my eyes or the crazed light of my wide-open heart. Trying to explain it or even write about it doesn’t fully convey the impact on me. It’s like I’m speaking in whale song to a group of humans. It sounds pretty but what does it really mean?

As I listen with my heart I remember returning from the Sea of Cortez the first time and how difficult it was to leave the remote ocean wilderness of the Midriff Islands. The whale sharks and sea lions on the second Sea of Cortez trip last year were just as hard to leave behind. In my listening I heard a question: What do all of these experiences have in common? I was completely in my element. The Ocean. Saltwater. Big animals. Bliss. I feel my most whole in wild, remote places of the sea. I feel inspiration, peace…connection to all life…profoundly with the sea.

Moments flash through my mind….floating on the surface of the Sea of Cortez after diving and feeling in complete and total balance….meditating in the water with humpback whales….yoga under moon and stars on the boat with the white mist of humpback breath drifting over me….shadow on the mountain in the Midriff Island created from moonlight that appeared to be a giant woman, a sea goddess….a sea lion that played with me while I photographed her….a mother humpback who followed her calf to the surface with her massive eye as she rested deeper in the water….the grunts of humpback whales as they rested beneath me….on and on the memories surface.

Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

If I see these journeys as connected, with time on land necessary to do the translating and sharing, then its much easier to integrate them into a flow instead of isolated experiences. The only thing I know to do is to follow my bliss, to joyfully step forward into more Ocean time, more underwater encounters and allow these experiences to continue their transformational magic on my life…my soul. And to continue trying to translate them to those who will listen.