Do you remember the movie, Splash? The one with Darryl Hannah, Tom Hanks and John Candy? It was a sweet little romantic comedy from the 80s.
It’s been over 30 years, (maybe more?) since I saw that movie myself but I remember Hannah played a modern day mermaid and Hanks played the NYC businessman who falls in love with her.
The story goes that when they were kids, Hanks’s character was on a tour boat excursion and looking out over the side, he thinks he sees something or someone. The next thing you know something happens that causes him to fall overboard.
The scene shows him sinking in the water, sinking, sinking, bubbles coming from his mouth, when all the sudden, there is swooshing of water moving around him. Then he sees, right in front of his face, a girl’s face. She’s smiling at him and he realizes that he’s fine. He’s not drowning but captivated by this beautiful girl. Then she kisses him.
The next thing you know, he’s being pulled out of the water by someone on the boat… As family and friends ask him if he’s okay he jumps up and runs to the side of the boat to see if he can see her again, puzzling everyone around him. “What, what is it?” they ask. She watches as the boat pulls away. He wonders if it was all his imagination, until he notices a shell necklace around his neck.
Years later, as he is managing a warehouse in the fish packing district of NYC, his friend played by John Candy, cajoles him to get out more, meet someone, fall in love. But he still wistfully remembers the incident of his childhood with some kind of hope for something though he doesn’t know what exactly.
Then one day he’s at the statue of Liberty and you see Darryl Hannah, in all her beautiful naked glory, emerge from the water, covered only by her long blonde hair, walks up to him and plants a huge kiss on him.
Through some kind of mermaid magic, she was able to trade her fish tail for legs. She sacrifices her life in an underworld paradise to be with the man of her dreams, and the rollicking comedy ensues, ending with (spoiler alert) he jumps into the sea and the two of them swim off together to live happily ever after. Because while he is with her, he doesn’t need to breathe air. He’s like her, the ocean sustains them in a beautiful underwater paradise.
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I find this to be a wonderful analogy of the World of Form. If the ocean is analogous to the World of Spirit, then the surface is like the World of Form. And didn’t science teach us that all life originated in the ocean anyway?
The concept of World of Form and World of Spirit was one of the principles taught by the kahunas of ancient Hawaii. As a kahuna, I know this particular sect of Hawaiians who lived from around 750 BC to around 1250 AD, were able to live in peace and harmony for those 2,000 years because of Reality-based principles that were handed down to them by their ancestors and then passed from generation to generation.
The most obvious question in all of this is WHY? Why, if we come from the World of Spirit, where it is literally paradise, a place of love, light, peace and joy, would we come to a place where there is pain and sickness and every form of cruelty?
Because just like the mermaid gives up her wet paradise to be with her true love, so too do we choose to give up the spiritual realm of Love, Light, Peace and Joy for the chance to know God in an experiential way. **
The ancient Hawaiians were very logical in their thinking. They concluded that the only way to define “God” is that God could only be All-That-Is, because anything smaller than All-That-Is, couldn’t possibly be God. If God could be contained by space, then space would be God, if God could be contained by time, then time would be God. God is that which contains all that exists, including time and space.
That logically follows that all of us, and every part of our lives, are a part of God. We are “little gods”, so to speak.
The Gods Thirst for Meaning and Expression
Huna Wisdom
In other words, we choose to come to this World of Form where the vibrations are dense enough to create the illusion of solid matter. I say illusion because as Einstein said, everything is vibration. The World of Form is contained within the World of Spirit.
It’s all an illusion but it’s an illusion that works for us. It has purpose. It’s like when you go to a movie and suspend your “theater reality” long enough to enjoy the “story reality” so that you can get the most enjoyment from the movie. When the movie is over, you get up and walk out of the theater back into the sunlight of your “real” life.
Does anyone remember, like I did as a kid, my dad used to watch every Saturday afternoon, The Wild World of Sports. The intro would show people running, jumping, cars crashing, skiers slamming into a wall, as the narrator ends with, “…the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”
The World of Form is here for us to experience all there is to experience because this is what God craves. God is All-That-Is, made of Love, which is the Connection to all of Itself. God wants to love Itself, and to do that It needs to separate Itself into different parts so that it can have more ways to love Itself.
Not only that, but God wants to experience every experience that it can possibly invent and create from every perspective of each and every living (and perhaps even non-living) thing. To see through your eyes what the World of Form looks like, what other gods look like, what contrast looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like, sounds like.
The World of Form is the place where all those things can be had. It is the place where all of us little gods, can experience the vast range of energy and emotion, from the depths of suicidal grief and despair to the absolute heights of ecstasy, bliss and joy.
So the reason I say this to you today, is because you need to know, that while we are having our World of Form lives that are filled with pain and pleasure, while we witness horror and love, while we experience the range of this crazy, wonderful place of beauty and danger, we must remember who we are and where we came from.
As soon as the mermaid dives back into the stillness of the sea, so too can we close our eyes, still our mind and return to the World of Spirit from whence we came.
The World of Spirit has not gone anywhere. It’s right here and right now. Here-Now.
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While all of the drama of our personal lives, of our societal conflicts, of global politics, of wars and disasters and the endless fluctuations of change, the ebb and flow of contrasting elements that make up the World of Form; the still, quiet, calm, peaceful, beautiful loving presence of All-That-Is that embraces us back to our Home, is only a breath away.
One of my favorite authors Martha Beck, likes to use the term, “just drop back into Wordlessness and Oneness” where we can instantly, instantly reconnect with our true self and our true nature. The place where we can experience the True Love of the Source of our being.
Abraham/Hicks says that if they could teach us to think positively instead of negatively, they would but find that it’s much easier to teach us to just stop thinking altogether, in other words, to meditate.
When you understand World of Form drama from the perspective of the World of Spirit, it becomes more like a movie that we came to see for its entertainment and educational value. Though it’s not Real with a capital “R,” it most definitely has value, as long as you understand it’s just a movie, it’s just the World of Form.
So, when you find yourself getting caught up in dramas of the day, whatever they may be, try dipping into the ocean of Wordlessness and Oneness and let yourself be recentered, refreshed and reenergized in the embrace of Love Itself.
God, All-That-Is, Living Love, appreciates, understands and has compassion for all that you experience. It all counts for Meaning and Expression.
As Rumi said, “…there is a field. I’ll meet you there”. Hint: the “field” is the World of Spirit where “rightness and wrongness” don’t apply.
If you want to. You don’t have to.
You can stay completely involved with horrible news and dramas of the day the whole time you’re here on this planet if you want. But how stressful is that?
Try taking a moment now and then, to just remember that the World of Form we are living in is illusion. What’s Real is the ocean of love you came from and ultimately will go back to. Like a drop of ocean that gets catapulted up into the air for a glimpse of life on the surface and then drops right back down into the ocean.
Splash away, because you are always okay.
Aloha!