Contemplating water's wintered wisdom

In winter, the water element flows more viscerally into awareness. The cold dark season calls us to deepen our roots, ensuring a steady flow of nourishment can be received. By reaching down into the most precious source of replenishment, these pathways help us find balance between our essential needs and our latent desires. Might this season and this elemental guide also be used to realise a new goal?

To transform ourselves during this quieter time by dissolving excess longing, in order to move through life with more resolve and purpose come spring —with a willingness to respond to our surroundings, rather than a stubborn need to push forward with our own agenda? In the stillness of reflection, might we discover a more fluid capacity—one that meets each moment with openness, welcoming whatever arises? In the darkness of winter, could our response be one of greater calm and clarity; a gentle meeting with each new experience revealing a more luminous wisdom?

Water can teach us how to go with the flow without losing our way. When we find ourselves caught in a fruitless determination to swim against the current, it's often the fear of losing the ground we've gained that keeps us from letting go of a determination to continue. We fear losing our stroke, no matter how exhausting it becomes, and the unknown potential of an alternative path barely flickers into the mind. But the tides turn, and water makes space for all things. Its innate resourcefulness allows it to find a way through, often by following the path of least resistance. This life-giving elixir sees all things equally and, in doing so, frees itself from judgments centered around success or failure. It effortlessly takes what it needs and leaves the rest behind as it flows onward. Yet, despite its willingness to let go, water is known to hold memory. It remembers the knowledge it has gained and understands that there is always more to learn. Perhaps this is why we are so drawn to this enigmatic substance, which appears in many forms - it is a wisdom keeper and a teacher.

The ability to change in response to new circumstances suggests a remarkable willingness to adapt with ease, embracing the cathartic release of past versions without the need to stagnate or mourn their loss. By shifting our preconceptions of fearing the unknown, we come to accept that what lies around the next corner doesn't have to announce itself with fear or resistance. Instead, it arrives with inevitability and the boundless potential to become a welcome expression of the next chapter.

The power of the water element has been revered since the creation of time – and maybe even earlier! It is both a source and a celebration of all life, a symbol of purity with the capacity to wash away past karmic influences and cleanse the body, mind, and soul.

In Bali, a water purification ceremony called Melukat is said to release negative energy and ward of bad luck. The Balinese people believe fervently in the power of water to purify body and mind and wash away bad spirits.

In moving water, there is life; where it rests in stillness, there is depth and reflection. Like gazing into a mirror of the past and catching a fleeting glimpse of the future, water’s mysteries run deep with mythical enchantment.

Step into a body of water and notice how it makes room for your presence. The liquid embrace surrounds you, touching every immersed part as though it is tasting your essence with a thousand tongues. If there is no fear present, its closing water appear to savour your being and recognise the existence it has within you. Might this be because water was our first home? Or perhaps because water fills the space it occupies and is more than willing to take on any shape and welcome it as a new home?

When pressed down, water presses back with reciprocal force. Its surface holds tension yet it remains penetrable with an un-retractable invitation to "dip your toe in". Underlying currents redirect parts of its flow with hidden purpose—secrets not meant to be exposed until a stone is worn away, a new channel carved, or a barrier shaped to steer the path onward. Or in the body where it is filtered according to the organisms needs: distributing, gathering, lubricating and stirring up what is stagnant – even sending messages to the brain that supplies need replenishing.

Water like winter has a dark side too. Where there is too much for a container to hold something must break forth and overflow. In nature water's terrifying powerful displays are witnessed through its impact on the land which it cuts a swathe through or surrounds. Where atmospheric conditions create imbalances in the ecosystem or where there is simply a need to redress balance, water and human life often collide. Then a rage is unleashed until the storm eventually runs out of rain and the flood waters return to the sea from where they came. The vast oceans have unfathomable depths where secrets hide in elemental shadows that are simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. These are magically amplified through the textured threads of folk tales featuring sea monsters, nymphs and sirens who lie in wait to consume vessels of souls and satiate their own liquid desires. Does this association of water invite us to embrace our own dark side, the disowned parts of us?

Maybe the mysteries of the deep are important for our own dream weaving capabilities and untangling of the psyche as we process the sub-conscious layers and coalesce with the clearing streams of ancestral karmas.

Perhaps most mystical of all however is the often missed gurgle of water’s conversations. From this translucent substance, sounds appear to burst on the surface, carried by an escaping air bubble caught seeking and sent out on a compulsory mission to communicate with other life forms. Maybe water listens and learns from the world around it too, absorbing knowledge deeply into its structure and allowing it to coalesce and gather - the good and the bad swirling amicably together.

If we wish to hear the wisdom of water, I think the one lesson we could take is to become quiet and still for a while. Just as a lake at dawn waits and knows the sun is rising before a single ray touches its surface; hears the birds' wings first soft beat before their fleeting shadows dance across it's view and which feels the earthen banks shiver to the timid whispers of unleaved trees carried on a crisp, cold early winter breeze.