Sacred Water

Image from Shinto and Jinja website

[One of pure-heart] will be like a tree planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers. ~Psalm 1:3


As the saying goes, "Where there is water, there is life. " Certainly, our physical life begins with us floating in the waters of the wombs of our mothers before our feet ever touch Earth's dry land. As I think about the struggle that we all must endure to remain in balance another proverb-- African in origin, I think-- comes to mind: "Where there is mud, there's water." I take this to mean that even in the messiest of situations there is the opportunity to grow. Before this can happen, though, we must point our divining rod into the direction of the Source. Set out on a sojourn to get to the hammam, or better yet, the Great Stream. The place where the soul thirsty for purification and rebirth can go to be cleansed. This is one of the reasons that the idea of river baptisms, especially ones of the old south, are beautiful to me. (It made me happy to learn that one of my relatives, Aunt Ora Lee, proudly recalled being baptised in the Guadalupe River near Victoria, Texas.)

In any case, listening to the radio yesterday, I heard a Jewish-Canadian neuroscientist and author named Esther Sternberg speaking about her book The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions. The main idea that she brought forward was that at some point there was a break between the once-unified domains of science and spirituality and that the people of today are slowly accepting that the split can (and must) be mended. Her outlook could not be compactly fit into the New Age category; instead her philosophy sounded as if it were inclined toward osteopathy.

Another of the profound, yet simple things she said was that in ancient times, healing temples or sanctuaries were usually built beside fresh water sources with sloping banks. The slope made it so that people who were too ill to immerse themselves could be eased in with the help of others. A beautiful vision. During her interview Dr. Sternberg spoke often of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing (known in Egypt as Imhotep, to whom temples were dedicated in Memphis, on the west bank of the Nile River.) During the writing of her book and the healing of her body from painful arthritis, Dr. Sternberg said that she visited Greece. One of the things she did while there was visit one of Asklepios' shrines.

She did not imply that the water in and of itself had any magical properties. Simply, the idea was that something unexplainable happened-- an awareness sparked or epiphany occurred. A Jungian kind of thing, I suppose. As a result, she was able to access a power that helped move her toward healing. (Another resonant point that she mentioned was that there is a center of the brain reserved for the meditative, read: hypnotic or trance, state. This made me think of Eknath Eswaran continually pointing out the importance of the personal mantra)

As I type, another image comes to mind is that of the master teacher Yeshua/Issa/Jesus taking a moment during his secret Passover feast to bathe the feet of his disciples. Most of the time we think of this gesture as being a lesson in selfless service, humility. Could He also have been saying, "There's more where this came from." In the same way that he was but a small sample (the Son) drawn from the vast Source (the great Mother-Father), the small bowl of water that He used to perform His act of outward purification was a sample of the guaranteed mind-body-spirit healing available to the disciples if they continued to walk along what Buddhists refer to as the Enlightened Path or The Way?