Row your boat
A lot of songs and nursery rhymes often have deeper meanings than they are letting on. One of my favorite ones which I repeat in my yoga classes is that of Row, row, row your boat. Let me break down and explain some wonderful nuggets of truth and wisdom in this simple nursery song. These are by no means my original thoughts, but rather, is something I have picked up along the way and live my life by.
ROW, ROW, ROW... In life, we need to “row” or work, and make effort at disciplines that make us move forward, or towards become better people. Not to row would make us stagnate in one place with no growth. The act of rowing requires discipline, focus and energy, too. In life, we need to put energy at inner and outer growth directions. When we move inwards, we try to develop insights into how we look at life, what we must change in our mental attitudes to become more positive; allowing in our heart spaces, feelings of openness, joy, love and compassion. To move outward is the expression of all that is inside us. So our lives move towards community, collaboratively working together for goals that are beyond our personal ones. Working with many sorts of people with different levels of consciousness is always a challenge in patience and understanding, and this is when we must learn to move forward, rowing-on, despite the challenges.
YOUR BOAT... The “boat” can mean us, or our physical body, our personalities, this vehicle which our souls and spirits are housed in. We need to take care of the body, move it towards “lightness” so it can perform for us the task/mission we have chosen to do in this life. The boat can also mean our personalities, the sum total of the many gifts we possess and are all for our use as we interact with people and the world around us.
GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM... We have to move gently, joyfully, and flow with the direction or the “stream,” which I would say is a symbol for Life. To move gently would mean to allow all that needs to be, to be, to arise. We do not need to fight things. By fighting the events and directions of our lives without trying to understand why the challenges are there would only result in us becoming violent, aggressive and defensive. This in turn gives us stress and anger. To be gentle is to bring awareness to our actions, and make sure the intentions we put in our actions are always positive.
The “stream” is Life. And the waters of the stream aren’t always calm. There are moments of intense water flows and thus, we learn to take our bearings from the foundations of the principles, values and belief systems we embrace and live by.
MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY... We move through life as joyfully and positively as we can. Need I say more? Sounds simplistic, but nowadays, the energies of the world can really bring us down. Dramas, challenges, natural catastrophes, all bring about erratic energies that trigger us to release emotions of fear, doubts, anger, etc. We are constantly challenged to transform pain and sorrow to understanding, anxieties to trust, sadness to joy. We need to shift our perspective in seeing that all these challenges, problems and dramas of our lives arise on our paths so we can grow, evolve and choose to live from the best and highest part of who we are.
LIFE IS BUT A DREAM... This phrase can blow our minds away if we try to get to the real essence. “Life as a dream” equates to life being an illusion. It has been written in esoteric books, in the Bible, in books of wisdom, that this physical life we have in this earth is a mere illusion, a creation of our minds and consciousness. The other reality, which is the spiritual world, that unseen world, is the world that is real. The Master Jesus often said “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” — and by this, He meant a spiritual world. Since antiquity, man has believed in another world, an afterlife, a world from where the spiritual energies come from and are transmitted downward to the physical material world. This is also the belief of Kaballah that states that Light of the highest intensity has filtered downward through various dimensions into the material world. Life is but a dream... In the blink of an eye, we are born and we are suddenly older with more memories from which we can gain wisdom from. And even more suddenly, we are at the end of our lives. In that remembrance of memories, what stands out are the most intensely painful points of life and chances are, these would also reflect our moments when we took a step up in our spiritual maturity.
Maybe in the future, when you hear this nursery song, you would see it in a totally new perspective. Go, row your boat!
