Tool for the Journey #37 - Playing 'Fetch'...

Sailors and explorers in days-of-old would travel to far-off lands where they would see miraculous things never imagined. They experienced adventures, ate unknown foods, tasted exotic spices, saw new animal species and - for better or worse - their horizons broadened! When they returned home with fantastical tales of the places and things they had seen most people felt their stories were pretty 'far-fetched'. This is where the phrase, far-fetched comes from.

Play FETCH (verb) as in the game we play with our dogs, has the meaning (Old English) to 'grasp something'; to go and bring something back.

A FETCH (noun) in folklore is, among other things, the 'bringer' of something. Your 'fetch' may be an angel or spirit or even a totem animal who brings wisdom and insights.

To FETCH (verb) in archaic times meant: to take a breath or heave a sigh. 

The FETCH (noun) in nautical terms is the maximum length of open water over which the wind can blow unobstructed. 

OK, so you're probably asking yourself, "So what does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?" Bear with me and I'll fetch my point for you.

I've been on a spiritual journey over the past 8 months which was born out of loss. Sometimes a tidal-wave of grief can force us to open ourselves to new knowledge. The prevailing winds bringing these new insights to me recently seems to be 'heavenly'. Four months ago I began to meditate daily, usually twice per day, and with each passing day there is a tidal wave of new insights, perspectives and understanding previously unknown to me. Thankfully, blessedly, these things have replaced or at least altered the deep waters of my grief.

Today in my meditation a metaphor occurred to me. What if Spirit/God/All That Is = the Wind and those of us who are on an active spiritual path = The Fetch. In order for Spirit/God/All That Is to work on us and help us grow and evolve spiritually we need to increase the distance of The Fetch = our openness, our receptivity and our capacity to be 'unobstructed' so we can receive more spiritual insights and awareness. 

The Wind flows across the length of The Fetch and creates first micro-ripples, then ripples, chop and ultimately fully developed waves. *Waves with the highest energy levels will result from a combination of a long fetch and a consistent dominant wind blowing in the same direction. So, in simple terms, the bigger the fetch, the bigger the wave*. Thus, my hypothesis is the more open we are, the more awake and receptive we are to Spiritual Insights, the longer we are as The Fetch, the more capacity we have to receive insights and spiritual inspiration from The Wind and be transformed from Ripples through to Waves.

If I blow on a bowl of soup, the length of The Fetch is only from one side of the bowl to the other. This is me in my smallest state; a state with limited fetch and thus limited (or no) capacity for The Wind to form waves of knowledge within the Sea of Me.

Continuing with the analogy of Waves generated in me by Spirit/God/All That Is. As I grow spiritually I will have peaks and valleys, crests and troughs. I will have times of light and illumination and I will have times of darkness and lack of clarity. Life's storms create waves and this sometimes, though not always, translates to learning by way of painful lessons. However, the longer and wider our Fetch (= the less restricted we are), the more easily the Wind can blow through, create waves of knowledge in us and not cause too much havoc. Storms far out at sea cause far less 'damage' than storms close to shore where there are 'restrictions' to bump up against.

Crest (physics) from Wikipedia. A crest is the point on a wave with the maximum value or upward displacement within a cycle. A crest is a point on the wave where the displacement of the medium is at a maximum. A trough is the opposite of a crest, so the minimum or lowest point in a cycle.

Throughout our lives, and our spiritual development as humans, there will be times when our Fetch will be both long and short and always our waves will have both crest and trough. This is natural and to be expected on the human journey. We just have to learn to 'roll with it' and trust the rhythm of the ripples and waves as they are formed within us.

It's good to remember we are both biological and spiritual beings. We are spirit-beings occupying a physical body - not the other way around. Both elements of us are important, but too often we focus only on the physical element and neglect the spiritual core of who we are. Our spirit occupies the body we were born into, but when our physical life is over our spirit and our consciousness will continue on the Grand Adventure just like those sailors and explorers from days-of-old....no matter how far-fetched that may sound to some. Death is not the end, but merely the next leg of the journey!

*"Our brain is part of the visible, tangible world of the body. Our mind is part of the invisible, transcendent world of thought, feeling, attitude, belief and imagination. The brain is the physical organ most associated with mind and consciousness, but the mind is not confined to the brain." www.sharecare.com

Consciousness is the bridge which connects us to the divine. Consciousness = the port-holes in our sailing ship. We get a choice which window(s) we look out of and the window(s) we choose to look out of will determine what we are able 'see'. Our Fetch is determined by our Higher Consciousness and our willingness to open ourselves up to insights and awareness from The Wind/Spirit.

The alpha and omega of all of this is LOVE! Love is where we came from and it is to LOVE we shall all return. It is LOVE which generates the Wind which, if our Fetch is long enough, will create Waves of Awareness and spiritual growth within us. It is only with LOVE that the imaginary linear lines which seem to separate us can be blurred. There is a phrase: As above, so below. Today it occurs to me: Love above, Love below. Love and gratitude are vital to spiritual growth! A wise soul recently told me: Gratitude is a spiritual light-switch.

I don't know if any of this will make sense, or if any of this matters. I'm sure I've mixed metaphors and perhaps included some logical fallacies. But I hope you'll look through a higher porthole and find meaning in these words. I hope in some way I have been a Fetch for you, bringing something to ponder and meditate on. Remember, the bigger the fetch, the bigger the wave. And the Wind is all around us, all the time. The Wind is the bringer of insights and spiritual gifts. All we need to do is increase our Fetch. There are ripples and there are chops of knowledge and there are waves of knowledge too. We have the capacity within us to choose which we will receive.

"You don't take baby-steps for the distance they cover, but to put yourself within reach of life's magic. Just like you don't hoist your sails to move the boat, but to put yourself within reach of the wind!" - Mike Dooley

One last thought. We all tend to love our oh-so-linear world. A-Z, 1-100, left to right, but I now suspect the 'truth' isn't linear. Love isn't linear, your arms wrapped around someone you care about is a circle, waves roll in circular motions.Sacred Geometry shows us everywhere in nature we see circles and spirals. I believe the truth we are seeking is ultimately 'found' in circles/spirals rather than in traveling a straight line. Sailing ships tack a course, they cannot sail in a completely straight line. 

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -T. S. Eliot

The spiral is a sacred symbol which represents our human journey and life as it is unfolding. The spiral symbol can represent the consciousness of nature beginning from its center and expanding outward. Many of the sailors and explorers (or those left behind) 'thought' they were sailing across a linear ocean and at some point would reach the end and drop off into the abyss. What was later discovered is the earth is round/circular, rather than linear/flat. Somewhere there is a message here for us on our voyage.

I am an Sailor who was born out of a storm I didn't see coming. Daily I'm working to expand my Fetch so the Wind can create glorious waves in the Sea of Me.

“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” — John A. Shedd. 

In-Joy and Gratitude,
Cheryl

"The wave is not the water. The water merely told us about the wave moving by."

                                - R. Buckminster Fuller

“We are mirrors mirroring a mirror” 
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop



*http://www.geography-site.co.uk/pages/physical/coastal/fetch.html