PureInsight | July 28, 2003
[PureInsight.org]All rivers have a headwater, a source, a beginning, often inauspicious and small. The purity of this flowing water source is pristine, life giving, unpolluted, refreshing. As the river courses on, its bed becomes broader. Tributaries from rivulets, brooks, creeks and streams soon contribute their waters to create a steady, sweeping flow, quickly becoming a current that cannot be held back, becoming ever broader and faster. At some bend in the river's journey toward the ocean, one glimpses languid outcroppings and tiny, lush islands in the waterway – seducing one to seek repose, linger and observe for a while as the waters eddy past. Life forms already inhabiting these outcroppings and islets are loath to leave the comfort of repose, to re-join others in the downstream pursuit toward the vast ocean where merging awaits. Those already in the stream encourage the dry land dwellers to join the river's flow.
Rivers, unlike oceans, are not subject to the moon cycles of ebbs and flows - there is no pausing or neap tide, when all is still for a time. Once one is committed to the river's current there is no turning back. Attempting to swim upstream or to get off the river onto the banks is dangerous and often fatal.
Such a river voyage is not without pitfalls and trials – but the reward, the vast ocean at the delta where the river emerges, is worth all the tribulations encountered along the watery journey. The reward is eternal.
