SYMBOLS IN THE SAND

At six-thirty sharp we loaded Terry’s car and pulled out of the driveway. We headed to the dolphin beach for my last hours with the Makua dolphin pod in 1997.  I began experiencing a vivid flashback; so clear was the memory that I felt I was watching a private video on her windshield  from my last trip, which had been a year ago.

It was my very final morning in Hawaii, for 1996 anyway.  The dolphins made the most of it and had been playing and singing with me that morning for at least two hours.  When the sun was nearing the ten o’clock position my friendly pod of about twenty , mostly Spotted coaxed me into shallow water and posed for what I heard telepathically was to be a very special photograph.  Shoot your Nikon; this is important! blasted a concise instruction that ricocheted around my skull, snatching me back from my film-less and therefore playful trance.  I don’t think so, kids, I mused musically at them through my snorkel.  But obediently, I raised my camera, knowing too well that I had already shot number thirty-six, and possibly thirty-seven.  I winked around from behind my camera, okay pod boss, I believe in miracles, too.    Sensing somebody bigger than me was literally calling this shot I quieted down and just followed invisible orders.

As soon as I peeped through the viewfinder, I realized that some of the dolphins had their bellies flat down on the bottom and had started drawing shapes with their tails in the bright white sand only ten to fifteen feet below me.  The rest of the pod had arranged themselves among them forming a perfect photographic composition for my benefit.  They hung conveniently suspended in motionless animation for several immeasurable moments, patiently waiting for me to comply.  I smiled back at the sand artists who seemed so satisfied with themselves for their creations, but then dolphins do wear that grin all the time anyway.  To my amazement, click, went the successful and very mysterious exposure. Well, what do I know?  I dropped my camera to my side and opened myself to their profound message of trust. A week later I was  stunned to see in film, a perfect image of the pod, the ones closest to the ocean floor were dragging their fins in the sand.

Remember frame number thirty eight!

Just as a few Spinners joined us, two more dolphins darted to the bottom and each made a completely different design, but the shifting sand took them before I could discern the full detail of their curvy shapes.  There were U’s and question marks.  What were these writings about?  And why wasn’t I surprised to see that the dolphins could draw? It remains an undeniable fact that every time I have a rendezvous with dolphins, everything is very intense and seemingly pre-planned.  I need only to operate out of my heart, not my brain, and follow my divine guidance, hoping that I may wake up to the arrangements that I had helped make on a higher level.

One of the few Spinner calves who had been closely shadowing me from the start briskly broke formation and shot up to look at me with a straight on innocence.   We were bonding with our eyes when I got a clear voice in my head. 

I am the essence of your grandson!  My heart fluttered almost painfully. Tears welled behind my mask. I stared questioningly, searching it’s smooth little face, falling in love with the curve of his lips.  There was so much love and trust in the baby dolphin’s eyes that I wanted to weep from the beauty of the moment.  But I couldn’t believe it happened!  My rational mind fought for recognition.  This is impossible!  But it couldn’t be impossible, came a suggestion from my higher, wiser self, I heard it plainly, just like I saw them draw the shapes.  I wished my feet could have touched the bottom, I wanted to pace the ocean floor for a while trying to figure it out.  How could I have heard that?  How could I have not?  The wiser one debated.  Yes, we were all delighted that our daughter, Amber was more than four months pregnant, but who’s going to believe this?  How could my grandbaby’s essence be here with me now within a baby dolphin’s body?  Am I cracking up or just confused, or too afraid that it might be true?  Such a beautiful thought, and how appropriate, our first grandchild is from the sea!

The little dolphin sensed my heart flaring wide open and used that moment to give me a whistle and an imprinting gaze that will always be etched upon my soul.  For the last year during good times and bad, I have called upon this touching memory and its confusing message many times.  It was all the more puzzling when a few months later our grandson to be, Kyle, arrived physically perfect yet stillborn to the tormented hearts there to greet him.  The little dolphin’s face haunts me still, always soothing the wound.

I blinked out of my flashback to see that we had another few miles to go.  I wasn’t in very good shape this morning, so I was really glad that it was going to be just Terry and me today; my last day with the dolphins.  Six a.m. had come cruelly and quickly, reminding me that I had been awake until at least four, watching the full moon sink into the glistening water of the Pacific again. Just like every night since I had arrived I was surging with energy, totally unable to sleep.  Each night it felt like the tectonic plates beneath the volcanic island were adjusting themselves every time the monstrous waves rocked the lava shore with a boom.

I laid my heavy head against the window remembering last evening.  While I was focused on briskly packing my equipment for my departure the next morning, Terry had nonchalantly shown me a historical book about angels I recognized as one that I had yearned to own only weeks ago but I walked reluctantly away from it, going totally against my guidance since I was saving every dollar I could to pay for this trip.  When I opened Terry’s book and fanned through it, a page of interesting symbols opened itself to me.

I was wide-awake in the dark of the night and wanted to go search for the book.  I thought Terry might have taken it to her bedroom and my bumbling around would wake her; that would have been inconsiderate. Somebody around here ought to be sleeping. 

Information was running wildly around inside of me in a strange form.  I relented that nothing could quell the constant energy.  I just had to be with it and stare at the illuminated ocean. During my nightly meditations I had a vision of the Goddess Energy returning to the Earth.  She was to emerge during a powerful window of time from the abdomen of the Earth, within the Equator area.  That area is considered to be the most stable part of the planet, mostly encompassed by ocean that would serve as an encapsulating buffer absorbing the possible monstrous backlash of the planet adjusting to her arrival.  I welcomed the Goddess to our realm every waking night; inviting her whenever and wherever she was to appear.  I kept getting the same image against the brightness of the moonlight.  An immeasurably tall female figure walked slowly and regally from the ocean depths to the sand.  She formed her own eclipse, blocking out the light of the moon, except for the rays shooting out from around her.  Her garment was filmy; I could see her arms through her flowing sleeves.  I am the Goddess, she said, here to re-activate the feminine power of all beings, for the sake of everything that dwells upon this living planet.

Every night in my meditation, she walked out of a thrashing sea.  Building sized waves were harshly crashing around her, but gave her a wide berth in which to walk.  On either side of her path was crystallized bioluminescence.  A small wave came across, gently washing her walkway smooth, exposing shiny little bubbles tumbling silently at her feet.  They looked like bubbles, but instead of being round, they had distinctive shapes.  Some were like horseshoes, some were round, and some were just elongated squiggles.  I noticed that in the splendor of the image, the only facet that would change from night to night were the shapes of the bubbles that inevitably would float up into the breeze, orbit around me and disappear into the ethers.

I snapped totally into the moment when we pulled up to the beach.  It was so perfect! The beach was deserted, and the dolphin pod was waiting for us, and nobody else, repeatedly twirling in the air, announcing the party that was about to begin.

Thoughts of the Goddess and the magic of the last few sleepless nights lay heavy on my mind but now it was my very last opportunity to mingle with my beloved dolphin family this year and I was an exhausted, rubber-legged wreck.  I was shaky from lack of sleep and anticipation of what was supposed to happen today; but it seemed almost normal to be worn thin.

The afternoon before I had found out quite by accident that there was to be a total eclipse of the full moon at eight o’clock that very morning.  I am not a student of astrology, but Terry and I winked at each other when an expert told us that this eclipse was to close the window that was opened a few months ago during the full moon eclipse on March 8^th.  The moon rules the tides, it is widely known, but now the moon moved into Pisces, which also governs the ocean and resonates with the energy of dolphins and whales.  This eclipse was to open communication between the mammals of the sea and humans to a new level. 

Within a few moments we were pushing the kayak through the waves to the deep water.  Chuck, the teen-age paddler got us to the dolphins quickly.  Terry and I belly-flopped into the darkness below.  The visibility was unusually limited. Diving conditions had gotten progressively worse every day since my arrival the week before.  Had I not been aware that I was once again on another blind and protected mission, it would have been quite un-nerving. It was still before seven, and to make visibility even more of a guessing game, thick cloud cover threatened to keep the morning sunshine at a minimum.

None of this mattered in the least when the dolphins filed by us tweeting and clicking with their white lips reflecting what little light there was under the dark water.  More and more of the huge shadowed group appeared from the deep blackness that our eyes could not penetrate.  Terry and I cooed shrilly at the sight of Spinner dolphins, the shy cousins of the Spotted ones when they swerved our way with the big pod of Spotties and exchanged pleasantries with us for a blessed while.

All of a sudden they just disappeared.  In a fleeting moment they were all gone.  I got an eerie feeling, searching feebly into the silent bottomless depths.  Oooops, not even singing, not good, I thought.  I raised my head to reality.  Chuck’s voice came like a foreign sound.  "Come on and get back in the boat, ''now!''  he directed with a fake calmness from his high vantage point.  The dolphins were definitely absent so Terry and I flopped back into the kayak just as he was pointing toward a tall straight, lone fin on the right, about twenty yards away.  "It’s a pretty big tiger shark, do you see it?"

" Yeeeppp!"  Terry relented warily. "But now look and see how the dolphins have scattered, they are reorganizing! There are a bunch of them already near the beach.  That’s amazing! Look how close they are to the shore, they want us to follow them!"  Without a word Chuck mechanically guided the kayak toward the group that was gracefully bobbing very near the breakwater.

To Top of Page

I was thinking that I had never seen dolphins in such shallow water when something told me it was happening!  I felt compelled to use those few moments of stillness to entrain with the dolphins and the Goddess. I started running my energy through my head, down into the ocean and up into the group of patient, neatly assembled dolphins.  I was resting my heavy forehead against Terry’s back out of necessity, for when their energy blended with mine and came back to me completing the curve, it felt like I had definitely exploded into bits, particles of me spewing ten miles past my skin in all directions.   Uh oh, I breathed, this is bigger than I imagined, whatever happens, help me hold on dearest Lord.

Terry stirred me from my energy stupor with a squeal.  Look, they are stopped and are waiting for us; this is such a powerful moment Star!  How unusually sweet they are today!  Just ten yards ahead I saw a most unusual sight.  Instead of being in their normal cruising mode, the pod was all in a clump, a floating clump that was stationary, waiting patiently for us to get back into the water and resume the festivities.

As our kayak approached silently, all the dolphins were lounging near the surface.  I felt an urgent need to shoot off several photos of the dark fins in the water before us.  I tried not to think but the pushy left brain continued to interfere.  I am shooting up all my film in both cameras!  I can’t change film in the kayak, why am I not saving film for underwater close-ups? 

I surrendered to the fact that I was not really in control here, and for best results I should immediately just shut up and follow the guidance that had successfully delivered me right here and now for what I still did not know.

 What I did know is that at that very second I had to point my camera toward shore and shoot.  But wasn’t it about eight o’clock? The eclipse is happening! Oh my God, Star, look at the magnificent rainbow behind you! squeaked Terry. 

Sure enough, I turned around, and there was a perfect rainbow, dolphins and all.

 With the rainbow still flying, we turned back around to see our dolphins, still waiting. "Gee, Terry," I mumbled, untangling my hair from my snorkel, "this last hour before I have to leave and there is that big shark behind us.... should I take this personally?" 

SPLASH! She was gone!  Well, I never!  She knew better than to worry about me,  Shark, what shark?  Not one second later and without another thought of the cruising tiger shark, I was off with a splat from the other side of the kayak.  I dove down into the darkness not seeing Terry at all. When I swam toward the surface for a breath the dolphin pod surrounded me so closely that I giggled with the image of being shoulder to fin with them in a crowded elevator. 

What floor, please? I snickered, being hypnotized by the racing energy of so many dolphins at arm’s length.

These were the same spotted dolphins that were not only with me last year, but also for the past five wondrous morning encounters.  The first time I got into the water a week ago, a good sized adolescent had raced up to my face welcoming me home again.  Here were my best friends back to say good-bye.  Instantly I knew it wasn’t time to focus on good-bye, not right now, at least.

There were many dolphins assembled on each side, most of them on the outskirts of my visibility, so that I could only see shadows.  I never did see Terry through the murky dark water, but occasionally I could hear her sweet signature song to the pod.  Matter of fact, we were all vocalizing loudly.  The dolphins were communicating from point blank range with purposeful clicking patterns today.  There was a lot of exceptionally loud, rhythmic clicking.  I was surprised from my blind side by a half grown female that arranged herself parallel as if we were both humans.  She looked right into my eyes and said, hey, Star, remember me?  Before I could reply in the positive, she sped to the sandy bottom and drew some sort of roundish symbol in the sand with the longest point of her pectoral fin.  I got a distinct image of being in a classroom and she was the teacher writing on the board, and I laughed out of my snorkel.  She made a direct beeline back to me and said now do you remember me?   My darlings, I do remember you, but the symbols are from another lifetime together, I am only human this time, but I am beginning to remember them.

LOVE IS THE KEY sang the invisible angelic voices of the choir.

I was pinching myself when a little larger, equally lovely female darted into my vision, and hung vertically emitting more loud clicks.  I got words in her stare, but I could not understand the language.  She blinked and I beheld a delicate princess, exuding shining power in the feminine.  In less than a heartbeat she raced behind then appeared in front of me completing a curt circle, and headed straight down.  She used her right pectoral fin and traced something similar to a question mark in the sand.  The flowing water quickly erased the precious sign, but I know it was round then squiggly on the end.  The dolphin popped back up to look at me again, made louder clicking, then she relaxed and floated at my side for a few moments of silent meditation together.  We floated until she briskly disappeared.

I surfaced and got my quick bearings compared with the landmarks of the shore.  I should not have been surprised at the fact that this was exactly the same place where the sand shapes were drawn last year.  I surfaced again relating to the location of a native Hawaiian sacred ground, called a heiau, (pronounced hay ee ow) not fifty yards from where this was all transpiring.

From somewhere far away, Chuck’s voice signaled that it was past eight thirty.  Okay ya’ll, I’ll go without a fight, I teased trying to hide my feelings of loneliness that were already creeping around.

The dolphins cruised off only a few yards away; still so near the shore.  By necessity I forced myself to turn away from my finned family to meet Terry at the kayak.   My eyes must have been like saucers, because Terry jerked her snorkel clear of her lips and bubbled, "I saw what they did for you, Star Baby!"  I was relieved to hear that, I thought I had gone off my rocker. I was surprised she had seen anything in the murk.  "I have been swimming with dolphins for many years now, and I have never, ever seen them draw pictures for anybody!" she laughed.  "They really love you!"  "I saw them do it once; I whimpered", "only moments before I had to drag myself away from them like this a year ago."

The dolphin pod stayed in the shallow water parallel to the still uninhabited beach even after we had all the gear and the kayak loaded on the car.  I was thankful that nobody shared our pod with us today.  But then of course, the big plan was carried out to the last detail, there couldn’t have been anyone else around.

The pod kept patrolling back and forth up and down the beach slapping their tails hard against the surface.  "They are asking you to stay," Terry purred," none of us want you to leave."  I fell apart as an energetic volcano rose from my feet causing tremendous rushing hot waves inside me.  Sweat poured off my wet brow.  I began trembling and sobbing from the depths of my bleeding soul.  Although embarrassed about the paddler who was in the back seat seeing me this way, I just could not stop crying.

Back at the house, I had only twenty minutes before I had to leave for California.  I wept in the shower for as long as I dared; still feeling like my energy had blasted out from my skin.  I wondered how I was even contained in the shower stall.  I closed my eyes, sliding down into a pathetic ball on the tile, letting the hot water hit me on the crown of my head and pour over my jittering body, running my energy, trying to regain command my physical body.

Suddenly I raised my face to the full pressure of the water in a revelation. Tears were racing the fresh water to the drain. Now I knew where all the training had been leading me!  From the first time I ever connected with wild dolphins years ago, I had been on a great mission for the Earth.  I had never known exactly what it was, but trusted my belief that each piece of the puzzle would be in place someday in the future.  The future was here, today.  The healing Goddess energy had truly emerged at the moment of the eclipse. 

I don’t know how long I shriveled in the shower.  I asked feebly why I had to have that reality-rocking escapade just before having to return to the chaotic world built by humans.  Why couldn’t I just lay down and shake uncontrollably in private for the rest of the day?  Desperate and out of breath, I asked my guardian angels to handle my exodus to California; to rush me somehow to the airport in my vandalized rental car, and rectify that situation at the finish of the fiendish race to the plane.

The familiar image of the Goddess emerging from the ocean arranged itself in the blackness of my closed eyelids.  She walked out of an even more raging ocean this time, with the same flowing, deliberate steps to the sand.  Sparks at her feet drew attention to the oddly shaped pebbles that tumbled out before her, and in front of me.  They rolled up close enough so that I could make out some of the shapes that were painted in iridescent shapes I recognized from the book.  I gasped as the sight of the symbols that the dolphins had traced in the sand were distinctly pictured at her feet.

I opened my eyes for an instant and when I closed them again an emerald heart shaped puzzle materialized in the sand.  The painted pebbles flew into their places; they were the last pieces needed to complete the heart.

Cold water falling on my head while years of questions were instantaneously being answered.  I knew then that I had been seeing and dreaming of the symbols even as far back as 1994.  I recalled clearly now that many of the bubbles within the Silver Lei formed for me personally by a wild dolphin on first contact contained symbols that were now running around in my sight.  I knew that four years ago during the comet bashing that Jupiter endured, my experiences with the wild and captive dolphins on that same day had something to do with changing me so that I could do all of this.  Just as the shower water turned cold, the message rang out.

The symbols that have flooded your existence are humanity’s keys to completely activate living circuitry, dispersing all fear by replacing it with light and love.

LOVE IS THE KEY;

....the symbols represent the connection with love in the first degree.