Anything is likely

There are those times when your consciousness comes in and gives you a slap in the face, as if to say: “Hey, wake up!”. The form in which the message came doesn't hold much importance in this story so I will not get into details.

After the slap, that initial shock, something quite delightful happens. It feels as if all the shells around me comes crumbling apart- layers of my ego being peeled away perhaps- and leaving me feeling totally bare.

It is not so unsettling as it may sound…rather, in this bareness, the mind has stopped its chatter, the white noise gone, I reach a place of calm, silence…quiet peace, out of which then emerges a smile, followed by laughter. As if my consciousness were laughing at me, gently yet unabashedly.

Usually, after such a thing happens, the dolphins are here, amazingly open and playful, and echoing that same laughter. It is funny how the way my consciousness laughs so resembles the way the dolphins do…childlike and yet very wise, mocking me a bit perhaps, but nudging me onwards, unconditionally.

Today, we only had three guests on the boat…As for the dolphins, it was a huge pod right at the edge of town, playing, relaxing. Nearly 100 spinners and a pod of a dozen spotted dolphins.

At the beginning of the morning, as the boat left the harbor, one of the girls had told me with the sweetest smile: “This was the main purpose of my trip! To swim with dolphins…” She was on her honeymoon, a bundle of excitement, eyes wide with wonder.

This was one of her first times snorkeling, and so we went hand in hand, me guiding her along. But when she saw the dolphins…! Reincarnation notwithstanding, I would have sworn she’d been a dolphin in a past life. Their sight ignited some spark of recognition in her, and with it amplified her excitement to a completely other level.

She reminded me of a baby dolphin- the way it seems to bounce through the water while swimming, their way of expressing joy with their entire body, a bit clumsily but with a purity that always amazes me.

She swam with me without tiring for nearly three hours, and that is how she appeared to me, a young dolphin that couldn’t quite figure out how to express or contain so much joy.

The spotteds came and greeted us first in a festive explosion of clicks and whistles;

And then onto the spinners…They were everywhere, dispersed in sub-groups, some of them swimming quietly skimming the reef, others spinning away or playing the leaf game.

The “clique” we came upon was composed of four dolphins…three adults, one exuberant teenager.

We started with a few dances in midwater, adjusting to each other’s energy. Then as I would come to the surface to breathe up, they gathered around me and we would swim at different tempos…the little one urging me on, twisting his body here and there as if telling me, “come on, you are too slow…. swim just a tad faster??” And then there were moments like quiet expirations during which they were just content to glide alongside of me, the little one nudging me a few times with its fluke.

How long we spent with them, I have no idea…A sense of intimacy pervaded the entire encounter and the laughter in their eye was worth a thousand words, juxtaposing with that of my consciousness; it was an encouragement to lighten up, to stop taking things so seriously, and yet it was a call for depth as well, urging me to be wise enough to see past illusions.

We left the dolphins around eleven, and when we thought the morning could not get any better, we found a large pod of pilot whales offshore. I had not seen these guys for a while…

This time, it was the other girl on board that opened me up to new horizons. She was an awesome free diver, graceful and posed in her movements and in tune with the dolphins. It was the first time she saw pilot whales.

I didn’t expect them to hang out for long, as usually they are only mildly interested in us at best. How wrong I was…! It was one of those moments that confirmed that, indeed as a friend once said, “anything is likely”. It was another significant step forward into the possibilities of “interspecies communication” (after Jim Nollman.)

I had always been slightly cautious around the pilot whales, mostly because of what I’d heard of them…they could be “quite moody, one had to be cautious around them” and so I’d never allowed myself the same openness as with the dolphins.

I thought later on that it was the girls candidness that facilitated the “magic” of the encounter…talking to both of them, I realized that there had not been an ounce of fear in them; I had just cautioned them that they were much “wilder” than the dolphins and that they needed to be approached with a lot of respect…and so they did, but with the same wide-eyed wonder as with the dolphins, and most importantly with equal trust.

Never did they seem to think that the whales could harm them…and so, holding hands with one of the girls, ever so quietly, I allowed myself the same openness and went to greet the pilots.

One big male had stopped five feet away from the free diver, perfectly still, as if in levitation. The amazing thing was they were facing each other vertically, the 12 ft whale and the tiny, delicate Japanese girl. Watching them from a distance, they seemed to be totally surrendered to the moment and to one another. The whale then spy-hopped at least five times in front of her… meaning that he would rise vertically so his head would emerge out of the water. Two other whales were watching them.

The other girl and I moved slowly into the space they were sharing. I did not want to intrude but I could not help it…but I was very glad that the balance of the moment did not seem to be broken by our presence.

What followed was infused with a quiet intimacy; as we got closer, the whale shifted positions and another one, a juvenile, joined him and we somehow found ourselves swimming between the two of them…so close!, just as I would with the dolphins.

The eye marked me the most- very similar to the dolphins’, bronze-golden hues, a depth of awareness. The juvenile was looking at (or into?) us with its eye wide-open; as for the big male, his eye was a half-moon, very kind and relaxed.

They have such a strong, massive build compared to the streamlined grace of the spinners…their power palpable underneath their apparent calm. And yet, I felt naturally safe; no fear, only trust, and I thank the two girls who were with me yesterday for participating in the resonance, to have created another bridge of understanding between our two species.