It's all matter
On listening to water and dissolving how we show up for what matters
Greetings. And welcome to March.
Thank you for opening this. I know there are many choices for where you can turn your attention. I appreciate your pause and consideration for matters of noticing. And I appreciate your interest in what I have to share.
It is my pleasure to release this essay into the world. It’s been a stretch for me to write it, to find words to describe what seems to be outside of words.
I’ve been letting myself learn from water (inspired by the work of Veda Austin and Masaru Emoto). I’ve been talking, singing, writing words, thinking thoughts, and dreaming to/with water. This essay is partly about this water play (and water listening) and includes photographs of some water samples in petri dishes (all with the same tap water and placed in my freezer for the same amount of time).
I’ll be writing more about what I’m learning from water (how I’m learning to read symbols, patterns, and glyphs) throughout the month of March.
I wish you a heart-opening month with all the freshness and awe it’s sure to bring.
Now for the essay—It’s all matter. May you delight in its wonder and dissolving. Please share if you know someone who might like it!
Left: “You are regular water.”
Right: “I love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, beautiful water.”
Thoughts have impact.
Words have impact.
How we see has impact.
Humans are over 60% water. Earth is over 70% water. Water throughout the universe is beyond what we can count.
What we breathe in, we breathe out into others. What others breathe out, we breathe in. Of air, of water, of biome, of thought, of feeling—all of frequencies.
It’s all matter and it all matters.
Water is Earth and Earth is Sky.
We are the tides. We are the turning.
We are the learning and the play and the wonder and the awe.
We are the whole of all systems and the whole of their changing.
How we see the sky shapes the sky.
The way we talk with children impacts how children feel about, and see, themselves. The way we think about our bodies impacts our body’s health and sense of wellbeing. The energy we bring to our day impacts our experience at work, in traffic, at the grocery store.
The way we think about “problems” impacts the possibilities we see. The way we talk about ourselves in relationship to others impacts the (dis)connections we experience. The way we see the world impacts how we co-create with it.
Left: I told water a story of the many problems in schools, how people work so hard to fix them and how they care so much, but how the problems never seem to go away.
Right: I sat next to water and held an energy field for liberated curiosity and the aliveness of all beings in their learning and connection. I didn’t say anything aloud.
I am learning how to listen to water.
To see what it sees. To know what it knows. To co-create with water as water.
We can read the science of this and still feel befuddled. We can know our words make an impact and still not know what to say. We can sense the impact of our thoughts and still feel too small to make a difference. Our “too small”-“not real”-“doesn’t matter”-“not for me” thoughts shape the world, too.
We have a lot to dissolve.
How we show up (to see, think, speak, be) in the world matters.
This is a time of intense perturbation—agitation, triggers, intensity, problems, fear. Although each of us will experience this differently, we can all feel it.
And it’s become our collective habit to talk about what is happening (in schools, in healthcare, in politics, in ___) as a “big problem” and explain our understandings of “why” it’s so “bad” and what needs to happen to “fix” it. We line up all the causes and plan out all the solutions.
It’s also become habit to accept frames of dichotomy for what constitutes action: against vs. complicity as if to be against is dutiful action and anything other is inaction; working within vs. outside the system as if action is something of strategy; pragmatic vs. fanciful as if science isn’t the beauty of asking questions and witnessing the interconnected poetry of it all.
In our habitual ways, we forget that habits are matter and are formed. We create them. And we can recreate them.
We choose how expansively we see.
You’ve heard me say this before:
This isn’t romance.
It isn’t wish.
It’s not for later.
This is now.
What’s outside, so within:
This idea is matter and it creates matter.
For us to create a more beautiful world (of liberation, curiosity, love) we must allow the perturbation, not “solve” for it.
To allow is not to surrender. To allow is to know that this is liberation work from the inside out. Agitation lets us see HOW our habitual patterns want to fix things with old ways of understanding. When we SEE this, it can release and percolate us as we sift, shift, discern, resee, and keep only what we need.
The work is the dissolving of our HOW.
How we separate ourselves in our solving of things we think are outside of us. How we break things into compartments and steps. How we control and measure in ways that hold our seeing at the center.
We dissolve and remember. Remember that we are alive as an interconnected whole.
We dissolve and discover new ways for HOW we co-create from this aliveness.
To be the effect is full aliveness of action. It is:
Commitment (I am here for ___. It is my responsibility to create____.);
Sculpting (daily presence, connection, each word-thought-action aligned with effect);
Discipline (see old patterns and habits, take responsibility for them, let them go).
There is nothing passive in this way of creating.
It is bold. It takes courage whether in a school, a board room, a kitchen, leading a team of ten or ten thousand, speaking to a friend or on center stage.
This way of creating is also simple. Ordinary. A plain, direct way of showing up as yourself wherever you go.
Sample: I chanted in my heart’s frequency of “Om” six times.
Many humans don’t see this yet. They are drawn to it (to slowness, ease, simplicity, connection). But they’re trying too hard to understand it. To fit it into old frames and old ways and old identities. This might be you. (And, you are me and they are we.)
It can be hard to let go. To dissolve everything you’ve known, what you’ve been good at doing, what’s worked before, who you’ve known yourself to be, how you’ve come to think you belong and matter.
It is of death and in death there is grieving. The way we allow our dissolving, honor its passage, witness its mattering—this is the whole of what we’re creating, too.
We don’t need to know how in order to know how.
There’s no “in order to.”
Cause and effect are collapsed.
Effect is cause.
Our imprint is our frequency.
Plants and animals, water and soil—they already know this. In their ordinary ways, they’ve been guiding us here all along.
Oh, what they know of learning, formations of wonder and awe, systems of thriving, vibrations of soulful expression beyond our wildest dreams.
May we listen.
love+light, Melissa
Do you want to continue to explore water play listening, alongside questions of learning, wonder, and (de)light throughout the month of March? You are invited to join as a paid weekly subscriber.
Do you know someone who might like to read this essay? Please share.
Learn more about the work of Veda Austin and Masaru Emoto.
If you’re interested in playing with water and learning to listen to its wisdom, I highly recommend getting Veda Austin’s guide: Collective Molecular Photography.
Learn more about me and my work: melissaabutler.com