In dreams and fantasies the sea or a large expanse of water signifies the Unconscious…. The sea is the favorite symbol for the Unconscious, the mother of all that lives… Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the Unconscious.

C.G. Jung

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(18) Kayaking the Unconscious   My favorite activity in my youth was kayak surfing in the ocean. Being carried along by a wave is a wonderful feeling, an ecstatic letting go, a merging of oneself with the natural world. After the heart attack, it seemed like I was caught up in much bigger water, and my feeling was far from ecstatic. This time, I was in a huge, tumultuous surf, and I felt that I could be crushed at any time, thrown into chaos, drowned. There was one time when, as a young adult, I had dared to try kayaking in extremely large waves, and I was scared to death. But while my mind was racing with fear, my body instinctively kept the kayak stable by adjusting and balancing in response to the huge forces of the waves, and this brought me safely home. My survival became a matter of trusting my instincts. After the heart attack, I cried almost every day for months, caught in waves of despair, caught in overwhelming feelings of grief and loss. At some point, though, I came to trust in the belief that if I let my feelings be, and experienced them fully, they would eventually right themselves and bring me back to something like normalcy. The sea still brings waves of emotions that I have to ride, but they are usually not larger than the boat.   March 3, 2007