From Crisis to Creativity

Transcendence: Creating Peace, Purpose, and Love

The only power that can effect transformations of the order we have described is love.

—HUSTON SMITH

Creating Peace

I’ve always loved the sea. Being a child in San Diego in the 1940s was like being Eve before the fall. There was the war, but it was far away, and even newsreels, ration books, and black shades on our windows didn’t make it real for me. To me and my sister, the war brought the magic of margarine: we squeezed a clear plastic container until the cherry-red coloring seed popped and was spread effortfully throughout the mass, resulting in something that looked like butter and almost tasted like it. The war meant feeding the chickens so that we could have eggs and tending the miniature vegetable garden alongside the chicken pen. The war also meant greater independence, as my mother and the other women in the neighborhood went to work in the aircraft factories. While we children were responsible for cooking and cleaning, we also had lots of free time, especially in the summers. Bicycling or taking the bus together to the beach brought us a sense of community. Playing, reading, talking, or just staring at the ocean between swims was our group meditation.

The sea was my solitude. I knew there were interesting creatures beneath the water, and good-tasting ones, too. My best friend’s older brother would bring home abalones from La Jolla, and we would remove the meat, pound it hard with a mallet, dip it in bread crumbs, and fry abalone for dinner.

It wasn’t until many years later, when I began snorkeling in Hawaii, that I discovered how beautiful many sea creatures are, so beautiful that sometimes I’d get so excited I would gasp and breathe in water instead of air through my snorkel.

Undersea viewing became a passion of mine, so much so that I created the necessity for excursions to Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, Tahiti and Bora Bora, Bali, and the Great Barrier Reef. The most fascinating and exquisitely beautiful sea animals I have seen are called nudibranchs, and although they are found throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans, they are most abundant on the Great Barrier Reef, off the eastern coast of Australia. I first read about them in a National Geographic magazine in the early 1980s. I finally saw them with my own eyes, just some of the more than four hundred species present, while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef in 1995.

The nudibranchs (“naked lungs”) are classified as mollusks. l couldn’t imagine why until I learned that they are actually shell-less snails, or sea slugs. While most mollusks’ evolution involved changing the shape and color of their shells, the nudibranchs “branched out” in a bold way. They left their shells altogether for the freedom of experimenting with exotic shapes and vivid colors. It is astounding to come upon these creatures, with names like “Spanish Dancer,” waving red and pink mantles like a bullfighter’s cape, or the “Blue Dragon,” stationary when I saw it, but with its many deep- to pale-blue projections undulating around its variegated blue-and-gold body. Another nudibranch is bright white bordered with gold: still another is translucent yellow with black spots.

Their freedom is as astounding as their beauty. These creatures eat and internalize tiny single-celled plants, algae, which then photosynthesize nutrients for them. Imagine being able to manufacture your own food supply while floating on a sunny reef! Not only have they created solar panels to grow their own food, they have also internalized a method of protection. They are able to feed on organisms that bear stinging cells, coating them with mucous so they are not harmed by the poison. These stinging cells end up inside the frilly fronds of the nudibranchs, becoming weapons to protect them from predators.

We too can leave our shells behind. The psychological defenses that protect us while we are growing up restrict our growth and our beauty once we are adults. The denial of disavowed grief, the anger that is projected from hurt, the obsession that controls from fear, and the depression that paralyzes us into the past, must all be shed in order to allow for the freedom of growth. We can learn to grow past and through, and float above life crises, internalizing the learning and transforming the energy of disappointment and fear into creative activities that confirm life.

Just as the war brought independence and purpose to me as a child, the crisis I experienced of being sued as an adult prepared me to help many others move out of deep, sometimes suicidal, grief over adversarial entanglements. My involvement with those who have suffered trauma taught me about human resilience. My experiences with death enabled me to better aid others who face profound loss. And learning to accept physical death led to an awareness of ongoing life. My divorce taught me that many of us have to leave home again as adults. We have to leave relationships that no longer nurture our growth and create new bonds in which we can grow our love.

Just like the nudibranch, everyone has all the resources needed to self-create, to give voice to thoughts and emotions, and grow freedom, complete freedom from fear. As artist Paul Klee said, “Shed your shell; try for a moment to think of yourself as God.”