The Search for Serenity (Continued)

Note: Photo is not mine.

    I checked my air gauge and the weights strapped around my waist as I began to descend slowly towards the meeting place.  My teammate Rezne Wong was already on the bottom, casually looking at fish and waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive. 

As my conscious adapted to the new environment, I began to really see how much life was hiding beneath the surface.  Moray eels poked their heads out of holes in the coral and black tip and white tip sharks curiously swam by us. Our dive leader and the rest of our crew made it to the bottom and joined us in a “slow-motion” meeting underwater.  My depth gauge tells me that we are about eight meters deep, and I realized we are resting on a sort of plateau, planning to go deeper.  Before the dive, our dive leader told us stories of huge manta rays with 10 foot wingspans swimming right up to the divers.  I constantly kept alert for I really wanted to see one of these majestic giants.   Large mackerel and yellow-fin tuna swam past us and on into the depths.  I felt like an astronaut; the slow inhale and exhale of compressed air and the weightless sensation of flying created an experience to remember.

We hit 18 meters and I rolled over onto my back to view the surface.  Something seemed wrong about the surface, moving around as if it had a life of its own.  Suddenly I realized I wasn’t actually looking at the surface, instead, I was getting a front seat view of an entire school of fish swimming above me.  The way I will always describe my experience is imagine you are watching the special about the ocean called, “Deep Blue” on Discovery channel. However, this time you are actually feeling the elements of fish, water, and coral all around you and not on a television screen.  Yeah! It is amazing. If you have never been diving before, I highly recommend you to.  Ah you can always say, “I want to go skydiving, bungee jumping, or snowboarding,” but you will never experience the pure peacefulness of being underwater for extended periods of time. 

SERENITY
Note: Photos are not mine.

Scuba diving is almost a form of meditation, where it is almost impossible to think Hmmm… I wonder what will be for lunch later? Or I wonder what is on TV? Underwater, hearing nothing but your own breath, being entirely in the present moment. I think you can say the search for Serenity may be found underwater in a liquid state just as we as babies were once in our mothers wombs.  Where pure peacefulness, silence, and a sense of security are found, serenity will be found among them.