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I wasn't entirely sure why I was going to Bimini.
There was a desire for experience and expansion, certainly. A desire to heal, to transform, to become more of who I am and perhaps also to become more of my potential. And somewhere beneath all of that was a much harder-to-explain sense of homecoming. Of family.
And yet I didn't simply surrender unquestioningly to the pull. There was resistance too. A small but persistent voice wondered whether travelling all that way to spend more time with dolphins was self-indulgent. There were practical fears too. I would be travelling close to hurricane season, and I was hesitant about making plans for the days I would spend alone once the organised dolphin quest was over.
I noticed the resistance and sat with it, moment by moment, day by day. Desire was there. Fear was there. Curiosity was there. I didn't really know what any of it meant until eventually something softened and I stopped resisting.
I went with the flow. Haha, and that is another story for another time!
For now, looking back, perhaps that was already part of the journey: not knowing, listening, choosing. And it wasn't the first time dolphins had brought me into an exploration of desire.
Earlier this year, I joined a group celebrating whales and dolphins with Joan Ocean. During the week, I had noticed how subtly desire can change its nature. At the beginning, I recall listening to a woman describe her experience of swimming with a family of spinner dolphins and found myself crying with genuine joy for her. There was a realisation that her experience had somehow become mine, that we truly are interconnected. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, was the deep joy I felt. You see, there had been times in my life when somebody else receiving the very thing I longed for might have left me, metaphorically at least, spitting nails.
But there were no nails. There were tears, a lived sense of one-ness and Joy.
Yet as the week unfolded and I heard more and more accounts of other people's encounters with the spinners, something shifted. Without really noticing it at first, I began to move from longing into lack. Other people's experiences began to illuminate what I had not experienced, and I began trying to make it happen.
Eventually I recognised that I wasn't feeling good and consciously changed direction, back towards home, back towards myself. Something softened.
There is much more to that story, and I have written about it elsewhere. What interests me now though, is not whether wanting is good or bad. I don't think it is either. After all, we want things all the time, don't we? We want to be healthy, we want the people we love to be well. We want to love and be loved. We want meaningful work, companionship, adventure, rest, a cup of tea and, of course, cake.
Perhaps the more interesting question is what happens when wanting becomes entangled with the belief that something must be missing: this needs to happen, that they need to choose me, that I need to achieve, possess or experience something before I can receive or arrive in the moment. Before I can be enough.
The Spiral Home grew out of that exploration, a body of work that is still unfolding. At its heart is something very simple, and yet something I continue to discover the depth and reality of: each one of us is enough. Each one of us is complete.
Months later, I found myself in Bimini waters, on a boat when a spotted dolphin came into sight.
Up on my feet and, before I really knew what I was doing, leaning against the portside bow rail, moving with the swell and rise of the boat as he swam beside us. I began to sing.
Well, not sing exactly. There were no words. A cyclical rhythm of sound evolved and I heard other voices ebb and flow with mine. There was a continuity. I didn't stop. I didn't question. I didn't doubt.
He was solitary, which in itself was unusual. The dolphin danced through the turquoise water, cutting and carving, jumping and diving, repeatedly returning to the portside of the bow where I stood as the boat rose and fell through the windblown waves.
It wasn't a song I knew. It simply arose — a calling, a welcoming, a response.
There was an exchange happening that I cannot explain, a sense of deep connection, of family. Tears streamed down my face as I stood there, rocking and rising at one with the boat and the ocean, in relationship with this extraordinarily beautiful being who somehow seemed to have singled me out.
And yet that isn't quite right. We had singled each other out.
Then the captain said there would be a drop, an opportunity to enter the water and swim with him, and the realisation came: I didn't need to. I stepped back, put down my mask and snorkel and returned my fins to the bucket.
I was complete. Nothing else needed to happen. The encounter did not need to become bigger, closer or more extraordinary in order for it to be enough and, perhaps most importantly, neither did I.
Then circumstances changed. There wasn't going to be a drop after all — a difficult call for a captain trying to meet the desires and expectations of a group, without a mutiny!
Later, while many and most stood at the stern waving goodbye, I sat at the bow on my own, integrating what had arrived. And then, suddenly, there at twelve o'clock were four spotted dolphins — three adults and a baby — swimming directly towards me. Contact was made - we met in the meeting place between All Things.
For a while I simply watched. My heart was full. I wasn't sure about swimming with them, not because I didn't want to, but because I wasn't sure I needed to. But then I heard their call - no, not a call - I realise now, it was an invitation. And then the mask and snorkel were back on, fins too, and there was enormous Joy. A gathering of frequency, ocean magic and dolphin delight.
It intrigues me. For recognising that I was complete hadn't extinguished desire. Enough-ness hadn't meant withdrawing from experience. Nothing being missing didn't mean nothing more could happen. In that moment I'd felt complete, and still, Life moved, it moved towards me.
Perhaps this is what I've really been wondering about ever since: what if desire isn't necessarily evidence of something missing?
If someone had spoken to me about desire prior to this experience, my mind may probably have gone to something sexual. Desire in my perception was associated with and had somehow become entangled with lust, seduction and temptation. With something private, perhaps a little dangerous, certainly not something I would immediately have associated with the deepest movements of the heart.
And now I find myself wondering how on earth did that happen? How did such an extraordinary word become so limited in my perception, in my interpretation of it?
Because the more I sit with desire, the more spacious it feels. Desire can be the longing to create, to love, to heal, to give and receive, to explore, to belong, to serve, to experience, to become. It can be the almost imperceptible movement within us towards something we cannot yet name.
And yet many of us have inherited cultures in which desire has also become tangled with ideas of indulgence and sin. No wonder we can feel so befuddled. No wonder there can be shame around wanting deeply, around trusting what moves within us, and perhaps even around admitting to ourselves what our heart longs for.
How perverse would it be if, somewhere along the way, we learned to mistrust one of the very ways Life speaks through us?
Perhaps desire itself isn't the problem. Perhaps we have forgotten how to listen to it and to trust it.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes about what she calls the overculture — the voices and expectations of the wider culture that tell us how we ought to be, often drowning out something older and more instinctive within us. Her work has long explored what happens when we become estranged from that deeper nature, from the wild and life-giving parts of ourselves.
Perhaps that is part of this too. What have I been taught to desire? What have I been taught not to desire? And beneath both of those, what is actually mine? What is the quieter movement that simply asks to be heard?
We often speak about desire as though it begins with absence. I desire something because I don't have it. I move towards it because I want to acquire, achieve or experience it. But I'm beginning to wonder whether there is another kind of desire, one that doesn't necessarily arise from lack at all.
What if sometimes desire is simply Life moving towards Life?
A seed doesn't become a tree because there is something wrong with being a seed. A flower doesn't turn towards the sun because it has failed at being a flower. A river doesn't move towards the sea because it is incomplete.
There was another thread weaving through all of this.
Before leaving England, I had felt a persistent nudge to take two small bottles of the combined waters of Glastonbury's Red and White Springs with me. I didn't know why, or what I was supposed to do with them. I simply listened.
On Bimini, some of that water was offered to the ocean above the mysterious Bimini Road. Later, on the Florida mainland, I carried the remaining bottle to a tributary of the New River, whose waters flow towards the Atlantic. Again, I didn't really know why. It simply felt important to bring these waters together.
And then, on Lion's Gate, the same day I made that final offering, I listened to a conversation between Heather and Brother Ke‘oni that opened another doorway into the questions already moving within me.
Somewhere within that mythological deep dive, Haumea had posed a wonderfully simple question: What do you want duplicated?
And Brother Ke‘oni had realised the answer was: Nothing.
That nothing stayed with me. Not nothing as emptiness or absence, but something much closer to completion.
Life meeting Life can be a complete circuit, in and of itself. We can feel it sometimes, can't we? In that perfect moment of simple Joy when nothing more is desired, when the moment itself feels complete and, somehow, so do we.
I found myself thinking again about the Lemniscate — the figure of eight, infinity flowing endlessly through its centre, two apparent polarities woven together into one continuous circuit. And I wondered: what if completion isn't the place where movement stops? What if completion is the circuit itself?
Perhaps we can be complete and still desire. Perhaps nothing can be missing and still Life can move. Perhaps the opposites we so often try to resolve are not always problems at all, but part of the creative tension through which something new becomes possible.
John O'Donohue speaks of beauty as an “emerging fullness.” I love the apparent contradiction held within those two words: fullness, and yet still emerging. Becoming does not prove that something was missing before. Perhaps fullness itself can unfold.
And this leads me towards a possibility I have carried for some time: what if Life is Love exploring and expressing itself?
If that is true, perhaps desire is not necessarily Love trying to fill an emptiness. Perhaps desire is one of the ways Love experiences itself, Love leaning towards another expression of Love, not because it is incomplete, but because it is alive.
And of course, the moment I move towards something beyond myself, I enter relationship. There is another: another person, another being, a dolphin, a tree, an ocean, a body, a community, a circumstance I cannot control. And the other is not simply an object in the fulfilment of my desire. They participate too.
Perhaps this is where wanting can so easily become grasping. We decide what the fulfilment of our desire should look like and then attempt to make Life conform to it.
Relationship asks something different of us. It asks us to listen.
And perhaps there is an important distinction here, because listening to desire doesn't necessarily mean obeying it.
Carl Jung's explorations of the conscious and unconscious, and of the opposites we carry within ourselves, return again and again to relationship rather than eradication. One side does not simply have to defeat the other. Something can emerge through their encounter.
I find that helpful. It is kind and mutually inclusive. It doesn't judge one side right and the other wrong. It allows them to meet and, perhaps, within that meeting place, something new can emerge.
Maybe Right Relationship with desire asks us neither to suppress what moves within us nor to assume that every desire must be acted upon. We can meet it, listen to it and allow it to tell us something without immediately deciding what that something means.
Rather than immediately asking, How do I make this happen?, perhaps I can wonder what is happening here, what is mine to do or receive, what is asking for my attention. And sometimes, perhaps I can simply remain here without knowing.
I think this may be part of what I mean when I speak about Right Relationship. It is not a predetermined state of perfect harmony. It is alive. It requires openness, curiosity and authenticity because the response needed yesterday may not be the response needed today.
We do not know, until we know.
And of course, it is one thing to contemplate all of this while standing on the bow of a boat communing with dolphins. It is quite another when, a few hours later, you've had a fall and you're bleeding.
My time on Bimini didn't unfold as I could possibly have imagined. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was pain, injury, fear, shock, uncertainty and a lot of blood. In an instant, I didn't know what the remainder of my stay would look like. My plans and dreams evaporated in one pivotal moment.
Or had they simply morphed?
Once the initial shock settled, I became aware of something else. Joy was still there. Not happiness about what had happened, not pretending that everything was wonderful, but Joy.
Ironically, I had spoken during my time with the dolphin group about my sense that Joy is always with us. Now I found myself living alongside that possibility. I could be injured, frightened and uncertain about what would happen next, and Joy could still be present.
On our final night together, I was able to give voice to that. I was even able to express gratitude for the accident, although it had hurled me into the unknown. Somehow I had settled enough within myself to recognise that something meaningful was unfolding even though I had absolutely no idea what it was.
That experience continues to intrigue me because it suggests that Joy, like wholeness, may not be something circumstances give us. Our emotional weather changes. There can be grief, fear, pain, anger, delight, excitement and tenderness, sometimes several of them within a very short space of time. And perhaps somewhere through all of it there is a deeper current of Joy. Not always felt, not always accessible, but not necessarily absent.
I had gone to Bimini desiring expansion, and it offered me expansion. Just not in ways I could possibly have anticipated.
There is something about this slither of land in a turquoise sea that feels mysterious to me. Stories of Atlantis are woven into the island's mythology and, whatever one makes of them, I experienced a quality of magic there that I find difficult to explain.
But I hadn't travelled to Bimini because I knew what was going to happen. There had been resistance. Uncertainty about travelling and spending time alone once the organised part of the journey was over. But I had listened to those fears rather than pretending they weren't there and, in time, I chose adventure.
I chose adventure without knowing what the adventure would ask of me.
I certainly didn't choose the accident, although in some ways it feels as though it chose me. I don't believe difficult things happen because we somehow need them for our spiritual development. But I do believe our frequency and focus matters. Where we place our attention matters. How we choose to meet what happens matters.
Circumstances invited me to meet the moment. To see life with fresh eyes, to make new choices. I was a solo traveller; no-one else could make the decisions for me. I had to show up. And increasingly, I realised that meant listening not only to the words and advice “out there”, but to my inner world, to my own guidance system, to my body, to my knee.
I discovered I could do that, but something else was happening too. I was receiving.
Again and again, I found myself on the receiving end of extraordinary kindness. People helped me, cared for me, made things possible, appeared when I needed them. Some were people I knew, others were strangers. In circumstances I would never have chosen, I was being shown something profoundly beautiful about our capacity to care for one another.
And I allowed myself to receive.
Perhaps that too was part of the expansion. Not simply discovering that I could listen to myself and take responsibility for what was mine, but discovering that self-responsibility does not mean doing everything alone. There can be strength in receiving, and relationship in allowing ourselves to be helped.
I could listen to my body, care for myself and receive help. I could take responsibility for what was mine without imagining I could control everything. I could live with not knowing and, again and again, I could listen and choose.
My knee has undergone what feels to me like extraordinary healing.
And Bimini continues.
Relationships formed there remain alive. People I met still reach across the ocean. Things said to me continue to reverberate. Possibilities I could never have anticipated are quietly appearing — including a wondering about whether my storytelling might one day be of service to the community there. Moments I didn't fully understand then continue to reveal themselves differently now.
I am still discovering what Bimini gave me.
And perhaps that is true of so many of our experiences. How much of what Life gave us yesterday, last month, last year — perhaps many years ago — are we still discovering?
Perhaps expansion isn't simply becoming able to understand more. Perhaps sometimes we expand in our capacity to remain in relationship with what we don't understand, to sense without immediately needing to explain and to allow mystery to remain mystery.
There is a beautiful paradox here that I haven't resolved, and I don't think I want to.
Nothing is missing. Joy is already here. And still, Life desires.
Perhaps wholeness does not mean completion in the sense of being finished. Perhaps we can be whole and still becoming, complete and still curious, enough and still reaching towards experience, relationship and expression.
John O'Donohue's emerging fullness returns to me here. What if we are not empty vessels trying desperately to become full? What if we are fullness, emerging?
Perhaps Love is endlessly discovering what becomes possible when it encounters itself in another form.
And perhaps the invitation isn't to decide whether desire is good or bad, spiritual or selfish, but to become curious about our relationship with it. To notice when we are grasping for something we believe will complete us and when something quieter is moving within us towards relationship, expression or experience.
Perhaps desire is not something to suppress, satisfy or obey. Perhaps it is something to listen to.
Can we desire something deeply without insisting that we already know what its fulfilment must look like?
I don't know. Perhaps we don't need to know.
As we move towards the Autumn Equinox, that moment of balance between light and dark and the threshold into another season, there is something in the turning of the year that seems to invite a pause before we rush towards the next answer, intention or destination. A moment to listen to the body and the heart, to one another, to the more-than-human world, perhaps even to our wanting.
Because somewhere beneath the noise of what we think should happen, there may be something quieter moving: Life towards Life, Love towards Love.
Not because anything is missing, but because there is still so much to discover.
