How to live with “flow”: learn to flow and go against the current by following the symbolism of the river

The best metaphors or symbols of life we have them in the very energies that make possible their incessant evolution. are the four elements to which the ancient cosmologies refer: the land that holds, the water that nourishes, the air that vivifies and the fire that transforms

The element water represents in an eminent way the capacity of allow life as we know it.life is like a river whose waters impel us inevitably. Flow with them, live with flowIt allows save strength. But sometimes you have to swim against the current in pursuit of a goal or cross it to access another territory.

The river as a metaphor for life

Our lives follow phases similar to those of a river.

On the summits a kind of basin or “womb” that receives the water that falls from the sky. That incipient river will make its way through the mountains – resembling a child making its way through the birth canal– until it sprouts or is born as such. Then it will define its channel and increase the flow.The childhood of the river, like ours, supposes small rivulets singers.adolescence and youth they look more like rapidwhen there are unevenness and the water accelerates forming eddies.in maturitywhen crossing flatter areas, the current moves slowlywhich is beneficial for the lands it crosses, since it feeds the banks without eroding them. In the end, when it approaches the sea, its flow has increased and moves with the slow solemnity of an old man, often forming a fertile delta at the mouth by way of inheritance.

The waters of a river are very changeable, just like our experiences: sometimes the course is very fast and linear, other times it creates winding meanders, you often have to overcome obstacles or fearlessly jump into the void forming waterfalls.

Can have a restless and superficial or deep and serene journey. Even on certain occasions it “gets out of hand” and causes floods.

Life flows, slides through the great avenues or the small recesses of time and space. No moment is the same as another and each place can be seen from a different angle. Everything changes and at the same time seems to repeat itself. Am I the same as a few years ago or maybe minutes? Yes and no, we could say.

Both the history of humanity and the course of a personal life move like a river: meandering forward, sometimes slowly, sometimes more quickly; noisy or sad, as sometimes happens to us.

Thought as a torrent: a continuous current

Continuing with the analogies, we observe that within us there are two important “rivers”. The first is the one that forms the continuous and essential movement of the blood, through which cells are fed and purified. The other, more subtle, is that of one’s own mind.

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Indeed, we can stop and remain motionless in silence, but the blood will continue to circulate throughout the body and our mind will not stop thinking. This psychic current can be considered immaterial on the one hand (we cannot locate it in a concrete way) and on the other so real that it ultimately constitutes the scope of our experiences.

That cycle of life and consciousnessif we can separate both aspects, is what Hinduism and Buddhism call samsara or wheel of existence.

If our lives are similar to a river that advances, be it placidly or turbulently, it means that we can control the course of the waters to a certain extent, but not totally.

That is, on the one hand the force of karma (law of action-reaction according to our actions) and on the other the influence of emotions conflictive (anger, ignorance, attachment, pride, greed) make us often get carried away by events.

In this sense, from a spiritual point of view, various symbolic solutions: trace the waters back to their source or origin; go down the stream, avoiding dangers, to the ocean understood as liberation; O well to cross the river“to reach the other shore”.

This last image is often used in Buddhism to mean leaving the waters of samsara and reaching the Nirvana, where suffering no longer exists.

Regardless of personal beliefs regarding these issues, the practice of meditation in its various traditional forms (within Buddhism: vipasana, zazen, shamata) helps calm the often troubled waters of the mindwhich on the one hand is a natural way to calm down and on the other can be the first step towards the progressive discovery of our true nature.

The symbolism of the river: what does it mean?

As we see, river symbolism is rich in meaning. It should be remembered that a river grows through the convergence of various tributaries, in the same way that society is based on cooperation between people.

If we take his example, he also invites us to follow our own path in life. Well, it does not have a path drawn up in advance, it is the river itself that carves its course. Also it can symbolize the journey and the adventure, with its changes of horizon and the transformation of the landscape.

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Although ultimately it is the search for one’s own identity. Just as time seeks the eternal, the river follows the call of the sea.

It could even be said that the river has a artistic soul, especially dreamy and musical.

In the words of Pedro Caba: “Every river is poetry, mirror and awareness of the landscape”.

You have to know how to swim and put away your clothes. This saying -of prosaic appearance- implies enjoy the beauty and pleasures of life, but without being carried away by the currents and eddies that create negative emotions and misconceptions. Putting away clothes can mean not losing sight of or neglecting the good that we have inside us: the capacity for discernment and altruism, wisdom and compassion.

Finally, nothing better than a love poem that someone wrote in ancient China so that, centuries later, it could be read by us:

“Quickly, my boat glides. I look at the river. Clouds roam the sky. The water is also clear night. When a cloud glides over the moon, I see it slide down the river, and it seems to me that I am rowing in full heaven. I think of my beloved, that is how she looks in my heart”.

The role of rivers in different cultures

Discovering the sources of a river has often been a mystery explorers and scientists have gone after. Today, with the help of satellites, it is easier and yet it is not always possible to determine the main current. It is the same difficulty that we have when asking ourselves about the beginning of our existence as a species or as individuals.

“The river is a path that walks”, affirmed the philosopher Pascal. Most of the great civilizations have arisen on the banks of a river.

let’s remember the Euphrates and the Tigris from ancient Mesopotamia, the Nile Of Egipt, the indus and the ganges in India, or the mekong in Southeast Asia and the Huang-ho, cradle of chinese civilization. Not only did the water from these rivers allow the birth of agriculture, but it has fostered human culture in a broad sense.

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Where does a river begin and where does it end? The symbolic response that religions give is that of a celestial origin. This is even physically true, since clouds and rain are phenomena, if not celestial or supernatural, then celestial.

So, According to Hinduism, the Ganges flows directly from Heaven. and has the virtue of erasing human errors by purifying accumulated karma, cleansing both body and soul of the living that are washed in it, like the ashes of the dead that are deposited in its waters. Let us remember, within Christianity, the baptism of Jesus in the waters of the Jordan River.

In the description of the Terrenal.paradise it is located in its center the Tree of Life, from where four rivers depart that are directed -forming a cross- towards the four cardinal points. Significantly, the same thing happens in the Himalayas at the base of the sacred mountain of Kailas, from where great rivers flow towards the four directions of space.

Often, the separation between the world of the living and the “afterlife” is marked by a river. This is what happens in the posthumous river voyage recounted by the egyptian book of the deador the transport of the soul in the charon’s barque according to the ancient Greeks.

Like any fundamental symbol, the river represents two opposite and complementary truths: on the one hand, life (growth, fertility) and on the other, death (irreversibility of time, oblivion).

“Our lives are the rivers that flow into the sea, which is dying”, is read in the verses of Jorge Manrique. Which does not mean that it is an absolute end, but the Passage to other states of existence.

Let us remember that when a river reaches its mouth it seems to cease to exist as such, but the current remains and the water does not stop flowing in a continuous movement.

Just like our lives, the river has a cycle or circle formed by a material side (its existence as a water course) and a more subtle one (clouds that rise from the sea and form the rain that falls back to the earth). Thus the soul, according to many beliefs, is reborn again just as a river does and does not end with physical death.