Water literally regulates the earth’s temperature. It also regulates the temperature of the human body, carries nutrients and oxygen to cells, cushions joints, protects organs and tissues, removes waste. Water, while it appears to pour freely from the heavens, seems to flow endlessly in rivers, is a finite resource. We only have what we have. It’s a precious resource more valuable than gold or silver. Water is constantly being recycled. It falls, condenses, evaporates and reappears, over and over again. Water droplets continually are transforming themselves. In a 100-year period, a water molecule spends 98 percent of its existence in the ocean, 20 months as ice, about two weeks in lakes and rivers and less than a week in the atmosphere. None of this water is new; it is just recycled, over, over and over again.

We see the exact form of what water shows us when we examine crystals of frozen water forming into particular shapes. This allows us to see, by means of a frozen picture, the pictorial message the droplet is carrying.  So, if water can carry memory and we can see this in particular geometric forms we can ingest as fruit, vegetables or from the blood in meat, we can see how water is a medium upon which all life is built.

In the body there is a continuous flow of information between the cells. This information is carried by intracellular transport mediums. They’re essentially piggybacking minerals and hormones on the back of water to allow us to get out of bed in the morning.

When water interfaces with other elements we can see the different forms it takes. When we watch the clouds moving across the sky, or the bubbles of a stream, or the steam off a hot spring, we are watching the movie of water as it moves in another element. When it snows, we see the individual snowflakes telling the unique tale of exactly what imprint occurred to that droplet of water.  Of course, we don’t really know what we are looking at but the fact they are all different shows that water is a living thing capable of memory which may be captured as it enters a different medium or changes form due to temperature. Even watching the foam on the waves is telling us a story. It is not necessary to decode this, but more importantly to watch the dance of it all and realise we are watching a tale we can barely understand but the tale is eternal and perpetually changing which gives us a glimpse of our own ancient story.

The bubbles in the water from the stream do not cease, and they do not repeat. They are an endless play of form upon the water, they’re no less than the thoughts of the river which allows us to see what we are capable of.  When water touches a seed, it calls its latent genetics into life and begins to grow and form into a plant.  When we pause for a moment to ponder the wonders that water brings to us at every moment of every day, to despoil it in any way becomes not only inconceivable but insane as it is quite literally keeping us alive and allowing every interaction with every other living being we have.

Truly, if water can be imprinted upon, to fail to use this to create the most fantastic forms capable of instructing our molecules in life-preserving and radically creative ways seems like a massive waste of resources.

When we take the time to immerse ourselves in water, or consume it with rapt attention our entire relationship with life shifts as we are changing the way we relate with not only ourselves but every other single drop of water in existence from the sea to the ants even the concrete, and everything in between.

And we ask, why does water not just collect memory endlessly and end up as a vast storehouse of information? Well, when we expose it to direct sunlight or freeze it, it essentially erases its memory and has the ability to imprint something new.

When we look at distilled water which is basically water stripped of its mineral content, it becomes water hungry for information and minerals. This is why it is the perfect matrix to imprint upon – much like a blank canvas hungry for paint.

When water becomes polluted with either human or chemical impurities it eventually becomes tainted too. This is the story of waterborne diseases like cholera and dysentery, diseases which act as a warning to those foolish enough to pollute their own drinking water.   Water does not judge, it is just the reflection of what we put into it.  Like any good mirror it will reflect the beauty or the taint relentlessly to either encourage us in a particular direction or discourage us from a course of action.

Since water allows life to exist and growth to happen, to assume that water is not alive in some sense is not really that useful. If water allows the stuff of thought and emotion to be imprinted upon it (as in Dr Emoto’s work and with the Ganges), then in a sense, it has life or more accurately it is life itself.  Just as our bodies could not exist without carbon the same goes triply for water.

If we see how much water there is in everything, from trees to grass to sea to lakes to coffee to shower time, to everything we put into our body, we see how truly dependent we are on this living matrix that allows life to exist and transact with itself.

Then there is the process of rain and watering of crops, the filling of lakes, the formation of clouds and the flooding of lands where what once was earth is no more.

Everyone can shift the way they view water. Committing to respect all life forms that share the water and depend upon it for survival will go a long way to restoring and preserving our waterways.

Catholic priest and ecologist Thomas Berry, CP, PhD, in his classic book, The Dream of the Earth, points out that three rivers of knowledge and wisdom are contributing to this deepening of consciousness about the planet earth: First, an awareness reinforced by science about the interconnectedness of everything; second, a deeper recognition of the fragile relationship of human health with natural environments; and third, a renewed appreciation and recovery for indigenous teachings about spiritual life. Berry suggested that before political solutions can be appropriated to address urgent problems of a global water crisis, we need to embrace humility about the essential mystery of the natural world, particularly water.