Walk in the storm

It’s been a really wet week. It started at the beach in fun last weekend when we ran out to walk near the shoreline under the rain. I love walking under the rain. And under storms, too, either in beaches or in mountains. I have done it many times in my life. There is something so wild and raw about feeling the first sting of the wind, gasping in that first breath of salt and sea through air. It is a real slap of the reality of the moment against any complacency the body or mind may have been in.

Except at that moment, the wind became a gale and I began to lose equilibrium. Steadying on feet that were sinking and curling into the shifting sand, I suddenly had an overwhelming feeling that I was losing control. The rain poured down hard while the sea next to us began to roar. Waves started rising, their white crescent tips widening. Walking through the storm demanded total attention in the moment. Every step began to be a conscious negotiation with chaos. And my mind split inside as a weird expanded reflection began to come through it.

My sarong, drenched and heavy, blowing in the wind, was impeding my walk. It reminded me of so much burdens we sometimes choose to carry. I took off the sarong and continued in my bathing suit. The path I was following dissolved into a landscape of blurred edges and hidden obstacles (like evading a sharp glass or jumping over a log washed to shore). Yes, I was being forced into a state of hyper-awareness, trusting instinct as much as sight. This wasn’t a fun stroll anymore. It was a dialogue with Nature’s elemental force, where surrender meant falling down, and perseverance became a physical power play of muscle and balance. I was in a moving meditation. It was a surrender with a sacred awareness — each step a conscious movement through the chaos, each breath a silent prayer whispered to Mother Nature. My body pressed forward against unseen resistance, as rain became both burden and baptism. And my heart opened to the rhythm of Mother Nature’s fury.

Suddenly a flash of insight came to me….I was in a ritual of baptism and cleansing, meeting the storm in full, and knowing that this symbolic cleansing was letting me release some issues I had been harboring deep in my heart. For these were already of the past, and they no longer served me. Ah, truly, transformation comes at the strangest times — rarely gentle, but always sacred.

Today, as I write this article, five tropical depressions/typhoons have come. And left flooding in so many places. Outside, the gale and rain continue. These storm/s are the very landscape of our times. We are now walking collectively through a global tempest of climate crisis, fractured societies, economic tremors and the profound disorientation of rapid, often unsettling, transformation that technology is giving us.

The winds of change howl, tearing at the fragile structures we once relied upon, traditions that grounded us.

Systems are breaking, truths are crumbling, and illusions are fading. The global storm is demanding we lean in, adjust our footing, and shed illusions of control. The bombardment of information, conflict, and uncertainty is that relentless rain, threatening to drown our spirit.

Someone asked me if things will be better soon. And my response is always, “another two or three years,” with a mix of both trepidation for the unknown and excitement for the new coming.

Collectively, we are all in this storm walk. This is not merely about endurance; it is the sacred, messy ground of transformation. It strips away the non-essential, forces clarity, and calls forth the resilience we as humanity don’t think we possess.

Technology, geo-politics, climate — each is now crashing like waves against the shore... echoing the inner chaos we collectively carry. And the objective of all this is spiritual transformation, a realignment to the sacred, to our planet, to our souls, that has been forgotten.

The world convulses with uncertainty, and if we take this as a sacred meditation, we are tasked with holding stillness within motion, finding soul within the storm. We are finding our tribe, we are connecting with those whom we resonate with and releasing those who do longer share our frequency, either individually or as a group. And this is so important, because in the storm walk within the chaos lies this potent seed of “kapwa,” of our shared humanity. Finding your tribe today is like finding shelter or a steadying hand in the physical storm.

Navigating today’s upheavals requires deep connection, community, our “bayanihan” spirit that looks out for others, too, and not just one’s selfish aims. Alignments and re-alignments, shifts in lifestyles, changes in choices of relationships to continue, collaborations with social and environmental impactful outcomes, are fueled by one’s value systems and, yes, energetic frequencies. We need to take strength, share strength and joy with each other, and not be bogged down by those who do not want to change or grow. It’s just the way of the shifting times. Conflicts of the times will make us see this. Water will find its level, just as the same frequencies will resonate towards each other.

For this next couple of years, we walk not around the storm but through it — knowing that on the other side lies not a return to the old, but the emergence of a landscape; and a self, irrevocably changed, cleansed and strengthened by the journey. The storm doesn’t just mark change; it is the crucible in which our future is being forged, step by deliberate step. Walking in the storm now is an act of reclamation: Of spirit, of vision, of our shared humanity. We are being forged through challenges and crises or triumphs and excitement in a transformational space, shaping a new future we are yet to name.