Dolphin Elders Exist.

A Dolphin Elder Helps to Change The Direction of My Life
By: Araphiel Isaiah Brown

I was having a really hard time in my life. I was 15 years old, and felt frustrated a lot. Somehow it was permeating my whole life. I felt completely bored at school, consequently my grades were dropping. If there was an exciting assignment, I would get right to it, but in handing it in, my teachers would not believe I had done it. It would be such excellent work they thought it was done by an adult. Consequently, they did not believe I was capable of this, so it further pushed me from caring about school. My incentive was dropping and I was just drifting along.
One day my mother took my brothers and I out to swim with the dolphins. She had been swimming with the dolphins for some time and wanted us all to experience it ourselves. We drove an hour out to the western shore of Oahu until we came to a place where a beautiful white sand beach stretched along the shore for miles. The ocean was a steely blue shifting to turquoise with sparkles of sunlight dancing on the smooth glassy surface. Dolphins were jumping and leaping out of the water off the shore about 100 yards out.
As fast as I could, I threw my fins and mask on, and swam out to them. I wanted to make it back in time to surf the waves breaking on shore. Groups of dolphins came by Just out of reach. After a while of trying to catch up with one group at a time as they checked me out and past me. A group of 20 dolphins began swimming toward me and then a strange thing happened. They circled me and held me in their captive dolphin made pen and I grew alarmed. What were they doing? And what did they want from me. For a moment I got really scared. I didn’t know much about dolphins, but here they were, in a tight circle around me, holding me in the center, every dolphin’s attention clearly on me.
Then the circle opened and enlarged as an older dolphin entered the circle swimming over to me looking deep into my eyes. This dolphin had a powerful presence and seemed to be revered by the dolphin clan. But he was covered with scars. I knew he had had a hard life. I thought of mine, all the difficulties and hardships I had endured. There was even a harpoon hole and shark bite out of his fin. I knew he had been through a lot. This old dolphin seemed to be greatly revered by the others and yet, somehow he wanted to make this connection with me.
He continued to look deeply into my eyes and I felt something powerful transfer to me. I was receiving so much that wasn’t even registering on my conscious mind, but somehow I knew something incredible was taking place. There was a message for me but I did not realize how deeply I was touched and how profound this message was for me until many years later.
The circle opened and we all began to swim together. With a strange effortlessness, I was able to follow them at their pace, wherever the dolphins went, and they kept close to me. I was so amazed that I was actually cruising with dolphins! It felt like we were in a silent communion, swimming together in unison, each of us with our past. Every time I would look over, the elder dolphin would bend his head and look directly into my eyes, with a deep soulful look. I felt he could understand what I’d been through and somehow I could understand him. We had both seen hard times.
He kept staying alongside of me, no matter what the others were doing. As we cruised along together, I began thinking about my life, how frustrated I had felt so much of the time and how sick I was of school. I had no direction in life and somehow I didn’t care.
My thoughts drew me down deeper and deeper...until I was remembering the time in my life when everything had changed, when the happy childhood I had known came to a sudden end, and a new, life had begun. My parents had divorced. As my family, had started attacking each other’s character and had victim stories of so many things in their life. I had been 4-5 at the time, innocent, open, loving, carefree, and enthusiastic about life. I got good grades, was into sports, adventures and having fun. As the years passed, my family and steps became angrier and more upset, until finally they were ranting and raving, blaming every time I saw or visited them.
I saw how shocked I had been; saw how devastating this experience had been for me, saw how I had become more quiet, more inner, happiness eluding me.
I never realized how much this had truly affected me, until this moment, swimming with my dolphin friend, within the dolphin pod. I had never thought about it so clearly and deeply before, I had just been living it and shrugging it off.
I now could see how all my Families misery, all their sense of victimhood had passed into me and now, in my teen years, was there right beneath the surface, influencing my life, ruining my life! It had all added up, accumulating over the years, and now it was my misery, my own sense of victimhood, my anger, my rage my un-comfort my lack self esteem and self worth. Somehow I had taken it all on! Was it because I had cared so much, wanted so much to make it better for them?
I looked over to my dolphin friend and he seemed to understand. I felt a sense of compassion and that he really cared. As the misery went out of me. I was seeing the loving boy again, the boy who loved so much and wanted to help, but never could. The boy who could not understand why his family would have to suffer so much and go through all the horrible things they would do and share about.
As fast as the images came to my mind, they would dissolve. I had a great sense of relief, as each one faded from my sight. The pain, the hopelessness, the futility all came up and passed before the screen of my mind and soon, I began to feel a deep sense of peace. The dark clouds were lifting! The deep pain was resolving. The emptiness I had felt for so long was leaving me!
My dolphin friend seemed to smile at me in that moment. I felt he truly understood what had been locked up inside of me and that now I was able to finally see it and release it. It was not mine! But somehow I had taken it on, I had carried my families pains and judgments, my families perspectives, my families sense of injustice deep inside me and it had wounded me. It had left a deep wound and sense of injustice as if it were my own. It had become mine and that was the strange thing about it. And now...now it was gone!
Right then, another dolphin came up on the other side of me and began leaping
high into the air. He was so huge, I got scared. I really thought for a moment that he was going to come right down on top of me! His splashes were huge reverberations through my being. Soon, I was laughing at his acrobatics! This dolphin was having so much fun. I felt he was giving me a message. “Let go of the past and you will find happiness again. You can learn to live in joy.”
He kept up these antics for quite some time, as if to make sure I got the point. Meanwhile, the other, more soulful dolphin continued to swim by my side, moving with me inwardly as well as outwardly....seemingly feeling all that I was feeling and gently guiding me through the healing passage.
After a while I was getting pretty tired and I started falling behind the pod. My dolphin friend stayed behind with me. I really wanted to keep swimming with the dolphins but they were getting way up ahead of me. Mentally I called out to them, “Hey, wait up.” Immediately they all came to a halt and waited until I caught up to them! I could not believe it! They had been going so fast and were getting so far ahead! Now they were waiting for me.
Once I caught up to them, they swam with me at my now slower pace for a long time. I felt much protection, safe, and cared for. My dolphin friend had made it clear that he was aware of everything I was going through. These dolphins were leading me on a healing journey and he was the facilitator of that healing.
Being with him, being one of the group, I could feel the love and protection the dolphins were providing me. It was incredible! They had created a sacred space for my healing process, had lovingly enveloped me with their presences, and because of this, I was able to get in touch with the hurt that was beneath my anger and release it.
I knew it was time for me to have more joy. The seriousness of my families illnesses had etched it’s sad history into my soul. Now, I was being given the opportunity to heal some of that pain and to move on into a happier life of my own.
Finally, my dolphin friends said goodbye and were on their way. My one friend gazed long into my eyes, before turning to follow them. He knew I was a different person, a changed person from that experience. He had gone on the healing journey with me, somehow taking me beyond the anger and my seeming apathy with school and life, deep into the heart of a pain I didn’t even know could be healed. In finding this wounded place inside me...I was able to release it from my life with there help, to finally let go of a big piece of it and the memories that went with it.
I felt very different after that day. I was more relaxed, easy going and peaceful. I seemed to get along better with my family and others, and amazingly I now was taking a renewed interest in school and with an effortlessness that seemed unimaginable, my grades increased.
Everyone noticed a big change in me. They saw that I was a lot happier. For me, I found I had a better intuition about things and a sense to follow that intuition which turned out to be a wise thing to do. I was more creative and excited about my life and I was free of that dull sense within that had for too long been covered over by angers I didn’t understand. The dolphins had set me free!