This Shore is Covered With Rocks
- Astra Soulfeather
- Sep 25
- 5 min read
There are the large rocks, stones the sort of size to please children as they stagger with them, two-handed, to the sea, hefting them in the water with a satisfying ‘plunk’.
There are the hand-held rocks, ones that fit comfortably in your palm, some with surprising holes all the way through or with three corners that shock your bare feet when you unsteadily walk over their shifting surface.
There are the tiny rocks, drifts of minute pebbles in great grading curves along the seashore, tangled with seaweed and shells and cuttlefish bones; the smallest stones you find yourself absent-mindedly rearranging as you listen to the ocean.
Then there is the sand, smooth and brown, damp and soft, where the solid reality of the stones meets the suppleness of the sea. This is the rock worn down by weather and water and landscape over thousands of millions of years, rock that we no longer call ‘rock’ yet comprising the same material as all that lays stretched up the slope of the coast, now in the form of drifting, compacted grains that are tugged to and fro by the tide.
And then there is what could be. Apply heat – extreme heat, the sort found in the hottest of lava flows, or within a nuclear blast zone, or perhaps the surface of the sun touching the shoreline – then drop the scene rapidly into icy cool temperatures, and the rock will transform again, this time into glass. Imagine that shoreline, where the impressionable sand is replaced with crystal glass, a sparkling mirror of coast along which the sea laps and bubbles.
We can visit the real beach, plunk the large rocks in the water, find our footing over others, play with the tiniest pebbles, poke our toes in the sand. And reaching into our dream-space, we can imagine the glossy surface of the beach that occurs with time and heat and cold. We can travel forward in our imagination to perceive the erosion of large rocks into hand-held rocks, into pebbles, into sand, and eventually into glass. We don’t have to see it in our world to wonder at it in our minds. And when we are in the dream-space, we see the Truth of things; that the material world offers an opportunity to see ourselves in new ways, if only we pause for long enough to contemplate, and make meaning, from the relationships and beings we are witnessing.
We so want to be the big rocks. We want to be large, heavy, impressive. We want to stand out on the shoreline so that we are seen and lifted up. We want to make a loud, reverberating sound when we are thrown into the ocean. We try very hard to be a Big Rock, to please and satisfy, to make an impact on the world in some way – in any way. We want to be somebody, and that means being a Big Rock.
Being a Big Rock seems impressive, but the price is high. It asks you to resist the natural passage of time and weather, to be unmoved by the River of Life swirling around you. To be a Big Rock, you must stay further up the beach, away from the babbling, playful sea, away from the liminal border that brings change and freshness. Big Rocks don’t get to have surprising holes, or three corners, or mingle with the shells and seaweed. They aren’t caressed or re-arranged, because that means erosion, and they cannot be eroded. Big Rocks cannot be worn down; they cannot crumble. They must not lose anything. They must not change.
In the dream-space, anything is possible. Millions of years can fly by in moments. Sand turns to glass and to sand again, the ocean recycling it endlessly into grains and solids, from cliffs to crystalline pieces. In the dream-space, we can imagine what it would be like to let go of our desire to be the Big Rock. Safe in the dream-space, we can see what might happen if we shift our senses and change our hold on the world.
As we let go of being a Big Rock, we tumble. We fall into the curves of the shingle, and our surface is abraded, then smoothed, then abraded again as we make contact with other stones jostling for their place. Millennia pass, and we become hand-held size. Water washes over us, more rocks crowd around us, and the holes form; deep tunnels into our very heart through which cool wind blows and dark things crawl.
In the dream-space, eons zip by, and we become pebbles. We are touched in our tenderest of places, and new layers of ourselves revealed; strata and inclusions we did not know existed, that appear vibrant and glittering as we are jumbled in the sea water. We are even more beautiful than we could imagine, now that we have had our dull edges sanded down by time and movement.
Deeper still into the dream-space, into the ages, we become sand. We feel all of ourselves, every grain from our time as a Big Rock, but now we are malleable, flexible; we spread out, become formless, reform, and allow ourselves to be washed away. We mingle freely with others, the particles of who we are interlocking and decoupling with the motes of who they are, over and over again.
The dream-space suddenly grows hot, blisteringly so, and then just as rapidly there is a deep, peaceful cool. We hear the ocean whispering, as we always have. But where before there was the constant knocking of stone against stone, Big Rock to hand-held to pebble to sand, there is now a hushed, beautiful singing. We are no longer mingling, no longer meeting and reforming, abrading each other. Instead, we are One; one shining glittering mirror of glass that extends far beyond the horizon, reflecting the infinite sky and laughing sea, sparkling with the pure pleasure of being here, being alive, being together. We are utterly transparent, visible only through our effervescent reflection. We are as clear as crystal, and as the waves lap against our edges, it is like the gentlest brush on the edge of a wine glass. With each movement of the ocean, a chime rings out, and the never-ending layers of our harmonious song fills the air; a song of serenity echoing into the Universe.
Our aim in life is not to become a Big Rock, an impressive ‘somebody’ that remains standing alone and separate on the beach. It is to become glass; to become a mirror; it is to experience the dissolving of the self and the integration into Oneness. It is to travel the path to transparency, and to crystalline insight. It is to learn what it means to become nobody – and in doing so, discover unending peace, and beauty, and release.
This piece of original writing was created by Astra Soulfeather. No AI was used to ideate, write or edit this work. The featured images are digital artworks created by Astra Soulfeather in open-source software GIMP using images generated by Chat GPT, original photographs, and botanical illustrations from Heritage Type available under a Creative Commons license. © 2025 Astra Soulfeather & Higher Love Co. All rights reserved.
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