Chosen By A Whale
Molly and I were momentarily suspended and beautifully intertwined in a nondual world.
Artwork©Daniil Lipin/123rf
Imagine being on the Pacific ocean, 15 feet away from a wild, 40-ton, pregnant migratory whale. In January 2015, while in Laguna Beach, California, I decided to go paddle board surfing for the first time. After signing up for a lesson, I met my instructor on the pristine beach. The Pacific Ocean was serene; there was hardly a wave breaking the shore. While still on the beach, my instructor showed me how to use my paddle to negotiate the surfboard. We took off on the ocean.
As I gradually found my balance, we eventually went far from shore, and several whale sightseeing boats passed us. The passengers gasped with delight, and we were all thrilled to see a gray whale’s heart-shaped, puffy blows at the surface of the water. We paddled farther from shore to visit a group of playful seals that dove through the Pacific Ocean. I gained more confidence with paddling on my surfboard, and felt connected to the marine life around me. Although the ocean surface was as still as a smooth sheet of glass, a legion of life appeared beneath the surface.
The whale I have come to call Molly — a magnificent gray whale who was 50 feet long but levitated from the sea momentarily motionless, reminiscent of the supernatural hovering ability of the hummingbird — suddenly spy-hopped, not once but twice, first about 15 feet away from me, and then again 30 feet away without creating a single ripple while I remained awestruck on my surfboard.
Spy-hopping occurs when a whale vertically pokes its head and upper body out of the water for a look at activity above the water’s surface. In no time our eyes met. I felt a great power emanate from her body. Molly seemed to be acting in a protective manner, like an attuned mother, by not creating a ripple, as I was shaky and learning a new skill. If whales can smile, I felt Molly was smiling and greeting me.
With her vertical half-rise out of the water, Molly’s upper body filled my entire field of vision, and I surrendered to the astounding moment and remained motionless. But when our eyes gravitated toward each other, she not only evoked the divine and sublime within me, but challenged me to reevaluate my perception of intelligent, conscious life. There was a glimmer of light in her walnut-sized brown eye. Her wise, soulful left eye held and contained me, like none other, for what felt like an eternity, but was in reality just 20 seconds. Her large eye seemed to be expressing my unexplored thoughts and actions; she was beckoning me to go deeper with them.
I felt an immediate kinship with her. As I was born legally blind in my right eye, my right pupil is larger than my left, and I primarily use unifocal vision to read. This method of seeing is similar to that of gray whales, who also use unifocal vision, as opposed to most humans who focus bifocally.
One could easily identify in my post-delivery baby photographs that my right pupil was much larger than my left due to a post lenticular cataract, which in medical school I had learned is indicative of a congenital cataract. Usually, this congenital malformation is diagnosed on a routine, neonatal pediatric examination with an ophthalmological scope. Despite my father being a physician, my cataract was not detected until I was in first grade.
When I was 6 years old, I was exhilarated to finally have my turn to be sent out of class for my eye exam. After the exam, I was frustrated to not be able to read the examiner’s note, which was written in script, as I could only read print. As I knew something was wrong, desperately I struggled upon returning to class to make sense of her script.
When my mom heard the news that I was legally blind in my right eye, she responded, “All my children were skunk cabbage and garbage.” I remember thinking, “What is skunk cabbage?” and asked her if we could have it for breakfast the next day. For a long time after this, we played a sadistic game in which I covered my good eye and my mom would ask me to detect the number of fingers she was holding in front of me. My mom’s contempt toward me left me feeling defective.
What an affirming surprise to find that my Molly has unifocal vision just like me! Under Molly’s monocular vision I felt recognized and accepted, in contrast to my mom’s bifocal vision, within which I felt abandoned and marginalized. Molly’s loving gaze welcomed me into a rich world of infinite, emotional spaciousness. In my relationship with my mom, there was only emotional room for her. I was raised to be a good Catholic girl and not have a voice. I was “bad Nina” when I expressed myself, especially if it did not reflect back to my mom what she felt. She had two healthy physical eyes, but could only see herself.
Before that day out on the ocean, I felt a captive to my mom, but I began to be able to glimpse the breadth of the world through my stunning and life altering moment with Molly. Now it feels so clear that I was blinded but now I see.
My seasoned instructor was wonderstruck by Molly’s monumental half-vertical rising and towering over me at such an intimate distance. Fifty feet to the side of Molly and me, he captured on his camera only Molly’s footprint in the ocean as she used her massive fluke to dive deeper into the ocean depth away from me. With one push of her tremendous fluke, Molly left eight-foot-wide footprints in the ocean water. I felt Molly was saying to me, “When you are big and you know it, you don’t have to make a splash or have fangs. I don’t have to play it; I am it.” Despite being gargantuan, Molly moved with the flexibility and nimbleness reminiscent of actors like Zero Mostel. Molly was fat and womby. Far from being a cutting presence, my Molly was embracing and nurturing with a loving sweetness. Gray whales, in fact, have no teeth; instead they have baleens, which are soft and composed of keratin, with the consistency of fingernails.
From late December through January, Molly was on her journey along with other pregnant grays, migrating from the Arctic seas along the Pacific coast to calve their babies in the warm lagoons of Baja, Mexico. These gray whales have the longest known migration of any mammals, traveling 12,000 miles round trip every year between the cold feeding waters of the Arctic seas and the shallow, protective, warm waters of the lagoons of Mexico. Through her own mammoth journey to give birth, Molly was inviting and inspiring me to give birth to my deeper creativity, long stifled and higher consciousness. Molly’s profound kinship and attunement gave me the courage to become better able to distance myself from my childhood anxieties about being “an oddball.” I slowly became emancipated to begin to express my thoughts and feelings with less criticism and a newfound sense of expansive freedom.
My instructor commented on how lucky I was, as gray whales are not known to spy-hop humans, much less at such a close distance, during their migration south. But this event felt as if it had nothing to do with luck; it was as if this divine creature and I were old soul mates who knew each other many lifetimes, millions of years ago, and together we had led pods of other whales through portals in the ocean. She was again greeting me, and I her.
People with whom I relive this mystical experience often ask me if I was scared. I was too awe-inspired to be scared, and from deep within I knew I had beckoned Molly forth that day, and we were again merged as one. She was a massive and wild animal who could easily bring me intentional or accidental harm by simply neglecting her body’s orientation to mine. Instead, Molly not only exercised great care not to startle or dislodge me from my paddle surfboard ,but lent herself to be attuned and meet me.
This pageantry of gentle and accepting attunement in such a dramatic and forceful, three-dimensional scale is the experience every baby needs. Molly seemed to understand and kept a respectful distance from me to not overwhelm me, but she chose to come close enough to meet me. Dr. Roger Payne, a pioneering whale biologist, refers to the “10-foot barrier” at which it simply feels too uncomfortable and terrifying to be any closer to a whale. Molly had a mindfulness to respect this 10-foot barrier and my personal space by spy-hopping me at a distance of 15 feet, allowing me to feel safe in our encounter.
In no time, Molly conveyed to me a new way to listen, feel, and understand without using words. I was able to take in and connect with a massively attuned being. I was home, a place where I am whole, floating on my paddle surfboard next to an inquisitive, gentle whale whose soulful, wise left eye looked into and contained me. In Molly’s recognition, I felt a clearer, fresher state of being and a greater sense of completeness.
Even though I had little previous experience of feeling chosen, I remained gobsmacked by the fact that Molly had chosen me to have this ecstatic encounter. Molly and I were amalgamated as one. I felt I finally belonged through my alignment with Molly. Similar to an alchemic conversion of dross into gold, my encounter with Molly was a parallel process of converting my human form into an elevated and higher spiritual force. Molly and I were momentarily suspended and beautifully intertwined in a nondual world. But I could not stay here long because there was too much light.
It was an honor that very few humans will experience, having contact with a whale in such an intimate way, in her natural habitat, and on her terms. By visualizing this day and imagining riding on Molly’s back with her heart-shaped, puffy blows spraying me in my face while we breach the water surface, I settle myself from the chatter in my mind to calm and center myself. Molly is my blanket, reassuring me that the world is an embracing one.
Dr. Nina Cerfolio MD, is a nationally recognized expert on trauma and terrorism, and a board-certified psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City for over 30 years. Her new book, Psychoanalytic and Spiritual Perspectives on Terrorism: Desire for Destruction (Routledge, 2023), includes her team’s cutting edge new research and her extraordinary first-hand experiences of being a first responder exploring a more expansive understanding of the origins of terrorism.
