Reflections On SELF
by Richie Lubner
There are moments in every life when the sense of ‘me’ and ‘everything else’
quietly falls away. Sometimes it happens standing above the wide, open sweep of Plettenberg Bay, where the mountains rise like ancient guardians, the ocean stretches into forever, and the air itself feels softer, more alive.
Or walking along the shoreline, where the rhythm of the waves seems to breathe you, rather than the other way around. Or in the warmth of the people - the easy African smiles, the unspoken kindness, the sense that beneath all our stories, we are not so separate after all.
And suddenly… something stops.
The mind goes quiet.
The usual noise falls away.
And what remains is both vast and deeply intimate as if the mountains, the sea and your own heart are not three things, but one seamless field of being.
These moments feel extraordinary because the beauty is undeniable.
The curve of the bay. The playfulness of the dolphins.
The meeting of green and blue.
The golden light resting gently on everything it touches.
The quiet presence in another human being when they are simply… there.
But we misunderstand what is happening.
We think it’s the place.
The landscape, the magic of Plett.
The beauty of its people.
So we long to return. To hold it. To recreate it.
And in doing that, we miss the deeper invitation woven into it all.
Because the mountains are not giving you something.
The ocean is not creating that feeling.
The people are not the source of that warmth.
They are revealing something.
In their presence, their stillness, their openness and their naturalness, the boundary you usually carry begins to soften. The sense of separation loosens.
And for a moment, life is no longer happening ‘to you’ or ‘around you.’
It is simply happening… as you.
A depth opens.
A stillness that isn’t empty, but full.
A quiet wholeness that asks for nothing.
You can’t quite name it.
You can’t quite locate it.
But once you’ve stood there with the mountains behind you, the ocean before you and another human being beside you and felt that dissolving…
You don’t forget.
So the real question isn’t just what these moments are.
It’s this:
What are they pointing to?
When the beauty of nature and the beauty of people mirror the same truth back to you…
And are you willing to turn toward that not only when you’re held by the vastness of Plettenberg Bay, but in the quiet, ordinary moments of your life…
Where the same ocean moves, the same mountains stand, and the same warmth lives quietly within everyone you meet?
