The final separation… where the link with the original source appears to be completely forgotten, is often illustrated by a snowflake that has crystallised from the water in the cloud, which had originally evaporated from the ocean. Here you have a highly structured, highly individual, separate entity which bears, seemingly, no resemblance to its source. Now you really need some sophisticated knowledge about water to recognise that the snowflake is the ocean and the ocean is the snowflake. And in order to reunite with the ocean, the snowflake has to give up its structure and individuality; it has to go through an ego death, as it were, to return to its source.

Taken from Uncommon Wisdom by Fritjof Capra