Reminders and symbols

Sometimes, you just get out of whack. You forget your true nature. You drown in life's barrage of emotional attacks and curveballs. Wouldn't it be wonderful to constantly have touch with that calm still centered space deep within you 100% of the time, so all the tumult arises around you and dissipates without striking that inner ocean?

Maybe you are there. I am not. However, for those of us in the same boat as I am, there can be some sort of reminder... a trigger if you will, to get you back to that state if you find you have been washed out to sea in the storm of life's hardships.

For me, it's birds. Let me explain. I am not the first contemplating soul to remark that all things evolve and can achieve perfected form. Rocks have a type of consciousness, for instance.... maybe not like yours or mine, but they have one in their own way. They know they are rocks. When that knowing becomes perfected, what you have is a gem. Gems are perfected rocks. Just like flowers are evolved plants.

Birds, if you are catching my drift, are highly evolved reptiles. Some people like gems. Some like flowers. They feel moved by them. For me, it's birds.

A bird can do something of which I am a bit envious: fly. When flying way up in the sky, the bird is surrounded by space... pure space. That space contains everything: objects, light, sound, the bird itself. No matter what that bird does while flying, the space can contain it. The bird can chirp, flap, poop, screech, whatever. Anything it does gets swallowed up lovingly by the endless sky.

That fact is analogous, in my mind, to existence. We exist in pure Being, which can be interpreted loosely as pure space, pure silence, pure stillness, or their pure opposites. Sitting back and being swallowed up by those things can be done in order to reconnect with the core of a person's true self. I wish I could live there all the time, but alas, I cannot. Whenever I see a bird flying in the sky, I am reminded of that space, however, and I think, "Oh yeah, silly, you shouldn't be letting your mind wander off in all these directions causing you distress... it's all FAKE. But the space.... the space is Real." Just breath and be in it.

This kind of stuff is tough to put into words. I am not a Dan Millman, Ken Wilber, or Eckhart Tolle, but I thought I would simply get it out there anyway.