On the subject of the everythingness and how to be in the midst of the barrage: the unharmonious and simultaneous coexistence of different feelings, intensities, and inner movements that we may experience—
I am a little bird in the palm of my hand.
Last week, I was reminded of how gnarly and conflicting the inner-world can get. Of how gritty and grating even a low level of cacophony can be. Of how angsty that sort of incoherence can make us feel.
While shifting around inside, settling to rest within as my own captain and my own anchor, a simple refrain came that offered up so much gentleness and simplicity it became like a lullaby, leading to home: I am a little bird in the palm of my hand. Sometimes, I am a little bird in the palm of my own hands, a little wounded bird, and I must stroke her gently, tend to her, love her as she is.
This little bird, I listen to. And when I listen to her, the world around me fades away. There is just this little precious bird and me. This little precious bird who needs the simple gaze of my love. Who maybe I’ve turned away from before. Who just needs me to stay the course, stay with her, without any idea or goal about what is going to happen in this moment that we share. Without needing her to change.
She is soft and quiet, plump and tender. She is not ready to fly. She rests in my hand without expectation, tired and unsure, disoriented from havoc winds, weakened and discouraged from existing within them.
She is a part of me. In this kaleidoscopic experience of “self,” she is another mirrored fragment, and for whatever mysterious reason that I do not need to know the answer to, she has appeared now, she has mustered herself up and out, the circumstances have pushed her above ground. She does not need a sermon or a brew. She just needs me. For this moment, there is just this little bird and she just needs me.
I zoom in and more in to just me and her. I don’t interrogate her; I don’t ask any questions. I just pet her, look at her as she is. I don’t try to be her shaman; no, now is not the time to activate another aspect or part. I am simply with her. She inhales weakly, exhales gently, her cute little body moved rhythmically by her breath. It’s just this gaze of love, this togetherness that affirms I am here with you and like that, the profound alchemy of life that is neither mine nor yours, that is unique to no one, the profound alchemy of life does what it will do.
Something relents in the little bird in my hands. Something works itself out and departs. Something returns. I spent many years dissecting and defining the whats of the subconscious and am sure that it is both liberation and kindness to meet ourselves without the looking glass. To retire the microscope. To bring it out only when it is exactly what is called for. Instead, we may welcome in simply by virtue of listening to and fully feeling our parts, much like the relaxation we feel when we know someone is fully listening to us, feeling us, taking us in. For many of us, this simplicity of safe joining, of melting together instead of the dissection of analysis is precisely the nonviolence we are looking for.
Now, the little bird in the palm of my hands is more spread throughout me. I feel the rhythm of her breath within the movement of my own belly, her sweet little feathers quietly part of my shoulders. She is now a more integrated part of the epic concoction of Self that I both am and am not, that I play and discover through, the skins I shed, the kaleidoscope I see through, the anima and the eros, the gifts and treasures I enjoy for a moment or a lifetime, and ultimately: the profound shape of me & my life that is informed, refined, and created by the going through.
Though I also feel her in my hands, vulnerable, nuzzling her neck into the strength of my bent fingers as I massage her. Less outside, more inside, a new iteration of a relational experience of Self. It is not perfect and it is ever-changing, far from static. This is a happy ending.
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