.....shining my light

Yogis,
When you finally get quiet and check in on what’s happening on the inside you typically bump into the mind first. Like a loud friend, thoughts, one after another streaming through. They list out everything that has to get done, replay what happened yesterday and share their favorite theme of what is wrong with both you and the world. Blah, blah, blah.

If you are willing to sit a bit longer, become silent and go deeper, beneath the thinking mind, you will encounter another you. The you that watches the thoughts. The you that isn’t making comments or judging everything as right or wrong but is simply observing. Can you find it? I will call this your awareness. And wherever you point your awareness, expansion and light will follow.

This story began with two pale yellow birdhouses that have hung beneath Danny’s garage eaves next door for as long as I can remember. A reliable home for the sparrows. When Danny died last summer, I realized that the birds he had befriended and tended would need a new home, so I transferred the houses to my front porch roof, facing their original home. Hopeful that they, like me, would be willing to make a move next door.

Each morning I watched for activity. Looking for any new pieces of straw at the openings. I bought bird seed and filled a jar to keep on the porch. With a whistle I tossed seed each afternoon into the fallen leaves which line the front. Whenever I came or went I listened for their rustling in the boxwoods….a perfect hiding place…..and sent a hearty hello  their way. Soon messy puffs of material are hanging from their new digs.

We then discovered a discarded feeder next door which was promptly hung in the center of our front yard. Before long the titmouse, cardinal and chickadees were excitedly flying back and forth from the cover of our large holly trees. When teaching, as I ask everyone to notice what they are hearing in their homes, I am now flooded by bird songs in mine.

Suddenly birds cross my path from every direction. Everyone keeps mentioning birds to me. A hawk flies over my shoulder. A friend recommends a podcast named ‘I worship every bird that I see’. I listen as I sit painting a cardinal.

A post crosses my path for a site where you click on the bird in a tree to hear its call. It reminds me how for years I would ask what sound a particular bird makes, only to find that they, like us, have many voices! To know them we must be willing listeners. I of course click on the cardinal first and at that same moment, a cardinal out the window begins to sing the same songs. I feel closer.

Everywhere I go I hear them. Their calls hold my awareness down below the din of humans. I stop to look them in the eye and watch as their throat forms their words. Thanking them for their patience as I learn.

I have tuned my awareness to the path of birds and a world opened up. Awareness is like a high-powered flashlight. Choose any path you want to follow and shine away! It will guide and surprise you in ways your thinking mind couldn’t imagine.

This morning on my run I was about to turn left when a symphony in a small patch of woods stopped me in my tracks. I entered and stood dead center, closed my eyes and was surrounded and serenaded by a flock of robins. I shined my awareness back to them all.

Where are you shining your light?

I can’t wait to see what is up around the next bend,
SARAH