Meditation is a Spiritual Spring

Each Spring, my wife and I are happy when it's time to head back up to the river, to reopen our little house on the Upper Delaware. It's usually still cold, and a little barren, but there's that vitality starting to percolate with the early birdsong, and the green shoots everywhere, fighting skyward. As always, the Spring brings me a new chance to reconnect with my angels, and myself.

My city meditations are calming and inspirational, but at last, again, I get to unfurl my blanket on a rock by the river, and tether my serenity to the simple magic alive in every natural moment. The early neighbors, mostly red-shouldered blackbirds, don't mind that I open with an audible OM.  My voice breaks, unsteady at first, but I manage to round off the changing syllable, and drop an octave to a solid end.

Almost immediately, thoughts become rather superfluous (thank God). Voices of my angels and ancestors begin to arise as I settle in to the gentle cacophony of the birds' chorus, and the light effervescence of simply being springs open in my heart, and surrounds my mind. I ask my "guardian angel," if I may enter that special place. “Of course,” she answers, "...of course."

A Canadian goose honks past on the wing, and suddenly, a bright, creaky cry puts my meditation on hold. Just down river, a matched pair of Bald Eagles take perch, sitting in their stately patience, welcoming me back to the edge of their river. Life is really alive. The sun rises over a slight saddle in the hills, directly above them, and pours a reflection onto the water, in a line from the pair to my heart.

Then, the voices of my angels arise, not like someone talking in my ear (don’t call the men in white coats…yet), but as intuitive understandings, originating in my heart. My guardian angel tells me, "Be yourself." My favorite childhood aunt says, "We love you."  Our late uncle, a famous philosopher and author, tells me, "Keep writing." Our cat Max, who passed over two years ago, says, "I will help you keep your heart open." My gnostic angel says, "We have work to do." My Buddhist angel advises, "Just sit, and be." It gets a little noisy, being so peaceful.

As the evidence of this deepest magic, when we visit Max's burial site in a fern grove above the house, the path leading to his marker is already dark, exposed earth – when all around are old leaves and forest debris. It looks like it's been raked, even though we haven't set foot there for nearly seven months. Obviously, somebody  has. There are cat paw prints– bigger than I like to see in the neighborhood. Next to them are deer hoof impressions, and other signs. They've all been visiting our friend.

I end my meditation with a stronger, clearer OM, and know that all of this peace and magical connectedness isn’t just imaginary. I've died, and come back to life so many times – this Spring is no different. This meditation is my path back into my truths.

When I return to the city, there will be things that need to be done. There will be talking heads barking the latest. Crowded commutes. Franchise coffee. Clients who wanted color – but not that color!   I ask you, does our reality live in this insistent, numb bombardment of "what must be done," or down that miracle path of meditation, to what truly is, within us, and without us, all? I think you know what I know.

As always, this meditation – like every meditation – is the rediscovery of my spiritual spring.

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 21: Two Feathers, Second Feather

............................................................................read about the first feather

Koko stood on the deck, looking across upriver to New York, to the promontory at the bend, but he didn't know why. He didn't...but then he did.

It had been a couple years. A couple difficult, challenging years in every way, except in the ways it mattered most. His work had gone disappointingly, one remarkable opportunity after another had taken a sudden turn south, until it seemed that you just couldn't even make the stuff up anymore. His big breaks had all broken. How could he be put in such unique and impossible rooms, only to have their possibilities evaporate? He worked his tail off, and yet nothing had taken flight, except his capacity for Love, which drew in the sky. His heart was full and open. She was always there. Food was always on the table. They lived a frugal life of sheer abundance, which didn't seem possible to them either. But it all worked out, somehow.

He knew the lessons he'd learned from the river, just sitting and listening to the wind, the songbirds, the bullfrogs, the sundance writing on the passing water, and the eagles' calls from the top of the white pines; it all taught him how to live a different way. An impossible way.

Now, he was being tapped on the shoulder again, by the unseen. It was telling him, the same way it had before, that the eagles had another feather for him. Another feather? Another feather. A different one, for a different reason. Look over there, they whispered in his ear, where you're looking now.

His neighbor had offered the loan of his kayak, whenever, so he took him up on it and set out upriver, rowing against the lighter current close to the bank, and then cutting across to the shallows on the other side. The sheet of water over the smooth river rock field got so thin his butt dragged and hung up on the bottom; so he hopped out, and ported the kayak up to a channel near the far side. New York.

Almost as soon as he arrived at the point, he knew he wasn't going to find anything, even though This is where you have to look for it, was what he kept hearing, with that same insistence as before. He floundered around in the lush, leafy undergrowth on the bank, looking up into the virdant cave trails that the animals had made, but he wasn't going to find anything but deer ticks in his hair, if he was willing to look for those. Or if Suzy would.

Why do they tell me something that's right, but not right? he thought.

About a week later, he repeated the futile exercise again, and then again, until his neighbor asked him what he was doing with his kayak, and all he could think of to say was, "Oh, nothing, really...just going for a paddle..." And now it was loud again in his ear, making him a little crazy, making him walk back out on the deck, peering purposelessly across the river to see what was much too far to ever see. This is crazy, he thought.

Right at that moment, a big female eagle hopped out of her New York tree on the point, and wheeled down south over the river, heading his way. She flapped her huge wings a couple times, gaining altitude and just as she did, a single white tail-feather fell from her fanned tail, fluttered lightly down, and set atop the current in the middle of the river. His heart stopped. There! They silently hollered in his ear.

"Hey!" Koko hollered back.

"What?" replied Suzy, who was planting flowers in the Vole's Garden. "Did you want me?"

He ran in, changed into a swimsuit, and ran down the rock steps, yelling crazily, "Watch that white spot on the river and tell me when I'm close to it!" and he dove straight in.

"Keep going out!" She yelled. "Keep going!" He could see it, when he craned his neck up above the little waves in the river. It was coming right to him, bobbing along, and when it arrived, he was right there for it. He put the quill shaft between his teeth, and swam in through the suddenly cold water, to his big sitting-rock. He held it up in front of his face, fourteen inches of a perfect, snowy white feather, just deposited magically before his eyes by the great female eagle whose awkward, oversized "chicks" would spend the summer learning how to fly out over that same piece of river.

Koko amazed, How and why, in the entire world, could a man be standing where I was standing, looking where I was looking, and see that, if it isn't for me?

The white feather is for having survived the years that so many never survive to see. The years until your head and tail strike pure white. Now, you know just how big this vision of life is. You've learned the lesson of Action and Repose. You can wait for it, and watch for it, but then you must dive in and swim to reach it. Have faith in the unfailing wind, in the abundance of the river, in the heavens in your heart. Now you know how to grow. Now you know how to fly.

Later, at the little town's street festival, Koko told the abbreviated tale to a woman at an Eagle Conservation booth.

"It's against the law for anyone but an Indian to have an eagle feather!" She snapped with authority. Koko could only think, I don't think she understands how it happens...

"My great-great-grandfather was Kickapoo," Koko said softly. He knew it was okay, in his heart. His grandfather tapped the woman on the shoulder.

"Oh...well..." she sidled and smiled a bit, "then it's okay, I guess."

.....................................................................this just popped up the other day

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 21: Two Feathers, First Feather

Koko woke up with a funny picture in his head that morning. Funny, as in different, entirely unexpected. It was a picture of a feather - a single, perfect, chestnut-brown eagle feather. Why it would be filling his mind was a mystery, but almost the instant he swung his legs out of bed, he found himself pulling his feet through the stocky green cargo pants he wore for working at the River House.

"Where are you going?" Suzy asked raising her head, his sudden, purposeful movement waking her all the way up.

"I have to go...up the river bank," he answered. He was kind of gone already, busy concentrating on an inner voice (perhaps the voice of his Kickapoo great-great grandfather), telling him: They have a feather for you, up the river bank. You must get up and go find it... It was like that. Crazy, but solid and insistent, and not to be denied, and so he found himself pulling on yesterday's socks too.

"There's a feather there."

"What?"

"A feather"

"A feather?"

"That's all. They're just telling me, "there's a feather waiting for me up the river bank."

"I'm coming too," she said, jumping up and into her clothes as he headed out the bedroom door.

Music: Ne-me'hota'tse (I Love You) by Joseph Firecrow

They started upriver, along the Pennsylvania side, she wore rubber gardening clogs, and he had the rubber knee-highs that came with the house. Each of them carried their long ash walking sticks, hers with the bark peeled down to white wood, his with the necessary girth to give any threat a good whack, if need be. If Suzy had known just how many snakes she was stepping over, or on, she would have been screaming like a schoolgirl the whole way, but she hadn't been there long enough to know yet, and Koko's intuitive calling took precedence over any phobias she was nursing. Funny, how an intangible necessity can vanquish any fear the mind might create. The snakes all seemed to know, and stayed well hidden, on her account, no doubt.

The two of them crunched and squished their way up the bank, weaving out to the river's edge and back "inland" along the scant deer and critter trail, sometimes on firm ground, or hopping rock to rock to avoid the spots you couldn't stand on without sinking.

He knew right where they were going, to the place up under the stand of towering white pines beneath the eagles perch. There, every day, from their pine-top promontory above the tree line, one or two of the great white-headed adults could keep watch on the river from the Narrowsburg bend down to Masthope. They sat stoically hour after hour, but they also did their fair share of preening and squabbling, so it made sense that a feather might be found underneath the spot, if one made it down through the tree limbs to the ground, or missed being carried away by the wind.

The longer they looked, the less likely it seemed, the grass and poplars low on the bank would have swallowed any feather landing there, and up in the barrens at the base of the trees it was easy to spot anything on the ground, if there were anything but pine needles. But still the insistence in his head: Keep looking, it's here for you.

"Let's hope they didn't get us out of bed for nothing." He said, clamoring back down the dry bank to the soft river's edge. He'd give it one last look, navigating along the base of the bank, where the pine roots held back what the river couldn't have. His eyes scoured the grasses for any sign of a feather that might have fluttered down from a hundred feet up and landed lightly, but to no avail.

"Did you find anything?" Suzy asked from up under the trees.

"Nope. I don't know why I felt so strongly..." Koko replied, like he expected all intuition to be magical, or something. He turned and looked up to her above, and as he did, something caught his eye.

There was a series of shallow, twisting caves in between the tree roots cascading down the bank. He bent down, and looked up into one that was about eighteen inches wide and a foot high. Hello, it said...you see, here I am for you.

One perfect, foot long, chestnut brown eagle feather sat tucked on a rakish angle, as though positioned by a stylist's hand, up in the mossy cubby hole. It was only visible from where Koko squatted in front of it. He

gently brought it out and held it up by the quill shaft, "Suzy..."

She looked at it with wide eyes, and looked back to him and smiled and didn't say anything.

This is to let you know that the eagle's steady gaze looks right past this world to your great-great grandfather's home in your heart. This is their gift - the gift of this feather for the faith in the voices of your ancestors that you can hear when you open your heart. This feather tells you how much more can always be seen if you look beyond this world, into the invisible world where everything comes from, and goes to. Down on the ground, it's hard to find without this faith; from up where the eagle looks out over the big picture, anything can manifest.

"Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone; you will find me there."

Logion 77, The Gospel of Thomas

Tales: From the Eagle's POV

"Stay calm. Share your bananas."

Koko the Gorilla

A popular video on YouTube shows a dog rescuing an injured dog from traffic on a road. Koko the Gorilla answers questions about death and friendship as intelligently as many people could. A very recent study suggests that dolphins are so intelligent, we should treat them as "non-human persons." There are lots of birds that can talk, comment on their surroundings, and recognize objects and people. Imagine understanding or making sense in bird language.

Revisit a previous posting about the nature of animal consciousness, and the intelligence alive there that practically equals our own – within their differently perceived worlds.

With that in mind, let's examine what our Eagle brothers and sisters might have to teach us...

"Detach and arise above the mundane so that you're able to see your life and circumstances with a broader perspective and greater vision."

Eagle, Animal Spirit Guides, Steven Farmer

Vision of the World's Abundance

The eagle looks out over the river. To our eyes, the water appears to be blue-green, almost solid. The glare from the sky prevents us from seeing beneath the surface. But the eagle has naturally polarized vision. She can see right into the water, past the surface, to the rich abundance that each endless section of the river is bringing. She isn't hunting, she's picking out what she wants whenever she needs it. Whatever looks good to her. The fish are always there, never running out, like a river full of candy bars swimming right past her. She is always taken care of. She has no concept of fearing that she won't get what she needs.

She sees how the world gives.

The Big Picture (A Bird's Eye View)

Atop a great white pine, hundreds of feet up, or riding a thermal a thousand feet above the river valley, the eagle sees the whole picture at once. She knows that there's no reason to get tangled up in the undergrowth. That the world isn't limited to just what's in front of her, but that each direction reveals the next direction. She's incapable of ignoring her intuition, of the willfulness that leads into a quagmire. From this perspective, she can cover great distances almost immediately, without ever leaving her perch.

She knows that the world shows her, intuitively.

Rest and Repose

The eagle is always either doing what needs to be done, or she is not. When she is doing what needs to be done, she is just focusing on doing that. When she isn't, she is resting and observing. In Zen, it's called wu wei, doing without doing. She never worries about how, or when. The event stream of her life shows her those things, when and how to do, and not to do.

She knows that the world lets her move, and lets her rest.

The Natural Connection

From her perch, the eagle sees the movement around her without attaching any judgement, just witnessing, just allowing. With patient observation, and a variety of calls, messages, and meetings, she is always connected to her family. She is always linked to those of her kind. She knows what is happening in her territory. Through this observation and communication, all problems find a natural resolution; all resources are shared. She learns and teaches by example.

She knows the world is always showing her how to be.

"Everything would change if only we could treat every single being we meet, human or animal, as who they really are -- a disguise of God."

Bede Griffiths


Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!