Category: Meditation

The Zen of Bird-Watching

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
If you want to develop greater inner patience and be a better listener, become a bird-watcher. If you want to learn how to remain motionless in absolute silence for open-ended periods of time, become a bird-watcher. And, if you long to experience being so centered in present-moment awareness that nothing else exists, become a bird-watcher. Sound kind of Zen-like?

More than 20 years ago, I became a bird-watcher for none of the reasons mentioned above. I loved birds, that’s all. I loved their colors, their songs, their marathon migration flights between South and North America. Everything about them was awe-inspiring. Gradually, however, bird-watching also became a spiritual practice for me. Because my interest in birds developed simultaneously with my interest in meditation, the natural similarities became interwoven in my consciousness. Both meditation and bird-watching involve focus and quiet; they also require awareness and presence. I found that whether I was sitting in meditation at home or walking meditatively outdoors in nature, my inner consciousness and my outer behavior were almost identical.

Over the years, the peace that I feel while meditating or bird-watching has brought with it an underlying joy at being alive. In fact, the distinction between meditation and normal waking consciousness has blurred for me. The practice of centering my awareness in the present moment makes all of life a meditation. And never more so than springtime in Massachusetts, when birds by the thousands fly from the tropics to mate and raise families in North America. Every year, bird-watchers eagerly anticipate the magic of this relatively small window of time when the birds are passing through in a parade of colors and sound. Why the excitement, you may wonder?

Well, to me, their brightly colored spring plumage (reds, oranges, yellows, blues, greens) and their varied spring songs are just plain thrilling to see and hear. One of the first sounds signaling the coming seasonal changes is the ringing-telephone song of the red-winged blackbird (photo above). He lifts and spreads his wings to show off his colorful wing patches when he calls. As migration begins in earnest, the songs of the wood thrush and veery fill the woods with an ethereal flute-like quality that make me feel as if I have been transported to a sacred outdoor chapel. Two of my favorite birds are the orange-and-black Baltimore oriole and the red-and-black scarlet tanager, whose saturated colors often evoke audible gasps from bird-watchers when sunlight hits their feathers. Then there are the tiny warblers, in a class all their own, with an infinite variety of markings, colors, and songs. I especially love the blackburnian warbler, whose throat radiates a deep neon-orange in the sun, and the Canada warbler, whose lemon-yellow chest and throat are accessorized with a delicate black “necklace.”

It’s each bird’s unique beauty that captures my heart and transforms mere watching into something deeper. Meditation, contemplation, Zen peace of mind/spirit—but also more than that. There have been times when a bird has landed on a branch directly in front of me and begun to sing, looking directly at me. A thread of light, of living attention, links bird and human for a moment in time. It is then that I experience that miracle of connection that makes me believe unequivocally in the familial relationship of all beings on Earth.

Infinite Inner Space

© 2007 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2007 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist

“Your soul is the silent witness of your life.”
—Panache Desai

That one sentence changed everything for me. Yes, I had heard about the “witness” before, but it was an idea in my head that I could never access within my own experience. After years and years of meditation practice, I continued to be lost in my thoughts. Then, during a webcast, I listened to Panache talk about dropping into present-moment awareness by simply taking a deep breath and repeating, “Here I am.” And here I am. And here I am. Now. And now. And now. Something shifted within me, and I was there, or rather here, in presence. The next morning at sunrise, during meditation, I was able to step back from my mind’s mental chatter into a silent inner space of awareness, of peace. When thoughts arose, I could observe them without losing consciousness. If I drifted into my thoughts momentarily, I found I could bring my self back to witnessing from the soul’s point of view: “Here I AM…now.”

That I AM that lives within each breath is greater than the personality self connected to the mind. It is a pure state of being, of infinite consciousness, which links all beings on the planet, actually in the cosmos. When I access that inner silent space, I am in the same place that you are when you access it. Within that living awareness, we are in complete and utter oneness. Within that space is the deepest peace and calm I have ever known. Infinite, with no fear attached to the endless being-ness. Some call this place Heaven, or Home. It is the source from which we all arise into human form and into which we dissolve at the end of our lives. It is God or Goddess; it is Great Spirit. It is Om.

And immersion in this profound state of consciousness is not limited to human beings. Animals experience their own contemplative moments. My dear cat Lily in her elder years used to sit on the back of the couch by the window, facing west at sunset, eyes closed in deep meditation. In the tall oak tree in my neighbor’s back yard, leafless now in the winter months, birds gather each evening, all facing west, their breasts shining red-gold in the setting sun.

We creatures living on Planet Earth find connection and comfort in the profound sacred silence that occurs at moments like sunrise and sunset. It reminds us of something beyond our lifetimes, something eternal and infinite at the heart of the universe—and within our own hearts. It reminds us that even when we feel most alone, there is always the loving presence of a greater consciousness of which we are part.

Birth Day

“Welcome Home!” a friend emailed me after I returned from a week’s retreat with Panache Desai at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York, last month. Little did she know how appropriate those words were. In the deepest possible sense, I came home to my self over the course of the two programs (“Receiving Boundless Abundance” and “Awakening Your Authentic Soul Signature”). The weekend Abundance program laid intense groundwork for the second Soul Signature one, and it was during those latter five days that I experienced not one, but two “births,” one taking place on my actual birthday. Along with so many others who were present, I stepped into being more myself (the soul self that I came to this planet to be) than I had ever been in my life.

Panache’s gatherings, more accurately called vibrational transformations, always pack a punch, but this one was off the charts (see previous blog post “The Silence Within” for a description of the avatar presence that Panache embodies which shifts those around him). Most of it was so experiential as to be almost beyond language, but I want to at least try to share one particular morning’s meditation journey in which I relived my birth at the very same clock time that I had been born. Throughout the meditation, Panache played a CD of mantras designed to help us move through any emotional blocks that were keeping us from living our full unlimited potential. We were encouraged to access any past fear- or survival-based experiences so that we could feel them through to completion (and thus free up the flow of life energy within us). He walked quietly among us, speaking occasionally, touching occasionally.

After a short time of not really feeling anything, suddenly I was catapulted into my own traumatic birth experience, in which both my mother and I almost died. She was hemorrhaging, and I broke her tailbone as I came through the birth canal. Reliving it, I experienced the neck and head pain associated with pushing to be born. Survival for me was linked to straining, struggle. My default mode has always been trying, never surrender. Completely letting go has been difficult for me because I always try to do it. As I emotionally felt the source of this within my own birth, something in me finally relaxed and surrendered to the experience of being born, on a physical and energetic level. My whole body began to vibrate, internally and externally, and my root chakra (linked to survival) was pulsing so strongly that it felt like energy was radiating out a foot or more from my lower abdomen. Simultaneously, I felt pressure and tingling at my crown chakra on the top of my head. It was if my energetic life support system was being blasted wide open for the first time since my birth.

The experience was powerfully liberating, and I cried tears of both release and gratitude. In the process of letting go completely and flowing with my rebirth, I also began to feel as if I were being gently touched by Spirit at different points all over my body, particularly my hands, which seemed as if they were being held by strong reassuring spirit hands. I truly felt surrounded by a deeply loving eternal energy, unlike anything I had ever experienced. I was completely beyond the mind and within my heart/soul, trusting the infinite universe that held me. It was amazing. Afterward, in the hours and days that followed, I felt lighter, quite literally—filled with light and spaciousness. Welcome home, indeed!

Fear Less

In Jan Frazier’s book When Fear Falls Away, she describes a sudden falling away of fear, just before having a repeat mammogram. The subsequent awakening she experienced changed her life. It is something we all dream of: to live with unshakable trust in the universe. I believe that we are now entering a period in the Earth’s evolution in which that is possible, not just for yogis or shamans, but for every person on the planet. Individual processes may not be as instantaneous as Jan Frazier’s, but I think the ultimate experience of trust in something greater will be very similar. I believe this because I feel it happening to me.

Recently, after intentionally stepping away from external busyness in the “real” world (see blog post “Unplugged and Reconnected”), I found that a door opened within me through which life poured through in boundless exuberance. The perfect books and spiritual workshops presented themselves to me with free-flowing synchronicity. In addition to these, the time that I sat alone in silent meditation and contemplation in my backyard was deeply transformative. I spent hours there each day, sometimes working in my garden, sometimes meditating, sometimes just breathing in the beauty all around me—the flowers, the trees, the sky, the clouds, the birds. A tiger swallowtail butterfly floating into the yard would make my heart catch in my throat at the miracle of its very existence. A single ray of sun penetrating the dense green shrubbery to form a patch of shimmering golden light on the grass would fill my eyes with tears. It was if I were absorbing the magnificence of the world through my very pores.

Gradually, as these magic moments continued, a deep loving connection to something larger than my own life became my prevailing experience. I have had such moments frequently in recent years, but something new was beginning to shift within me now. The connection to Source or Spirit was less fleeting, more a part of me. As the external world continued to be rocked by the changes inherent in 2012 and the Great Shift, I found that, within me, everything that was not trust in the presence of Spirit in all things began to dissolve. Old rigid ways of perceiving the world fell away. As did fear. I was not completely fearless (impossible—I am human), but I feared less.

Months later, after continued inner journeying on my own and at various spiritual gatherings, I find that this opening/shedding process has continued. I am no longer run by fear. Instead, at any given moment, I can connect to a spacious silent place within where peace and a trusting calm exist (see previous post “Infinity”). And I truly believe that now is the time when we all can find that inner space and open our hearts to a greater trust, a greater love.

 

Wake-up Call

For years now, I have been awakened at 3 a.m. by neck pain that often culminates in a migraine headache. Lying down seems to make the pain worse, so I usually get out of bed and sit in the living room. Often, I have taken strong medication to get rid of the pain, not always successfully. Headaches of one kind or another have plagued me since I was a teenager. Tension morphed into migraine in midlife. Having tried every possible traditional and nontraditional remedy, with little success, I had almost resigned myself to always living with chronic pain. It was a never-ending drain on my life energy. That is, until recently.

During a weeklong retreat in Costa Rica with Panache Desai (see recent posts: “The Silence Within” and “Infinity”), I learned how to rid myself of the pain through a deep meditation of “allowing and receiving.” When I returned home, I was initially nervous that I would not be able to repeat the miraculous releases from pain I had experienced on retreat. Admittedly, my apartment is not tropical, nor does it have a view of the Pacific Ocean! Thankfully, I was still able to get rid of the headaches most of the time, partially because of a shift in my own perception: I finally recognized that Spirit, or my Higher Self, wanted me up at 3 a.m. for a reason, and neck pain was an effective way to get me out of bed and into the receptive meditation mode.

As I sat meditating in the predawn hours, breathing deeply and letting go into “allowing and receiving” (and sometimes listening to Panache’s meditation CDs), I found that the pain would slightly abate but not disappear entirely until I had passed the three-hour mark. At that point, I could begin my day, not only pain-free but also filled with a deep joy and love for the world around me. I saw only blessings everywhere I looked. It was just amazing.

Clearly, then, I was supposed to practice allowing and receiving for three solid hours on a daily basis. (One morning, when I slept through the usual 3 a.m. time, a loud voice in my head shouting my name woke me up with a start at 4:30. No sleeping in!) After several days, it occurred to me that I was being firmly guided to follow this regimen not just to get rid of pain but also to learn how to allow and receive everything: anger, sadness, and fear as well as beauty, joy, and love. Challenging events, emotional reactions, stunning sunsets, loving friendships—they are all part of the human experience on Earth, and it is impossible to have one aspect and not the others. They are the intricately interwoven blessings of being alive. That perspective alone has completely changed how I experience life on a daily basis.

Through this meditation, I practiced how to live from a place of receptivity instead of resistance, gradually learning how to be in the flow of the energy of life, however it showed up. Allowing and receiving has seeped into my moment-to-moment experience. Each day, I open more and resist less. My inner default setting has shifted from defense to gratitude, from worry to trust. The accompanying insight for me is that physical pain is not inevitable. I discovered that it was the voice of Spirit within my body persistently trying to get my attention. At long last, I woke up and listened.