Four Tweets and a Creepy Long Stare
How a Carolina Wren Course-Corrected my Spiritual Run
Sitting in my comfiest chair, my morning meditation underway, I feel relaxed and content. I have swept this crowded subway of a mind as best I can, and my focus is on the black space behind my eyes.
The trill of a bird pierces the silence. As it enters my left ear, I command my eyes to remain closed. I think smugly to myself that Thich Nhat Hanh would be so proud of me as I acknowledge the song, smile, and thank the sender for its beauty.
But it chirps on at me, like an impatient child banging on the bathroom door as I try to pee in peace.
My brain attempts a refocus, but the singsong demanding is too persistent, too intentional, and frankly too freaking loud. It is killing my Buddhist buzz.
With a sigh of resignation, I lift my aging body out of its pre-Zen state and head over to the window in the kitchen.
A small bird is sitting atop my Cuisinart griddle cover looking intently in my direction. It is tweeting so forcefully that I can see its tiny body move in a collective spasm with each sound.
Damn, that bird is really trying to tell me something.
I say hi and compliment their singing. The squawk talk continues as they toss their small head sideways, batting away the praise as if I’m the village idiot for not understanding this very urgent message.
I say, “Okay, okay I’m listening. What is it you want me to know?”
Two tweets, followed by two tweets, then an unsettlingly long stare.
Because I flunked bird in college, I ask again, this time taking a moment to exhale and release my brain.
Again, two tweets, two tweets. Even more unnerving, this time I swear that avian bugger side-eyed me.
But then something inside me sings along with his lilt, “Be here, be here.”
My brain short circuits for a beat and then suddenly, I know. Down deep into my bones, up and out through my now gaping mouth, I know.
I laugh far too loudly, as the heat of humility claims its territory across my face.
About a year before my divorce, I embarked on a relentless journey inward. It started because I was desperate for my physical self that stomps around this messed up world, to match my true, authentic, inner self; the one I could feel calling to get my attention somewhere beneath the center of my chest.
I know it sounds kooky, but when I tell you it was calling, it was call-ing, like those dang solar telemarketers. All hours, every day, wouldn’t take no for an answer.
It was time to commit to a deep self-inspection. A no-holes-barred, brutally honest assessment to discover what was really percolating within.
Suffice to say, I was not too pleased with the results.
The overarching theme that kept bubbling to the surface was I had been missing and/or steamrolling moments because I wasn’t paying enough attention to my words, actions, and inactions.
My coping mechanism, in response to so many traumatic events in my life, had left me swinging wildly from a pendulum of constant worry and control to numbness and absence. My lack of attention to all of it, was definitely not serving my loved ones. And I was hurting people to boot.
At times when I engaged, I could be a bit of an ass because I thought I was right, or because that hot rush of justified indignation felt electrically good in the moment. Control can feel that way, full in the instant, empty immediately after, cursed when you’re in bed staring at the ceiling damning your big fat mouth.
I was sick of feeling sorry ten seconds after I had shot my mouth off, fired off a knee-jerk defensive email or text, or forgot (read chose not) to reach out to someone I knew needed connection.
I wanted that space in time to evaporate permanently, for my instinct to always be my soul’s instinct, not my egoic one. I wanted no light between the two.
Simply put, I was living in misalignment with who I knew deep down I should be. But that person was buried underneath so much earthly crap, there was a whole lot do work to do.
My marching orders were embarrassingly clear; I needed to shut up and recalibrate my humanity.
So, for a few years now, it has been a heart first dive into humility, contrition, forgiveness, spirituality, theology, personal growth, self-awareness, inner transformation, yoga, health and wellness, non-duality, to name so very few.
I have been following every breadcrumb and going down every rabbit hole the universe lays across my path. I’ve even become quite knowledgeable about quantum physics because weirdly, and more often than you’d think, many roads lead to it.
Unfortunately, in my desperate effort to self-correct my course, I may have lost sight of the objective. Some kind of internal switch had been flipped within, and the thought of engaging with the outside world elicited a loud physical and spiritual groan.
An impartial observer might even categorize it as a palpable lack of desire to be around other humans — any human really. That impartial observer would be correct; very few people were making it past my locked doors.
The universe, a.k.a. God for me, had to get very creative to pull the chain on my lightbulb moment.
Cue that noisy bird.
For all my walk and talk about transforming, self-awareness, and yes, abandoning my ego; this Carolina Wren somehow made me realize that all of it, every blessed and blasted thing, had been aimed at me — inward, self-oriented, me.
Blurgh.
The arrow I shot out into the universe had boomeranged and hit me right in my closed third eye.
Irony itself probably had a good spit-take at my nuclear level, head up my ass moment.
I’m not discounting the life-changing lessons and profound insight I have gained over these years. I have at the very least, a size 8.5 footprint on the path to becoming a better version of myself.
But holy self-awareness Batman.
A simple thought continues to wash over me when I think of that morning.
None of it means anything if I can’t take what I discover out into the world, out into my relationships. I can meditate on changing myself until I’m literally blue in the face, but if I stay within the four walls of this contained space, am I truly becoming anything new?
I can only become with the help and connection of others. I can only transform within the hum of relationship. That vibratory circle of give and take, push and pull, hurt and heal, is the very mode of evolution and transformation. It is the current of our connectivity that sparks our growth.
But the insurmountable and quite humbling problem I currently have is I don’t want to do that. I honestly don’t want anything to do with ‘getting out there and chattin’ with all the people’.
My most pressing emotion is that I’d rather just stay on this quiet, reflective couch of a journey where I don’t have to test-drive my inner work.
I keep telling myself I don’t want to fail; I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. But the pitiful truth is, I also don’t want to get hurt. I’m realizing that sad fact may be the long shadow cast from this very private pilgrimage.
Yes, I wanted to become a better person, but more to the very subconscious point, I know that if I’m tucked inside and away from everyone, no one can wound me.
That cozy safety net, stitched together with the longing to evolve into a more loving and compassionate person, is simply too hard to resist. It sounds and feels incredibly good. Why would I ever want to leave this protected space and venture out?
But damn if that freaky little bird is telling me otherwise.
My journey inward is not as important as being present and engaged with others, be they friends, family, strangers, or Carolina Wrens.
I may have reached the center of my chest, but I’m not quite able to directly access what lies beneath and who awaits me there.
Me thinks there is a door I must force open, another new, perhaps scarier journey to begin. My spidey-spiritual senses are telling me a deeper and more profound awakening is to come.
As I take my first tentative steps beyond the black space behind my eyes, I’m feeling a sense of calm reassurance.
Although it is quite noisy and bright out here, I know at least I’m headed in the same direction as my first journey…towards my true, authentic, inner self.
Out of contentment, I go.
Tweet, tweet, stare indeed.
