A black bird with a black crest landed on one of my bird of paradise leaves outside my office window. He/she sat there for at least three minutes while deciding what to do next. I took a picture of him/her to document the moment, and only after I did that did I enter into the present moment and fully allow his/her presence into the moment. I don’t know what kind of bird it was (I’ll look it up later because I have a picture), but I only need to know to satisfy my ego’s need to name, sort, classify, and separate.
Yes, separate. That’s what names, and classifications do. They separate and categorize things into neat little distinctions that don’t matter much. There is only one moment, and everything in that moment is one. There is no separation between anything. It’s all one energy manifesting as different shapes and vibrations to fulfill the moment. This bird was fulfilling my moment, but not until I decided to just be with it. Forget the camera. Forget thinking at all. Just be, and allow the bird to be here with me.
It’s amazing how long that bird just sat there balanced on the pointy end of the bird of paradise leaf. I was happy he stayed so long because the longer he stayed, the more I felt his energy as mine. Everything else sort of faded into the background, and it was just him/her and me. I understood the meaning if the biblical phrase, “I am that I am”. Only I understood it with a comma thrown in, “I am that, I am.” The bird and I were one. Yet I was a different perspective of consciousness. We shared the present moment, and I’d like to think we both benefited from the experience.