As the Crow Flies

 

There is a phrase in these once remote Ozark hills used to describe the shortest distance between two points, and that phrase is "as the crow flies." This is what "The Bird Path" is all about.

One encounters so much advice about how to rearrange one's inner furniture, and so much verbiage and effort concerning consciousness this consciousness that. None of this is pertinent to the awakening of the Pristine Awareness which is the core of not only your existence as a human being, but the "I AM" of all living creatures.

The image that comes to my mind is that of someone washing and waxing their car, sweeping out the glove box, vacuuming under the seats, polishing the rearview mirror, rather than simply getting in and driving to their allegedly chosen destination. Tidying up our humanity is like polishing a mud ball: there will be nothing left when we have cleaned it all up. We are children of the soil, and removing the soil from our being will leave an empty shell. Not to mention that the effort put into "raising consciousness" might have been put into the awakening of Pristine Awareness.

A difficult (but not insurmountable) fact is that consciousness is a conditioned state of Awareness, hence the old image of searching for fire with a candle. Another hurdle is the supposition that what we seek is a personal evolution, when the fact of the matter is that the personal has become translucent and therefor no longer a source of fascination.

The use of meditation to permit Pristine Awareness unfettered access to expression in the event which is our person-hood requires some preparation or else the freedom of self will be accessed as self improvement. But then it all depends on where you want to go. And as the crow flies, the bird path is the shortest distance between that place and where you now stand.

Certainty

The colors of experience which become the motive forces behind our lived moment boil down to a very few primary movers. These primary movers transcend our humanity, our mammal-ness, and are coeval with our existence as animals. With regard to our behavior as psychological beings the foundational need is that of "certainty". Emerging from the obvious need for food and shelter is an awareness of the uncharted land of a morrow. And this primal awareness of "future" in a sophisticated brain will naturally lead to the creation of "certainty".

Certainty is the foundation of civilization with its web of benefits and failings. The dysfunctional extensions of certainty include such behavioral grotesqueries as greed, lust for inordinate power, and a host of psychological maladies that when examined reduce to a hysterical need for certainty, and perhaps an intuited awareness of certain catastrophe. With regard to any future for humanity it is extraordinarily important that power possessing beings are not operating under dysfunctional appetites for certainty, but as we look about us the opportunities for catastrophe are little ducklings in a row following their dysfunctional certainties to their unnecessary denouements.

The most subtle and insidious uncertainty is that of the undiscovered self. The ultimate actuality of self is Pristine Awareness. And when Pristine Awareness becomes the seat of personal identity we exist in a discovered universe of certainty.

Meditation is the key

Satori is the door.