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.