There is something so undeniable about the splendor of the west. Living in this land, one is constantly confronted with the power of the natural world. When you feel your own small body in relationship to the grandeur of a mountain, it is difficult not to be completely overcome by the monumental beauty and power of this earth, of which we are all an integral part.
Wandering these lands, one feels the profound and sacred order that is always at play, the deepest undercurrent of all life itself.
Today we saw a great bald eagle circling above - her wide open wings embracing the shifting current of the air, sailing through the high winds, a symbol of total freedom from captivity. This is a being so fully in possession of its power that it is impossible to look away. To look upon this ancient being and all that she represents is to look upon the greater spirit of humanity, and to see the wide scope of our potential, like the breadth of a wide open mountain view.
I imagine that the eagle does not feel small against the mountain. I imagine instead that she feels the sheer power of this great land radiating upward into her own strong body, whose force is conducted through the instrument of her wings beating rhythmically back and forth, like the movement of the tide, the dance of breath, the cycle of the day into the night, of summer into winter. I imagine she senses within her body it’s ancient wisdom, interconnected to the changing shape and form of the land. I imagine that when a powerful gust comes, she does not cower under her own wing, but instead beats harder - meeting the force of the current, knowing her own divinity - owning her own being in its dramatic and epic potential.
Perhaps this is also why so many souls in these lands truly value complete freedom of being. When you live amongst such splendor - when you experience the fierce power of these elements pulsing through the veins every day - it reflects in the experience of life itself, and the feeling of complete connection back into the very root of humanity, and the root of spirit herself. One cannot deny this power, this majesty, this divinity, for it is all and everywhere, and right before our very eyes.
In the East, these epic vistas are not as easily experienced, as the touch of industry and machine is everywhere. Life is lived through density, and the spirit becomes smaller - shrinking inwards in order to accommodate the thickness of the population, the compactness of the living situations, the density of the vibration. It is easier for the body and mind to become caged, as cities of iron and steel and invisible synthetic waves surround every living thing, slowly ripping us away from our natural and sacred order. The head disconnects from the body itself, forgetting that the sensation and feeling transmitted through this miraculous instrument connects us, like a beacon, into that great sacred order. The decapitated head alone is incapable of knowing this sacred order. The small mind is incapable of comprehending the doorway into the spiritlands.
But when one is confronted every day with such grandeur and majesty, the synthetic life falls away. Because in the face of the great eagle, and in the face of the great spirit herself, it is but shadowplay - a fabrication of immense proportion. This shadowplay teaches us to be afraid, to give away our power willingly, and to forget our sacred origins. It orders us to be small, to be cowardly, and to enslave ourselves to the gods of technology and their strange and dark formations.
When the great spirit has touched you, when she has whispered in your ear to remind you -
how expansive is your being, how royal is your origin, how interconnected is your life to the very fabric of the cosmos herself - it is impossible to hide away and to live in such terror. It is impossible to forget who you are, for one hears this truth in the song of the breeze, in the scent of the tall grasses, in the taste of the soil, and in the great mountain eagle before the eyes. The immense sorrow caused by this great forgetting is immeasurable, as it is that which has severed us from the cord of life and the invisible realms that coexist along side us all. It has severed us from our own sacred nature, and the great eagle spirit that watches over each and every one of us.
The land calls us all home, the eagle calls us home, the great spirit herself calls us all home.
The great ocean of remembrance is wide and deep, and the doorway has been cast open for all souls to step forward, and plunge, headfirst, back into the sacred waters from which we were all born, so that we might soar again in our own sacred splendor - free, infinite and divine.
