The Seagull & The Eagle

DREAM that someone had hoid of a seagull and was shoving their fist down its gullet to pull it out, and offer it to the white-headed eagle standing right beside it. The person had dabbed something on their wrist that persuaded the seagull to open its beak and swallow the fist. I remember seeing the little balloon of the seagull’s ‘gullet’ that came out, and knowing the person was going to have to ripped it out…

DREAMWORK:

I felt apalled and shocked when I started to wake up from the dream. Fear of pain for the seagull, for myself…

Seagull, a common bird with apparently little virtue, was me. The eagle standing by like royalty, waiting for the offering, was me. The person enacting the sacrifice with knowledge and certainty, was me. Or I should say, they were all parts of me. Two birds. One lives in a flock, one lives alone. One nests low, one nests high. One hovers near human society, one soars above it. In between the two divergent paths, heaven and earth, spiritual and material, there is a place of convergence, the Middle Way. In the middle there is also me, the priest/priestess, making the necessary sacrifice of one to feed the other, the earth to nourish heaven, by shoving my fist down the gull’s gullet, my own gullet, and pulling out the stomach, the organ for food, the source of appetite, hunger, and satiety, the container for excess emotions, cravings, vitriolic acid.

What would happen if my physical body is deprived of its basic survival need, no longer feels hunger, free of appetites and cravings? It surprises me that I have never even come close to pondering this question before. I would be freer and lighter, unfettered by the necessity of labouring for food, looking for food, getting food, preparing food, and eating food, not to mention worrying about food. So much more energy and focus will be available to me then, and it is not lost on me that I have planned to fast for a day tomorrow while Michael is away. He left me a note this morning that said: “Stay home and do your fast.” Signed: Oracle.

Not to be driven by the need for survival, I think this is the message and practice. Even more personally, the gorging that has been the side-effect of this drive to avoid hunger, the mania to consume.

The eagle needs to eat too, but she is a discerning eater. She has the bigger picture, yet she never misses a detail. She is distant from the baser desires, for she blazes her own flight. She is alone, not lonely. There is always wind beneath her wings, the truth and laws of Nature her providence and guide.

Yet somehow the seagull must be willing to open its beak, it must be made to comply without a struggle. What was the substance that enticed its cooperation to surrender such a fundamental part of itself? What will get me to surrender? Something that smells and satisfies the senses like food. The fragrance of fulfillment: Oneness. In Oneness there is constant exchange of energy, and no such thing as lack or deficiency or emptiness.

Why did I just think of David’s, a restaurant in Spadina Village?? I have some warm and fulfilling memories with good food and good friends there, I guess, although I’ve not thought about that in years. Had I near-perfect moments there that were the closest I came to the feeling of Oneness? Food to share, love to share, warmth to share, laughter and tears. Basic and trite, yet so dear to our animal being. But where am I going with this? That it is the sense and sensations of satiety that is our object of desire, the state of the nursing infant at the breast that is the home where we are longing to return to. But that is the path of regression, even though it also leads to Oneness.

My dream is showing me a path of maturity to Oneness, through purification of all the baggage I’ve taken on since my original state of Oneness at my mother’s breast. It is the path of spiritual growth and completion of individuation. It is time to wean my squabbling, gobbling seagull self and feed my nobler, self-possessed, regal eagle spirit.