On The Wings of a Bird
Thank goodness for daydreaming! Daydreams are like the wings of a bird. They fold back and down– and then lift and release. Without our even realizing, there is effort in gathering in and then freedom in going for a ride. Rhythmically pushing and then reaching from past into future, daydreams comb through the past from root to end and shape into the future as well.
Letting myself dream helps prevent burnout. I gather in through my senses the qualities that I miss or long for. My memories set a tone, and then I set them free into a daydream.
Quantum physics discovered that we participate in recreating our pasts just as we participate in creating our futures. My memories back and daydreams forward sculpt around an essence of truth that is alive in me presently. A broken, shattered, or hurtful time can be woven whole again when kindness toward myself is discovered. That is how we can re-write, mend, and heal missing, hurt, and burdened pieces. Therapeutic partnership supports this process of infusing love and insight into old injuries or stuck experiences of overwhelm. With a shared resonance between client and therapist, kindness can be found amidst the rubble and restored to something still in pain or to something in the future that is causing fear.
The nice part about daydreaming in this way, is that much of it can be completely made up. I can experience having the wings of a bird, or sending a message on a bird’s wings, riding a bird, or talking to a bird... I can bring my heart and genuine qualities, my signature being, to my daydream and in that way be both completely honest and completely fluid at the same time. I can be myself while filled with imagination.
Writer, Ira Sukrungruang, gives us an example of this process in his essay, Nesting:
"When we are desperate, we look for hope in anything, even, as Emily Dickinson wrote, a ‘thing with feathers.' ... I watch the birds instead of being a good dad and playing with my son. I watch the birds because I'm lonely, too. A female house finch flies into a hanging basket above my head. She looks down at me. I look up at her. The finch's beak is wide almost too wide for its small body: necessary for breaking the hull of sunflower seeds. She stays in the basket among purple and white pansies... The pansies nod…(I ask) ‘What do you do when you feel down? Because I feel down a lot. I feel helpless. And hopeless. Like I’m failing at everything. I’m a horrendous father, and instead of being better, I let everything make me feel tired and impatient and irrational. You guys are all I’ve got. I watch you and imagine your world, because my world, this world, is falling apart.’ Look, she says, I’m not a therapist, I’m just a bird. ‘I want to be a bird,’ I say. ‘My son wants to be a bird.’ I get it. It’s because we fly. ’And sing...’”
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”
Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) is at work inside each of us. When allowed to be fully expressive, an integrative process begins (AIP), and it takes us towards health and towards kindness. However, it requires that we somehow discover something spontaneous, genuine, and beyond words.
