In August of last year I wrote about a small blue and yellow bird which keeps banging on our lounge room window which, lined with a film of reflective sun protection, is in essence a mirror - trying to connect with what it believes is another bird but which is really itself.
At the time I said:
Synchronicities abound in life and more so when we become aware of them. There is a little bird, gloriously, shimmeringly blue, which bangs on our lounge-room window at various times of the day.
And now, as of this past week, we have another bird doing the same thing but this one is black and white and much larger. The closest I have found to it is the White-headed Black Chat although I am not sure it is this bird. It looks like a version of our Australian magpie, akin to the size of the Piper Magpie.
The noise as it bangs against the glass and the image of itself, mistaken for something other, is much, much louder. It is three times the size of the small blue and yellow bird. Is the cosmos upping the ante on the message it is sending me? I am beginning to think the answer is yes.
Black and white are opposites and birds are believed to be symbolic of a link between heaven of earth; between the material and the spiritual; between ego and psyche.
Given that my ponderings of late have been around beliefs, rights and wrongs, blacks and whites, Self and other, this 'message' may well be a reminder that when I 'bang my head' against the 'mirror' which is my life, I am doing so because I see the image as 'other' when in fact it is me. This fits of course with the philosophy that we are all connected and what we do unto others we do to ourselves. It also fits with one of my favourite maxims: 'That which we condemn in others is that which we deny in ourselves.'
So given the pointlessness of the bird banging at the glass because it wants to connect with what it believes is another bird, the message for me perhaps is that 'banging away' at the 'glass' of division which I see as a separating barrier between myself and others in terms of belief, is just as pointless.
There are many aspects of my life at present where this is relevant. Just as the bird is mistaken in believing the image is 'other' so I am mistaken in believing in a similar image whether it be of individual or belief. I would not have thought I was like this but the cosmos is wonderfully frank and blunt when it speaks to us and this is the language of synchronicity, just as it is of dreams.
We talk about 'banging our head' when we are trying to be understood, to be heard, to bring about change and in essence that is what the bird is also trying to achieve. He or she wants to connect, to join with the image, which is perceived as other - it is in essence a reaching out but one which achieves nothing because there is no 'other' and the image is mere illusion.
The world is a magical place and never more so than when we see through the language of symbol and meaning. Jung said symbol was the lost language of the soul and given my almost desperate search for answers to current problems, well, perceived problems, and issues, in recent weeks, and given the lack of anything approximating an answer, perhaps this is it and my cosmic guides are saying;' turn away from the false image, the mirror reflection, the illusion that something is other and return to the certainty and the centre of Self.
The language of Soul has never been so precise, nor so beautiful.
NB: It is Sunday and the same bird is now flinging itself against my bedroom window which I can see from my desk when the door is open. There is no sun-protective film on this window, so no mirror reflection, but s/he kept at it for a while. Perhaps I did not heed the message well enough. And it does fit with an experience last night where I pondered who and what I was and wanted to be and then had a dream about being pregnant and giving birth which always reflects a birth of Self, particularly at my age.
