Bird Man and The Tree Spirit

from my book Dancing with The Dream Deva

The following excerpt is from a dream I had. It is published in my book titled Dancing with The Dream Deva, published 2013.

I was playing on the edge of a large pond. Not much for me to do today. Relaxed. There was no place I had to go and nothing I had to do, so I wandered around the pond tossing pebbles into the water and watching the birds socialize.

The songs of the birds soothed my soul. They had so many stories to share. I relished the still water and the tender sunlight. Mother Earth was alive today. I wished for her to speak to me, some profound message about how to get through the struggles of my day-to-day life. Soon, as if instantly answering my thoughts, a large hawk silently swooped down from the trees, right past me. I followed the silent bird with my gaze, turning my head to witness it land on one of the strangest things I have ever seen. The hawk now stood, with its wings wrapped around its body, on the arm of a large Bird Man who was suddenly sitting near me. "Bird Man" was the only way I could think to describe him. He was half human and half bird. He sat peacefully among the trees a slight distance from the small lake. As the hawk stood on the Bird Man's long, feathered arm, it began to pick through his feathers.

This gentle Bird Man didn't budge or shoe the hawk away, though I could sense his discomfort with the hawk. And with Bird Man's thoughts of discomfort, a huge golden eagle soared towards him and scared the hawk away. I could sense that this brought comfort to Bird Man and I realized that the eagle was his friend, his best friend. The hawk meant no harm, however. The only problem was that it didn't have the conscious awareness to know any better. But the golden eagle knew. It knew Who and What it was.

Bird Man sat now with the protective eagle on his arm and allowed me to approach. I stepped cautiously, respectfully, even though I sensed that he was not frightened. Somehow I knew he rarely allowed people to approach him, or even get this close to him, but with me, he was calm. In fact, he radiated serenity. I got a closer look at him. The eagle remained tranquil. In fact, the eagle inched its way up to the Man's shoulder as to allow me more space to approach. Bird Man lifted his head. His face was not human at all. His skin was dark and stretched as if he had been badly burnt, yet the texture of his skin was soft, not that of a burn. This was just his natural appearance. His teeth were long and white, almost pointy at the ends, like the teeth of a carnivore, yet his mannerisms suggested that he'd never kill anything in his life. He had no hair and very tiny ears. Instead of human arms, he had long wings, though his legs were human. He also had a human torso and human feet. In fact, he was wearing jeans, no shirt and several Native American beaded necklaces hung from around his neck against his feather-lined chest. One necklace was a silver chain with red beads and another was a silver chain with turquoise beads. Normally he kept his head down, tucked to the side, but he raised his head for me. Then he smiled, and screeched softly, proudly, like an eagle.

Next to us, the massive tree shook its plentiful leaves. I glanced up into the soft sunlight cascading through the leaves and the tree began to speak. It said, "Don't ever claim to be any one particular thing, lest you get stuck being that one thing in thought and in action. Instead, claim to be nothing and everything, so you'll be free."

Somehow I knew that the presence of Bird Man was a gift. Very few people ever got to see him. He was like a perfect combination of a spirit guide and an animal totem mixed together into one brilliant life form. He had come to help me heal painful experiences from childhood. I remembered something someone once told me, "Don't fear that which is ugly inside of yourself. Love it instead and see what is has to offer."

Then, the spirit in the tree told me a story.

One day a young Native American boy broke the silver chain of his favorite necklace. He picked it up gently and carried the chain with him in the hopes of finding someone skilled enough to help him fix it. During his wandering, he came across an old sage who lived alone in the desert. The boy held out his necklace and asked the sage, "Do you know how to fix this?"

The old man eyed the boy with a subtle grin, yet nodded his head with a serious face. "Of course," he said. And the Sage proceeded to give the boy a long-winded lesson about freedom, release, Divinity, inner will, power and transformation.

The boy was very polite, though confused. He listened to everything the old Sage said. But when the Sage finished talking, the boy realized that the Sage had said nothing about how to fix his necklace. The boy smiled, said, "Thank you," then went on his way searching. "Someone," he said to himself out loud, "must know how to fix my necklace."

The boy wandered on for days. As he traveled the Earth, the terrain changed from desert heat to the coolness of a mountain valley. Eventually the weather changed too. Rumbling storm clouds blew in overhead and the boy found himself caught in a summer rainstorm.

However, he kept on with his search.

Soon he came to the river of the valley. Through the rain in his eyes, he spied a group of people struggling to complete a bridge they had been building across the river. The people slid in the mud as they tied ropes and stumbled off damp rocks as they nailed boards together. The peoples' clothes were soaked and their hair ran rain droplets of water into their eyes, yet they pressed on with their important task.

Immediately, unselfishly, the boy rushed to help. He grabbed hold of a rope that was about to snap in the wind and he held the bridge steady long enough for the final nails and boards to be secured. The wind whipped the river and pounded wave after wave onto the people as they hurried to build, but no one was injured and no one was scared. After all, it was just wind and water, nothing to fear.

As the bridge was complete, and everyone could walk across to the other side of the river, the storm ceased and cleared way for the sun.

In the growing warmth, the people joyfully thanked the boy. "We would have tumbled in for sure if you hadn't held that loose rope," one man said. "Thank you!" They all smiled and shook the boy's hand. As a peaceful group, they walked away.

The boy found himself alone on the sunny river's edge. He was happy as he watched the people move on towards their destination across the river. On his own once again, he planned to resume his search for someone who could fix his broken necklace. But when he looked down, into his open hands, he realized the necklace was gone. "Where did it go?" he wondered. He figured he had dropped it and proceeded to search the ground where he had once stood holding tightly to the loose bridge rope. After extending his search to bushes and rocks, he saw the necklace far ahead shinning in the sun. It had been washed away by the river, but the boy thought he could still reach it if he climbed through the underbrush along the river's edge. However, just as he moved to go after his necklace, a large crow with huge black wings swooped down and snatched it from the rock on which it lay.

"Hey!" the boy yelled. "That's my necklace!"

"Not anymore," the crow cawed. "Now it belongs to me."

The boy stopped in his tracks. He watched the bird fly towards the sun. He wasn't angry, just curious as to why, after all this time of searching for help, did he lose his necklace at the very end. The simple word fell from his lips, "Why?"

Just then the voice of the wind came whispering in his ear, "You don't need it anymore. Now you can stand up straight and walk without the burden of carrying around that which has been broken. Now you can walk on without that worry. Follow the knowledge given to you by the Sage. But honor the memory of your broken necklace, for it is the one thing that got you to move along your journey in the first place."

With these peaceful words, the gentle breeze and the sunshine, the boy walked on, carrying only himself.