Treasure in the trees

Home of the birds

It was just past noon in Santa Catarina, South Brazil, as I sat and prepared for my morning mediation. I have been following a Deepak Chopra twenty-one day meditation practice, how to get “unstuck” in life. I myself, find the same thoughts reoccurring, day after day, week after week, as if they are part of my true self. I have learned they are not. The thoughts are the flies that agitate the eyes of the great lion, but the lion does not chase the flies. Those eyes, deep pools of black serenity, blink and twitch, and eventually the flies find another beast to bother, as that is their nature. I am learning to let the dry tears drip away, evaporating in the savanna heat, while resting in the cool shade, knowing they will be gone naturally. The clouds slowly drift apart, and the blue expanse opens, shining bright down upon the world.

I was on day eight of twenty-one, and for the first time I decided to keep my eyes open throughout the opening words of guidance from Opera and Deepak, before Deepak started the actual meditation. I sat on my yoga mat, with two pillows to support my hips, and I gazed upon the sub-tropical forest beyond the terrace of my fifth floor apartment. That’s when it appeared. The toucan landed on a branch, mysteriously hidden within the trees, exactly at the level of my gaze from where I sat. It turned its beak parallel to the branch where it stood, directly across my horizon-line, and then slowly tilted its head back lifting the long beak up toward the tops of the trees. The sun drifted through the branches, like gentle snowflakes silently patting down on a windless winter day in a northern forest, and rested upon the beak of the toucan, revealing the vibrant yellow glow against the myriad shades of green reaching back into the thicket.

It seemed as if the bird was stopping to find the pleasure in the warmth of the sun, and the instant the sunrays rested down on it’s colorful body, an aura of satisfaction vibrated through me, as would come from taking a drink from a cool glass of water on a hot summer day. No need to gulp down the entire glass, just one, long slow sip, letting the water moisten all the mouth, and trickle down the tongue and throat. The toucan absorbed the energy from the sun, and as those seconds passed, there was no attachment to that moment of bliss, only an acceptance of the evanescent nature of the experience. Then, in one fluid motion, from the position of the tilted upward bent beak, came a subtle release, and a rapid yet relaxed flow of five downward pecks around the branch where the toucan stood. It must have felt good feel the wood vibrate down its beak.

Then came a peaceful stillness in the toucan, as if to soak it all in, gently moving its head in different directions. Swiftly the toucan sprung from the branch, beat its wings just twice, and in one straight, delicate line, glided away from the forest. The forest remained the same, yet there was a shift in the energy, a resonance from the sly bird echoing off the thick trunks of the wise trees, smiling up at the warm winter sun. A certain sense of peace remained within me. Learning from the toucan, I can connect to the rhythmic tides of the universe, of life, of meditation. Rooted within the breath, down beneath the silence, the hidden beauty appears, untouched by the ripples of time. A buried treasure, deep beneath the layers of the mind, deep within the sub-tropical Brazilian Southern forest.