Meditation and Intoxicating Substances: Animals

The flight of a bird

“The bird” is a good place to begin, because everyone can imagine a bird.

The meditation exercise consists in the guide asking participants to imagine themselves as a bird. It begins with slipping out of the egg in the warm nest—being hungry and chirping—until one day learning to fly.

Then the world suddenly seems infinite after the finite boredom and safety of the nest.

The bird flutters from tree to bush, from flower to fruit, playing around until at a certain moment everything begins to feel familiar, and a desire arises for something higher—to come closer to the light.

The bird rises.

It is a beautiful summer day and the warm air currents allow it to fly higher and higher, while beneath it the trees and shrubs grow smaller and the landscape ever wider.

Higher and higher goes the flight—

until the bird enters a cloud.

Inside the cloud nothing can be seen.

It is a white darkness that blocks the view but is not truly dark.

As the bird tries to fly higher, the mist only becomes thicker.

This is the moment when doubt arises: whether it was a good plan, whether one is still progressing, whether it might be better to give up.

The bird that perseveres will sooner or later rise above the cloud cover.

And what appears then cannot be described in words:

the fierce light that forces the eyes to close,

the fluffy surface below,

the pure blue sky above.

That moment may last for a while—but it does not remain forever.

Soon the bird must descend again,

back through the cloud, which now holds nothing frightening since we know what lies above it.

Further down,

until the familiar landscape gradually appears again.

Tired but satisfied,

the bird returns to its trees and shrubs.

Everything is unchanged—

yet nothing will ever be quite the same,

because the bird now sees things with different eyes.

That, roughly speaking, is the meditation exercise of the bird.

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