bees

Bees are rather lovely little creatures. It is always a delight to watch them buzzing from flower to flower, in their element. Ordinarily bees are symbolic of industriousness, of busyness, but this characteristic does not feature highly on the spiritual journey. In fact, busyness is always associated with purpose, and purpose gets in the way of our spiritual growth. It is only when we come to dwell happily in purposelessness that we can rest in our being, in harmony with existence, not chasing after things, not always being distracted from the beauty of the moment. So the busyness of bees is rather something that we should avoid on our spiritual journey. However, there are two other characteristics of bees which I rather like and from which we can learn.

The first of these has to do with flying. It is said that bees should not be able to fly – their bodies are too big, their wings are too small, they’re completely un-aerodynamic. But nobody has ever told bees that they should not be able to fly. It is not in their belief system that they can’t fly. And so they fly. Probably a scientist would tell you that this is all nonsense, but nevertheless it is a beautiful little story to indicate how we constrain ourselves through our beliefs. We limit ourselves. We have much greater potential than we can know, and yet by feeling ourselves incapable, it becomes the truth. Just the belief that we can’t do something is enough to ensure that we cannot do it. So, much of the spiritual path is about letting go of beliefs, especially the ones that are holding us back, constraining us. These constitute the cage which we have built for ourself. Whilst dwelling in the comfort of our little cage, we feel trapped. Deep down we know we have much greater potential that we are not yet living.

Somehow we have to become more like the bees. We need to drop those beliefs and have an open mind about our own potential, our own capabilities, but also about the rest of existence. This is a great tragedy, that how we see ourself is also how we see the outer world. So whilst we are living with this mindset of limitation, then we will also be seeing the whole world in a limited way, missing much of what it has to offer, feeling deprived; whilst really everything we need is available to us. So let’s just drop all those beliefs within us that say we cannot do something. Let’s just go and do it anyway. Like the bees, let’s just fly.

There’s something else about bees which I rather like, and this is their fuzziness. From time to time, I like to take

photographs. In the old days, one used to focus a camera lens manually, using the eye to judge when the image was in focus. Nowadays, cameras have very accurate autofocusing systems, and yet I noticed when photographing bumblebees that the camera struggled to focus on the bee. It wasn’t sharp enough, it wasn’t delineated clearly enough. It was fuzzy. So I had to resort to the old method of manually focusing the camera when photographing bees.

For me, this fuzziness of the bee is symbolic of the fact that beings are not really separate. Our energy fields do not suddenly stop at the edge of our skin. No. There is actually one continuous energy field. If we consider ourself to be separate at all, then we have a very fuzzy boundary, like the bees. Ultimately on the spiritual journey, we come to feel not separate at all from the rest of existence. We are a part of a huge energy field that dances and changes, flows, moves. We are a part of it but we are not separate from the rest of it. This is what the fuzziness of the bee reminds me of.