diving bird

Looking out over the Persian Gulf, I see a diving bird floating on the surface, bobbing about. Every now and again it dives underwater, disappears from view, and I play a little game with myself, trying to guess where and when it will resurface. I'm not very good at it. Sometimes the bird is but a few seconds out of sight and sometimes a minute or more.

Watching this bird disappearing and reappearing at random, it reminds me of my essence: that most mystical part of who we are. Sometimes there is awareness of it – it's very present, very visible in some way. And then it's as if it disappears from sight, and I am lost once more in the humdrum banalities of normal life. And then, quite unexpectedly, without any warning, that essence reemerges from the deep, and I am once more bathing in its beauty.

It's so unpredictable. And yet it is not that the essence ceases to exist, not at all. It's just our awareness, our attention gets so bound up with other things: the noise of the surface, these little waves lapping at the shore. They are so entertaining, disturbing sometimes, pleasing at other times, and they take our attention away from that which underpins it all, the essential part of who we are. And I notice, too, that when that diving bird is out of sight, and my attention is on the superficial side of life, then I also am not feeling the suchness – that essential part of the rest of existence. And when once more the essence is being felt within myself, it is also felt externally, everywhere I look: that indescribable suchness hanging in the air, almost tangible, but not quite. And this is what this diving bird is reminding me of, this morning, as I gaze out across the Persian Gulf.