hummingbird

I am in a village in the hills of Colombia, sitting in a hotel room. And just outside the window, there are some hanging flowers. They are hanging in long chains down from some climbing plant above. They almost form a curtain outside the window. And a few moments ago a hummingbird came to visit these flowers. It was beautiful to behold. Its body shimmered with implausible iridescent colours. And as it drank from each of the flowers, of course its body, and his head in particular, were held so still, whilst its wings beat at an unfathomable speed. It felt almost miraculous.

And watching the hummingbird, seeing its stillness in the midst of all that activity, it reminded me of our essence. Each of us has a still point within us, at the very core of our being: a place that is always still, still and silent, at peace. And this is something that the stillness of the hummingbird reminded me of. And the spiritual path is really about accessing that still point within us. And of course, to begin with, we might need to go and sit in a cave in the Himalaya, find some place that is very quiet, silent, where there is no activity to disturb us. But that's only in the beginning. That's the first step, to get access to that stillness.

Really, though, to mature in our spirituality, we need to become so at home in our own stillness that we are feeling it, sensing it, even in the midst of activity, with the children playing and screaming outside, the sound of traffic from time to time, other people's voices, the bamboos shimmering outside in the wind. All of this activity does not need to disturb us from our stillness, and even our own activity, in the end, need not be a distraction, need not be a disturbance, just as that hummingbird's wings beating so fast were not disturbing the stillness of its head. So too, we can be in movement, we can be active, and at the same time, be sitting in that stillness within us.

If you are a meditator, you might have had experiences like this: especially when dancing, sometimes if one really loses oneself in the dance, there is a great stillness in it, even as the body is moving to the music. And so it is that we too can be still and drinking the nectar of existence, even as our body is dancing, and the world is going about its business. This is what this beautiful hummingbird reminded me of, as it drank nectar from the flowers outside the window.