My friend, T---, is a bit of a mystic. Not the self-proclaimed kind, but the type that doesn't know it, yet revels in the reality of the mystery.
His mom died yesterday and today, he found a hawk in the middle of the road. He thought it was dead, but it wasn't. He picked it up, cradled it like a baby and took it home to a large birdcage he keeps upstairs. Don't ask why he has a large birdcage hanging around his house. Its sentimental, I think.
So he calls me and texts me all excited about this large hawk that lets him pet it and is watching him like....you guessed it...a hawk, as he walks around the cage. This is T---'s spirit animal (he calls it). He thinks it's his mom come to be with him for another day.
I say he's grieving, but the ironic and mystical nature of the entire experience is a bit exciting.
Tonight I go over and see the hawk and T---. It's amazing - before long, I'm singing songs to the hawk and picking up the guitar and the bird is watching me like....you guessed it....a hawk. Eye to eye. Winking at me every few seconds. It's all mystical in the upstairs room where the hawk is. I reach in and touch it and our eyes are on each other's eyes. I'm singing and somehow, this feels normal.
This is T---'s life. Mystical. Completely normal to him, but utterly mystical.
He tells me a story of finding a pigeon when he was 15 in the icing water of the creek. He grabs it and wraps it in his wool hat, takes it home and for the next week, nurses it back to health. Everyday for months on end after he finally lets the bird free, it would greet him, land on his shoulder and stay there as he walked to the bus stop to go to school. When he returned from school, the bird was there and again, greeted him as he got off the bus. How can you believe this stuff? But then again, it's T---, so you know it's true. The pigeon eventually was found dead in the road, run over by a truck. It didn't meet him anymore, but it's a typical story of T---'s.
I can't be around normal people anymore. Maybe I never could. But life just doesn't seem like it's living if it isn't in some kind of mystical motion. I try to deny the mystery sometimes. It's a lot more work when you have to live that way - this way - in the mystery. The mystical mystery world of acknowledging something beyond what our brains discern. To live in the mystical is to live in the sensory world beyond the brain's interpretation and proceed into the soul zone.
So what feeds the soul zone?
Trusting the mystery. It's just that simple.
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