SEEING AND BREAKING THE CHAIN OF BELIEF.
I happened upon this picture of a painting by Carel Fabritius of The Goldfinch (1654) and was moved by its delicate and fine rendering of the household songbird that some wealthy people of that time kept as pets to delight them (not having today’s media diversions) with their melodic singing and, in a few instances, the medley of tricks they were taught, including lifting a tiny thimble size bucket to dip water from a container. What struck me most, and totally, was not so much all the above human – all-to-human – absurd ways we contrive to entertain (then as now) but the symbolism of the chain that would not allow the splendid bird to freely fly, to live the fullness of its beautiful born nature.
‘Looking for something I can believe in.’ (from a song)
Indeed, that chained songbird was, and is, a powerful metaphor for how the spirit of one’s beingness is chained by one’s born insecurities that lead one to belief; by a gossamer-thin, golden filament spun by the mind that keeps the mind from lifting off; from the freedom to be that which one is – awareness. The chain that keeps the supposed ‘person’ from the recognition that there is a long traditional chain-link of invisible, interlocking conditioned beliefs that hold us down, so to speak, that keep one ‘cribbed and confined’ in mind-made fears and desires that, believed, produce the conflict, confusion, and suffering we’re heir to, apparently.
But only apparently, yes. 😉 The ‘trick’ is to see the trick, to see directly, instantly, that any and all belief keeps one tightly bound to living a lifetime of seeming separation; to see that, like the old saying ‘all we fear is fear itself,’ that in fact, ‘all we believe is belief itself,’ is to rise above it all, to sing the song – not just the words – that arise in being aware of being aware, simply, plainly, evidently, obviously. To no longer live enchanted and enchained; to move in ever-spiraling rings of non-personal, non-conceptual knowing; to freely fly and flow in fidelity to reality, in the peace, beauty, and joyful harmony of one’s infinite being. In fine, to fully express one’s human and divine nature. To soar. To love.
~ Mind is conditioned to con, condemn, constrain, contend, contradict. One’s unbound, unknowing nature is free to be, to love 
