PREVIEW chapter from upcoming book on animal spirits
JERR
Hawk
Eye
and
eagle
sight
There will be times when a man will feel weighed down by the circumstances of his life. He will lose sight of his own purpose and will feel lost. This is when a man is suffocated by his problems and will hold despair in only seeing the problems that surround him.
When a man is depressed and loses vision, he becomes blind to the possibility of hope beyond today and sees no reason for tomorrow. He is consumed by a darkness and feels that the light has abandoned him.
There is a saying that goes, “cannot see the forest for the trees.” This saying means that a man who is face to face with a tree will not realize he is inside a forest because he makes himself blind to the greater reality by focusing too closely on the objects before him. This is a perceptional problem where the man’s becomes too confined and to restrained by being too close to his own problems.
One of the great perceptional issues that a man has is when his perception becomes confined by his closeness to his own concerns. He does not allow himself a sense of distance over himself and the world which creates a blindness to hope and a confusion to the truth of reality. It is only when a man can step back from his own problems can he examine them with rationality.
When a man is overwhelmed by his problems, he is unconsciously identifying with the animals that are confined to the earth and who are imprisoned by gravity. The feel the weight of their problems because those problems hold gravity. The word “gravity” comes from the Latin word “gravis” meaning heavy, weighty and serious. The word “gravity” and the word “grave” both share the etymological root from “gravis.” Graves are burial grounds for dead bodies that are held in the earth. Dust we and dust we return. A very heavy, weighty and serious matter. This is what it means to be mortal or confined by the gravity of the world. If a man was buried alive, his vision would be trapped by the dirt that covers over his eyes and he will be suffocated by the earth that binds his sight. Men who are overwhelmed by their problems are like men who are buried alive. They exist in a twilight zone of being both alive and yet buried. They see only the close earth like moles who dig at the earth before them and lose sight of purpose beyond the clawing away of each day. Their sense of gravity roots them to the earth and their close perceptions makes them lose sight of the big picture.
But when a man “breaks through” in gaining hope to his despair, it is like a breath from the surface of water or like breaking the earth and revealing the light. All he felt was pain and isolation. But by breaking through the dirt and scratching at the coffin’s wood. He is able to reawaken in the liminal space of the undead who seeks resurrection. This is when a man can project himself from the unconscious burden of his dead body and take possession of the bird that he sees above himself. A bird in a tree who can far above the earth and who can fly into the sky and break free from the tree in order to see the forest. “No tree is so tall that it touches the sky but every bird can try.”
When a man projects himself into the mind of a bird, he is able to soar and create a distance between himself and the world that binds him to his problems. He becomes free from the weight of gravity and is able to free himself from the “seriousness” or grave concerns that press down upon him.
There are the five senses of sight, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. Then there is the sense of distance. This is a mental distancing that allows a man to establish space between himself and his emotions, establish space between himself and his problems and establish space between himself and the gravity of his situation. A man who feels like a mole in the dark grind of his life should break the surface and take control of the hawk that circles above him in the sky. “Hawks don’t squint; they see the world in sharp relief.” And “A hawk’s eye cuts through the fog of doubt.”
The birds of prey are totems of possession over the perception in order to gain a sixth sense of “distance.” When a man identifies himself with a bird of prey, he desires the freedom from gravity that binds him to his “grave concerns” and he desires the eyes that can see from horizon to horizon. “An eagle’s gaze pierces the horizon.”
Distance can not only help a man deal with his own gravity or grave concerns but also allow him the psychological distance for power. Remember, the king’s throne is raised above the court and the king looks down from the balcony of his castle. This is not just physical representations of distance but clues to his own mental distance over his subjects. The king would not only be raised up upon his throne, carried on the shoulders of his servants or look down from a balcony from his castle in order to elevate him from the gravity of that binds others to the earth but these elevations would allow him visual distance in order to behold his subjects as smaller in his sight. The servants would have to look up to him which would create a mental association with power in viewing themselves as below his authority. Kings would elevate themselves in order to see “horizon to horizon” which is a means of using the eagle’s eye. They would be able to see those under their frame of authority as “small ants.” The people would be below their gaze and small in meaning.
In ancient Egypt, the Pharoah was seen as a god-king who embodied Horus who was depicted as a hawk or falcon that symbolized divine vision and rulership. The feathers of Eagles have long been used by chiefs of native American tribes as symbols of divine vision. The heraldry of Byzantine and of the Holy Roman empire used Eagles which was a symbol of a king’s dominion over the earth and heavens. The Etana myth from ancient Mesopotamia features a king who rides upon an eagle in order to receive divine wisdom from heaven. In ancient Persia, the Simurgh was a mythical bird that guided kings in the Shahnameh bringing them divine vision and insight.
A king must have a sense of distance between himself and subjects, a sense of distance between the petty struggles of his subjects and a sense of distance over his own conscience compared to his subjects.
Men will struggle with their own minds and struggle with the gravity of their problems only because they lack the sense of distance that would allow them to rise above their problems. They feel weight over the state of their lives and the state of the world because they are bound by its gravity and are buried under the weight it. But men who seize the eagle in the sky become free from the weight of the world and are able to see mankind like ants. They are able to see the light of a new horizon before other because their vision is not blocked by earthly concerns. They are able to fly over the world and look down upon it with distance eyes. This is the eagle, hawk and raven as animal guides