Intuitive healer and therapist, Katarina Winslow
reflects on belonging Wisdom is to let nature be, and to know that everything and everyone is connected to each other, just like the right wing and the left wing belong to the same bird. Pushing it a little further, we can ask ourselves what would happen if the two wings didn't belong to the same bird? Would the bird be able to fly then? No, it would fall out of the sky in a twisted spiral, to meet its destiny.
Isn't that precisely what is happening to us? If we imagine that all humanity is a bird, just one bird, aren’t we trying to pull the wings of the bird apart, making it rapidly crash into the ground?
On a global level, we know that we lack respect for nature. As for humanity, there is a growing absence of inclusiveness of all parts and facets of humanity, and a loss of consideration for all life on earth. Social injustices increase daily, literally pulling the wings of the bird apart. Everybody who knows history is aware that it is inequality, conflict, and chaos that permeate our communities to metaphorically tear the wings of the bird apart, to tear humanity apart. As world citizens, it is wise to truly see the world, to understand the interconnectedness of everything and everyone to maintain peace.
On a personal level, inner peace is to embrace all of you. We are a microcosmos of the macro cosmos; our own lives reflect the whole. It is quite simple, if we all found inner peace, there would be peace in the outer world too.
Looking closer, inner peace and wisdom are often sought out as a result of internal suffering. Seeing it that way, the opportunity to seek world peace is at its greatest today. You could say that the world is at the 'suffering' point where you were with yourself before you mustered the courage to seek help. When you go to therapy, engage in personal development, or experience healing, you reach out to find more peace and belonging within yourself. You could say:
"All healing is the cleansing of the illusion that you are anything but love."
Naturally, healing is a return to the essence, a homecoming, a return to love. Just as the bird is at peace when its wings are left alone in accordance with nature, high in the sky, you genuinely live when you stop the secret war of tearing yourself apart.
The good thing is that the impulse to seek wisdom is found in its opposite, in all that is not wise: in separation and obsession, in disillusionment and addiction, in sorrow and victimhood, in anger and frustration, in depression and a lack of meaning - in all that makes you suffer, metaphorically tearing yourself apart. But there is a hidden blessing, however difficult it is. It is the starting point for a better you, the universe gently pushing you to awaken to the beauty of you and the beauty of life by uniting yourself within you.
It is an opportunity to accept that your past and your future symmetrically belong to now, serving to magnify the moment. To comprehend that your right arm and your left arm wholly belong to your actions. To accept the simple evidence that the right side and left side of your brain equally give you the ability to analyze, reflect, and create. To manifest your inner self through your outer self as the highest version of yourself on earth. To witness that the earth and the sky belong to the love of life.
That is was wisdom is, to seek and find the love in you. To transcend the limitations in the knowledge that you are everything and nothing at the same time. To know that you are the deep breath of the universe and a small breeze at the same time. To share the air, lung to lung, with all living beings.
To throw light on wisdom, the Wikipedia entry states, "Wisdom is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence, and non-attachment and virtues such as ethics and benevolence."
A lack of inner peace is the seed to transcend internal contradiction and stop 'dividing' yourself. The same needs to happen in society - the divisions being a seed for world peace. I would like to say that not accepting that the right and the left wing belong to the same bird is a lack of wisdom and a lack of compassion for the bird. It reflects the lack of care and compassion we see for individual well-being in society today, as greed and profit are taking more territory each day.
It is common sense, right? To accept that there are two wings to a bird. Really not that much to fuss about when you think about it. It is like agreeing on the fact that your left-side brain and your right-side brain belong to you. Couldn't we then, in the same way, recognize that we all belong to the same humanity?
On another note watching TV, I can't help feeling frustrated that I live in a society where so much seems to be concentrated on pitting one thing against another, one wing against the other. It is like the two opposing sides are there chipping away at each other slowly until there’s nothing left of either one - the extinction of our species. How come we continue to pit one gender, one country, and one belief system against another? Surely, we are at a point where we need all our powers to reverse the mess we have created.
Symbolically, it is like pulling one wing of the bird to the ground and the other towards the sky, being so preoccupied with getting 'your' wing where you want it without any care for the bird and no concern for its survival.
If we continue long enough pulling each wing in opposite directions, we can easily understand that the bird will eventually die and drop dead to the ground – wingless.
Seeing the bigger picture of what is happening in the world today, I would say that this metaphor is entirely accurate. It is strikingly obvious that there are forces that are tearing humanity apart while we are standing by watching it happen, powerless - attached to the strings like puppets. Then I hear the soothing words, "When you belong to yourself, you belong to the whole human family," ring true in my inner being.
Belong to yourself in the sense that you are pure love. It is the law of nature. Just as simple as both wings belonging to the same bird.
Let us stop creating more separation and mess. Let us start to fly towards a new way of integration of the left and right, the male and the female, the earth, and the sky.
On that note of the human choral, let us celebrate Christmas.
Together.
