Bluebird

Ever see a bluebird up close? They’re absolutely gorgeous.

The color of their feathers is something like luminous royal purplish blue with gold around the edges. They’re so beautiful.

The other day, we saw a bluebird up close. We were staying at a friend’s house. They have a woodstove with a metal chimney.

Our fifteen year old friend Gaura, son of the house’s owners, told us that one time a bird flew down the chimney, and when they opened the large, double glass doors next to the stove to offer the bird its freedom, it flew to the other side of the doors instead, and kept banging on the bay windows until everybody got brooms to chase it out, and when that failed they finally had to go outside and remove the screens on all the windows before the bird would fly away.

It had stubbornly refused to simply fly out the completely unobstructed, more brightly lit, larger opening offered by the open double glass doors right next to the stove it flew out of.

My wife and I were chanting in the house one morning, minding our own heavenly business. We then both heard a strange sound we had never heard before.

If someone had asked me, “Did it sound like something flapping its wings down the length of a twenty-foot length of metal stovepipe?” I would’ve said, “Yeah! That’s exactly what it sounded like.” But, at the time, I had never heard such a sound, so I didn’t know what the hell.

We didn’t’ hear anything for a while after the initial weird sound effect, so we went back to our rounds, with slightly puzzled looks on our faces.

I sat next to the stove, in case the sound had actually come from there. I thought, maybe whatever it was, if it was some kind of bird actually flying down this chimney, maybe it flew out again, because the noise had totally stopped.

Then I heard what was unmistakably the sound of a bird flapping away like crazy inside the stove itself. It must have fallen down the chimney, smacked its head on the stove floor to the point of stun, then revived and tried to bust out.

“OK,” I said, having heard how to deal with the situation. “I’ll open these doors. You stand right here and wave this broom, in case he goes for the windows, and I’ll encourage him to go out the doors.“

My wife, dutiful as a soldier, valiantly took up her post, waving the broom back and forth into the space above the doors in the high-ceilinged house.

I opened the glass doors, allowing Mr. Bird a spectacular view of an extremely reasonable looking exit: a clear shot right back out into the backyard. No windowpanes in the way, no walls, no doors, no brooms waving around to obstruct his flight plan, just pure bright, clear backyard air.

I opened the doors to the stove and saw him for the first time as he flew out: the most gorgeous male bluebird I had ever seen, just like I described him. I thought of the elusive Bluebird of Happiness, how rare he was to be seen.

Flying easily around my wife’s graceful broom-swinging barricade, he went straight for the windows, bashing himself again and again into the glass in the alcove around the dining room table.

“Shit.” I said. This was exactly what Gaura said would happen. “Come on! I opened the friggin doors for you!! What the hell?!”

My wife tried to gently nudge him away from the window and toward the open doors with her broom, but no use. Our bird friend, the emblem of happiness itself, wanted nothing more than to slam himself against the closed, screened windows with full force.

“Damn it!” I shouted in frustration. “Gimme that broom!”

“Maybe you should take the screens off,” my wife suggested.

“Awwww, all right. Here, keep him in here,” I said, handing her back the broom.

I ran outside, watching my wife continue to try to nudge Mr. Happiness toward the opening I was trying to make in the screens.

After pawing my way through a year’s worth of spider–and-God-knows-what-else-kind-of-web-making-insect’s dusty, sticky, gross webbing, I pried the screen off, and watched as my wife coaxed the King of All Gorgeous Creatures one last time towards the new opening in the dining room window area, the one leading to the rest of his unincarcerated, liberated bird life.

I stepped back inside, and he flew away.

We thus chased the Bluebird of Happiness out of our lives.

Afterwards, I was thinking this is what it’s like for a spiritual teacher to guide his disciples out of materialism. We’re used to going after whatever it is we’re used to going after, whether its our own reflections, or a dim patch of what looks bright and attractive to us, even if it’s just another illusion thrown at us by the power of illusory energy.

The guru points us toward a clear opening and says, “Here’s the open door to freedom, you idiot! Go!”

And we head straight for the freaking window.

The guru gives us instruction, which unsettles us. He tries to get us, for our own damn good, to go out the wide open doors to a life of full spiritual freedom. We refuse. We perch tightly to our perches, slamming ourselves into the barricades, and curse the very ones who want nothing more than our own freedom and good fortune.

“Why are you hassling me, man? Why don’t you just leave me the hell alone?” God!”