Have you ever seen two ducks fighting in a pond? There is a passage that I want to share from the book very close to my heart. It narrates the story of a duck with a human mind. The story has stayed with me since I read it many years ago. I go back to it often when I get sucked into the human folly. If not all, many of us can relate to it. It goes something like this.
In The Power of Now, I mentioned my observation that after two ducks get into a fight, which never lasts long, they will separate and float off in opposite directions. Then each duck will flap its wings vigorously a few times, thus releasing the surplus energy that built up during the fight. After they flap their wings, they float on peacefully, as if nothing had ever happened.
If the duck had a human mind, it would keep the fight alive by thinking, by story-making. This would probably be the duck’s story: “I don’t believe what he just did. He came to within five inches of me. He thinks he owns this pond. He has no consideration for my private space. I’ll never trust him again. Next time he’ll try something else just to annoy me. I’m sure he’s plotting something already. But I’m not going to stand for this. I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget.” And on and on the mind spins its tales, still thinking and talking about it days, months, or years later. As far as the body is concerned, the fight is still continuing, and the energy it generates in response to all those thoughts is emotion, which in turn generates more thinking. This becomes the emotional thinking of the ego. You can see how problematic the duck’s life would become if it had a human mind. But this is how most humans live all the time. No situation or event is ever really finished. The mind and the mind-made “me and my story” keep it going.
We are a species that has lost its way. Everything natural, every flower or tree, and every animal have important lessons to teach us if we would only stop, look, and listen. Our duck’s lesson is this: Flap your wings — which translates as “let go of the story” — and return to the only place of power: the present moment.
Excerpts from the book — “A New Earth”.
I find this story liberating. It is about how we humans unconsciously keep the negative stories alive in our heads, far detached from the reality. How it is so simple to drop it yet so difficult! Simple is not that easy after all. Someone cuts you off on the road and you spend next hours infuriating with anger in your head. Someone at work pisses you off and you spend all day thinking about what you could have or should have said in return. Your mind starts spinning strategies on what you will do if it happens again. You have a conflict with a friend or a family member and you could be spending years thinking about it and keeping the hate and anger alive in your head. You could be replaying, ruminating and reliving the same story again and again in your head without even knowing! Not only you keep the story alive but it completely obstructs your view of that person or situation in the present moment. You look at that person or situation through the mirror of his/her past actions and events. Sometimes people waste years and even their entire lives sticking to their version of a story about a person, situation or an event. It is on the deathbed they realise how futile it was to live with the mind-made story! It is important to realise that by keeping the story alive in the head never actually change anything. In fact, it keeps you stuck in your head! What changes the situation is — action. It is not to say that by letting go you tolerate inappropriate behavior or fall into submissive lethargy. You do what you have to do and snap out of it. Leave your story behind. Let it not malign your present reality.
I have seen young children and animals epitomize the duck behavior beautifully and effortlessly. If I say ‘NO’ to my 18 months old daughter for something — she frowns, cries and makes angry faces! But within a few moments afterward, she comes to me smiling and gives me hugs and kisses.
No trace of emotional garbage left.
No time to make a story and live with that story.
No time to breed anger and keep it alive.
Spontaneously back to the present with joy and liveliness!
It’s amazing how we grown-up humans do not just manufacture misery through our pseudo intellectual minds but also completely justify it!
Flap your wings and release the shit.
