The Starling Question: Alligator or Hawk?

Earlier this week, I received an email from a childhood friend, now a resident of the Sunshine State, following his morning run. He told me about seeing an alligator, a starling, and a hawk. As I’ve mentioned before and will mention again, the Maya say that God, or, to use the Native American term, Great Spirit, talks to us all the time through nature. With the brilliant insight of a Mayan shaman, he readily received an inspiring message for his current life circumstances. He watched the starling reclaim his territory by noisily flutter near the hawk until the majestic bird flew away.

My friend was reminded that he, as a small businessman, can still hold his own against huge corporations who are both predatory and proud (hawk). Moreover, my friend saw how he can maintain his integrity by not swimming with the alligators, those bottom feeders in business, who become cutthroat and unethical in seeking to survive. Reading his email, I was reminded of his courage and tenacity in overcoming bigger opponents all through his life from athletics to business. But, beyond this message, there was another, related message for me to share with you relevant to remembering who we are truly are.

Since ancient times, the core elements of our human beingness have been depicted as three-fold. Plato described the soul as a charioteer holding the reins of two horses as his chariot moves midway between heaven and earth; on the one hand, a dark horse pulls the chariot downward toward earthly delights while a white one strives upward toward the heavenly realm of ideals. Saint Paul described our being as three-fold: “your whole being—spirit, soul, and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). And, Freud referred to the ego, the "I" at the center of our consciousness. On the one hand the ego is pressured by the id, that cauldron of body-based, instinctual desires; while on the other, the ego is compelled by the superego, the socially-conditioned conscience, filled with the morals, taboos, and ideals.

Now, here was my childhood friend presenting a richly symbolic and substantial shamanic depiction of the structure of our being as well as the choices we face that define who we are. It is an apt picture for the current shift we are being called to make. It is a shift in identity, in how we define ourselves. The pesky starling in us (ego) is faced with the choice of aligning with the massive instinctuality of the alligator or with the majestic spirituality of the hawk. In Egyptian mythology, the hawk was the symbol of the god Horus, and in the Native American spirituality, hawk is referred to as the “messenger of Great Spirit” (God).

To identify with the alligator, we risk being swallowed up in a life driven by the reptile brain. In contrast, the starling (ego) could identify with the hawk. Will we identify with the ego (body-based sense of self), the little self, the noisy, pesky starling, and drive away the majestic hawk, the higher self, the spirit, the transcendent portion of the soul? As mentioned in earlier postings, e.g., The Iguana & the Hawk, the Maya depict our highest potential as being feathered serpents, kukulcans. The lower in us is integrated into and guided by the higher.

Saint Paul called us to make our bodies a “living sacrifice” and thereby be “transformed” by the renewing of our minds so that we can then be filled and guided by the spirit of God (Romans 12:1-2). And, since God is love, that essentially means being guided by love. In the next posting, we will see what being guided by love meant to a psychiatrist encarcerated in a concentration camp.

• Today, reflect for a moment on the starling, the hawk, and the alligator as elements of all of us as human beings. Which one are you aligned with in life? Pay attention to the creatures crossing your path. And, remember they may take the form of something in our technological society such as the stylish jaguar making a turn at the traffic light.