Spiritual Lessons from Nature Part XIV: Who am I?

So, it turns out, I am not a hawk after all.

Let me explain.

Like many in New England and around the world, I have long admired that majestic winged predator called the hawk.  And short of new-agey beliefs around spirit animals that have never been my thing, for many years, decades really, I have felt a strong affinity, and even connection with, this animal that to me symbolized strength as beauty, independence as self-reliance, and no-nonsense as wisdom.

However, about a month ago, this all changed.

It happened when I was walking across a large campus-like lawn, and 3 hawks took a dive to within about 5-10 feet of me.

After my initial awe at having such a close encounter with not one, but three of my favorite bird, I realized they were all charging for the same exact squirrel that I can only presume was on each of their breakfast menus.

After some flapping of wings,squeals out of their pointed beaks, and a few attempts at a steal, only one of the hawks finally won out.

But what got me most, was the fact this fight between these three hawks for this one squirrel was happening on an extremely large green space that was jam packed with literally hundreds of chunky grey squirrels.

After this National Geographic-esque experience, I continued to walk across the campus toward my own destination and reflected on what I had seen, at which point it dawned upon me: I am not a hawk.  

Which is to say, I am not competitive. I am not a predator. And, I am not an “each man for himself” kind of person- or animal as the case may be.

Of course I already knew this at a cognitive level, but I don't know that I had ever really radically accepted it.

This realization about myself reminded me of a scene from a 2014 animated Disney movie that I like to watch with my son called Big Hero 6, in which the character of Baymax, a robot designed to provide healthcare, tries to explain to the main character Hiro that he cannot be aggressive or violent toward others by saying:

My programming prevents me from injuring a human being.

Similarly, to Baymax, I don't think I'm programmed or wired to be a hawk.

So a couple weeks after that day on campus lawn, I made a tough decision to leave a group that had a mission and purpose that I cared very deeply about, but happened to be a group comprised of several hawks who were more than okay with ripping metaphorical squirrels out of each other's mouths.

And even knowing the culture of the group is not who I am, it  was still very difficult to walk away.

They say some monastics and committed yogis practice meditation for years or even decades with one single spiritual question or mantra: “Who Am I?"

I for one have never used this question as part of my meditation practice yet, but particularly now, I understand how it could be quite revealing to pull away the layers of "I," and ego, and the self (small "s") by repeating this question over and over.

Until then, I may not know who I am, but I have grown in awareness of who I am not.

And to me, that is something.