Reclaim Your Chicken

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

We are grateful to Rupali Bhuva for offering this hand-made painting for this reading.

Being does not require thought. Be fully attentive, gently attentive. Trust the natural ease of awareness. Make no effort. No trying, no doing, no defensiveness. Just gazing and seeing without resistance.

As you allow this natural openness, at some point it begins to gel. The Jell-O of awareness! One minute it’s liquid, the next minute — bloop! It’s kind of a little jiggly, but there it is: connectedness. When you’re tuned in like that, there’s empathy. There’s no “your feelings” or “my feelings,” just the movement of sensation.

This is what it means to understand profoundly—not personally—what responsibility really is: the realization that we are interwoven with everything and everyone.

As we cultivate this attentiveness, interconnectedness of being emerges. With it comes the natural letting go of the burden of always being in survival mode. Unfortunately, as you all know, we live in a world where survival mode is normal. That’s the heart of why we are lost, hopeless, helpless, and in despair. We have lost touch with being; our true being.

But it is not lost. You are intimate with it. It is nourishing, loving, generous. Perceiving it fulfills us as human beings.

And so you can live naturally as who you are in the world, more in touch with your individual purpose, your contribution to the ecosystem of all being. You may not be able to articulate it, you may not understand it, but something deep within you completely trusts that movement is guiding you and guiding everything all of the time, because now you’re in sync with it.

Awakening is being in sync.

Years ago, I used to say I was into the Teachings of the Chicken.

You’ve heard the expression, “you’re like a chicken running around with your head cut off.” Remember that? Well, I changed it to, “you’re a head running around with your chicken cut off.”

You have to reclaim your chicken!

There is such wonder in experiencing peace throughout your whole nervous system. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. What a relief! Then we really see. This seeing is also feeling, listening, being, connection. A profound synaesthesia.

At this stage of listening, very little instruction is required. If you’re looking for more, notice that urge. Notice that insecurity without trying to fix it. Allow insecurity. What if insecurity—wow—was nothing wrong? This is just a natural rebalancing in process—this is just healing. Healing isn’t necessarily getting rid of a condition. It could be. It’s also balance, and harmony even with imperfection, and ultimately freedom.

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Jon Bernie is a contemporary, nondual spiritual teacher who offers a compassionate, heart-centered approach to awakening.