INCONVENIENT is about the nicest word I can use to describe my forced “Owl Experience” last Friday. And no, it didn’t turn out to be magically spiritual or anything. Or did it?
So here’s the deal: a year ago I bought a 90 minute “Owl Experience” for two at a charity auction for the Sacramento Valley Conservancy. It seemed like a good idea at the time. One of those things where having won it, we had a year to use it. After close to 11 months of procrastination, I realized we were at the end of our owl and pulled up the West Coast Falconry website to find an “experience” we could fit in our limited schedule. There were only 2 spots left in the whole 6 week period, so I grabbed the date and cleared my consciousness of all owls and owl-related experiences.
Fast forward to the day before The Owl Experience (early 90s band?) when I am now knee deep in panic racing for a Nov. 19 due date (some call it a deadline, I find that violent) on my book manuscript. I try to get Megan, a bird-loving friend, to replace me on the experience and do the 5-hour day trip with my husband. Neither that or having she and her husband going together instead fly. So it’s decided that Megan and I will go.
ts a beautiful day and a gorgeous drive and I’m with my good friend, so I brace myself for one of those I didn’t have time and I resented it but it was really amazing and deep experiences.
That didn’t happen
I didn’t have an amazing deep experience. What did happen is that we stood around for about two and a half hours learning how stupid owls are. Yes, you heard me. A 90-minute Owl Experience was really a 150-minute Owl Experience and, more importantly,
Owls
Are
Not
Wise
Turns out these bird brains are dinosaurs (along with alligators and something else) with dinosaur brains. They use all their brain power to make those big eyes and ears detect a mouse hiding under the snow at 50 yards at night.
That they can do. As a result, they are easily distracted by, well, everything. And absolutely terrible at learning how to fly from one human’s gloved arm to another even when very hungry for mice parts.
That’s the reason The Owl Experience took 60 more minutes than it was supposed to. They couldn’t do their only current jobs even with Mouse Motivation.
Nonetheless, the owls are very interesting to watch being dumb. We got some decent pictures. Megan loved it. And the trainers were phenomenally charming, funny and delightful. Which goes a long way. We learned that the tiniest owl (pictured above) has its own instagram feed #IAmNotABaby because it is seven years old. Whereas the largest owl (not pictured) a gorgeous Siberian something, IS a baby. Below is me with a barn owl.
A few days later I was complaining about the Owl Experience to Sunny, another friend, whining that if I was to go through all that I at least expected to gain some sort of spiritual wisdom but no, because the freakin’ owls are not even vaguely wise!
Sunny chimed in, as she often does: Um, could that be the spiritual wisdom?
Sara: What?
Sunny: Maybe the wisdom is that even though owls use all their brain power to find mice under the snow and can’t learn how to do anything else, that’s their thing. You can’t judge owls or anyone for being the way they were made.
(Okay, Sunny didn’t really say all that but it’s close)
So darn it, that’s the freakin’ wisdom that pays for the trip: Owls are wise because they do what they do without judgment or aspiration (they don’t have the brain cells to judge or aspire). And, I mean, they are very very beautiful.
Tool of the week
Clearing judgments (from Access Consciousness). When you notice you have a judgment about someone (or something) else like “that owl is an idiot” or “why am I standing around for 2 and a half hours when I could be writing my book?” you can say “interesting point of view, I have that point of view” three times. The concept is to own it from our perspective and theirs.
Reflection Questions
- Whoooo are you judging for being less than you think they should be?
- Everywhere you decided that there’s such a thing as “brain power” and that you get to be the arbiter of what that brain power should be used for and everything that is times a gazillion are you willing to destroy and uncreate it all right now?
- If not, what’s stopping you?