Do you ever have one of those “A-hah moments”? When things are so clear to you, you wonder why you didn’t see it before? I want to share mine with you.

Read on for a story about when I felt true “oneness.”

My Morning with the Birds

I started my daily reading ritual with my hot cup of tea, a book, and a few cushions. Gathering these together, I went to my back porch to sit in the sun. It is on the third level of a house built on the side of a hill, so when I’m on the porch, I am entirely in the midst of the trees, many of them still towering above me. 

My birdfeeder is a few feet away from where I typically sit to read, but because the flocks are familiar with me and my dog in our spaces, the birds still cluster around it. 

This one particular morning, though, there was some construction noise, a constant roar of a backhoe. This annoying sound prompted me to move to my front porch. It is on the ground level, covered, and again, tucked within lush greenery. On my front porch, I have a small pondless waterfall. The sounds were soothing, and I finally settled down to read Paul Selig’s book, Alchemy.  

Alchemy is about knowing God in form, knowing oneself as an expression of God in form. I read this book slowly and repeated passages until I felt some assimilation. It was heady, but I sensed that it was essential to understand.

I got to this sentence in Alchemy and marked up the book with my interpretation of it. I put my understanding of the text in parentheses below:

 “To rely upon form (the material world) for expression gives you great opportunity to know the self in tandem (in a relationship) with others, and through experiences that can only be claimed while embodied.” 

At that moment, I looked up and saw five birds standing a few feet away from me on the edge of a wet rock. They stood frozen and stared directly at me. Then, more birds gathered around my little waterfall feature. I wondered, were they the same birds that had been on my back porch minutes prior?

As I watched, more birds arrived. There were eight birds, then ten, fifteen, and soon more than twenty. Even the Cardinal showed up. They were all splashing, drinking, and frolicking in the water. Were they here to tell me something?  

I felt that with my small gesture of a feeder and a waterfall, I had established a relationship with this whole community of birds. We were in a relationship and in tandem that very minute. I felt “oneness” with them that I never felt before.

The birds: The Divine in form.

Me: The Divine in form.

You, me, the birds, the trees, all Divine in form, all in tandem with the other.  

Moments of Oneness

Has that ever happened to you? An experience that is produced by a seemingly average activity that creates an incredible new feeling? A clear sensation of “oneness with…”? It’s easy just to let these times pass as if they didn’t happen, as if they were not real. But they are real, and they happen to all of us. 

What do you do when these moments happen? You recognize them and listen?

I like to bask in these feelings of oneness occasionally as I remember this experience. These are the moments when the veil is lifted, the idea of separation dissolves, and the inherent Divine is unmasked. As the birds show me, we are all one in Source. 

I know that it is the Heart Self, the part of me that is made in the image of God, speaking. I Listen.