Falling into Grace

A beautiful, thought inspiring passage from Adyashanti's Falling into Grace.

The great spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said,

“When you teach a child that a bird is named ‘bird,’ the

child will never see the bird again.” What they’ll see is the

word “bird.” That’s what they’ll see and feel, and when

they look up in the sky and see that strange, winged being

take flight, they’ll forget that what is actually there is a

great mystery. They’ll forget that they really don’t know

what it is. They’ll forget that that thing flying through

the sky is beyond all words, that it’s an expression of the

immensity of life. It’s actually an extraordinary and wondrous

thing that flies through the sky. But as soon as we

name it, we think we know what it is. We see “bird,” and

we almost discount it. A “bird,” “cat,” “dog,” “human,”

“cup,” “chair,” “house,” “forest”—all of these things have

been given names, and all of these things lose some of

their natural aliveness once we name them. Of course

we need to learn these names and form concepts around

them, but if we start to believe that these names and all

of the concepts we form around them are real, then we’ve

begun the journey of becoming entranced by the world

of ideas.


The capacity to think and utilize language has a shadow

side that, if left unattended and used in an unwise way, can

cause us to suffer and experience unnecessary conflict with

one other. Because after all, that’s what thought does: It

separates. It classifies. It names. It divides. It explains. Again,

thought and language have a very useful aspect and they are

therefore very necessary things to develop. Evolution has

worked very hard to make sure that we have the capacity to

think coherently and rationally, or, in other words, to think

in ways that will ensure our survival. But when we look back

upon the world, we see that the very thing that has evolved

to help us survive has also become a form of imprisonment

for us. We’ve become trapped in a world of dreams, a world

in which we live primarily in our minds.


This is the dream world that is addressed by many

ancient spiritual teachings. When many of the old saints

and sages say, “Your world is a dream. You’re living in an

illusion,” they’re referring to this world of the mind and

the way we believe our thoughts about reality. When we

see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing

life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have

a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve

turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an

idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made

you into something very small. This is the way of human

beings, this is what we do to each other.


Wow...

Peace and love, Krista