Flight of the Condor

Imagine for a moment that you suffered a catastrophic illness that has kept you hospitalized for such a long time that you forget what it feels like to be out in the world. In the early days of your illness, you were bedbound and barely conscious. A few months later you remain bedbound, but your mind is becoming alert. You see the nurses and doctors moving around you, smell the pervasive disinfectant, hear the hums and beats of medical equipment toiling to keep you alive. From your supine position you are starting to follow the daily rhythms of hospital life. This is your new normal. It is your new world. The old you and your life in the outside world fades from your mind.

And then you are moved to a rehabilitation ward where you are kept busy as you painfully relearn how to operate your body, how to move from one spot to another, how to bring food to your mouth so you can eat. The rehabilitation ward is now your new normal, and memories of your bedbound hospital experience begin to fade. You imbibe the daily rhythms of the rehabilitation ward as you work towards becoming a new you. Your life here is now your complete existence. The outside world doesn’t exist for you. In fact, you rarely dwell on the mundanities of the outside world.

As your body heals and your limbs regain strength, you are informed that it is time for you to return to the outside world. You understand the outside world intellectually, but you have lost your feel for it. Despite previously living in the outside world, you find yourself suddenly uncertain and cautious about rejoining it. You want to, but you are uncertain whether you are able to.

On the day of your discharge from the hospital rehabilitation ward people gather around, full of excitement and nervous energy for you. But you are contemplative of the big step you are getting ready to take because while you are you, you are leaving the hospital as a physically, mentally, and emotionally new you. The experience of your illness and the extended time in the hospital has changed you. And the new you will be joining the outside world for the first time ever.

Even though you relearned to walk in the rehabilitation ward, and would be able to walk yourself out the doors, albeit slowly, it is hospital policy that you must be taken outside in a wheelchair pushed by a hospital employee. The ride to the outside is swift. The people around you jostle to keep up and stay out of the way as they prattle on about this or that regarding you. You pay them little mind. You are thankful for them and for their love, but your focus is on yourself and whether you can navigate the outside world.

And just like that, the wheelchair comes to a stop. The hospital employee sets the brake. He has parked you at the edge of the sidewalk. One misstep to the left or to the right and you might find yourself toppling over into the grass. There are no more handrails. In front of you is a curb cut where the sidewalk slopes downward to the asphalt surface where cars are parked. During rehabilitation you practiced navigating steps; you didn’t practice walking on downward slopes. The floor was smooth and flat.

And so, you suss out the terrain around you. You could step off the sidewalk onto the uneven surface of the grass, walk to the curb, and step down to the asphalt. You’ve practiced stair steps. You start in that direction, but realize it’s too risky. Instead, you take a deep breath, and start making small, slow steps down the sloping curb cut, careful to maintain your balance on the downward slope. Once on the asphalt, you start shuffling faster towards the car.

The new you, has entered the outside world and passed a small but important first test. Your new you will survive.

Flight of the condor

Last year an Andean Condor shared this same experience and was released into the wild after a long rehabilitation. The team who cared for the condor filmed her release. (Note: If you are viewing the video on a smartphone, maximize the screen.)

Andean condors are majestic creatures. They are one of the largest flying birds in existence. They flap their wings when initially taking flight. Once airborne, however, they rarely flap their wings. They soar. Their average life span is fifty to seventy years—almost a human lifetime.

This condor is now flying free, soaring above the land, surveying the ever-changing landscape below.

Spiritual heart and vision

Those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will rise up on pinions like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not grow weak.
(Isaiah 40:31)

Renewing their strength means wanting what is good more and more. Rising up on wings like eagles means being able to understand what is true more and more, and becoming more and more rational in the process. (Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #3901.2)

There are no condors in the Bible. But there are eagles. The image of rising up on the wings of an eagle has become part of our cultural and metaphorical landscape. It suggests rising above the common, jostling fray, and seeing life from a higher perspective.

And indeed, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) interprets eagles in a positive sense as rising up to a more rational, and ultimately more spiritual, view of life. The sky above is a symbol of the spiritual world. Soaring in the sky like an eagle, or a condor, is a material image of a higher, more rational, more spiritual view of our existence.

Humanity is ill

Unfortunately, the condor of modern society has fallen severely ill. It is in intensive care. Irrationality reigns. The world has descended into heated political and social conflict in which there is far more heat than light. The result has not been the better world that various parties and ideologies have promised, but a descent into conflict and chaos, while average people struggle and suffer.

Let’s look at just one element of that societal illness.

In his historic 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed a vision of the future that became instantly immortal:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

In today’s political and social climate, we are farther from King’s dream than ever. Both ends of the political spectrum judge people by the color of their skin. The content of their character is largely ignored. The result is not an improvement of the lives of any race, but an embattled society in which different races are pitted against each other in an unwinnable battle. A wave of racism and xenophobia is washing over the world. The nations are groaning under the chaos of racial and cultural warfare.

But this is not really a social or political issue. It is a human issue. And it is a spiritual issue.

Racism is self-love writ large

What is racism?

Essentially, it is an expanded version of egotistical self-love. My people are good. My people should have the best. My people are better than other kinds of people. Other kinds of people are bad, or at least suspect. They must be excluded from our country and society, or at least kept at the lowest rungs of the social, political, and economic ladder.

For more on the origin and character of racism and xenophobia, see our article “Black Lives Matter”—and no, it’s not about the Black Lives Matter organization and movement.

This is a social and political illness. And it is a completely irrational one that leads nowhere good. Our present-day racialized thinking on both ends of the political spectrum has put society into the intensive care unit. This is not the only type of selfish and irrational thinking that has put society into the intensive care unit. But it is a significant component of the malaise that our world is suffering from today.

Will the world recover from this illness? The end of that story is not yet written. And this is a spiritual blog, not a political blog. We’ll just have to see how things play out on the political and social level.

But as individuals, if we have been infected or affected by the racial virus that is racing around the world, there is a path toward healing, and toward sanity.

Wanting what is good

The well-known words from Isaiah 40:31 speak not only of rising up on the wings of an eagle, but also of renewing our strength so that we do not grow weary and weak. And in truth, the polarized state of society today certainly can make a person weary and weak.

What can renew our strength? Swedenborg suggests an answer when he writes, “Renewing their strength means wanting what is good more and more.”

What carries us out of wearying conflict and chaos to a stronger and more motivated sense of life? Many things. But the most powerful and sustained of them is devoting our life to the good of other people.

Yes, self-love and an us-against-them mentality does provide a certain motivating factor for action and conflict. But focusing our life on the good of others in practical actions of care and service goes far deeper. It provides a deeper level of motivation that gives a person strength even in the most disheartening of situations.

Consider some of the great figures of history who devoted their lives to improving the human condition and the lives of the people around them. Some of them died for their beliefs. And yet, they are remembered for the power of their actions and their message.

The greatest of them wanted what is good, not just for their own people, but for all people, everywhere, regardless of race or identity or culture. These are the great figures of history who moved humanity forward toward a better world.

As individuals, most of us can’t change the world, or even our country. But we can change our own heart. We can commit ourselves to wanting what is good more and more not just for “our people,” but for all people, whether or not they look and think like me and my people.

Becoming rational

Selfishness and greed lead to insanity. No matter how clever and Machiavellian power-hungry people may be, ultimately their program leads to disaster and collapse. Nations and empires rise, and then they fall because their leaders and the people themselves start vying for power, wealth, and control rather than thinking of the good of the nation and its people. Along the way, irrationality takes over, and every new action becomes one more laceration tearing apart the fabric of the nation.

Again, as individuals, we can’t fix this. The whole mindset of the nation, and of the world, must change. And unfortunately, this usually happens only the hard way: by seeing what our selfish and greedy attitudes and actions lead to—which is the collapse of our society.

But we can heal from our own illness of irrationality. We can rise above selfishness and greed, and the conflict and chaos they lead to, and like the condor, see things from a higher perspective.

It will not be easy. We have all been weakened by the illness of society, and by the illness within our own heart and mind. We may have to spend months or even years in the spiritual rehabilitation ward, awkwardly struggling to relearn how to live as a human being. Yet each of us can make the decision to rise above our own and our culture’s irrationality and narrow-mindedness.

And when we have done the initial work of rebuilding a new mind and heart within ourselves, we can take flight and see the world, and our own life in the world, from a higher, more rational, and more spiritual perspective.

The condor’s view of race

In the example of racism and xenophobia, one way to accomplish this is to consider the issue of the different races from God’s perspective.

Why did God create different races in the first place? Did God make a mistake? Or does God play favorites, loving one race more than another? Some religious people sincerely believe that God does love one race more than another. And they quote from their Scriptures in support of this.

But really, what is recorded in their Scriptures is God gradually leading and coaxing people, cultures, and nations out of their naturally myopic, self-centered, and racist view of life to a broader, more universal, and more rational perspective. In the Bible, there is a progression from the narrow focus of the early parts of the Old Testament on Israel and its people’s good to a broader and broader focus in the Prophets, and especially in the New Testament, toward viewing all people as God’s children, equally loved by God.

The reality is that God does not play favorites. God loves all of God’s children equally, with a powerful and infinite love.

The reality is that God did not make a mistake in creating different races. God knew that a healthy, well-functioning society and world requires people of all different types and characters. And so, God provided endless variety in humankind.

When we view the situation from this rational and spiritual perspective, while turning our heart toward the good of all people, we can find healing within our own heart and mind, even in the midst of the chaos and conflict all around us that is driven by selfishness and greed, including the broader forms of racially-based selfishness and greed.

And as each one of us makes the choice to renew our strength through focusing on the good of all people, and to rise up on the wings of an eagle—or of a condor—by lifting our minds up into the sky of a more rational and spiritual understanding of the human condition, we can gradually, one-by-one, and then all of us together, move our world toward the vision of universal healing among all races, cultures, and nations that Martin Luther King, Jr., so beautifully dreamed of.

For further reading:

• Black Lives Matter
• Is Racism Equal-Opportunity?
• “Get Out of My Country”? Whose Country Is It, Anyway?
• Think No Evil, Speak No Evil: The Way of the Angels
• Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth