Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Crow

The regular reader of this blog will know that I have a long-standing relationships with the symbol of the crow (see for example my recent "Beyond Good and Evil" note: http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2015/01/beyond-good-and-evil.html) Essentially, this powerful symbolic bird opened up my shadow path, encouraging me to fully embrace my masculinity, face my demons, and forcing me to put my foot down when the situation demands it in spite of my friendly nature. This morning, I saw the crow flying by, landing on the fence of our house for a brief moment, looking at me, and then flying off. I didn't think much of this occurrence and then left for my morning commute.

Once I arrived at work I saw a research note from one of our more junior analysts who I really care for. Unfortunately, she had just made the classic mistake that I had done earlier in my career, so I simply couldn't help sending her a short, somewhat biting email back, essentially telling her not to do it again. I was secretly hoping that she would reply back, allowing me to explain better that all I wanted to do was to protect her from future critics, which she "luckily" did. I think I got a few lessons across to her in that exchange, and hope that at the end of the day she was no longer mad at me. 

So it turned out that my "one-person, good cop - bad cop strategy" worked out. Had I sent her a long explanatory email to start with, my important message would likely have been lost on her given that she had an extremely busy day. And just as I was thinking about all of this while walking to a meeting, I found myself walking in front of the office where the story of the crow started many years ago (see the link from above). So it was only then that I remembered my encounter with the crow from the early morning. Looks like the crow gave me her blessing!

Light-workers beware, the Tao uses all of life's symbols - the light as well as the shade!

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