The World is a Vast Field of Caged Birds

Are you grasping for air inside a cage where the door is always unlocked?

I was assisting a mocking bird exhibiting strange behavior yesterday, turns out, I think he was fledgling and needed some water.

As I held this magnificent beauty in my hand, the image of a caged bird passed through my mind’s eye.

Is the world a field of caged birds able to fly away from the cage whenever they choose?

I remember leaving grad school with over $50k in debt realizing that I was being re-directed from the career I thought I wanted.

This was all before 9/11 and I found myself sitting in a forensic anthropology class learning how to tell someone’s gender or level of health by their bones. I doubt those swallowed up inside the trans-agenda would approve of a class like that all these years later where anything goes and sanity is the only thing that has flown out of the cage.

Working multiple jobs, racing around like a chicken with its head cut off, I decided that subsisting on ramen noodles wasn’t the best survival tactic and ended up in the glamorous world of money and marketing. The wine was expensive and as long as I showed up to the dinners and tolerated the advances by men in shiny shoes who drove Porsches, without complaining too much, then I’d be rewarded with a Nordstrom gift card as a bribe to keep me quiet and punching the clock with a smile on my face and high heels on my feet.

I’ve certainly seen it all and lived, what seems like, at least 4 lives in this 1 so far.

That young version of me was in survival mode drowning in a sea of empty promises and false ideals. At the same time, I didn’t take that work home with me and there was still time for long walks and laughter. I look back see strength where I once saw weakness…I see character being forged and the opportunity to learn to set boundaries being made….I see myself learning to appreciate both the simplicity and finer things life brings in its ebbs and flows.

Fast forward to 2008 where I found myself laid off and without work for the first time in my life.

A great deal of stubbornness and tenacity planted me fearfully into a consultant role that was full commission sales….the amount you can make is endless, but the hustle and grind was too. I recognized something was way off with the 9/11 story but there was no time to go down rabbit holes, at least not fully….that’s the cage, the mind wants to wander, the body knows the truth, and the soul cries let me out….but the churning and burning to pay bills kept the inner birdy from singing.

For years I wore myself thin inside a system that only wanted to squeeze as much out of me as possible. I could buy pretty much anything I wanted but instead I had to spend to sustain myself because there was no time left to enjoy life. I was earning an urn.

It’s not an unfamiliar story.

It’s like being in the wrong relationship. You look like the perfect couple on the outside, on paper, but inside you know you’re not aligned and a little piece of you is dying. You rationalize it because you’re good at it. You justify it because you care about your clients and colleagues. You make excuses because there are parts of it that are actually really great. You turn the other cheek to the looming thoughts that creep up and say things like: “Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing? How will I pay the bills? How is this useful or helpful? Is this all there is to life?” …. and sometimes those answers just won’t be made clear without opening the cage and jumping out first.

And that’s where the deception has its tentacles…..in the rationalizations, the justifications and the excuses. The whole world turns a blind eye and the minute you bring it up, you’re outcast from the hive like an unspoken rule of conduct. You can paint your cage a pretty color, you can give it purple hair, you can don it with the latest trends and optimize it so it never crashes down…..you can even add windows, but it’s still a cage.

Nothing is for nothing, though, because what I learned about propaganda and programming through marketing and advertising is something I never would have seen into with such great depths and an inside lens had I not been part of it.

Every profession inside the system is part of the programming and everyone who sees at some point in time has to decide to stay in and play the game or exit and do something different. If you stay in and play the game, can you do so ethically while holding your conscience in place and not getting eaten alive in another way? Or if you leave can you hold it together without falling in to the next trap(s)?

I certainly don’t have the answers. Even the cage has its benefits, that’s why it’s so hard to leave…And the risks of flying free from it means learning to stand in darkness, aloneness and uncertainty….but with wings.

This is the self-initiation to both a more sovereign and Source-guided life brings. It takes the extremes of the paradoxes and merges them. It takes the joker and the thief on a ride to realization that all conspiracies truly are an invitation to witnessing the “A-Ha” that it’s all an “inside job.” The collective unconscious driving the bus of cages around the wheel of ages loses a bird that day…..who, instead of going off to join the circus, goes off to join the sages.

I walked away from the 6 figure career that was built on blood, sweat and tears. I was “successful” by societal standards but not my own.

I knew for a long time the exhaustion and fatigue wasn’t from burn out but from burn-in….the burning of my soul to step, once again, into the unknown.

It’s harder to step into that discomfort as we get older, yet even more invigorating.

A lightness came over me…instantly the fatigue began to let up.

I spent a lot of time in contemplation, who was I before the world told me who I should be?

I remember being so poor that one night all I had to eat was a box of croutons….yet I was full of life…..even then I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Grace over croutons, can I at least get a side of vinegar and oil?

That’s what the world is, it’s a field of caged birds with an open door….an invitation to the liminal spaces where breath breathes out again. It’s the reminder that richness is in how we live, not what we have.

I learned the hard way that no one realizes how wound up their nervous system is until they really sop….I mean REALLY stop.

Because the propaganda wants you to become a brand, one with the productivity program, integrated with the data constantly chasing the carrot (goal post) that always moves and never lets you rest…..if you just “connect” with the algorithm, if you just do the next thing, then the next thing, and so on.

We’re not meant to play chase with an algorithm, we’re meant to dance with the natural rhythm of life….you’re not a brand, you’re a soul….you’re not a machine, you’re an enlivened being…..you’re not a product or producer, you’re a Creator, an artist here to paint your own experience in a way that only your eyes can see…. to walk a journey that only you can.

The totality of it all holds weight. Even the cage serves a purpose until ready to jump out…..will you fall or will you fly…..what if both are ok because at least you dared open the door?

Are you grasping for air inside a cage where the door is always unlocked?

The world wants transactions that fit the prescribed propaganda, not transformation, not transcendence. Imagine what would happen if you stopped decorating the cage?

I thought I was squeezing the most out of life because I’ve taken risks, met all the goals, gone to the places, won the trophies, done what I said I would do…but the truth is I was leaving a lot on the table…until I wasn’t….more sacredness, joy, beauty, nothingness, sovereignty, the parts we must claim by our own will, by our own hands, by our own wings.

I’m still growing my human wings…….a fledgling like this little bird …..as if he was saying, come fly with me, come fly?

Life is a beautiful gift to be seized right out from under the system that tries to keep it out of time, in line, playing the game of pantomime.

And it all can change a thousand times and in an instant.

My experience says to go where you are appreciated for who you are, not what you produce. Do not follow the heart, the savior programming, the system, nor the false light that builds the cages, but something deeper, the wisdom whispering the song that only you can hear….it will ask you for courage, it will dare you to do things the world calls “irrational,” it will help you grow your own wings.

Remember, do not run from the cage, do not merely open the door and go out on a limb, but remove it entirely and melt it into something beautiful that can never be re-formed into what it once was ever again…for it is not just symbolic, but a tether to the grid…a grid hoping the hinge will grow squeaky and rust shut, not be blasted through with the siren of your authentic signal…a siren that doesn’t reveal where you are on the map unless you choose to be found.

~ Angela