Once upon a time…
A beautiful feather belonging to the King of Birds, called the Sïmurgh, fell into the center of China.
The other birds of the world discovered the feather. They happened to be sick and tired of having no ruler to guide them. So they decided to track down the Sïmurgh and ask him to be their ruler. But in order to get to the Sïmurgh’s Palace, the birds had to cross seven valleys.
Each valley presented a challenge, and no one may cross the valley without completing its challenge.
To cross Valley 1, you must build self-direction and patience instead of blindly following the path of least resistance.
Valley 2: You must let your capacity to love win over your capacity to intellectualize.
Valley 3: You must find wisdom everywhere including in pain and suffering.
Valley 4: You must understand things not in terms of their separateness but in terms of their cosmic interconnectedness.
Valley 5: You must discover inner peace that cannot be broken by external circumstances.
Valley 6: You must see the divinity inherent in everything.
And finally, to cross Valley 7, you must part ways with your ego and embrace the divine essence within you.
When the birds heard the descriptions of the valleys they would have to cross, many of them reacted quite poorly. Many said that’s a no from me dawg, many others claimed that the valleys and the Palace were an urban legend and just stayed at home, and some just straight-up spontaneously died when they heard about how great the challenges of the valleys would be.
But some of the birds had the courage to set out on the adventure. And sure enough, not every bird was able to cross all the valleys. In fact, just 30 of the birds finally made it to the Sïmurgh’s Palace.
When the birds entered the Palace, the courtiers welcomed them and invited them to occupy the throne. Confused by this gesture, the birds ask about the whereabouts of the Sïmurgh, who was nowhere to be seen.
It was at this moment that the courtiers revealed to the birds that they themselves are the Sïmurgh, which means '30 birds' in Farsi.
By crossing the 7 valleys, the birds became a self-ruling, self-sufficient collection of individuals without even realizing it.
This is my adaptation of The Conference of The Birds, a beautiful, surreal and spiritual work by the Sufi poet known as The Attar of Nishapur. It was written by the Attar as an allegory for spiritual development, but I also believe it very much applies for the process of psychological development - which involves self-directed movement away from the ego to the true Self - a process the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung calls individuation.
As the Iranian-American poet Sholeh Wolpe writes:
We are the birds in the story. All of us have our own ideas and ideals, our own fears and anxieties, as we hold on to our own version of the truth. Like the birds of the story, we may take flight together, but the journey itself will be different for each of us. Attar tells us that truth is not static, and we each tread a path according to our own capacity. It evolves as we evolve. Those who are trapped within their own dogma, clinging to hardened beliefs or faith, are deprived of the journey toward the unfathomable Divine, which Attar calls the Great Ocean.
Finally, from my point of view, the greatest takeaway from The Conference of the Birds is this: don’t intellectualize the destination, and think you know all about it because you’re someone who’s good at intuiting these things, or other people have told you about it. Do not refuse your own call to adventure, meaning and the discovery of values that matter most to you.
Clear your mind and set out to do the work: whether that’s personal, creative, or spiritual that your heart compels you to do.
Start. Don’t think this is all just for the birds. Just start.
Love,
Yepi
Art by Peter Sis in his beautifully illustrated version of ‘The Conference of the Birds’ (Courtesy Penguin Press), available here for purchase from my official book list.
Hadn’t heard about this fable. Thank you for sharing! Insightful read as always.