The Eye of Horus Experience

In today’s episode, we’ll explore gaining a broader perspective and applying it to our daily lives as we navigate through challenges and opportunities.

It was the summer of 2007, and I was generally in a state of appreciation. One day, while driving into the subdivision, I passed by an accident. As I continued deeper into the neighborhood, I noticed what appeared to be a vulture standing in the middle of the street. It was starting to wobble, and this was a sizable bird. I slowed down as I got closer, realizing it wasn’t a vulture but a hawk. Its wingspan was over eight feet, an enormous bird.

As the hawk took off and gracefully flapped its wings, I nearly stopped to admire its brilliance and beauty. Sometimes, nature reveals itself to us in the most unexpected ways. I drove the rest of the way home in a state of deep appreciation, grateful for this close encounter with nature.

Upon reaching home, I realized I’d left my phone in my car. Stepping back outside, I looked up and found myself less than eight feet away from a deer and its offspring. I felt no fear, only profound appreciation for the beauty of the moment. My neighbor, in the distance, noticed it too, and we shared the awe of the experience. The deer, without any aggression, trotted off with its offspring through our lawn and into a wooded area.

I marveled at the incredible coincidence of having these two close encounters with nature back-to-back. I went back inside, took a nap, and contemplated the meaning of it all.

During my nap, it struck me like a bolt of lightning—I understood the significance. In classical mythology and ancient religions, the hawk symbolizes perspective and insight. In Egypt, it represented Horus, the all-seeing eye. The hawk’s ability to soar above provides a unique perspective, seeing both the road ahead and your current position.

On the other hand, the deer represents us in the material world, navigating situations and circumstances—sometimes toward opportunities, other times toward obstacles. Having a hawk’s perspective, an external guide that can see from above, can be invaluable. It can warn us of unseen dangers, like a bridge being out down the road.

In such situations, the hawk can say, “I know you’ve been that way a million times, but trust me, that bridge is out.” By listening to the hawk, we can avoid conflict and safely reach our destination, with everything working out.

The message I took away from that experience is this: you cannot deny these two aspects of your total self. There is an innate, divine intelligence offering you insight and showing you the path of least resistance. But how do you access this path? You have to cultivate a relationship with that broader perspective. It involves listening to your instincts, acting spontaneously when appropriate, and not acting spontaneously to your detriment. It means not being trapped in a rigid mindset of “I know, I know, I know.” Sometimes, our logic and thinking can limit the opportunities and perspectives we can fully experience.

Now, I understand there’s no empirical evidence for this, no Harvard-reviewed study to substantiate it. However, we’ve all had experiences in life when we get an inexplicable urge to do something differently. Maybe it’s hesitating before heading out and avoiding traffic, or changing lanes for no apparent reason and finding it’s the only one moving in rush hour. These are small examples of that inner guidance.

I’ve heard stories about people who had a mysterious urge not to go to work on 9/11. That’s the divine faculty speaking to us, communicating with us. This communication is happening all the time. I was listening to a personal development audio tape, and it mentioned that our brain is the receiver. The deer on the ground perceives its surroundings, the divine faculty conceives of the entire plan, and the brain receives these conceptions as what we typically call “thinking.” It’s instinct—the same instinct that a flock of birds uses to gracefully navigate the sky. I call it thinking with the bigger, broader brain.

Nature’s instinct is a divine faculty at work, knowing its own nature and the integrity of what it is. We, too, have a divine faculty within us that knows how to chart the path of least resistance to reach our desired destinations. We can choose paths with more opportunities or more obstacles, and the obstacle often arises from limited thinking. Opening ourselves up to broader communication and thinking beyond our immediate perspective can lead to greater opportunities.

Think of it as being like the Sphinx—a human head and an animal body. It symbolizes thinking with your broader perspective while navigating daily experiences. It’s beneficial to have that “Hawk above” that can see down the road, helping you avert conflicts and obstacles.

That experience had a profound impact on me, making me more attentive to building and nurturing that relationship with insight. Over the years, I’ve found that if you can listen to the call and heed it, it can guide you toward the destinations you’ve already identified as special and worthwhile for yourself. Embrace it.