Over a nice cup of tea this morning, Anna and I observed that, as fall approaches, many of our summer feathered friends seem to be preparing for their trip south, which reminded her of something she read or heard somewhere about an ornithologist who discovered a hummingbird that apparently hitch-hiked its way south by tucking itself deep into the feathers at the joint of a goose or duck's wing.
Considering that story, we asked ourselves, how did the hummer know to do that? How did it know that the duck or goose was flying south? How did it know that hitch-hiking (or better, stowing away) like that would work? And how did it know when the goose or duck had arrived at the hummer's preferred destination? Presumably, the duck or goose stopped here and there along the way, as they do, and how did the hummer tell the difference between an intermediate stop and the final stop?
And, of course, the answer is, God knew.
The hummer does not see the Universe separatively as we do. So everything that is in God's Mind is accessible to the hummer … when and as it needs it.
"I know what I need to know when I need to know it."
I remember reading years ago (and seeing a television show, or maybe it was a movie, on the subject) about the earliest settlers of the Hawaiian Islands and how they had sailed there from some very distant starting point in the western Pacific, navigating solely by the stars and the waves. Here too, the question arises, how did they know there were islands "to the east" and how did they know how to find them in the vast ocean? Again, the answer is, God knew, and evidently the one among these early people who was "the navigator" did not perceive himself or herself as separate and distinct from God, and so he or she knew too.
I remember, many years ago, walking in the woods, I was concerned about getting lost, and I thought to myself that if only I could let God think for me, it would be impossible for me to become lost anywhere ever, for I would always know the way.
The knowledge, the awareness, is there, is here. Our inability to know it, to hear it, to see it, to be it, is a factor of the ego, that which causes me to perceive, or that by which I perceive, that I am me and you are not me. That generates a sense of separation from God, which interferes with my knowing what God knows.
Self-Realized Teachers … those to whom the ego is no longer an issue … know what they know because God knows it. And just so, we routinely read about, hear of, and experience, instances in which a True Teacher "has seen right through me" or "knew everything about my life" or "told me things about myself which no one else could have known". The Teacher, being Self-Realized, is not an "else", any more than God is an else, and so what is Known is known.
And hummingbirds know that! The best part is, they undoubtedly don't even think about knowing it, or how they know it. I suppose they don't even know that they know it; they just know it.
Too cool.