Guidance
I am the Roadrunner. I come to teach you the wonders and passions of being a human. To have desires but not to be governed by desires is a beautiful thing. And yet your desires are essentially empty. You must discover this through following them and then transcending them. I love to eat scorpions, rattlesnakes and other poisonous and toxic creatures. I am not afraid of them. You too must not be afraid of life – of emotions, of messiness, of the fears and projections of others. Like the samurai, you must run directly towards your challenges, rather than away from them. Wherever your life is messy right now, be ok with it. It too is a part of the greater plan. Do not wish it gone. Just wish others well.
I am also a solar bird. In the mornings I turn my back to the sun and absorb its rays through my black feathers. You do the same. Rise before dawn and when the sun is up, turn your back and absorb its heavenly rays into your back and spine. This will help you let go of your problems and feel protected and free once again. If you really wish to embrace the ecstatic within you, consider making this a practice, as I do.
Two final messages for you:
- Adapt yourself to these changes life is throwing at you. I used to live in the forests where I used my wings more. Now I love the open plains and I love to run. When I first did this, my people all looked at me with great disapproval: ‘You are a bird,’ they said, ‘we use our wings to fly!’ Rebel that I am, I simply ignored them and ran. Do you run? Maybe you should try it.
- Don’t tie your happiness to someone else’s happiness. Love people, wish them well, but don’t make their happiness your job. That is the way of pain. Open to the freedom that life brings you in each moment. Worry less about what you wish to happen, and let whatever happens, happen. This is my teaching for you.
Mythic Influences
North and Central America – To the Pueblo people, the roadrunner was a bird of great magic because it has two toes pointing forwards and two pointing backwards, making it very difficult to track.
Mayan – In Mayan legend, there is a connection between the quetzal (35) and the roadrunner, which suggests a strong relationship between the themes of ecstasy and boundlessness.
Meaning
The roadrunner is a symbol of great passion and sensuality. It represents the headlong plunge into the world of the senses and the body. This is a symbol of transcendence through the physical form – through joy, abandonment and revelling in life’s delights. The roadrunner is also the only bird that will take on the desert rattlesnakes and kill them, so those with this symbol have a certain fearlessness to their character, needing to let go of their fear of life’s toxins and embrace all aspects of physicality. The fact that the roadrunner has wings but uses its legs as its main form of propulsion also suggests that this symbol has a wonderful paradoxical nature that unites the physical with the spiritual.
Contemplation
We humans have no real idea of the capacities of this body in which we live. It can sip the nectar of a star when it is correctly attuned. It can make sweet love to another person just from thinking about them. The body is a mirror of the macrocosm. It has so many jewels and treasures within it that we couldn’t explore them all if we had aeons. Our bodies are the great untamed wilderness. They’re the frontier, not the final frontier, the only frontier. We’ll never exhaust their abilities, their capacity for love and ecstasy.
-The 64 Ways
I am the Roadrunner. I come to teach you the wonders and passions of being a human. To have desires but not to be governed by desires is a beautiful thing. And yet your desires are essentially empty. You must discover this through following them and then transcending them. I love to eat scorpions, rattlesnakes and other poisonous and toxic creatures. I am not afraid of them. You too must not be afraid of life – of emotions, of messiness, of the fears and projections of others. Like the samurai, you must run directly towards your challenges, rather than away from them. Wherever your life is messy right now, be ok with it. It too is a part of the greater plan. Do not wish it gone. Just wish others well.
I am also a solar bird. In the mornings I turn my back to the sun and absorb its rays through my black feathers. You do the same. Rise before dawn and when the sun is up, turn your back and absorb its heavenly rays into your back and spine. This will help you let go of your problems and feel protected and free once again. If you really wish to embrace the ecstatic within you, consider making this a practice, as I do.
Two final messages for you:
- Adapt yourself to these changes life is throwing at you. I used to live in the forests where I used my wings more. Now I love the open plains and I love to run. When I first did this, my people all looked at me with great disapproval: ‘You are a bird,’ they said, ‘we use our wings to fly!’ Rebel that I am, I simply ignored them and ran. Do you run? Maybe you should try it.
- Don’t tie your happiness to someone else’s happiness. Love people, wish them well, but don’t make their happiness your job. That is the way of pain. Open to the freedom that life brings you in each moment. Worry less about what you wish to happen, and let whatever happens, happen. This is my teaching for you.
North and Central America – To the Pueblo people, the roadrunner was a bird of great magic because it has two toes pointing forwards and two pointing backwards, making it very difficult to track.
Mayan – In Mayan legend, there is a connection between the quetzal (35) and the roadrunner, which suggests a strong relationship between the themes of ecstasy and boundlessness.
The roadrunner is a symbol of great passion and sensuality. It represents the headlong plunge into the world of the senses and the body. This is a symbol of transcendence through the physical form – through joy, abandonment and revelling in life’s delights. The roadrunner is also the only bird that will take on the desert rattlesnakes and kill them, so those with this symbol have a certain fearlessness to their character, needing to let go of their fear of life’s toxins and embrace all aspects of physicality. The fact that the roadrunner has wings but uses its legs as its main form of propulsion also suggests that this symbol has a wonderful paradoxical nature that unites the physical with the spiritual.
We humans have no real idea of the capacities of this body in which we live. It can sip the nectar of a star when it is correctly attuned. It can make sweet love to another person just from thinking about them. The body is a mirror of the macrocosm. It has so many jewels and treasures within it that we couldn’t explore them all if we had aeons. Our bodies are the great untamed wilderness. They’re the frontier, not the final frontier, the only frontier. We’ll never exhaust their abilities, their capacity for love and ecstasy.
-The 64 Ways
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