realising power of the mind through birds eggs collection

Page 9 - 13 out of Ozay Rinpoche book: Freedom! escaping the prison of the mind

Pete and I had a lot of adventures together, and became like brothers. We would play pranks, and were always dreaming up new schemes to get money to buy our favourite treats—custard cream cookies and sponge cakes.

When we were not doing this, we would be out bird – nesting. We each had a bird egg collection, and it was our pride and joy. The idea came from an uncle of Pete’s, who had a birds’ egg collection, and who arranged his eggs in an artistic display. Each egg had a story to go with it describing the adventure by which that particular egg had been collected.

Many a time we would find ourselves in all sorts of predicaments because of our enthusiasm for this hobby. We were only about seven years old when we started. At that time, nobody cared about such things as wildlife protection, and we did not know any better.

On one occasion, we decided we wanted to add a raven’s egg to our collections.

The ravens nested on a high quarry face that must have been at least seventy feet from top to bottom. All we had to do to get to them was to clamber across a rock face—with the twenty-foot drop below us.

Pete never showed any sense of danger, but when I looked at that quarry face it put the fear of God into me. I would never show this fear to anyone, of course, as I believed I had an image to maintain, and I was not going to let anyone see my fear.

We decided Pete would climb across the rock face first, I watched carefully where he put his hands and feet, so that I could copy his every movement when my turn came.

At one point he got into trouble. I looked at his predicament and hoped he would decide he could not do it, so that we could call the whole thing off. To my dismay, Pete somehow found a way across to the relative safety of a ledge on the far side of the difficult path. The raven’s nest was just a little further on.

After Pete go to the ledge, he stopped and called out to me: “Come on! I’ll watch you across.” Perhaps he sensed my dear, or perhaps he just knew it was a difficult climb. Neither of us would ever admit to any weakness.

My heart went to my mouth. I thought to myself: “I’ll do it. If he can do it, then so can I.” This was my rationalizing to overcome my fear. I had been sure Pete would turn back. Now he was calling for me. I had no choice. It was do or die.

I began to climb across the rock face, and got past the first part without much difficulty. Then I got to the area I knew was going to be a problem. A certain point would support the weight of only one leg, since one’s full weight would cause the toehold to collapse. The other leg had to be stretched out at a seventy-degree angle. The only hand grips were small cracks in the rock face that allowed one or two inches of the fingers to be inserted.

Suddenly I froze with fear. Every muscle was rigid. Thoughts of falling from the rock face flooded my mind. I said to myself: “This is it. I’m going to die.” With that, I froze even more rigidly.

Then I become aware of another though-process in my mind. This was a more logical way of thinking that told me that the more afraid I became, the less chance I had of making it to safety. The best thing I could do would simply be to stay where I was, and hope that someone would call the fire department to come to my rescue.

I relaxed momentarily. But then I encountered another problem. Due to all this continual exertion, my hands and legs were beginning to give me tremendous pain.

Something had to be done soon. If the fire department was going to come, Pete would have to be the one to alert them. Since he would have had to pass by me to do so, this was now impossible. It was all up to me.

The thought of just staying there out of fear was so strong, and so easy to give into. In the end, I concluded that if I did not do something soon, I was going to fall to my death.

I looked at what I had to do. Pete was encouraging me, telling me where to place each foot and hand in turn. I did not like the idea of holding on with only one had, but knew I had to momentarily do so in order to make progress. It was my only chance.

When I reached the ledge, my heart was pounding so hard I could hear it thudding. The next few steps were easier. I got to where Pete was, and at last felt safe. I took a deep breath, still trembling from what I had been through.

We decided to continue on to the raven’s nest. Pete went first. When he came back, he said there were no eggs in the nest anyway. So we sat on the ledge and chatted for a while.

Then I realized that to get home, we would have to make the dangerous crossing once more.



My muscles still ached from the first crossing. I needed time to recover before I was ready to go through he same thing again. I was not looking forward to it.

The time came, and we decided to go back. Again, I carefully watched Pet’s movements. Though he had some difficulty, he got across the quarry face relatively easily.

As he was climbing back, I wondered how he managed to make it look so easy. Perhaps he is not smart enough to realize how dangerous it is, I thought. Then I wondered if it could be because he was shorter than me. But that could not be the answer, since being smaller, he had to jump proportionately further. Yet he seemed to do it effortlessly.

My mind churned out excuses as to why Pete had no problem, while for me it was incredibly difficult. Finally, I came to the conclusion that the problem was I was thinking about the whole thing too much, while Pete was not. Even before we decided to start this expedition, I was the one to say: “Hang on. Let’s plan how we’re going to do this climb. Look at the rock face. We will do this, and then we will do that with the other foot,” and so on.

Pete had just wanted to get on with it without any thoughts or plan of attack, relying solely on instinct. My mind, on the other hand, was thinking of all the possibilities, and all the different angles. All my energy went into formulating ideas.

A light went on. I realized it was my thinking mind that was stopping me. It was my mind that had stirred up all my fear! Thought alone prevented me from traversing the rock face without problems.

That mind could so easily have cost me my life!

When I came to this conclusion, I made a resolution to focus totally on the rock face, and not think about the possibility of falling, nor of how high off the ground we were.

It came to my turn to go back across.

I could see the look on Pete’s face. It was as if he knew I was going to have a problem. He would shout our advice as to where to put my feet. I knew I did not want to feel that fear again, so I blocked all thoughts from my mind, except thoughts as to how to cross the rock face. My concentration was focused solely on my hands and feet, and on where I was going to put them next.

Before I knew it, what I had deemed to be a threat to my life was over and done with.

This little escapade taught me a truth in life at an early age. The mind can be useful, but it can also be debilitating when used in the wrong way.