The Vulture & The HSP

There is an ancient story that I want to tell you.

I want you to listen very carefully because when I first heard this something shifted in me permanently.

I believe it will do the same for you.

It's the story of the vulture.

Now before you dismiss that stay with me because the vulture is one of the most misunderstood creatures in the natural world and if you're a highly sensitive person that alone should make you feel an immediate kinship.

We are told that the vulture is ugly,

That it scavenges,

That it waits for the dead and feeds on the leftovers of other animals' kills as if it deserves no honour,

As if it's a lesser creature.

Sound familiar?

But in the oldest stories,

The ones told long before the modern world decided what was beautiful and what was not,

The vulture was something else entirely.

It was a bird of immense power,

Vast wingspan,

Extraordinary vision and an animal that could do something no other animal in the kingdom could.

It could hold two worlds at the same time.

The old story goes like this.

One day the sun began to fall from the sky,

Tumbling down towards earth.

Every creature in the savannah watched in terror knowing that without the sun,

Well,

All life would end,

Be swallowed up by cold and darkness.

The otter came first.

The otter is a quick-witted rational animal,

A creature of science and design.

It began to build a tower,

A structure of intellect and ingenuity to haul the sun back up into its place.

But the sun crushed the tower.

Its power was not of this plain,

Not of this land and no amount of intelligence or clever construction could hold it.

Then came the lion,

Fierce,

Mighty,

The king of the jungle.

The lion decided it would simply push the sun back up into the sky with sheer force.

But the lion had one eye,

As it always does,

On its own pride,

On its own stature,

Status,

Its image.

Too proud to be fully burned,

Too concerned with how it looked to give everything,

It pushed just enough to be seen to be trying and then gave up.

Next came the elephant,

Wiser than the lion,

Stronger than the otter,

With thick skin,

Thick enough to not fear the heat of the sun.

The elephant tried with everything it had,

But it soon realised something devastating.

It was bound to the earth.

It could not leave the ground,

It could not leap into the air,

Could not exchange one realm for another.

And wisdom,

As great as it is,

Can only take you so far.

The elephant gave up too.

Now,

Through all this,

The vulture had been watching.

In those ancient days,

The vulture was breathtaking.

Long,

Slender,

Coloured feathers covering its entire body,

Including its head,

A plumage of extraordinary beauty.

And the vulture understood something none of the others had grasped.

This task did not require intelligence alone.

It did not require pride,

Or brute strength,

Or even wisdom.

It required the willingness to give yourself completely,

To care nothing for what it cost you.

So the vulture took the sun onto its head,

Burning,

Blinding,

Ferocious,

And launched itself from the earth with a force so immense,

So fully committed,

That the weight of the sun began to lift.

Its feathers burned as it climbed.

First the head,

Then the neck,

Then the body.

Its beauty,

The thing it had always been seen and known for,

Was being stripped away in real time.

And the vulture did not stop.

It did not flinch.

It did not look down to check how it appeared,

Or how it was doing.

It pushed,

And pushed,

And it climbed,

And it gave,

Until it transcended all space and time,

And became one with the sky,

With the clouds,

With the furthest reaches of the heavens.

And the sun,

In that moment,

Finally understood.

Here was an animal it had been waiting for.

The one that could unify all realms.

The one that was equally at home in the dirt on the earth,

And the fire in the sky.

The vulture pushed the sun back to the very uttermost tip of the heavens,

And then fell,

And fell back down to earth,

From the divine to the ground.

Its feathers burned to nothing.

No longer the most beautiful,

No longer the most proud,

Lying on the earth,

Exhausted,

Transformed.

And the sun looked down on this creature that had given everything,

Without asking for anything,

And gave the vulture a gift.

The gift of effortlessness.

The ability to stay in flight for hours at a time,

Without effort,

Suspended,

Poised,

Vast,

Between heaven and earth,

Watching over all life,

Guardian of both worlds.

This is the realm of the highly sensitive person.

Not the otter's cleverness,

Not the lion's pride,

Not even the elephant's wisdom,

But the vulture's capacity to hold heaven and earth simultaneously,

To move between the seen and the unseen,

To carry the light from one realm to another,

At great personal cost,

But without needing to be recognized for it.

I see so many highly sensitive people living in the air,

Pure ether,

Pure feeling,

Pure perception,

Yeah,

But no roots on the earth,

Nothing rooting them to the ground,

And without those roots,

All of that extraordinary capacity has nowhere to land.

You cannot build from air alone.

You cannot create,

Sustain,

Or truly serve from a place of rootlessness.

The vulture's power was not just that it could fly,

It was that it could return,

That it could touch the earth and take flight again,

That it belonged to both worlds fully,

And yet flinched from neither.

That is your work.

That is the work of the highly sensitive person,

Not to transcend your sensitivity,

But to manage it,

Not diminish it or even apologize for it,

But root it,

Ground it,

To become so fully present in your own body,

In your own sovereignty,

In your own earth,

That when you rise,

You rise with everything.

The vulture lost its beauty,

Saving the world,

And was given something far,

Far greater in return.

You