THE HUMBIRD'S AGENDA, learning from hopelessness and the radical representation of the heart

That state prior to awakening has a name. It is called hypnopompia (also hypnagogia). It is where the subconscious and the conscious meet, it is where many of the dreams that we retain until wakefulness are produced, and perhaps that is why it is a time of great creativity where interesting ideas emerge. Or at least that is what happens to me. Well, some of those ideas that appear do so simply in the form of words, and recently some of them repeated in my head: "the hummingbird's agenda".

As messages that my subconscious insists on sending me, when this awakening happens to me I keep thinking about the meaning or symbolism of the words after waking up, and if I do not see it clearly I usually do some research. Normally what happens is that I soon find some meaning that, although unsuspected, inevitably resonates with me, as if my subconscious was sending me that message in the form of a key, both for its occult and its importance.

Well, Agenda comes from the Latin: agenda 'what is to be done'.

A Guarani legend tells that one day there was a huge fire in the jungle. All the animals fled in terror, because it was a terrible fire. Suddenly, the animals saw the hummingbird pass over their heads...but in the opposite direction, that is, towards the fire. They were very surprised and, away from the fire, they stopped to observe him, watching him come and go from the flames, until they realized that he was collecting drops of water with his small beak and throwing them on the fire. The rest of the animals laughed at the hummingbird and shouted at him: "Are you crazy, do you think you can put it out like that?
To which the hummingbird replied, "No, but I'm doing my part."
In other words, the hummingbird was simply doing "what it had to do," regardless of the outcome.

But that's not all. The hummingbird is the third archetype of the Andean shamanic path, indicating the north. It helps heal on the mythic level and represents the courage needed to undertake an epic journey, just as tiny hummingbirds migrate over the Atlantic each year from Brazil to Canada. Once touched by the energies of this archetype, we are propelled into our own epic journey that ultimately takes us back to our source, where our spirit was engendered. When you don't have enough time, money or knowledge for what you are attempting, the hummingbird can provide the courage and guidance needed for success. It is not meant to fly and yet it undertakes and accomplishes the impossible journey. And this, in fact, resonated with another phrase I also dreamed recently, almost more mysterious even: "the learning of hopelessness." Because what the hummingbird does is to teach us that, when something "has to be done", we do it even if we have lost hope in obtaining the desired result. Because what the hummingbird has learned from hopelessness is, precisely, that behind it the agenda persists.

For some time now I have been involved in projects that aim to promote, let's say, a new way of understanding the world, a healthier relationship with others and with nature, to increase our awareness and our connection with life. And when I am asked how I see the future of humanity and the planet, and if we can "save ourselves" or if the "apocalypse" will come, I usually answer that I don't have the answer to that question and that, in fact, I don't think it's important to have it either. That, in short, we have to do "what we have to do". I don't think I had ever used or thought of "agenda" with an ethical or philosophical connotation of "what needs to be done". But it seems my subconscious has.

The Mayans, for their part, also have their legend of the hummingbird. The old and wise Mayans say that the gods, when they created all things on earth, gave each animal, each tree and each stone a job to do, but when they finished they realized that they had not given the hummingbird anything, so they assigned it to carry the desires and thoughts from one place to another.  The hummingbird was therefore entrusted by the gods to transmit good thoughts among human beings. In Nahuatl, hummingbird is called Huitzilin, and means "always in motion like our heart". And, as it happens, another phrase that my dreams gave me, perhaps even more powerful than the previous ones, brings me back to the hummingbird: "radical representation of the heart". And what better image and concept to make itself present to consciousness as what is to be done, what root, essential element to represent as part of a life agenda than the heart. In short, what the hummingbird teaches us is the joy of living in the present moment, of doing what must be done even in despair, or doing it in spite of it.