To the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all
Do you know that feeling when a good old book almost jumps out of the book shelf and calls you to re-read it?
That is how the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull practically fell into my hands.
Richard Bach’s story about the Seagull Jonathan is a fable about freedom of humanity. In the most beautiful way he asks: How can we be free and independent and live in the now without limitations preventing us from living the life we really want?
“Jonathan Livingston Seagull” is a beautiful and thought provoking tale about Jonathan, who deviates from his flock. He cannot conform to the standards of the flock; He wants the free and independent life.
He loves to fly and spends all his time on his wings and as the days go by he gets faster and more skilled. Because when Jonathan flies, he forgets about time and space, he is in the now, and he is independent and free.
Jonathan is expelled from the flock and sentenced to live the rest of his life alone. At first, he is afraid of losing touch with the family, but gradually it stops concerning him, because instead of being part of the fear, boredom and anger that characterized the life of the flock, whose only focus is to eat to survive, he can instead fly every single day.
He keeps on training. He folds his wings in new ways and dives at more than three hundred kilometers per hour. He sleeps in the air, setting course at night and travels over one hundred and fifty kilometers from sunset to dawn, while the other seagulls sleep on the beach.
He learns that a streamlined high-speed dive brings him to finding rare and tasty fish that live three meters below the surface of the ocean. He floats on the drift winds far inland and eats himself full with delicious insects. He achieves for himself what he had hoped for more seagulls in the flock.
One day, Jonathan meets two other gulls, brilliant and beautiful, gentle and friendly, and not least very, very skilled at flying. They tell him they have come to take him home to another flock, where everyone has the same passion for flying and strives for freedom. Here are seagulls who think as he thinks. For them, the most important thing in life is striving to achieve complete mastery of their passion: flying. Jonathan learns more about flying and how we choose our next world based on the experiences we have in this world. If you do not learn anything, the next world remains the same, with the same limitations that must be overcome.
Heaven is not a place, nor is it a time. Space and time are meaningless. Heaven is complete. Full speed is to be there.
“To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere there is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived,” says Jonathan’s teacher.
Overcome space, and all we have left is here.
Overcome time, and all we have left is now.
So we could meet a couple of times between here and now?
Jonathan returns to his old flock who had expelled him. Here he finds more seagulls who want to fly for the sake of the joy of flying. He trains them and they quickly get enthusiastic. Training matters. Jonathan says to his young students: “To begin with, you have got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body – from wingtip to wingtip – is nothing more than your thought in a visual sense. Break the chains of thoughts and you will also break the chains of the body. ” The students looked at him, slightly confused. “Let’s start with a horizontal flight,” he says, leaving the day’s flight team with the next teacher in line. We are never alone. There are always lovely “flying colleagues”.
I enjoyed every page of the book and hope you can use it as inspiration. It is a good idea to start the flight training.
Do not miss the amazing film, based on the fable, with beautiful music by Neil Diamond.
About the author
Dr. Pernille Knudtzon, MD, Specialist in Family Medicine, Acupuncture, New Health Technology and NLP Trainer runs Vitafakta Health Clinic in Southern Spain. Her main medical training was done in Denmark. But curiosity led her to travel and study Holistic Medicine and Lifestyle aspects in many places around the world over the last 30 years. From her consultation in southern Spain she is now providing Personal Health Consultations based on a holistic health and functional medicine approach. She focuses on Health, Wellbeing and Vitality and guides her clients to live a healthy life and to thrive and shine the most. She is presently studying Functional Medicine at the Institute of Functional Medicine https://www.ifm.org/.