Too often, we live and die thinking and acting as if the self we believe we are is our true, self. Here is a story that might help we who are ‘true-self’ searchers and seekers.
A farmer was walking in the woods and he found an eagle’s egg lying on the ground. It was still warm so he hurried home and put the egg under a hen that was sitting on her eggs. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
All his life the eagle did what the chickens did for he thought he was a chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He tried, rather vainly I might add, to cluck and cackle. He would thrash his big wings and in doing so he could fly a few feet.
Years and years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he happened to look skyward – being a chicken he did not look skyward very often – and he saw a majestic bird soaring effortlessly above. He was enthralled – the bird seemed quite familiar for some reason. One of the eagle’s sisters noticed him looking skyward. He turned to her and asked her if she knew what kind of bird that was. His sister told him that that majestic bird was the king of all birds, it was a golden eagle – the sky was its kingdom. She then reminded him that they were chickens and the land was their place – not the sky. He turned away and pecked quietly at the ground; he was after all a chicken — this he knew.
So the great golden eagle lived and died a chicken for that was what he believed he was.
So here I sit, once again, asking myself – is the self I believe I am truly my true self? Am I really a chicken simply because others tell me, over and over again, that I am a chicken?
Searcher-Seeker 