The Eagle and Brood of Chickens

This was lurking around some where in my org file, and I thought it wise to post it here.

A parable from priest and therapist Anthony de Mello on the stories we tell ourselves:

A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest
of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the
brood of chickens and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the barnyard
chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken.
He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He
clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his
wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day
he saw a magnificent bird above him in the
cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty
among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a
beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he
asked.

"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said
his neighbor. "He belongs to the sky. We belong
to the earth-- we're chickens."

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's
what he thought he was.”

Source: Song of the Bird