The Eagle's Egg

Once upon a time, a farmer found an egg. He didn't really know what kind of egg it was but it was an eagle's egg. Not knowing exactly what it was, but interested to find out, he placed it in the nest of a barnyard chicken. His thinking was it could possibly be hatched. The egg hatched and an eaglet appeared with the brood of chicks. Being with the brood of chickens, it naturally grew up with them.The eagle spends all its life doing what the barnyard chickens did. Quite simply, it thought it was a barnyard chicken. It scratched the earth for worms and insects. It ran for feed offered by the farmer. It clucked and cackled like a chicken. It thrashed its wings and flew only a few feet in the air. It did just what the chickens did.As time passed, the eaglet, quite unaccountably and illogically began to experience a longing to fly. So it would say to its mother hen, "When shall I learn to fly?"The poor mother hen was quite aware of the fact that she could not fly. In fact, it hadn't the slightest notion of what other birds did to train their fledglings to fly. Yet, nothing really needed to be taught. All that was really needed was to push the eaglet out of its nest. The mother hen was embarrassed to confess the inadequacy that she herself could not fly nor did she understand how to teach another to fly. So she would say, "Not yet my child, not yet. I will teach you when you are ready. The eaglet believed the mother hen. She was correct about so many things in life, why should he doubt her?Months passed. The young eagle began to suspect that its mother did not know how to fly. But the young eagle could not figure out how to break free and fly on its own. Although it had a deep longing to fly had become confused. It has become confused with the gratitude it experienced toward the hen that had hatched it and the need to break away and leave her behind.Years passed. The eagle grew very old. One day the eagle saw a magnificent bird above him gliding gracefully in the cloudless sky. It flew majestically within the powerful wind currents and rarely beat its strong golden wings.The old eagle looked up in amazement and in awe. "What is that?" The eaglet asked. A reply came from its neighbor: "That's the eagle, the king of birds. The eagle belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth. We're chickens. "So the old eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was. And with him died his deep longing to fly and to be only what he really was, an eagle.As a creative entity, a creative being, you are that eagle. As an eagle you need an unlimited sky, an unlimited space, in which to fly. You need an unlimited universe. However, as in the story, the farmer did not know what to do with the eagle egg. As a child, no matter how caring and nurturing your early care givers may have been, they were like the farmer and the mother hen. They did not know what to do with you. You were simply kept and placed in the family in which you were born rather than being placed in the kind of environment which would teach you to fly. That is, to access your unlimited creativity and creative power.They themselves did not know how to fly, nor did they understand how to find you the appropriate teacher. They could not give you that unlimited sky that you needed to spread your wings and access and release your unlimited creativity to claim your birthright. In essence, your family, as the family of chickens in our story, do not know who you are or do not understand your birthright and why you incarnated into this life. They just assumed you were a biological offspring created in their image when, in fact, you are an entirely new creation unique to yourself with less in common that one would originally expect if you were purely a biological offspring.Ultimately only you can give yourself that unlimited sky. That unlimited sky beings in your own being and in your creative imagination. As you will come to see the beliefs that you chose to hold and / or those that you choose to release are what keep you bound or allow you to find your true nature and become free. Because of how you were raised and the tendency for consciousness to define itself by experiences it has, you keep going back to the mother hen, your past, who nurtured you physically, that external world, represented by your family, your teacher, the traditions which you were taught to follow. You follow all the habits and ways of being in the world you created, asking, "When are you going to teach me to fly?" But what you have learned about life and beliefs you hold will not teach you how to fly. They can't for all that you have been given were given to you by those who did not know how themselves. If you believe what you are told by those who don't know how to fly and have never accessed their unlimited creativity (your past), you will be condemned to live the life as the eaglet in our story. If however, you claim your own truth and choose to live your truth, you will manifest your unlimited creativity. To do that however, you will have to shatter the ego of whom you think you are to explore the depth and breadth of your being to discover who you really are.Adopting a creativity perspective and developing an intimate relationship with your creative spirit will give you the tools to discover who you really are and learn to fly - to act in the world true to your nature.