Being a believer

Our mind is like a horse, the reins of which are in our control to train it.

A man found an eagle’s egg that he placed in his poultry farm. The egg hatched and the little eagle grew up with the chickens and behaved like them – chuckling, cackling, feeding on worms and flapping its wings to rise a few feet above the ground. And, this eagle grew old with the misconception of its identity and limitations. One day, it saw a magnificent looking golden bird in the sky. It glided gracefully and majestically against powerful winds quite effortlessly.

The awestruck eagle asked what that was. A rooster replied, “That’s an eagle, the king of birds. The vast, open sky is its domain. Our place is the ground; we’re low, earthly chickens.”

So, the eagle lived and died a lie as a chicken for that’s what he thought and believed it was. We limit ourselves, not realising – we are what we think.

Another story to prove the point: The Japanese General Nabunaga decided to go to war even though he knew that the enemy’s army was 10 times the strength of his own. He was sure he would win but noticed that his soldiers were very low on confidence. On the way to the battlefield, they stopped at a shrine to pray. Nabunaga addressed his army saying, “Let me toss a coin to check our luck. If it’s head, we’ll take it as a sign of impending victory from God. And if it’s tail we’ll prepare ourselves to lose. Let’s have faith in destiny revealing itself.” He tossed the coin. It was head. The soldiers went all out to wipe out the enemy.

The next day an aide said to Nabunaga, “No one can change destiny.”

“Right”, said Nabunaga showing him a coin that had heads on both sides. Boosting our confidence is a problem, not winning the battle. “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is a limitation.” – Richard Bach in Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.