A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a backyard hen. The eagle hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the backyard chickens did, thinking he was a backyard 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 far 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 the 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 are chickens.”

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

–Healing the Eight Stages of Life quoting Anthony DeMello ‘The Song of the Bird’