A Re-read

The Self-Imprisoned Bird and a Great Secret of Change

Posted: 08 Apr 2009 12:03 PM PDT

By Tom Russell

Several years ago my wife and I were in Colorado for a speaking engagement. We had an afternoon free and visited the local zoo, sauntering back to the exotic bird section. There we saw a circular fence, probably 18 feet high and some 60 feet across. It was very odd to us that the fence had no top to it.

We observed a rare bird over in a far corner. I reasoned that the keep¬ers must have clipped its wings so it could not fly away. Then suddenly the bird went into full flight to a tree on the other side of the cage. Obviously I was wrong. The bird’s wings were fine.

I found a zoo attendant and asked him why the bird didn’t fly away.

“The reason is very simple,” he said. “This bird was raised in captivity. When it was young it was placed in a cage with a top on it. Every time it tried to fly away it would hit the ceiling. Now, the bird never tries to escape. It is convinced the top of the cage is still there.”

What limits do accept without knowing it?

The cage probably seems tranquil, even cozy, to our self-imprisoned bird; likewise, our familiar mindsets seem right and natural. Though change to a happier, more productive life draws interest, change unsettles cherished routines. The familiar lurks in the background to lure us back to the familiar, back to the cage.

Could it be that authentic inner life success, success as a human being, grows out of a willingness to feel uncomfortable or wrong for awhile, not right?

The Alexander Technique provides an ideal example of how change at first feels wrong. At the turn of the previous century F.M. Alexander pioneered a practical method for postural improvement. Today it is part of the core curriculum at Juilliard’s School of Music, allowable as therapy in England’s health care system, and widely practiced around the world by professional performers and self-awareness enthusiasts. One day a mother brought her young daughter to see Mr. Alexander. She suffered from severe postural misalignment. Mr. Alexander helped the girl find a vastly improved posture, but when the session concluded she ran to her mother and said, “Mommy, look what he did to me. He bent me all out of shape!”

Though the young girl’s physical muscle patterns objected to the change, don’t we have well-worn mental patterns of at least the same intensity? How do we break through this resistance, so the changes we want in our lives really come about?

Daring the Wrath of the Familiar

After any decision to modify our life, even something as simple (and productive) as the resolution to watch less Television, frazzled feelings, an inner ache, a confusion and/or emptiness soon surface. The cage wants us back!

Why do we go back, often without much of a stand at all? The answer is not really fear of change, I’ve found. The answer is fear the change might cause more upheaval than we can handle. Picture our self-imprisoned bird hearing gunshots outside his cage – gunshots from hunters poised to pick off any creature that flies free. The shots though, are blanks, duds, not real bullets though they sound like it. The guns look real and even smoke after a “shot.” So the bird stays put out of fear of consequences that can never exist.

Dare the wrath of the familiar patterns, and what happens? Things get worse for awhile. Does this upheaval have real power? Millions read that it has no power, but that’s about all most people do. Unless we risk it, and do so over and over again, we’ll never know from ourselves.

Society, in almost every sphere, teaches by words and deeds to seek happiness, seek comfort, and do what “feels” right. Yet, the truly right never feels right at first. It feels wrong for awhile. Think of the power of this nugget of wisdom when applied to your life! No, the glamor and wordiness of popular self-enrichment programs goes lacking here, and the simplicity of this nugget may have more power than presently realized. Wisdom sprouts from principles applied.

A Fictional Twist

Let’s get back to our self-imprisoned bird. In addition to the bluffing hunters and their popguns, let’s add another twist. Imagine we have other birds in the cage with our friend — perhaps his parents, his school teacher and his religious instructor. If our friend makes some feeble yet sincere efforts to test the top of his cage, what will be the reaction of his fellow birds? Probably words like “Who do you think you are?” and “Why aren’t you happy in here, like we are?” But if our friend keeps trying, and if he gets more daring, moving from one inch above the imaginary boundary to perhaps twelve, well, hold on. The elders swing into action.

In our fictional twist here, the elder birds each have a rope. Taking turns as needed, they toss the rope up to our friend just as he infringes on his make-believe boundary. Our friend catches the rope and the elders pull him down; however, one day, ah yes, one day our friend refuses the rope. He makes it up five feet over the “ceiling” and terrified, plunges back down. The elders go berserk. How will they stop this renegade who now dares to refuse their ropes? Stop him for his own good of course since it’s dangerous out there!

Finally the great day comes. We knew it would. Our friend refuses the rope yet dares to leap high enough to unravel his mental ceiling. He shatters forever the make-believe boundary. He holds out his wings to catch the natural currents, lifting him higher and higher. The vast sky of the whole earth welcomes him.

Why Others May Fear Your Change

Yes, others (especially those closest to you) indeed feel threatened by your changes. In their mind resides a carefully constructed picture of you. They have you pegged. When you act outside the settled picture, it unsettles them.

Some may think these points at least somewhat cynical. But are they? We can discern the attempts of others to control, to disapprove, to hint at what we “should” do, and we can see it all without a touch of hostility. They are free to live their own life and think their own thoughts, and so are you! And it’s rarely necessary to tell them anything about it. Your new found love of the sky is sacred and blooms best when kept to itself.

Where Real Freedom Resides

Hence, it is indeed vital to refuse the ropes thrown from our environment. They abound. In fact, the evening news could be viewed as one giant rope tossing session. Yet, our inner domain, the place of our own thoughts, dwarfs environmental influences. Does anyone really treat us worse than we treat ourselves? Worry, guilt, fear, jealousy – aren’t these ropes tossed within our own mind? And don’t we cause our own punishment by catching them?

The more we inwardly observe these inner rope tossers in action, the more we see there is no real need to try and stop them from doing what they do, which is to toss ropes. There is only a need to let these tossed ropes fall to the ground inside, unclaimed! If we simply refuse to catch them, the life at hand charms us with joy and vigor.

The day of freedom, then, is not the day when the rope tossers disappear. It is the day we know their ropes have no power other than what we grant when we catch them. Oh yes, not only will these inner rope tossers get upset, it is likely they’ll stage a riot! If you deny them energy, they might fade away! So they brazenly claim that YOU are fading away. No, they are fading away. You have reclaimed your life now, and YOUR life has nothing to do with THEM.

The Royal Life is Yours

We find ourselves increasingly feeling good with an abundance of energy and zest for life. The simple things, like the next breath or the next conversation, recover their delight. You dared to break through by daring to feel uncomfortable, even disoriented, over and over again, as you came smack up against more than a few self-created barriers.

Like the childhood fairytale Humpty Dumpty, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” Nothing has the power to convince us to pick up those ropes back up, just in order to prevent the cage from rioting. “Oh, don’t hit me” is gone and in it’s replaced with the bold, “Is that the worst you can do?”

When a resolution turns us in a new direction, so much genuine good flows from daring to feel uncomfortable, or wrong, or whatever you want to call it, perhaps even for days or weeks. Knowing in advance this is going to happen, and even intensify as you continue to make your stand, is the great secret of change.

My first mentor was an old Osteopathic physician. I met him when I was just 18 and he was 80. We chatted (as he called it, though he did all the talking) from time to time for several years. Dr. Chester C. Chapin perhaps said it best, “Tommy, it won’t hurt you to hurt.”

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Enjoy more from SuperWisdom: Seven Vital Secrets for a Rich and Purpose-Filled Life, by Tom Russell
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