A king once lived who was extremely fond of birds. One day, on his windowsill, there appeared the most extraordinary bird, of a kind he had never seen. "How could such a bird be?", wondered the King.
It was a bird of foreign origin and had paused to rest on its passage over the King's domain. The King was afraid it would fly away; he was fascinated. Its wings were much wider and differently shaped than those of all the birds he knew; its beak longer and sharper and its head wider.
He had it captured. "These wings must be trimmed!" he said, and he began the job of clipping and re-shaping the bird's great wings. "These are not how bird's wings are! They must be shaped to perfection, as are the birds of my kingdom."
"And this beak! It is not shaped as a bird's beak should be!" And he held the bird down on the table and began the task of reshaping its beak to the proper shape.
The bird struggled, suffered, fought and sought to escape, to no avail. The King would not let it up until it had been clipped and shaped and molded to perfection. Finally, he had it right.
"There!" he said. "You are now perfect, as a bird should be!" The bird, weeping and mewling, exhausted from struggling, turned its newly formed head away, and died on the spot.
Thus in our hearts: when concepts rule over the power of feeling what is there to be felt; when the power to grant beingness is abused by the power to dominate with the mind; when the freedom of the instant is overruled by the tyranny of what Was, the race becomes a destructive force.
The problem is not in how we live, but in how we love. See how you love, and discover the lines of feeling un-allowed. See how you love, and open the fields of the moment's feeling of what is, without the judgment of the mind. Only see how you love.