27 Jan The Palace and the Fish Market (ALAN COHEN)
Grand theft identity began soon after you arrived on Earth. Parents, teachers, siblings, clergy, and authority figures told you that you are inept, insignificant, ugly, stupid, unworthy, and sinful, and that the world is a dangerous jungle with threats at every turn. Over time you began to believe these terrible lies, until the day came when you forgot your innate beauty, strength, innocence, and safety. Eventually you adopted an identity contrary to your divine nature and have since lived as someone you are not.
The Palace and the Fish Market
The story is told of a princess who was kidnapped as a child and taken to live among fishmongers. She grew up amidst piles of fish, smelled like them, and adopted the mentality of a struggling hawker. Years later, one of the king’s servants found the princess and brought her back to the royal palace. Her parents welcomed her joyfully and showed her to her elegant room laden with a plush bed, fine linens, colorful flowers, aromatic incense, a breathtaking view, and servants at her beck and call. During her first night in the palace the princess tossed and turned. “Get me out of here,” she cried out. “I want to go home.”
What the princess did not realize was that she was home. Elegance, royalty, and riches were her birthright. But she had gotten so used to living amidst foul smells and poverty that she believed those conditions were her true place in life. Normal does not equal natural. Like the princess, we have all become accustomed to living in psychic quarters far shabbier than we deserve.
You can find your way back to the palace by remembering your true origin. You are not your name, age, weight, address, religion, relationship status, job, bank statement, medical diagnosis, or any other attribute by which the world identifies you. While social convention pigeonholes you by fragmented aspects, you remain whole as you were created.
A Course in Miracles Made Easy
Alan Cohen
