The Startling Story of the Ugly Duckling

Do you remember the story of the Ugly Duckling? Like many of Hans Christian Anderson’s beloved fairytales, the storyline carries a deeper, more profound meaning than most of us perceive. While enchanting and delighting the younger crowd, Anderson is mining the deeper veins of human experience. Looking into the abyss of our human vulnerability, he first comforts us and then leads us to a jubilant conclusion.

You know the story. Somehow a swan’s egg found its way into a duck’s nest. When the baby swan hatched, the mother duck and her little babies all looked at this interloper as ugly, awkward, clumsy, and somehow defective. Since all the baby swan heard were these horrible things about himself, he believed them.

He concluded that he was a defective duck. He only realized the truth about himself when he saw a flock of beautiful swans soaring overhead. As they squawked and honked, he suddenly realized his true identity. He was not a duck. He was, in fact, the most beautiful and graceful of birds.

This story accurately depicts a deep truth about our human situation; ultimately, we see it’s a story about mistaken identity. We often think of ourselves as limited, and sometimes even as defective or lacking. We have a constant stream of critical self-talk in our heads: “You didn’t do this right! Why did you say that stupid thing? You’ll never get this right! You’re so stupid.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

This, our most common experience, is a grotesque misunderstanding of who and what we are. This is our ego talking. That odd construct built from odds and ends that we picked up in our infancy and have mistaken for our true selves. The ego’s original function is to help us get along in social contexts and that’s all.

The ego has its origins when we learn, in infancy, that certain behaviors are acceptable, and others are definitely not. By some unknown and unseen magic, we introject societies’ rules and proscriptions and turn them into our sense of self. We then mistake this conglomeration of rules for who we truly are. As a short-term.  solution, the ego is a remarkable invention. It allows us to get along in society. Its only limitation is that it obscures who we truly are. It obscures our identity.

We are more than a conglomeration of rules and social proscriptions. We are much more than what we think we are. Like the baby swan, we have assumed that we are ‘less than’ the others around us. Since childhood, like the baby swan, we have been criticized, ridiculed, and made to feel inadequate. But this is not our deepest truth. Our deepest truth is far more expansive. Let me show you…

Can you remember the last time you experienced something truly beautiful? Do you remember that breathless sense of awe? The expansiveness you felt in your chest? That enchanted sense of utter delight? Perhaps it felt like God or some invisible entity, tapping you on the shoulder, saying, “This is who you really are. This is what you’re created for. You are so much more than that silly jumble of rules you mistake for yourself.”

And do you remember the release you felt – that sense of wonder, that elation, that joyous exuberance? Yes, this is what you’re created for. It has precious little to do with that jumble of ‘rules-to-live-by’ that we mistake for our self.

As Anderson so deftly points out, we are swans: the most beautiful and graceful of all of God’s creatures. We have mistaken our egos for our deepest nature. Our egos are always scrambling in a futile attempt to please everyone else. That’s, in fact, what they were constructed to do to help us get along with others. But our deepest nature is very different from this jumble of rules.

Deep within, we are built for beauty. We are built to love and to love deeply. We are built for the truth about ourselves and the world. And when we experience these three, the need for the ego to negotiate the perils of social interaction simply falls away. In its place is your radiant Self. A self that belongs completely to itself. The Self of wonder, of joy, and of deep peace.

Focusing on the intersection of science and spirituality, Dr. Ken Kaisch explains the deepest spiritual teachings in terms that are accessible to all. Trained as an Episcopal priest and a clinical psychologist, he uses insights from both disciplines to open you on how to explore your innermost depths, and discover a true sense of belonging. Piercing through authoritarian structures and dogma, he reveals practical methods for coming into a joyous connection with the Divine. For more information visit www.kenkaisch.com.