" Who Do You Think You Are ?"

Who do you think you are ?
As you read this story about a lost cub,see if you need to find
your true self.Now,go ahead and read the story.
A cub lion, as the fable runs, was one day playing alone in
the forest while his mother slept. As the different objects
attracted his attention, the cub thought he would explore
a bit and see what the great world beyond his home was
like. Before he realized it, he had wandered so far that he
could not find his way back. " He was lost."
Very much frightened, the cub ran frantically in every
direction calling piteously for his mother, but no mother
responded. Weary with his wanderings, he did not know
what to do, when a sheep, whose offspring had been
taken from her, hearing his pitiful cries, made friends with
the lost cub, and adopted him.
The sheep became very fond of her foundling, which in a
short while grew so much larger than herself that at times
she was almost afraid of it. Often, too, she would detect a
strange, far-off look in its eyes which she could not
understand.
The foster mother and her adopted lived very happily
together, until one day a magnificent lion appeared,
sharply outlined against the sky, on the top of an opposite
hill. He shook his tawny mane and uttered a terrific roar,
which echoed through the hills. The sheep mother stood
trembling, paralyzed with fear. But the moment this
strange sound reached his ears, the lion cub listened as
though spellbound, and a strange feeling which he had
never before experienced surged through his being until
he was all a-quiver.
The lion’s roar had " touched a chord " in his nature that had
never before been touched. It aroused a new force within
him which he had never felt before. New desires, a
strange new consciousness of power possessed him." A
new nature stirred in him," and instinctively, without a
thought of what he was doing, he answered the lion’s call
with a corresponding roar.
Trembling with mingled fear, surprise and bewilderment
at the new powers aroused within him, the " awakened "
animal gave his foster mother a pathetic glance, and
then, with a tremendous leap, started toward the lion on
the hill.
" The lost lion had found himself." Up to this he had
gamboled around his sheep mother just as though he
were a lamb developing into a sheep, never dreaming he
could do anything that his companions could not do, or
that he had any more strength than the ordinary sheep.
He never imagined that there was within him a power
which would strike terror to the beasts of the jungle. He
simply thought he was a sheep, and would run at the
sight of a dog and tremble at the howl of a wolf. Now he
was amazed to see the dogs, the wolves, and other
animals which formerly had so terrified him flee from him.
" As long as this lion thought he was a sheep," he was as
timid and retiring as a sheep; he had only a sheep’s
strength and a sheep’s courage, and by no possibility
could he have exerted the strength of a lion. If such a
thing had been suggested to him he would have said,
“How could I exert the strength of a lion? I am only a
sheep, and just like other sheep. I cannot do what they
cannot do.” But when the lion was aroused in him,
"instantly he became a new creature," king of the forest,
with no rivals save the tiger and the panther. This
discovery doubled, trebled and quadrupled his conscious
power, a power which it would not have been possible for
him to exert a minute before he had heard the lion’s roar.
But for the roar of the lion on the distant hill, which had
aroused the " sleeping lion within him," he would have
continued living the life of a sheep and perhaps would
never have known that there was a lion in him. The roar
of the lion had not added anything to his strength,had
not put new power into him; it had merely aroused in him
what was already there, simply revealed to him the power
he already possessed. Never again, after such a startling
discovery, could this young animal be satisfied to "live a
sheep’s life." A lion’s life, a lion’s liberty, a lion’s power,
the jungle thereafter for him.
There is in every normal human being a sleeping lion. It is
just a question of arousing it, just a question of
something happening that will awaken us, stir the depths
of our being, and arouse the sleeping power within us.
Just as the young lion, after it had once discovered that it
was a lion would never again be satisfied to live the life of
a sheep, when we discover that we " are more than mere
clay," when we at last become conscious that we " are more
than human," that we " are gods in the making," we shall
never again be satisfied to live the life of common clods of
earth. We shall feel a new sense of power welling up
within us, a power which we never before dreamed we
possessed, and never be quite the same again, never
again be content with low-flying ideals, with a cheap
success. Ever after we will aspire. We will look up;
struggle up and on to higher and ever higher planes.
Phillips Brooks used to say that after a man has once
discovered that he has been living but a half life the other
half will haunt him until he releases it, and he never again
will be content to live a half life. When one becomes
conscious that the reality of them, that the truth of their
being is God, that they are indissolubly connected with
omnipotent power, they feel the thrill of divine force
surging through every atom of their being, and can never
doubt their divinity or possibilities again. They can never
again be timid, weak, hesitating or fearful. They rest
serenely conscious that they are in close touch, in vital
union, with the Infinite. They feel omnipotent power
pulsating through their very being, they feel the
omnipotent arm sustaining, upholding them, and they
know that their mission on earth is divinely planned and
divinely protected.
Many a poor child has grown up in the slums believing
that they were like all the other children in their
neighborhood, that there was no special future for them,
nothing distinctive, nothing out of the dead level of their
monotonous environment; but something unexpectedly
happens, some emergency, some catastrophe, something
which makes a tremendous call upon the great within of
themselves, and they are suddenly surprised to discover
that they are different altogether from those about them.
Something has touched them, something in them have
been aroused, something which shows them that they
have a tremendous latent power which they did not
before know they possessed, and they unhesitatingly
answer the call. They go out into the great world, and are
never again satisfied with " a cheap success," never again
satisfied with their old nature or content with their old
environment.
Again,I ask," Who do you think you are ?
[ PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS STORY IS PART OF A BOOK WRITTEN BY, - Orison Swett Marden ]