It’s one of the biggest cons in the bird kingdom.

The famous cuckoo bird rarely builds its own nest. When ready to lay eggs, mother cuckoo looks for a nest with eggs similar to hers already in it. When mom and pop warbler are off looking for food, mother cuckoo slips into the unsuspecting warblers’ nest, deposits her egg, and takes off never to return. Meanwhile, hard working mom and pop warbler return, and not being too good at arithmetic, don’t notice the addition to the family. The cuckoo hatches and gets fed with the other baby warblers.

But baby cuckoo is 2-3 times bigger than her nest-mates. Wanting more food and more room, she kicks the warblers out of the nest one by one, killing them off to make more space for herself. Soon, the cuckoo is the only fledgling left and mom and pop warbler are working their tail-feathers off trying to keep her hungry appetite content. Finally, cuckoo flies off and repeats the same deceitful trick on another unsuspecting warbler elsewhere.

The moral of the story is…never let a cuckoo bird lay an egg in your nest!

Fear appears in the human consciousness in much the same way a cuckoo egg appears in a warbler’s nest—out of nowhere.

Have you ever gone to bed feeling well only to wake in the morning feeling ill? If so, cuckoo bird laid an egg of fear in thought during the night, and it hatched by morning.

Have you ever been happy and without warning suddenly felt depressed? If so, cuckoo bird just hatched another egg.

I’m using cuckoo bird here as a metaphor for mortal mind—the sensuous, material and selfish mind that has nothing but ill to offer.

To prevent the “cuckoo bird” of mortal mind from depositing alien eggs, or fears, into thinking, we need to stay spiritually alert, awake, and attentive to what happens in our mental household.

“Stand porter at the door of thought,” Mary Baker Eddy wrote.

Put on the Mind of Christ the apostle Paul instructed. With spiritual alertness we can prevent false beliefs from taking root and growing to unwanted proportions.

Let’s keep our thinking filled with Truth and Love, and stop the predator of fear from sneaking into our mental precincts.

Cuckoo bird be-gone!