Jonathan Livingston Seagull

is the title of an excellent book by Richard Bach. It's well worth rereading every year or so. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

...to eat, to stay alive as long as we possibly can.

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long life indeed.

We choose our next world through what we learn in this one.

Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.

You have less fear of learning than any gull I've seen in ten thousand years.

"Why is it", Jonathan puzzled, "that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he'd just spend a little time practising? Why should that be so hard?

You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practise and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves.

Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, to find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.