The Power of Storytelling and a Chinese Folktale – Losing Your Vision
In this series of blog posts we will unfold the Chinese folktale entitled We are All One. If you have not yet read this Chinese folktale then click on this link We are All One. Then when you read this inspirational story then you might come back to this blog post. This Chinese folktale is used to ground you in what is foundational to this Personal Development and Beyond blog (PDAB) which is the view, leading to the direct experience, that We are All One. This world view is not simply a philosophy but as a result of a direct revelation of the ground of existence. It is the knowing that really perfumes the writing of these blog posts. Folktales, fairy tales, parables and mythological stories are filled with wisdom. Wisdom is not simply more intellectual knowledge. wisdom is not what my teacher Osho referred to as Logic Chopping. Wisdom does not arise simply because you know the words that invite such wisdom. Wisdom is beyond the words. You can learn all you want about motherhood but never know what it is like to give birth and raise a child. Wisdom is a form of birthing experience.
In this Personal Development and Beyond blog post I invite you beyond mere logic into an awareness of the wisdom mind and the power that the wisdom mind has to heal the majesty within you that is sometimes deeply pained by the circumstances of your everyday living. This is the pain of losing your true vision allied with meaning and purpose, losing your ability to have insight, losing your ability to be a visionary and become one who is a true seer. A true seer is one who sees from inside out.
In the Chinese folktale We Are All One there is a rich man. This could just as well have been a rich woman. Each of the characters in this story, as in all folktales and fairy tales, can be taken to represent an aspect of your psyche. The rich man is experiencing more and more pain in his eyes. Metaphorically speaking this is the experience where you are becoming blind to the richness that is within you.
Losing our Vision
This is a process that we all go through. The poet William Wordsworth declared this beautifully in these lines from his poem Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come
We come into his dimension of time and space and we are filled with the richness of our natural ability to flow as the movement of Love in form. We come trailing clouds of glory. We are in fact well informed, because we have not yet caught the disease of the eyes that will become more extreme over time. In the movie Avatar, the final frame of the movie has the hero open his eyes that allows him to see the world, not as a collection of separate things, but as a sacred unity. This experience of sacred unity is the invitation from this Chinese folktale called We are All One. This way of seeing the world is the way in which small children have their eyes open to wonder. It isn’t that their eyes change over time but the what changes is the way of seeing the world through the opposites of right and wrong. The view of the world changes as the sense of the separate self develops and the eyes begin to lose the vision of Oneness that allows us to say and live the true story that We Are All One.
The rich man in the Chinese folktale We are All One is still rich. However, over time he becomes blind to the richness that is available within his environment. The rich man has a disease of the eyes and the eyes are the mirror of the soul. He is thus not at ease with the way he sees the world and his ability to change his world view. All his advisors are unable to help him. All his advisors are representatives of what is already known but of no real help. This is like living in a dynamic where everything is known and everything is kept as it is so that we might feel safe but not necessarily envisioned. However, this experience of being human cannot leave out the vision of the soul. What cannot be left out is the vision that you, as a unique expression of Love in form, are here to radiate and embody in form. This is the true meaning of being well informed.
The rich man, who cannot see the richness of his life, suffers. We are told in this Chinese folk tale that his suffering deepens. There seems no way of alleviating this suffering. No none within the house of the rich man knows what to do. So there is only one thing left to do. This is to go out into the wider community and offer something in return for receiving the gift of healing. In this Personal Development and Beyond blog this invitation to seeing, to insight, is the invitation to find true meaning and purpose out of which arises a vision for the future. This is what this writer and storyteller calls soul vision. This is the ability to see the foundational dynamic beyond the idea of the sense of the separate self and to know and to live from the direct experience of We Are All One.
The pain involved with the disease of the eyes and the vision for the future intensifies for many people during midlife prior the life transition that is the 2nd half of life. When caught in the full blown life transition that is termed midlife crises the advisors to the richness that is within you seem incapable of helping you. You try all the solutions that have worked in the past but the sense of unease heightens and the pain and confusion deepens. You cannot see a way out. You begin to lose hope. You begin to long for what you once had. You act out. This is part of the experience of the life transition known as the midlife crises. It is what this writer and storyteller calls having your eyes opened. All your skills, all the advice you have accumulated to date, seems not to hold the answer. These are the advisors who my one time teacher Osho calls the logic choppers. These are the dynamics within you that are used to everything being solved by logic or more cerebral information. It takes the symbolic invitation from stories such as this Chinese folktale to invite you to open your eyes beyond the opposites of cerebral knowledge.
Healing the Disease of the Eyes
It helps to know that there is a dimension available that gives you true vision and is in alignment with the richness within you. This richness and vision is available when you connect to that aspect of yourself that is willing to remember the wisdom of old as represented in this Chinese folktale by the grandmother of the Candy Peddler. She is the one who knows the way of the healing herbs and is not simply someone who knows about what might heal. She is in connection with the Wild Old Woman within. She knows what the real disease of the eyes is about. It is about the loss of vision due to the absence of meaning and purpose.
The essential disease is the unease that is felt by the identity we call the ego. This is the separate sense of self that is a boundary that we tend to protect at all costs and which we maintain before all else. The more energy we put into the establishment of the ego as being who we are the more we lose our true vision and the more unease we feel because we are heading for a doorway that we tend for the most part to ignore. This is the threshold place called death. In this Chinese folktale the rich man is symbolic of the true Self. This true self is your essence. Without your ability to connect directly with this essence you are in fact seeing in the dark. In the words of the Bible
For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
This seeing through a glass darkly is the way of the world. It eventually becomes a way were all our advisors cannot help with the disease of the eyes because they have no direct experience or direct experience of the journey to what true vision reveals. This is the vision that heals the unease that we feel about our identity with the time limited form of the body within this dimension of time and space. The eyes need healing of this perception of separateness. It is at least useful for the rich man who is almost blinded by his attachment to his ego and its related desires to know that there is a different way of seeing. First we have to contact the one who knows about sweetness. This is the person in this Chinese folktale who is that aspect of yourself and who in this story is the one called The Candy Peddler.
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4 STAGES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH – The stages of spiritual growth is sometimes not easily identified, and we’re all of us are undergoing a transformation down this path, even if some of us don’t know it.
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
KARMA TUBE is a collection of inspiring videos. This website brings inspirational stories to light, using the power of video and the internet to multiply acts of kindness, beauty and compassion
Life Transitions and Passages of Inspiration for Living the Wild and Precious Life
To live the wild and precious life requires that you are able to pass through a series of life transitions or life passages. Many people have difficulty transiting these passages and coping with such life transitions. This is why I have decided to write a series of blogs that will form of a kind of life transitions coaching in the hope that you are inspired to journey into the fullness of your one Wild and Precious Life. This will a series of blogs that will invite you to live the whole life you are here to give and to gift the world. In this series of blog posts I will be unfolding an inspirational passage and also aligning it with lines from inspirational poetry. At the end of the blog I will include some recommended reading for those who are interested in taking the real opportunities that is invited at all stages of life.
Here is the passage that we will use to invite you to transit to a fuller and more relaxed way of being in the world. I will go so far as to say that this is essential knowledge especially for those people who are navigation the life transiton called midlife and the 2nd half of life. This is the life transition stage that I refer to as the stage of life called the will to meaning. So let me share with you what will be the first of a series of passages of inspiration that will allow you to, not only cope, but enjoy life’s transitions.
Your true function is not to do anything, rather, only to be willing to listen to the small Voice within. This is a voice you are not likely to be accustomed to hearing, for it is a voice that speaks, not in mere words, a hearing that does not require the body’s ears. It is the Voice for joy. It is the Voice for Love. It is the Voice you share with the One who created you. It is What you will someday become, not by change, but through remembrance and awakening. Joel Wright – Author of The Mirror on Still Water.
What is to Become of me?
In a one word answer to the question “What is to become of me?” the answer is “Love?” You don’t have to make yourself the perfect person. You don’t have to change all those aspects of yourself that you think are not acceptable. This is not to say that you are to engage in activities that harm yourself or others. The words of the mystic poet Mary Oliver writing in her poem the Wild Geese are helpful here.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.From Wild Geese by Mary Oliver (Bloodaxe World Poets)
There are certain key issues that arise out of this passage that are important for making the later of life’s transitions. These key aspects include,
- Doing versus Allowing.
- Willingness as Abundance.
- Stillness that Speaks.
- Listening without ears.
Doing versus Allowing
The embracing of the above life transition energies are not what we are usually taught in mainstream education. The above dynamics are certainly not what I was taught when I was being brought up in my homeland of Northern Ireland during the 1960’s and 1970’s. I was assured that it did not matter how far I walked on my knees, or how many miles I walked through the desert, I could not change the fundamental fact that I was born wrong. This sense of wrongness is still being taught as fundamental to the teachings of the church throughout many parts of the world.
This teaching of our essence being in some way wrong creates a need for what is called the Protestant work ethic. We work, not to express the joy of creation, but essentially to try to create enough things in order to fill a kind of existential emptiness. This keeps us doing and doing more. The result is that we as a species are literally in the do-do. While doing is necessary for transiting the first half of life it works against you in the second half of life. Essentially, what we call the midlife crisis, is the transition to finding what will fill that existential sense of not belonging in the world.
Let me say this. I am not against work. I work seven days a week and probably ten or more hours each day. I am not stressed because what I do, is more or less, being done through me. This is the difference between doing and being willing to allow the voice of Creation to express through you. I am not stressed because I feel wholehearted. There are of course challenges but that simply allows me to trust more deeply in the creative process.
This is doing versus allowing. The allowing makes you more creative which is not merely to be equated with making you more productive. We are at a point of our evolution as a species where we are producing more than the earth can provide on a sustainable basis. Much of this doing it to feed the collective mantra of market forces of never quite enough. This is not action arising from the experience of allowing that force within you to create through you and in doing so fulfil you through such allowing.
Willingness as Abundance
Thy will be done.
Willingness is a feminine practice. It is a life transition practice of trust. It is a practice of faith. People tend to think that faith is something you give allegiance to as a doctrine laid down by some religious or political text. Faith, for this writer and storyteller, is the willingness to trust in the unknown and the unseen as being able to express through you. This is alignment with true prosperity because you are willing to be in alignment with what is infinite but which express through you.
Our approach to life transition is what is called a dominator approach. We impose our will upon life and we see how we do this with our relationship to the natural world. We are told that we have dominion over the earth and we have quite literally taken this, not to heart, but to a point of insanity. Willingness is a life transition that allows us to come into harmony with Creation. We begin, not to dominate the way we see how the world should be made to suit our own image but how we can align ourselves with the image of creation that we uniquely are. This is truly imaginative and gives us true power. This is not ego power but the power that arises when we really are willing to say and mean some of the words from the Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done.” One doesn’t have to be a Christian to take this spiritual gem to be a guide for real life transition.
Stillness that Speaks
Stillness is the language that creation uses to communicate with you. You won’t hear this communication in words. You won’t hear this communication with ears. All you have to do is allow the soft animal of your body to do what it loves. If what you do is what you love to do, and not because you are told that you should do it, then this is the small still Voice speaking through you.
The modern mystic Eckhart Tolle writing in Stillness Speaks states that when you lose touch with your inner stillness that you lose touch with yourself. Thus you are left to transit life passages without being in alignment with your true north. For those of us engaged in the modern go getting way of living life stillness is veiwed as a waste of time. The paradox is, for those, willing to allow stillness to be central to their life and how they manage key life transition is that time expands and can expand into the vastness of the dimension of the timeless. Then you have all the time in the world available to you to allow the timelessness of creation to express its power and grace through you.
We have become afraid of stillness. It is had to find a place, other than in nature, where you can invite the connection to stillness. That is why I love to go into churches. I go into churchs when there is no one else there and I abide in the silence. This silence speaks to me because I go with the intention of being willing to listen to the guidance from that silence. This sounds crazy to the logical mind. It is crazy to the logical mind. However, I say to those who wish to make the transition to the wild and precious life, “Get still.” Become willing to be the voice of Love as it is intended to pour through you.
Listening without Ears
How do you listen to a voice that speaks through stillness and that you do not hear with your ear? The listening is done by paying attention to your energy. If you feel that your level of energy is raised (without the addition of some drug or entertainment) then this is a pointer to the fact that you are in line with allowing
the soft animal of you body to do what it loves.
Notice that I have stated the energy is raised in a natural way. There is no outside stimulation. You become like a child who dances because the Lord of the Dance has been allowed to dance through you in the way that unique way in which you are created to dance. We have been conditioned to listen to every other voice other than the Voice that will lead us to the fullness of who we are. We go to experts but there is no one more expert that you in knowing what brings you alive. What I invite here is a life transition beyond all that your ego thinks it has to do to get what you think you need to be happy and fulfilled.
In one sense I am inviting you simply to turn around and go inward. I am inviting you to remember who you are and why you are and to have revealed through you what it is you are here to become. What is it you are to become is a unique voice of Love expressing in form. This is a major life transition the I invite to know and live. This is a still voice but it has a stillness that gives you a peace beyond understanding. To listen and follow the promptings of the still small voice is the quest into the whole life. It is to journey into a willingness to listen to the voice of the one who has loved you during all your life transitions. This is the one, in the words of the poet Derek Walcott who, “Knows you by heart.” This is the voice that you gave up listening to for the promise of doing your life in an endless cycle of never quite enough.
Letting your body do what it Loves
Here are some ways in which you can learn to practice the invitation from this passage and live the wild and precious life.
- Practice meditation.
- Learn Hatha Yoga.
- Discover Tia Chi,
- Walk by a river.
- Dance
- Drum.
- Garden with Spirit.
Each of the above will allow you to let the soft animal of your body do what it loves. Make sure that you practice any of these practices, not with wilfulness, but with the feminine attitude of willingness. Gift yourself the following:-
- Be willing to be miraculous.
- Be willing to be wondrous.
- Be willing to be sensational.
- Be willing to be gifted.
- Be willing to receive.
Notice the essence (meaning that which is essential) in the above list. None of the above are what you do. They are all about being and becoming. The above list is what will become of you should you accept the invitation to be still and know the wonder of who you are and enter your life transition in a more feminine way. This willingness impacts the way you live in the world and the way that the world is reflected back to you. It makes those life transitions that we all face transitions of opportunity rather than just experiences of resistance. There will be resistance but with the focus on the above dynamics of allowing, willingness, stillness and listening such resistance will be minimised. You will be more in flow and live more of a whole life rather than an unlived life.
It is my intention to write further invitations that arise from inspirational passages that help with life’s transitions. You can bookmark this page to return to it. Simply press ControlD. You might find it easier to subscribe via the RSS Feed for Personal Development and Beyond Blog which ensures that anytime I post to this blog that you will receive that article and be able to move into the connection to the wild and precious life you are here to live, to love and to give. Here are some selections that I recommend should you like to journey more deeply into the important lessons that are available through life transitions. This learning, is for this Irish writer and storyteller, true education. Education means “to arise from within.”
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
life inspirational message
4 STAGES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH – The stages of spiritual growth is sometimes not easily identified, and we’re all of us are undergoing a transformation down this path, even if some of us don’t know it.
CHAKRA HEALING – Articles on Chakra Healing by Energy Master Carol Tuttle
EN*THEOS RADIO – en + theos. Two little Greek words. Put ‘em together and you’ve got enthusiasm—or “God within”—the secret sauce to authentic awesomeness. Helping you tap into Highest within is pretty much what our little business is all about.
Finding the Stolen Child Within – A Search for Meaning
The stolen child in the poem by W. B. Yeats can be viewed as an invitation to search for meaning in life. The stolen child, who appears in Irish fairytales such as A Brew of Eggshells is about young child who is stolen and replaced by the one they call the changeling. The changeling tends to be wooden and is does not speak. We, in our own way are changelings. What brings the changeling alive and releases the ability to speak is the discovery of the new and witnesses something that has not happened before. This story of the changeling and the Stolen child is the story of rediscovery of who we truly are and within that discovery finding our life’s meaning and purpose. The central invitation from the poem by W. B. Yeats called The Stolen child is this:-
Come away, O’ human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Terri Windling the folktale website Endicott Studio writes about the Stolen Child as follows:-
Yeats was a folklore enthusiast and a life-long believer in the fairy folk. His poem “The Stolen Child” is rooted in changeling tales found throughout the British Isles, as well as in other lands with fairy traditions of their own. Changeling stories are not “fairy tales” as the term is commonly used today. They are not set “once upon a time” in magical lands distant from our own, like fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or Puss in Boots. Changeling stories are folk legends, usually set in the same country as the teller, and come from an ancient belief system in which fairies are real, co-existing with mortals.
That which is stolen from each of us is our connection to our souls. It is in order to find that which is stolen from us that we go on a search for meaning. This is usually in the 2nd half of life and is often preceeded by the crisis to meaning called the midlife crisis. This goes hand in hand with our ability to live a wild and precious life filled with passion, purpose and prosperity. Prosperity, in the way this writer means it, is the prosperity of meaning. This is your life’s energy allied with creative activity that expresses that meaning within form. It isn’t simply the acquisition of more nor is it simply production for productions sake. It is what is truly productive that arises from a hand in hand connection to the dimension of the infinite.
We get disconnected from the water and the wild. This is the water of our unconscious. This is the disconnection from the living of our dreams. This invitation to the waters and the wild is wonderfully invited in the writing of Robert Johnson. He writes in his book Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the worldtoward that same church, which he forgot.
From Sometimes a Man Stands Up during Supper – Translated by Robert Bly
A Yeats tells us in his poem this world is full of weeping and you might not understand the why of it. This is because there are aspects of creation that are a mystery and will forever remain a mystery. There is suffering but there is also the end of suffering. It doesn’t mean that you cannot understand your part in that mystery and especially your part in such mystery as a co-creator. In the wonderful words of Marianne Williamson written in her book entitled Return to Love she invites meaning and purpose in this way.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
In the words of Rumi, which I often quote to school children when telling them stories,
You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly! – Rumi.
To often the changeling in us forgets that we are born to make manifest the glory of God (or if you prefer, Love) within us. In a culture where everything becomes homogenised we become wooden and unable to speak the truth of who we are as unique individuals. This truth is not a fixed truth codified in words but a living of life moment to moment that arises from the waters and the wild of our unlived life, and all to often, our unloved life. The fairy element in this poem refers to to a vaster experience than that limited by the five senses and the dimension of time and space. This is the dimension that I refer to in this blog and its related website as the beyond. It is a state of being beyond the limitation of the persona (persona meaning mask). When this beyond is allowed to flow through you it radiates within the personality. The word wild here does not refer to being wildly out of control. It is more akin to the experience invited by the Master Jesus when he gives the advice,
And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Neither is the above an instruction that suggests you regress to becoming a child again. The invitation is to reveal the stolen child within who knows how to be wildly creative, wildly spontaneous and wildly loving. Children know how to do this without doing this. It is natural to the way that Creation moves through them. In this way you go into the realm of the timeless hand in hand with time. All too often there is the wish to transcend the world in order to avoid the weeping than you cannot understand. However, this is your world and the way in which it is seen is in most part is a reflection of the waters of the wild unconscious that are within. When you change the way you think the world will change to reflect that new way of thinking.
The changeling is often depicted as a wooden creature. This is symbolic of a way of thinking that has become inflexible. In its inflexibility thought has stolen the spirit of the child within. The midlife crisis, which is the call to return the stolen child to its place in the family of man, is a difficult time. The story of the changeling involves roasting the changeling on the fire until it cries out and the fairies return and reclaim their own. During the midlife crisis it feels like we are being roasted in the fire of experience. The symbol of fire is the symbol of transformation. It is the element of the firebird, the phoenix that rises from the ashes of the unlived and unloved life.
In the poem you are invited to come away and not run away. I invite you to come away from a culture that keeps you wooden and that keeps what is unspoken within you from being heard and thus being manifested in your life. This world is more full of weeping, more full of suffering, because you are not a revealed one. You are one who has not yet authorised the water and the wild as it is intended to flow wildly through you. To invite the wild and precious life within you, and to get you to come away from a culture whose growth is depression and violence, I offer you practices. These are practices that invite the Wild Old Wicked Man to grow within you or the Dangerous Old Woman to grow within you. These are the people who are potential within you and who will allow you to live from meaning and to act in the world from a connection that goes hand in hand with that dimension called the timeless.
Let me say this. What is true within you and what reflects the glory and the grace of Creation cannot ever be stolen from you. You can lose your hand and hand connection to this source of grace and power and beauty but it is forever available. To the extent that you do not make your life meaningful and commit to a search for meaning, especially in the second half of life, is the degree to which the world will appear to be full of weeping. In the story of the changeling the change comes about when the parents of the stolen child do something that has never been done before. This is a key piece of knowledge that begins the transformation. It is the invitation to radical creativity. It is the invitation to live the new and not live simply tied to the limited idea of persona. It is to invite the revelation of Love that is then radiated through the personality. This is the fullness of personal development and beyond.
I hope that in some little way you can begin to see the potential that is held within the power of poetry and the power of storytelling to help you transition some fairly intense personal development and beyond stages of life. These poems and stories that I invite you to discover at this blog contain images and symbols that have one purpose. This is the purpose of soul revelation that gives human life meaning. Symbols are the language of the soul. They contain the invitation to the deep hearts core. They do not reveal themselves to the consumer mind that would grasp and possess them. They are gifts of the spirit that inspire and are available to those who would serve Loves purpose.
My purpose is to invite you to take a first step toward the waters of the unconscious toward the wild an precious life. I invite you to go hand in hand with that dimension within you that knows (beyond intellectual knowing)that this world is not just a vale of tears and a place full of weeping. This world has within it a revelation that gives a peace beyond understanding. This revelation is a practical process. It needs practice and it needs commitment. It is easy to lose that hand in hand connection to the source within the focus of our day to day lives. To live the wild and precious life of meaning and purpose you have to find the inner voice that brings the changeling within you alive. Within the fire, that is the crisis of the unlived and unloved life, there are wings that will allow you to fly. You aren’t meant to crawl. You have wings. Use them and fly.
Take any of the practices as outlined in our related website and commit to at least one of them. When you commit with intention, and pay attention, then the Universe listens to that commitment and moves in mysterious way to fulfil your true hearts desire. This is not the desire that is promoted by market forces but is the desire that arises from your willingness to live as loves purpose. When you are so willing then, although the world is full of weeping you, will feel empowered to take that weeping and transform it into the waters of the wild and move as Love in action. You will act in this dimension of time and space for the highest good of all.
I ask you to commit to surrounding yourself with words and phrases that speak to your deep heart’s core. Make it a practice to send such words and phrases to friends in need through a practice of prayer or meditation or by sending them a note of appreciation. Combine such words and phrases with some art that has spoken to the deep hearts core throughout history. You then move, hand in hand, with a symbolic power that creates universe. It is in this way that you become truly empowered. You do not sink into a form of apathy and wonder what on earth the meaning of all this weeping in the world is about. Refuse to listen to the changelings who invite fear and anxiety. You have a voice within you that knows a world beyond weeping, beyond financial crisis, beyond fear of terrorism and beyond the idea of the separate sense of self. I say to you, as W B Yeats says to you,
Come away O Human child to the waters and the wild.
Meaning and purpose is found within. Don’t wait until the time when you are so wooden in your ways of viewing the world that you are afraid to move and a time comes when you find that it is not death you are afraid of but the fact that you have lived an unlived life. Simply begin to practice a daily practice. Trust in the process and the way to the waters and the wild will be revealed. Then you will have revealed to you the life you are here to live, to love and to give. I leave you with one of my favourite songs. It is the song by the Waterboy’s and is from their album entitled Fisherman’s Blues. It is their interpretation, and I think it is a wonderful interpretation, of W. B. Yeats poem The Stolen Child which we have been reviewing above. If you have an iPod then you might like to download it
If you do this heartsong practice then it begins to set up an intention within you that puts the Universe on notice. The universal intelligence that creates all things from no thing knows that you are making a clear choice to embody and align yourself with your soul purpose. The Universe will then come into alignment that intention. This is how life is designed and how you are designed as a co-creator with, and as, Love. The quest for meaning in life begins with a real quest and a real question. The degree to which you are aligned with your wild and precious life will be the degree to which you are willing to answer by direct experience those existential questions that will allow that meaning to arise from within you.
Let it be so.
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NIGHTINGALE CONANT – Dowload inspirational personal and spiritual development podcasts for FREE
SOUL PROGRESS – Wonderful articles on spiritual life and spiritual living including the most sought after goals for individuals walking the spiritual path
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
A Poem and Song for Midlife Transition into the Second Half of Life
Midlife transition into the second half of life is a challenge for most people. They are often left in the dark without any sense of having a song in their heart or a vision for the future. In order to facilitate this midlife transition I wish to share a song and a poem that invites you into a deeper awareness of the opportunity available within this period of transition. This poem will also share with you the consequences of being unwilling to follow the call into midlife transition and beyond. This experience called the midlife crisis is what this writer and storyteller calls the crisis to meaning. It is the invitation and opportunity to find a call to find meaning and purpose in the second half of life. Here is a poem that I would like to offer to those who are experiencing what is called the midlife crisis.
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him
as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out
into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.
by Rainier Maria Rilke (translation by Robert Bly,)
The search to find meaning and purpose in life can happen at anytime beginning with adulthood. However, life appears to create a hightened tension during midlife. Dr. Steven Farmer writing in Men, Spirituality and Power Animals tells of his experience with men.
Over the many years of working with men, I’ve found that this awakening can sometimes come as a result of the “two by four” approach. This happens when a man is going along, thinking everything’s okay with his work and his relationship, (even though there’s this nagging voice inside saying otherwise,) and God hits him with a metaphorical two by four. His wife divorces him, he gets laid off from his job or his addictions catch up to him– some momentous disruption of his life takes place. He can ignore this or take it as a signal to change, but by the time he’s in his late 30’s or 40’s, it becomes more difficult to deny it.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
mystical poetry
TIME OUT FOR TRUTH – This spiritual wisdom podcast and website explores the great truths of the ages, and authors like Vernon Howard, J. Krishnmamurti, Gurdjieff and Anthony de Mello.
STAGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH – This article describes four levels or stages of Personal Growth — social accomplishment, psychological growth, spiritual progress and transformation.
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
The Stages of Personal Development from Midlife and Beyond
In order to live your full wild and precious life, from midlife and beyond into the 2nd half of life, you to be aware of the stages of personal development. You need to develop the persona or what is known as the ego. To live a life of meaning and purpose is to engage consciously with personal development to the point where the ego expands into what is beyond the ego. This expansion has been called by the mystic Joseph Benner “The Impersonal Life.” This impersonal life has nothing to do with the experience of emotional coldness. The fully lived life is the union with that which is both personal and impersonal. The paradox of the fully lived life is the extent to which you give your life utterly to that which is beyond your idea of the separate sense of self you call the personality.
There are many maps to guide you in through the stages of personal development and beyond that have been given throughout the history of human development. In this blog and its related website this Irish writer and storyteller will be concentrating on those stages of personal development life that hold such potential during midlife and the 2nd half of life. These are the stages of life from anywhere beyond the ages of your late thirties and early forties until the time when you leave the vehicle of the body that is within this time and space dimension.
There are many ways of viewing the work of personal development and beyond and I am going to begin with a very simple structure that has been recognised within various cultures throughout the world. This structure is more easily recognised in the lives of women but is no less important in the lives of men. This is a three tier structure that is an easy to follow stages of personal development map.
Woman Man
Maiden Master
Mother Father
Crone Warrior
The names given to the stages of personal development and beyond for men are names that this writer and storyteller has chosen. I have chosen them more as a reflection of the names given to the stages of personal development and beyond as reflected in the life stages of women. Throughout this blog and its related website the third stage of the human development cycle will be given more poetic names. The crone cycle in women will be referred to as The Dangerous Old Woman (DOW). This reference is taken from the audio recording by the storyteller and Jungian analyst Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This audio recording is available from the Sounds True catalogue of inspirational teachings. The warrior life stage in men I will refer to as the Wild Old Wicked Man. (WOWM). This is the title taken from a poem of the same name by the Irish poet W.B.Yeats. The word wicked in this context has nothing to do with being evil. The wickedness referred to here is the courage to become all that you are here to be.
There are many personal development blogs on the web. These focus, as the name suggests, on the development of the personal. These cover various topics that are important to what I will refer to as the first stage of life. This is the stage of personal development where the personality is being carved out of experience following adolecence. This is the age from around eighteen to twenty one years through to the late thirties and mid forties. For most people this is a period of career development and a full on working life. It is the building of a family and the acquisition of an identity that you learn to establish. During that time you acquire many skills that are needed to develop you in all kinds of ways.
The kinds of skills that are needed in the first half of life might include all or any of the following as being recognizable personal development skills:-
Time Management
Goal Setting
Positive Thinking
Financial Management
Organisational Skills
Relationship Skills.
Each job will have its own set of skills that one can develop and which in learning such skills will develop the personality. This development is encouraged by the media, the educational system, business and the culture. There is more than enough information available on these early stages of personal development on various personal development blogs and websites to give you material to develop the persona for several lifetimes. This is information that is to be valued and used.
This will assist you to in moving through such early stages of personal development. These skills are necessary to the first stage of life. For the woman that is the stage that transits late maidenhood toward the later stage of motherhood. Note here that you do not have to be a mother in order for this information to be of value. The first stage of life for the man transits the period of the late young master to late in the cycle of the father. Again you are not required to be a father in order that the material in this blog be of benefit to you.
I have concentrated the invitation from this blog and its related website on the stages of personal development called midlife and the transition from the midlife stage into that stage of life called the 2nd half of life. I have chosen to do this because it is a transition that our culture does not handle very well and this leads to much unnecessary suffering and can include the ending of long term relationships during these stages of life. It is my purpose and my passion to illiviate suffering in any way that I am graced to do so. This is essentially through writing and storytelling.
These stages of personal development are well mapped periods of transition within indigenious cultures. These periods of transition had recognised rituals and practices that ensured that the individual moved through these life stages into the fullness of the wild and precious life they were gifted to share with their community. The important thing to recognise for many of us living today is that we are all living longer. Future generations will, through the benefit of modern medical science, live to be over 100 years old. This means that the second half of life can become a wondrous opportunity to live a long and precious life. This will be a life that gives you the opportunity to live with the power and the expansiveness of the Dangerous Old Woman or the Wild Old Wicked Man dynamic.
However, while this powerful and expansive dynamic is available to each and everyone of us while living in a body of a certain age there is the issue of what is called the period of transition. This stage of personal development is often experienced as the midlife crisis. Beyond the midlife crisis there is the transition period called the menopause. This transition happens in the lives of both men and women. These cycles of life are driven from beyond the personality. The midlife crisis is a call from the soul as is the transition for the man or woman who is moving through the menopause into a different life cycle.
In each of these phases, or cycles, there are changes happening for the individual on many levels. These include:
Physical
Psychological
Emotional
Spiritual
Cutural
All these levels need to be taken into account in order to move from one cycle to another. In any given cycle there is going to be resistance. Resistance is a form of birthing. It is likely to be painful. This pain is to be acknowledged and not denied. The real problem is not the birthing of the new but the still brith of the new. This is because we are afraid of leaving what is known. To avoid this transition from one stage of personal development to another. We refuse to journey from the first half of life through midlife into the opportunity of a deeper stage of development. It is to avoid the opportunity of development of the persona into the radiance of being.
The focus of this blog and related website is to provide you with an awareness of the cycles and stages of personal development and the physical, psychological and other levels of change inherant within such cycles.
The other intention is to show you what kind of life is available to you should you choose to have the courage to move through such stages of personal development with conscious intent.
Then there are the practices that assist you in moving through these cycle. These practices are a different kind of technology. These practices that I will share with you are what I call sacred technologies. They work to reveal what is sacred within you and what will sanctify you and allow you to enjoy a real experience of sanctuary. This is a sanctuary from the rollar coaster ride that is often experienced within these periods of transition that most people resist.
Whenever it is appropriate to do so I will share with you my personal experience of these periods of transition. It is my experience that it helps tremedously to know that what you are experiencing is not something that makes you a terrible person. This can cause you to isolate yourself. By sharing my own experiences I hope to show that it is a natural stage of personal development and beyond. It just happens to be one that is not spoken of because of fear and shame. It is the loss of that which is known and thus is associated with loss of control. The good news is this. That which is beyond the persona is vast. It is infinite potential. It is the opportunity for the culmination and the harvesting of what is truly valuable within you. It has the potential to take you into dimensions of human experience that you cannot imagine but that you can be the knowing and the living.
One major aspect of the movement through personal development stages in the 2nd half of life and beyond is what I will call the contract. Personal development and beyond requires intention, commitment and practice. This is the holy trinity of the evolution of consiousness. These three are needed to prepare the ground for the wild and precious life that is intended to be lived through you in the 2nd half of life. This is not a luke warm commitment. It isn’t something that you fit in when everything else is accomplished and when you happen to feel like it.
The revelation of the wild and precious life that comes to fruition in the Dangerous Old Women and the Wild Old Wicked Man is not for those who are lukewarm. In this blog and its website I will be giving you practices and invitations that, if you pracitce them, will allow your life to be graced in ways unimagined. Such a grace requires solid ego boundaries and with such grace comes tremendous responsibility that is best exercised with humility.
You are a Dangerous Old Woman or a Wild Old Wicked Man in training. This training harvests the gifts and talents that creation birthed in you beyond the time of your birth into form. These gifts are not necessarily the same as those skills you learned in the first half of life. The skills that equip you in the first stages of personal development are not the skills that will assist you in the transition between midlife and the 2nd half of life. You might consider this writer and storyteller not as a personal trainer, but your impersonal trainer.
Through this blog I train you in the practices of transition. I train you to connect not to the finite within you but the infinite within you. I train you not so much in the practice of time management but the direct knowing of the timeless within you. I train in the practice of revelation. As an impersonal trainer I train you in directly knowing that you are not only loveable but you are Love incarnate.
The difference between a personal trainer and an impersonal trainer is that most of the work is not about gain but about letting go. There is one central aspect to this impersonal training. In a word, one that will be repeated through this blog, the central technique to learning to live a wild and precious life is the practice of trust.
I essentially train you in trusting the process of becoming who you are intended to become. Through this blog I will mentor you to trust the cycles within you and the deep heart’s core within you.
As an impersonal trainer, a trainer beyond personal development, I don’t add anything to you but share sacred technologies that reveal the power, the grace and the beauty of who you are already.
This grace, power and beauty is who you are and always will be. The quest I, as an impersonal trainer, invite you on is one of revelation. This revelation of who you are deepens as you integrate the various stages of personal development that life invites you to live and to Love. Are you willing to claim your birthright as a person and being of such grace, power and beauty? It is my hope that you make this quest a truly heart felt intention. It is my purpose and my passion to keep inviting you in full knowledge of the outcome. This is no better illustrated than in the words of my own impersonal trainer.
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn’t matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.- Rumi
Another key aspect of integrating the stages of personal development and beyond is the aspect of forgiveness. Even if you have broken your committment one hundred times you are still to come back again and again. This transition into the 2nd half of life is not a caravan of despair. You are being invited here into the beauty of who you are and ever will be. You are to forgive your so-called mistakes. This being able to forgive is an essential stage of personal development and beyond. You are to forgive the fact that you will resist the process. However, this is not a licence to indulge your resistance. Your work is to become an alchemist of love. You become a true magician. You learn to change the lead of doubt into the gold of trust, knowing the glory of who you are and who you are always becoming.
If you are so intent then one step you can take is to subscribe to the ‘Personal Development and Beyond’ Newsletter. This will keep you connected to the true potential within you. It will help ground you in the opportunity that is available in the second half of life. It will help your transition during the period of midlife that is often filled with more crises than is acknowledged.
It is my purpose and passion to assist in the flowering of the beauty and grace you are here to be. In that sense I am a kind of midwife. I assist in the birth of the beauty and grace that creation in its love of its creation (which you are) birthed you into form to celebrate in this time and space dimension called the human experience. This birthing and flowering happens within all the stages of personal development and beyond. However, it is important to know that what you love in one stage of personal development often becomes the very resistance to the movement into the next stage of personal development and beyond. It is this resistance that is necessary for the birth of the new within you. Understand this and it will go some way to your avoiding unnecessary suffering.
If the time is not right for you at this moment to make a commitment to your personal development and beyond then you might like to bookmark this page. Simply press Control+D and this will allow you to do so. Let me finish by saying thank you for taking the time to read this far. I hope that we might meet again on the pages of this blog and that together we can build a world where the Dangerous Old Women and the Wild Old Wicked Men can become elders to the young who so need inspired leadership and courage to become all that Love asks to be birthed within them.
Let it be so.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
midlife crisis
PHILOSOPHERS NOTES – The ultimate personal growth tool. Giving you more wisdom in less time. The essential teachings of 100 optimal living books condensed into convenient 6-page PDFs and 20-minute MP3s.
INFINITE BEING – Spiritual metaphysics articles to help spiritual seekers find inspiration, love and creativity through heart-powered consciousness.
BLISSITATIONS – At this site they are committed to making it easier, more enjoyable and more effective with guided meditations, visualizations, affirmations and other goodness to help turn your meditation into Blissitation!
U2 Can Find Meaning & Purpose from the 2nd Half of Life
In order to live a life of meaning and purpose you too (U2) must learn to give yourself away. As the knight Percival (Parsifal) asks in the story of the search for the Holy Grail, “Whom does the Grail serve?”, you too must ask what the holy meaning and purpose of your life is here to serve. I love to watch U2 clips on YouTube. Their song With or Without You is, for this Irish storyteller and writer, is a kind of mystic poem and modern day rock anthem. This song, like all great heart songs, works on various levels. It is a song about the struggle to live in relationship. At a more mystical level it can be considered a song about the struggle to live in duality. At the heart of the song are these lyrics
And you give yourself away
You give yourself away
and you give and you give
and you give yourself away
This giving yourself away can be giving yourself in the surrender of physical love making. It is the giving one’s self away in the union of the mystic with the Beloved. It is giving your self away to the work that expresses your soul essence and not simply work as a means to an end. It is a mother giving herself away to build a world of safety for her children. It is the mature male who is focused on protecting all children who he meets. Whatever way in which this giving yourself away happens it is important that it does happen. This is not simply about giving yourself to a project for the purpose of ego satisfaction. This is not what I take these lines from the U2 song With or Without You to mean.
What you give yourself away to has to be bigger than your individual ego self. It is in this way that you find meaning and purpose. It is a paradox that in giving yourself away you find what you are seeking. This giving yourself to something larger than the ego is important at some stage of your life. It is especially important during the second half of life beyond the age of fifty. This is when you begin the process of individualisation and you leave what is culturally expected of you to go in search of your personal holy grail, asking the question, “Whom does the Grail serve?” This is another way of asking, “Whom will my heart serve?”
The Grail is the cup that is said to have held the blood of Christ. The blood is the container of primal life energy that flows through the body. The Christ is the experience of non-dual consciousness that allows you to know and to be all that you are here to be. The Christ is the servant of all and serves from the knowing of Love. Do not confuse the Christ with the time space body of Jesus of Nazareth who knew how to give himself in total surrender to Love as one who lived from the experience of Christ Consciousness. This confusion of the historical Jesus with the dimension of Christ Consciousness is such a common error that no one really ever questions it. No one has Christ Consciousness. It is not something you own but is who you are to become as the revelation you are intended to be.
In the first half of life we give ourselves to creating a career, a family, a home and a kind of identity. At the midpoint of life many people struggle and begin to ask a question from another song,
Is this all there is?”
These three cycles are universally recognised – at least for women in the maiden/mother/crone cycle. I am not quite sure what the three cycles are for men except that they are there. The tragedy of many people’s lives is that they refuse to transition from the first part of life into the second. This resistance is experience by both men and women as the midlife crisis. They think that the skills they have learned in the first half of life prepare them for the journey of meaning and purpose in the second half of life.
In the case of many men, they continue to live as boy men, living the idea of success as opposed to failure. When they retire they live a life of narcisstic self-indulgence and all too often they find that their life has lost meaning. Most high powered executives who are men and who have heavily invested their time and identity in their work die within three to five years of retirement. I suspect they exit on the planet because they feel they are no longer of productive use. This is a tragedy.
If you are between the ages of thirty-five and fifty you will be experiencing mid-life. For many of you this is a cycle that might be termed ‘the will to meaning.’ If you do not have this experience of will to meaning then it might come later. If it does not come, pray that it arrives. I mean that literally. The sadness is that these cycles are known but not taught. They were known and ritualised in indigenous societies but ours is a culture that focuses only on the first half of life, which is, in reality, only half a life. In India it was traditional for a man to leave his wife and family and go off to a forest or mountain to find out who he was. Fifty is a good age for someone living on the Indian subcontinent even in this day and age.
There is no need for you to leave your wife or family or husband or partner or job. There is a need to leave the culture that invites a never ending focus on self-serving. There is a need to transition and turn around and quest. There is a need for you as an individual to answer for yourself the question “Whom does the Grail serve?” The grail is a symbol of sacred unity. It symbolises what is whole in you and what way in which you can make the world whole.
The quest begins with a question. What are you going to do with your “one wild and precious life?” In the second half of life you learn to give it away. You learn to surrender to Love’s purpose and not your own. You listen to the still small inner voice. You listen beyond the manic clamour of your mind and the collective mind. You learn to centre yourself and become the knower within. You claim your true King within or your true Queen within.
You too can give yourself away and live a life of meaning and purpose. It is an antidote to what they Jungian analyst Robert Johnson terms the unlived life. It is an antidotes to the pull of a depressed life energy that destroys so many lives. You become, in the words of the poet W B Yeats a Wild Wicked Old Man or what the storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes terms the Dangerous Old Woman. This Wild Old Wicked Man and Dangerous Old Woman are those who are ready to give to their community the best of who they are for the highest good of all.
Giving yourself away with a sense of purpose begins with intention and moves through faith into Love in action. It is not simply ‘do gooding’ but leads to the knowing that giving yourself away is the only sensible answer to the question of existence. In this way you give meaning to your life and live the wild and purpose-filled life. So rather than grow old and slip into a loss of meaning in the second half of life remember that U2 can find meaning and purpose for all your life by giving yourself away.
For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
2nd half of life
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
OUR ULTIMATE REALITY – The new de-facto reference for how to achieve your own Spiritual Growth as you travel your own Spiritual Journey along your own Spiritual path as we enter a crucially important era for all mankind
SPIRITUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION – The study shows student life is enhanced if students engage in “inner work” through activities such as meditation or self-reflection