Characteristics of Fairytales and The Wisdom Voice Within
The personal development and spiritual guidance available from fairy tales has been lost in our adherence to the logical linear mind. We have, both individually and collectively, lost contact with the wisdom voice within. As a consequence when we have life experiences that take us into our personal dark forests we are left without a guide. We are literally out on our own. However, the wisdom voice is never lost. In many fairytales and folktales from around the world we are instructed how to access this voice of destiny and its guidance in finding our life purpose. One story that tells about the power of the inner knower within is the story called Vasilisa the Beautiful. This is a Russian folktale also known as Baba Yaga. Baga Yaga is the archetypal Dangerous Old Woman.
In a far off Tzardom, there lived a little girl who was so lovely that she was known as Vasilisa the beautiful.
When Vasilisa was eight years old her mother became ill and no doctor could cure her. Just before she died, she called Vasilisa to her bedside and told her:
‘My dearest Vasilisa, do not weep for me, but listen carefully to my words.
I am leaving you this little wooden doll, which my own mother left me; you must never show it to anyone.
Always carry it with you wherever you go. It will help you whenever you are in trouble and comfort you when you have no one to turn to.
When you need help, go somewhere quiet and give it something to eat and it will tell you what to do.’
In the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful the heroine is lonely. This is often the case with those most in touch with the beauty of who they are. They are forced to live alone. This does not mean that they do not have a family, that they do not have a job or a career or are surrounded by friends. In this modern day culture of acquisition, and possession by acquisition, the one who lives from a sense of beauty is often left to experience this alone. The paradox is that they are connected to this beauty through a sense of All Oneness. Rather than feel alone they feel all one.
This extract from the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful leaves out an important part of the mother’s instruction. This instruction is relevant to our own lives. It is relevant to the way in which we can develop, what this writer and storyteller refers to, as the knowing within. The mother, who is deeply connected to her child and to her ancestors, tells her daughter that she must give the little wooden doll some little food and some little drink. When this is done then her daughter will be able to ask questions that the doll will then answer.
Here we see the importance of tending what we feel is wooden within each of us. We are instructed within this Russian folktale to nurture that which might seem not alive within us. This gift from the archetype of the good mother, representing unconditional love, is wooden because we do not give her the attention she needs to be able to speak to us. The more attention we pay the knower within the more it can guide us through our personal dark forests. We all go into our personal dark forests at different times during our journey within time and space. Many of us, too many of us, perish there. This is not a literal kind of dying. It is the psychological death of meaning. The quest for meaning and purpose to life is at the heart of all fairytales and folktales that are read and told throughout the world.
The death of meaning is a major issue within our Western culture. It has been a major issue through the journey of humankind. Like Vasilisa the Beautiful we have to leave the domain of the good mother. We leave behind the world of the child and we venture out into the world of everyday existence. We are asked to grow up, and if we are fortunate, we grow into the beauty we are intended to be and to express within this world of form. If we have had some half decent parenting then we will have been encouraged to trust our unique sense of knowing. Then we are able to feel a sense of confidence in the intelligence that arises within us and which guides us to living with a sense of meaning and purpose.
The characteristic of this Russian folktale is the invitation to trust the still small voice within as represented by the wooden doll who knows the answers, would that we attend to its needs. Most of us have starved our inner knowing. This is in large part due to our present educational system. This inner knowing, however, never dies because the wooden doll cannot die. This inner knowing is not simply a question of acquiring more information. The small still voice within is the wisdom voice within. More information tends to be partial while wisdom, by its nature, is a way of seeing beyond opposites. It solves problems. It gives direction because it arises from a higher level of consciousness. As the scientist and mystic Albert Einstein said,
A problem cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it.
The small still wisdom voice within accesses higher levels of consciousness provided you pay it attention and feed it through awareness. This means that you fill this aspect of your being with awareness and in this way honour its potential to guide you on the true way. This is best done on a daily basis. One of the best books that I have read about the characteristics of fairytales is entitled The Wisdom of Fairytales and is written by Rudolf Meyer. In this book Rudolf Meyer writes “The characters in fairytales lead us to discover the treasures of our own souls.”
Fairytale characters are representations of the journey to meaning and life purpose. The real meaning that gives life purpose is the ability to be able to express the creative and beautiful way in which creation intended you to be its expression in a unique way. Meaning and life purpose are found in expressing your gifts in the fullest way that you are able. This ability to give of the way in which creation designed you to express through you is what is beautiful within you and is your real treasure.
Another wonderful book that uses fairytales for personal development and spiritual guidance written by Lorna Catford PhD and Michael Ray PhD is The Path of the Everyday Hero. In this book we see the power of fairy tales used as strategies to finding ones true creative spirit. In this book we find how we can relate to the character of Percival who quests after the Holy Grail. We find how, in this story of the quest for the Holy Grail we can ask questions that give us our true meaning and purpose. In the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast we discover how this tale can teach us to create loving relationships. In Cinderella you get to explore the values beyond material wealth that will enrich your life and allow you to live your one wild and precious life.
This is the real invitational power of fairytales. They are great stories for spiritual guidance and personal development that most people overlook. They celebrate the imagination. They help you live your life with a path that leads toward greater joy and fulfilment. They are realistic. Even though many fairytales end with the words
and they lived happily ever after
that phrase has a different meaning than the one that we might associate with Hollywood movies. In fairytales and folktales you are always asked to travel the road of trials. This is not a punishment although it is a trial. It is the journey of the soul into the arena of higher lovemaking. At the end of the fairytale the hero or the heroine brings back the gift that they have found. This is a metaphor for the finding of the treasure that is within you and that you are heroically willing to gift to the world out of a realisation of Oneness.
Ashes and cinders in
fairytales are code words
for the ashy, sooty depressed
“out of time” experience. – Robert Bly
At the end of the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful returns with fire that flames from a human skull. This is the symbol of the fire of your creative imagination to light your way through the dark forest. This power can be frightening to those who live in the sooty, depressed out of time bound life. You meet with such people who will tell you that the work of the creative imagination is the devil’s work. You meet with the depressed and the sooty who will tell you that you are a sinner and that your life has no worth unless you become one who mouths some magic spell. Julia Cameron, the writer of the Artist’s Way, calls these ashy and sooty people crazy-makers. They will drown at birth any creative potential you care to share with them. This is why the mother tells Vasilisa not to show anyone the doll. This is why the poet Goethe advises in his poem the Holy Longing,
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.- The Holy Longing - Johann W. Von Goethe
In the beginning, when connecting with the still small voice within, tell only the wise person or keep silent. This is a private and a tender flowering of your beautiful creative potential. Guard it from those who would criticize its unfolding and stay away from those caught in the obsession with the darkness of the separate sense of self and who are not insane for the light. Don’t give it to some religious group consciousness that will bind it and have you feed some other idea of who you should become.
Fairytales map the journey of most of the challenges that any one of us will face throughout the time we live in form on this planet and this dimension of polarity. Some tales include the whole journey into meaning and purpose. Such a story is the German folktale Mother Holle. Others cover the stages of Love as in Skeleton Woman. There are many stories told that show you the ways to integrate within you many of life’s challenges. These are not just stories for children but for the person who desires to find the treasure of living a meaningful life filled with purpose, passion and prosperity.
As a writer and storyteller I use fairytales and folktales for personal development and spiritual guidance. It is through their instruction that I practice listening to the knower within. This is the wisdom voice within me that I feed each day I feed it by trusting in it and nurturing its flow from within. There are characteristics within fairytales that hold true for all cultures and all times. This is why they remain as true teaching stories.
Your life story is not a fairytale. It is, however, a story that follows the characteristics of a great many fairytales and folktales around the world. Storytelling is the way in which we learned long before we were tied to a classroom. You are both the Beauty and the Beast. You are the one who has locked Sleeping Beauty in the tower which is the tower of the intellect. You are the one who keeps her asleep and you are the one who is invited to kiss this beauty within you awake. You are Visalia the Beautiful who is able to feed and nature those wooden aspects within you that come alive in a way that is beyond your intellectual understanding.
The choice is yours. You can choose to feed the wisdom voice within. You can learn to ask questions that guide you to a life of meaning and purpose. You can connect to the knower within that enhances the presence of beauty within you and allows you to follow true spiritual guidance and further your personal development and beyond. Otherwise you can leave the inner knower to starve to death. In various tales through the world the result is the experience of the wasteland. This is the metaphor for a life lived without the beauty of meaning and purpose. I invite you to take the path less travelled and learn to be the knowing that arises from the still small voice within.
Let it be so.
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Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
inspirational storytelling
SPIRITUAL THEMES IN YOUNG ADULT BOOKS – Many young adult books can provide the spiritual information young adults need to assuage the loneliness of their passage; some of the possibilities are presented here.
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.
SOUL PROGRESS – Wonderful articles on spiritual life and spiritual living including the most sought after goals for individuals walking the spiritual path
Finding Life Purpose through Irish Myths and Stories
I tell old Irish mythological stories connected to the beauty of the wisdom mind. This is your mind that is connected to the Source – the One Mind. These old Irish mythological stories are not simply entertainment. They are invitations to the return to the source of a meaningful life and the meaning inherent in your life. One mythological story that I tell is the story of how the river Shannon in Ireland got her name. This is really a story about wrong intention and the price you pay for trying to use certain kinds of powers in a certain kind of way other than for the highest good of all. This is a great story for those who use the Law of Attraction for purposes other than serving Love.
This Irish mythological story about how the river Shannon got its name begins with the story of the maiden Siannan. She was an outsider. She did not make herself an outsider. In the beginning she was like anyone of us. The Source of Creation created her as a dance of Love in form within in this dimension of time and space – this vale of soul making. However, she was different in a way which was approved. She was the union of two blood lines.
On one side she was Formorian and on the other side she was Tuatha de Danaan. This could have been a great opportunity to unite the opposites within herself but rather than deepen her magical abilities by turning the lead of separateness from Love into the gold of union Siannan turned bitter. She made the purpose of her life vengeance for all the hurt that had been heaped upon her because she was made to feel different rather than the new creative possibility that Love in its intention intended her to be and to become.
Thus Siannan gets stuck in the energy of the first chakra. This is the energy of the blood ties and the energy of her Formorian ancestors. It is the energetic of fight and flight and fear. She does not do the work that is required to rise above her sense of separateness. She focuses her intention and the power of her intention on acquiring powers that she intends to use for vengeance. She intends to use these powers that she has no knowledge of to avenge the hurts that remain locked inside her heart that has become armoured and absent of joy.
This focus of making others pay for the suffering of one’s life can become the purpose of one’s life. We spend our life’s energy in ensuring that those who have wronged us pay for that wrong. You see this happening in the lives of couples engaged in bitter divorce. I see this happening within the dynamic of my own family. It is often within families that this kind of dynamic goes deepest. It also happens within Nation States. You see this happening with Ireland and England. You see it happening within the collective that is my tradition in Northern Ireland with its main focus on the mantra of “no surrender.”
What you think about expands. This is why it is so important to become the guardian of your own mind and the thoughts that you allow to become the foundations of your life. In my own life, and the life of most of my friends, the foundational thought that we were taught as children was that we were sinners. We where assured that being sinners we were existentially wrong because we existed. These poisonous stories are still being told and I see them destroy the lives of the most vulnerable. They are being told by the Formorian mind that thinks it knows the beauty and grace of the Source without ever having done the work of surrendering to such Source and becoming at one with it.
Within you is the wisdom mind. It knows you by heart. It is the mind that has loved you all your life. It doesn’t know any other way. In the Irish mythological stories that I tell the Formorian mind is the ego. This is the false sense of self that has taken over the Palace of Love. The ego is all that you identify yourself with as being me, my and mine. It sees itself as separate from others and it lives by doing and acquiring and feels itself as living separate in a body within time and space and within a timeline between birth and death.
We have more in common with Siannan than we might wish to admit. She is both the sense of the separate self but she has within her the blood of the Shining Ones – the Tuatha de Danaan. This is the blood line of those whose lineage is the knowing of the true Self. These are the ones who live from the direct knowing of the Source. They are those who live from the Buddha mind, from Christ Consciousness or from the Tao. These are the shining ones who have the ability enter the light of the One source. This is the knowing of the light that creates all things from no thing. It is termed enlightenment.
Siannan is exiled from Love – from her source. It has made her bitter. It has made her want, not love, but power that she intends to use for her own purpose. This purpose is to make people respect her, to make people fear her. She is blinded by her dark intent. Such power will not give her her true hearts desire which is her ability to love and be loved. The meaning of life isn’t in the satisfaction of ego desire. As our consumer society proves this simply becomes a form of addiction to ever more meaningless acquisition that peaks and troughs leaving lives destroyed in the process. The meaning of life is found, not in acquisition, but in giving your life away to the highest purpose that can live through you.
You begin to attend to this higher purpose through the power of intention. You begin to ask yourself through some spiritual practice on a daily basis what your higher purpose is. This may be through prayer or meditation or some other daily practice. This is the invitation to the shining power of grace and beauty of creation expressing through you. You don’t make your life a means to an end. You don’t dictate outcomes. You begin the process of surrender to the way of Love. It knows how to work through you if you are willing to allow it. You begin the process by trusting in your inner knowing which paradoxically speaking isn’t yours but is not separate from you. This knowing is what you are and not something that you acquire. It is more a revelation of who you are rather than more information you acquire about who you think you are.
I have a certain sympathy for the outcast Siannan. She was made an outcast by her people. We used to do this in Ireland with woman who birthed children outside marriage and with those who we thought a little odd. We did it to those we sent into the care of those we gave our power. These are the one in four who in Ireland have suffered some form of sexual abuse. These people are still looking for a sense of justice that the hierarchical institutions responsible for such abuse refuse to acknowledge. So some of these people become like Siannan and get locked out of their personal power to love and be loved. This I think is a double tragedy. It is heaping suffering upon suffering.
Storytellers are not just entertainers. They should be magicians. They are usually magicians who have been exiles from Love in some form or another. I am both, archetypally speaking, the orphan and the magician. I have in my time walked the frozen lands of a loveless life. Except that the Source of that life is not in any sense Loveless. It is only that I learned how to forget and to focus my energies on a sense of self that was always living in the darkness of the illusion of the separate self.
Now I get to sit at the source of the Shannon river and I tell stories. These are my stories because they are the stories of the journey of the soul in its return to the Source of the Oneness of all things arising from no thing. It is in this way that I give my life away with the intention of inviting the direct experience of the true Self. The journey of my own life could so easily have been the journey of Siannan who eventually gets washed away by the forces of the unconscious that she wanted to use for the sake of avenging the hurt she held within her. We are all in our own way embracing the Siannan within us when we seek power in any way other than for the highest good of all.
Let your story be the story of the full integration of the Formorian and the Tuatha de Danaan within you. Let your life become the grace note that it is intended to be. Do no die with the music still left within you and do not be attracted to power other than the power of Love for the purpose of Love. Give your life in service to Love’s purpose and how it is intended to be lived through you. In the silence of a daily spiritual practice begin to learn the process of allowing the still small voice within you to speak to you in images and experiences of inspiration.
This voice speaks in unique ways. Your work is to allow yourself to trust the knowing way that lives inside you and which creation expresses through your once you are willing to allow the will of Love. Then you will avoid the fate of Siannan who tried to outrun the forces of the unconscious that rose up and washed her away and in their wake, but not in her awakening, left what is now called the river Shannon.
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.
Finding Life Purpose through Irish Myths and Stories
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
INFINITE BEING – Spiritual metaphysics articles to help spiritual seekers find inspiration, love and creativity through heart-powered consciousness.
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
The Law of Attraction, the Bible and the Power of Story
One of the key aspects of the Law of Attraction is called creative visualisation. It is the practice of imagining. Much of what is imagined within the Law of Attraction process tends to be focused on material gain. This is what this writer and storyteller calls ego desire. It is using the images conjured up from the ego, allied with the universal energy of co-creation, for purposes of self interest rather than on service to the Self. In this blog I want to share with you the importance of the creative imagination and its relation to the power of storytelling. I hope to show you that these stories of old are not just old stories but have real relevance to the way you can invite your life to be the wild and precious life it is intended to be.
In order to do this I will take part of an old Irish story about those called the Tuatha de Danaan – the beautiful people – and also a story from the Old Testament. This is the story of the Flight of the Jews from Egypt. Each of these I will attempt to show can be viewed in different ways. I will be showing you how you can examine these stories so that they become living treasures of possibility within you. In understanding stories in a particular way you open the heart and mind to the wisdom mind within you. This is the mind of beauty and the mind of the prophet within you that guides you across the metaphorical Red Sea to the land of milk and honey where you realise the true beauty and attractiveness of who you are and why you are.
I have of late been having images arrive in my mind while being in a state between sleeping and dreaming. These images are of flowers and also include the image of a virginia creeper that clings the wall of this cottage. This is simply an exercise in paying attention. It arises from the willingness to have the imagination be free to express in its unique way without my need to manipulate it for some idea of personal gain. This is a subtle process. It is a process of faith development. This is not faith in some outer form but the willingness to be guided by what arises from within. “So what,” you might say. How is the image of a flower going to make my life different. That depends on the significance you are willing to assign it. Most of us, including myself, have little patience. We want instant results. We are enticed into ideas of becoming attractors of some get rick quick schemes and instant soul relationships. This is the consumer mind within us that tells us because we want it we can have it and that if we think certain thoughts long enough we will manifest a certain result.
You are unique. How that uniqueness is to flower within you is your responsibility. It is not a flowering from without. It is a flowing from within. The world is created from the inner to the outer and to live a wild and precious life your primary focus needs to be directed inwardly. You need to pay attention to the inner promptings. In the story of the Tuatha de Danaan and their four magical gifts one of the gifts is called the Stone of Destiny. It is told, that whoever, sits on this stone, and hears their name being called from within the stone will become the rightful King or Queen of Ireland.
Many who read the above lines about this old Irish folk tale will take this story literally. They will assume that this is a story of olden times. In their imagination they might visualise a large stone. They might visualise a King or Queen dressed in the fashion of Kings and Queens of a particular period of Irish history. They might hear the stone scream out some old Irish name. Finally, they might imagine that the stone is situated in a land called Ireland. The same process happens when people read metaphysical books such as the Bible or the Holy Koran or the Bagavad Gita. For example, they take the virgin birth to be a literal virgin birth. They take the flight from the Land of Egypt to be the literal flight from the Land of Egypt.
This is why the mystic poet William Blake laments
They read their bible day and night
where they read black I read white.
If you read folk tales, fairy tales, biblical stories from a literal, logical point of view you are reading in the dark. You might have the ability to quote your bible or Gita chapter and verse but this is only from a knowing about basis. All that is known are the words and not the essence. The emotional and transcendent aspect of the symbol are not known and neither is the meaning that is inherent within the symbol known. You might be able to say that “God is Love,” but without knowing that as a direct living experience within these are only words. You could spend a life time in Bible study classes and never touch the transcendent wisdom that is invited to be known by the words of the bible.
When the invitation to stories, whether they be stories in the bible or stories of myth leave out the poetic then the imagination is left out. All that is left is cerebral knowledge. This allows you to think you know and understand the invitation when all that is happening is that you have read the signposts pointing the way. Those who say they know tend to manipulate those who are more honest in their admission when they admit to not knowing. Those who come to be true knower’s of the poetic invitation tend to be suppressed by any hierarchy that they happen to belong to, be it religious, political or social. To enter the real knowing of the transcendent invitation contained in holy books one has to be prepared to enter the cloud of unknowing. This is a state where you are literally speaking out on your own with no support from outside sources.
So how do you go about learning to read a story in a poetic, rather than a literal way, and why is this skill of any importance? The reason why it is important to learn this skill is because it opens the heart and the creative imagination. Without living from the heart and the heart of creative imagination life will be something you tend to know about rather than allow to be the wild and precious gift that is given to you to co-create from. Be aware, however, that there are those, especially those in religious authority, who will warn you against claiming your own authority in matters of spirituality.
These stories of old are not about a long time ago. The Genesis story is not about a long time ago. It is a story about the eternal now. The story of the Jews as being the chosen people leaving Egypt to cross the Red Sea to a land flowing with mild and honey isn’t the story of a tribe leaving captivity to find a better place to live in freedom. It is your story of captivity in slavery to the idea of the separate self. In that sense it is a story of the journey of the flowering of human consciousness and it is your story as part of that eternal process.
The crossing of the Red Sea is the metaphor for crossing the threshold beyond your blood ties with the tribe and entering the waters of your unconscious. The land flowing with milk and honey is the metaphor for your living the wild and precious life beyond your limited identification with the ego (slavery). You have within you the wisdom guide. You have the one within you who is the prophet. This is only available to you should you wish to trust this possibility. You have been taught for most of your life that you should give your authority to someone or something outside yourself. Learning to trust the wisdom voice within – the still small voice within – is the real beginning of the working of the Law of Attraction.
If you doubt that such wisdom exists within you then it will not be available to you. You will do what the collective do. You will remain enslaved to ego desires and be metaphorically speaking enslaved in the land of Egypt and refuse to cross the sea of the unconscious mind into the revelation of your Divinity. This is your at one ment with Love and the meaning of atonement. This is your realisation of your connection with the state of being that is Oneness and is represented in the story of the flight from Egypt as the land flowing with milk and honey. Reading the story of the Flight from Egypt in this way places the responsibility on you to leave the slavery of your identity with the separate sense of self and cross the threshold into a free land. This is not the work of someone else. You cannot give this responsibility – which is a soul responsibility – to your preacher, your guru, your life coach or any other person. They can guide you but be sure that they do not control you.
In the Irish folk tale about the Tuatha de Danaan – the shining ones the same is true. The shining ones who are also called the beautiful people are you as potential. Ireland, in the story of the Tuatha de Danaan is not a land set somewhere between Britain and the USA. Ireland represents the experience of sovereignty. Sovereignty meaning wholeness. The King or Queen is you. The King or Queen metaphor is the invitation to the realisation of the true self. In biblical terms this is the realisation of what is called Christ consciousness (7th chakra level of awareness). The stone metaphorically speaking is the armoured heart. It is the heart that has turned to stone. Within this heart of stone is the wisdom voice that speaks your name. This is your true name. It is not the name you where given in words after you were born but your name which is that unique vibration given to you from all of creation. This is your unique good vibration.
When you are ready you can listen to the voice in the stone. Sometimes it screams. Sometimes there is turmoil in your life. You loose your job, you become seriously ill, you get divorced or you have someone close to you die. The voice in the stone is screaming and asking you to become the integral sovereign ruler of your life in service to the chosen people. These are the disparate and desperate aspects of your psyche that you have enslaved in the dark of your unconscious mind. This is not an easy choice. The way is, however, known by that unique wisdom voice within you. It might begin simply as the image of a beautiful yellow flower caught in the mind between sleeping and dreaming. The beginning of the journey out of slavery begins by paying attention and trusting how this flowering will move through you.
Make it real by writing about the experience. Write no matter how long or short you make it. This is journaling. This is a spiritual practice that connects head and heart via the hand. Don’t worry that you are not a writer. Just write and in this way you demonstrate to the King or Queen within you that you are ready to claim the sovereign life you are here to live. Be very discriminating about who you share any of your insights with. There are plenty of Pharaohs’ out there who want to keep you enslaved to their personal idea of what spiritual stories should tell you. It is in their interest to keep you in the dark. If any of the above sparks some sense of delight in you then follow that feeling. Trust it and leave the slavery of ego desire for the true desire of your heart which is to live in the knowing of Love.
Be discriminating in your use of the Law of Attraction should you be attracted to use it. Many of its adherents are inviting you to stay in a more comfortable kind of slavery. If you are a sincere spiritual seeker then be discriminating in your use of this wonderful power of co-creation. Ask yourself if your true intention is to use this Law in serving Love’s purpose. If you are honest and humble then you can follow the promptings of that which is truly attractive within you. If not then understand that using the Law of Attraction for manifesting material trinkets has karmic consequences. This is not a punishment but the way in which the soul refuses to allow you to miss its most beautiful and life affirming invitation to what is wild and precious within you.
I hope that you will begin to look at the stories of myth and the stories in religious texts in a more poetic and heart conscious way. Always remember that these old stories are not just about the time they were written in but were written for all time and are written primarily as an invitation to the timeless. If you find that any one who you give your authority to in matters of spirituality debunks this kind of invitation to the wisdom voice within you or in any way makes you feel bad about your personal journey into Love then I suggest you look elsewhere.
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.
law of attraction
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.
NEW DIMENSIONS – Over the years, a wealth of practical knowledge and perennial wisdom has accumulated in the audio archives of New Dimensions, a virtual treasure trove of timeless wisdom.
FREE Healing Meditations, Affirmations, Inspirational Broadcasts and Downloads
Chakra Balancing, Poetry and the Power of Storytelling
When your energy is in free flow you feel fine. This is the movement of refined energy with the body. The energy is moving through the centres of the body called the chakras without these centres being blocked. You feel balanced, you feel creative, you feel the movement of the wild and precious life within. In my workshop entitled “Living the Wild and Precious Life” I use a combination of storytelling, poetry, song and spiritual practices to the bring energy of the individuals and the group into alignment. It is an invitation to the opening of the creative imagination and is intended to allow you to experience the feeling of expansion that comes from the awareness of the creative Self that flows from the practice of chakra balancing.
There are many folk tales and fairy tales that invite the technique of chakra balancing and for healing and making whole that which you feel is desperate within you (2nd chakra experience). I invite you to have fun with finding a story,or a poem, or a song that has meaning for you and start a practice whereby you begin a dialogue with this story, poem, song or other invitation that arises. Begin to make this a spiritual practice. In some traditions it is similar to the spiritual practice called Lecto Divinia. This is usually practiced with scripture. This is the beginning of the real Law of Attraction within you because, if you are being drawn to such lines without your having to force the matter, then there is already an alignment within your energy field..
This invitation is not a cerebral invitation meaning that it is not simply coming from your head. You are not being asked to become a poet, a storyteller, a singer songwriter or any form of artist. You are being invited into what you used to know and live from. This is your childlike imagination. I use the Way of the Chakra’s as a framework. I do this because this framework excites my imagination. It isn’t simply an Eastern framework but a human framework. It is a pathway, a map to the full realisation of your potential.
The starting pint for this path of individualisation is the root chakra. The root chakra is a symbol for your everyday living in this dimension of time and space and form. It is a given. If you are living in a body on this planet then you are living from the root chakra experience. In the process of individualisation I will be referring to what each chakra symbolises within the process of human development and beyond. This is a process that is in alignment with your development. The chakra framework does not only apply to the individual. It can and does apply to nations and even to historical times. Everyone in their personal development and beyond begins with the root chakra. It is your conscious day to day living and all that is unconscious in you is asleep. All the potential you are here to live has yet to be awakened within you.
To become individual, to live the uniqueness that you are, means leaving the security of the family, the connection to limited ideas of separateness evidenced by the nation state and culture. None of these are to be considered bad in a moral sense. They are simply too limited an experience for the longing of your soul. You can love your family, your nation and your culture but to move beyond the root chakra your experience of yourself has to expand beyond this limited time, space and form identity. You have to move from what is simply conscious within you to alignment with the unconscious within you. This is the first step in chakra balancing.
What usually happens in most peoples lives is that they stay asleep. It has happened in my own life as you will see later. They stay locked in the tower of cerebral thought (meaning that most of life is lived in the head) and the beauty that is within them sleeps for much, if not all, of their lives. This is the story of the Sleeping Beauty. This is living in the root chakra and is a kind of banal place. It is the place of work, work, work and the place of paying the bills and doing lots of things as a means to an end. It is a place of suffering and injustice. It is characterised in moves such as the Wizard of Oz as being a flatland where everything is grey. In the story of Cinderella and the story of Mother Holle it is the place where you do ashes work.
In poetry it is the place you refuse to leave and you then leave a legacy for the future generation who then have to do the work of individualisation that you refused to do. You refuse to live the one wild and precious life you are here to live and the one wild and precious life that you are here to give. You refuse to follow the promptings of the heart and you do what you often think you are duty bound to do. This is because in the root chakra you tend to be loyal to family and to ideas such as the nation state and the cultural ideas that are surrounded by cultural taboos. Thus as in my own case my heart wanted me to be a teacher of Yoga and I opted to become an accountant instead. This is because the role of the accountant is safer and one that is more readily acceptable. Becoming an accountant didn’t go against the cultural norm of the time, when I lived in Northern Ireland, and where I was assured by those who taught me Christian values that Yoga was the work of the devil.
What happens if you refuse to follow the movement of the energy that begins to awaken in the root chakra and that begins to align with the energy of polarity in the 2nd chakra. Metaphorically speaking you die among the dishes and the glasses, meaning that psychologically and spiritually speaking your life force stagnates amidst all the things you acquire in order to try to give meaning to a life without Love (4th chakra experience).
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
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.
Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly
Here is a great poem about someone who refused to move beyond the 1st chakra. Notice that the movement from the root chakra to the 2nd chakra can happen at any time. In the above poem it happens during supper. This I think is also a reference to the Last Supper. The movement in this poem is about the movement away from the ties of family and culture into the place that is unknown. It is somewhere in the East. It is the arising of the energy of the 3rd chakra – the Sun centre. The church referred to is the church made without hands. It does not refer to some building allied to some hierarchical religious organisation.
It is the place of sanctuary – the heart chakra. It is the place of sanctuary that you are able to enter when you balance the energy of the chakra’s. It is what the poet Rumi calls the heart house and it is the cabin that W. B. Yeats builds on his Lake Isle of Innisfree and where he feels the peace of the heart come dropping slow. What happens if you refuse to stand up and find the church in the East. Then the energy of creative potential gets stuck. It not only gets stuck in you but it also gets stuck in the family energetic and then those who are born into the family have to go and find a way of crating a heart house, a way of finding the church in the East that gives their life meaning, gives their life purpose, passion and prosperity.
The language of poetry is not just more information. The language of storytelling is not just entertainment. It’s primary purpose is the invitation to take the journey to the full realisation of what it is to be human. This begins with where you are now. This journey is the journey without end because it expands into infinity which has no beginning or end. Have a listen to some of the deep hearts core podcasts that I have recorded here. These, I hope, will show you the potential within the power of storytelling and poetry to inspire you to balance the chakra’s so that the personality can become available to the higher centres. To use a Christian description of this process
Thy will be done on Earth (1st chakra) as it is in Heaven (7th chakra).
I invite you to have fun exploring the lines of songs, images from movies, the poems, the stories that have given you times of joy and even sorrow. These are filled with images that attract you in some meaningful way. They are filled with symbols which are deep signs along the path to living your wild and precious life. Invest in a Journal
I recommend writing to begin with. It can become a deep connection between hand and heart. It unites the two hemispheres of the brain. Most of all have fun and don’t force. To come into alignment and to balance the chakra’s means learning to be comfortable with not knowing and learning to trust the unknown. This is the movement from the 1st to the 2nd chakra. Enjoy the adventure and feel free to contact me to share your experience. Maybe one day you can share how you got up at supper and left to find the healing heart house within and how you found the experience of chakra balancing within you.
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The 7 Chakras and the Power of Storytelling
As a storyteller I write and tell stories from the heart (4th chakra). Fairytales and mythological stories are not simply stories told to entertain children. They are maps that chart the fullness of human potential. They are maps of the journey of the soul. These stories contain deep psychological truths. They have their own special kind of language. It is the language of symbolism and the language that leads to meaning and a life of purpose, passion and prosperity. I like to refer to this language as
the full moon language
This is the language that will take you into foreign lands of adventure where you can learn to live the one wild and precious life you are here to give and to share. Some fairy tales chart the full journey of the seven developmental phases of human potential as represented by the seven chakras. Others represent only a part of the journey. However, the fairy tale, the mythological story, demonstrates that the development of consciousness is not simply a linear progression from lower to higher but more the movement of a spiral.
The journey of personal development and beyond begins in the root chakra. This is the place of our day to day living. It is here that the full potential of the human being awaits revelation. It isn’t something that you have to add to yourself; rather think of it as your allowing yourself to be an instrument of manifestation. Each chakra has a world view associated with it and from which one lives their life. At the lowest chakra (low is not to be equated with bad) the world view is the view of separateness. It is the view that says you live in a body in time and space between a timeline called birth and death. At the seventh chakra the world view is Oneness. The journey of the Way of the Chakras is the journey into an ever increasingly expansive view of the world as a sacred unity rather than a collection of separate things.
In fairy stories or mythological tales the root chakra world view is often represented in various ways. In the modern day tale of The Wizard of Oz (7th chakra experience) Dorothy leaves the grey world, the flat lands of Kansas. In other stories the everyday world is represented by a colourful kind of paradise. In the story of the Fisher King the everyday world is a wasteland. This mirrors the ups and downs of our everyday living. Sometimes our everyday life is a series of grey days and we dream of a time when there might be days filled with colours of the rainbow (the colours of the chakra’s)
Dorothy Gale, played by the young Judy Garland in the film The Wizard of Oz, sings
Somewhere over the rainbow up high
There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow
and the dreams that you dare to dream
really do come true.
This somewhere over the rainbow isn’t a dream. It is the nowhere place that is everywhere. It is the vastness of the blue sky represented by the knowing and the living from the 7th chakra knowing. The blue birds that fly over the rainbow represent the element of the air which is the element of the heart chakra. This song is a lullaby. It is a song that is intended to comfort the child and lull them to sleep. It is not the sleep of the unconscious but the sleep that arrives cloaked in a sense of safety.
In fairy tales there is the common motif of disruption. The ideal world of the King and Queen (aspect of ourselves) who live in the Palace with their beautiful child Sleeping Beauty is disrupted when she finds the room that was hidden. The gray world of Kansas is disturbed when Dorothy is caught up in a tornado that carries her far from the grey world into the colourful world of Oz. This is where she walks the golden road of infinite possibility to meet with companions along the way who help her face her journey’s trials.
In the motif of the Hero’s Journey we see this as the step on the journey referred to as the call. It is the call to open the doors of the secret rooms that are the rooms of the unconscious. We see the rooms in different ways. Sometimes they are simply hidden in different part of the Palace – a metaphor for the psyche – the soul. Other times they are expressly forbidden as in the story of Bluebeard. Or they are simply a matter of curiosity as in the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Opening the door of the secret, or forbidden, room is the work of the second chakra. This is the phase of personal development that is called the Encounter with Opposites. It is the encounter with those aspects of yourself that you do not love and which send you asleep for over one hundred years.
Three Ways to Open the Doors
There are three ways of behaving in relation to those locked doors that invite you to cross a psychological threshold.
The first way is simply to ignore the door and continue living life as is. This is not the way to experience your wild and precious life. It leads to an absence of meaning. It avoids that special story filled with meaning and purpose that only you are here to tell. This is the potential you that is hidden within the secret or forbidden room. In avoiding the crossing of the place of threshold life remains grey and lifeless. You do not get to journey on the golden path to the magical kingdom of Oz where you meet with the wizard who shows what you already know but don’t have the confidence to act upon.
The second way of behaving in relation to the rooms is to open the door of the room and simply stand at the threshold and not cross over. The result is that you see what’s in the room but you do not engage with it. The door is shut and you can pretend that what is in the room really isn’t in the room at all. You can deny what you know is in that room. This leads to an inauthentic life and the death of any real intimate relationship. In the Hero’s Journey motif we see this stage as being the refusal of the call. This happens to the character Luke Skywalker in the opening of the map of the chakra way called Star Wars.
The third way, which is the way of the hero, is the movement from everyday consciousness into the world of the unconscious It arises from the decision to open the door, and cross the threshold into the secret of forbidden room. This is the way chosen in the fairy tale and the stories of myth. Thus begins a phase of expansion. We enter the room and we explore the contents and we begin the process of the work of the 2nd chakra.
Everyone one of us has rooms within us that we keep locked. Everyone of us has a voice within us that calls us to open the door of this room or rooms and come alive. This is the call of this soul – the call to unify all those opposing forces within us that divides your energy and keeps you locked up in the place of material comfort or in the poverty of cinders. Everyone of us has heard that voice call to us. Many of us, including this writer and storyteller, have refused to listen to this voice. We choose to stay in the world of the grey that is at least known. It may be just a little dull and routine and less scary than the wild and precious life that is potential within each one of us.
This may be what happens to you if you refuse the call. A life style, then your life, becomes devoid of meaning. It may lead to depression or the mindless pursuit of consumerism which become a form of addiction and the avoidance of the invitation to soul. The everyday grey world is absent of any sense of the joyous body and expansive feelings of compassion and love.
The power of fairytales lies in their connection to the sleeping beauty within you. This beauty will stay asleep within you until the time you hear the call to awaken and respond to the call. No one forces you to awaken but bear in mind that the process of awakening is inbuilt into the human psyche. The resistance to this awakening and the identification with separateness is the root cause of suffering. It is the experience of living in the root chakra and living from that world view. It is the refusal to accept the invitation to take the journey into the fullness of being – a spiralling upward journey into the power, the grace and the blessing of who you truly are.
I hope, in this short outline, that you begin to see the real power of fairytales and storytelling. These stories are maps to the meaning and purpose of life and not just some quaint little story of old. These stories invite the quintessential in you. This is a 5th chakra experience. It is the experience of the movement of matter into non matter. It is the matter that really matters.
I invite you to listen to stories told by one of the world’s great storytellers. She takes you deep into their meaning and empowers you with potential and the courage to imagine that you could be someone who, not only dreams of that somewhere over the rainbow but is prepared to journey. It is the storyteller who guides the way along the road less travelled. This is the golden road to the City of Oz. This is the journey to meet the wisdom mind in you that already knows that Love and you are never separate.
Why not begin to open the door and take the adventure along the golden road. I offer you suggestions below from the world renown storyteller and cantadora (keeper of the old tales), Clarissa Pinkola Estes
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Finding Inner Beauty and the Tuatha de Danaan
This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
Thy voice and hand shake still, –long known to thee
By flying hair and fluttering hem, –the beat
Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
How passionately and irretrievably,
In what fond flight, how many ways and days!
From – Soul’s Beauty – Dante Gabriel Rossetti
To live the one wild and precious life that you have been given,you need to be able to connect to beauty. This beauty is not about glamour. It is not about the cult of celebrity. It is about the connection to your life force, the Universal Life force that creates all things from no thing, motivated by Love. There is nothing wrong with being physically beautiful, but there are many people who are seen to be physically beautiful, who feel most unworthy.
As a storyteller, I love the stories of Irish mythology. I especially love the stories about the Tuatha de Danaan. This translates as “The Children of the Goddess Danu.” She is the one who is the gift giver. She gives all her gifts without condition to all her children. The Tuatha de Danaan are also known as the fairy people and the Shining Ones. They have, in the words of an old English folk song, “Been much reduced.” Once they were tall and beautiful. Now they are small and have been driven underground.
Once these beautiful people were tall and shining. They radiated the light of the Source from where they expressed their fullness and their beauty. They are now living underground awaiting a time when Ireland needs their energy. Ireland, in this sense, is not a physical place but the heart (4th chakra). This is not some story of old. It is a living story about you, what you and I do with the beauty of who you are and why we are. The Tuatha de Danaan are not a people of olden times. They are a metaphor for living the wild and precious life. They are you as potential when you are willing to stop defining yourself as something outside of yourself.
A large part of your plan in living a wild and precious life is to find an inner beauty that transforms . Then it will allow entry into that other room beyond what we call in Ireland “a thin place.” It will allow you to banquet in the moments that are always available to you. It is the only time you ever have. This is the time of now. It will allow you to feel your essence and what is essential to life. You will recognise your essential self in the moment-to-moment experience of inner beauty. Inner beauty is not some dream. It is essence. It is the essence of who you are. Your work, if you would commit to it, is the revelation of that experience moving through you from the timeless beauty of Love into the one wild and precious life that you are here to live and to share.
This is provided you know how to look. Let me share with you seven reflections that may assist you in getting in touch with that inner beauty that you always are.
1. Inner Beauty means you acknowledge you are not who you think you are
Inner beauty is your essence. It does not come for your persona or your “thinking about.” Your personality is like the light of the moon. This light of the moon is beautiful. But the source of the moonlight is from the sun. The moon is merely a reflection of the true light. The light of your being is powerful beyond any “thinking about.” Start “to be” more and “do less.” The hard part is that this requires trust. Trust more and learn from your “inner telling sense.” This means trusting the sense of the body.
2. Inner beauty means you know.
We focus our energies outward. We look for satisfaction instead of joy. (4th chakra experience). We accept belief but do not venture beyond belief. This inner beauty that is your essence goes beyond any belief system. This inner beauty is your birthright. It is your psychological and spiritual home place. It is your place of belonging. You will not find this “home place” in the outer world. This outer world is only a reflection of the distance we have come from our inner beauty. Spend ten minutes each day in focused silence. This can be when you are walking, sitting, eating or at any time that best suits you. Take up a daily meditation or prayer practice. Take up one of the many practices of yoga or similar physical routine. Take up spiritual gardening if that suits you.
3. Inner beauty means you are forever enough.
In this 21st Century of noise and haste you are focused on the dynamic of “never enough.” Our society’s main focus is ensuring that you never get to “feel enough.” If you get to feel enough it might then mean the end of economics.
You get little time to rest in your soul. This is the place of real recreation. This is the place where every day is a holy day. These words “holy day” are the original meaning of the word “holiday.” You do not have to leave home for exotic or non-exotic experiences.
You can travel the world of inner beauty without ever going anywhere other than your heart. You can go on holiday to your “home place” at anytime. Just take a moment. Sit still and breathe in and out slowly. Become the fine being you always are and learn to know you will always be fine. Commit to knowing life and give up the limitation of belief.
4. Allow your inner beauty to flow.
As a writer, I authorise this free flow of life’s energy moving through this body. When I write I am the experience of allowing writing to happen. I am not intent on going anywhere. When I write there is no sense of wanting. There is only surrender to flow. I sit before this fireside having a chat with my soul. Energy moves freely through “little me” when I let go and let be. This is inner beauty. This is free expression of the soul. Soul expresses through talent. Discover what it is you love, and then, as my beloved poet Rumi advises,
“Risk all for love.”
5. Inner beauty is not defined in words but felt in the body.
Inner beauty is not definable or a debatable point. It does not belong to “you” or to “little me.” It is not “my” beauty. I do not own it. One can make oneself look physically beautiful and this is a delight. Yet all outer beauty fades with time. Inner beauty develops with age and is timeless. It develops and is embraced with wisdom and understanding. Beauty proceeds from the inside out. It means honouring the inner beauty of this body. The delight of inner beauty is erotic and not just cerebral. For one moment each day lose your head and fall into the heart.
6. Inner beauty is the expression of love.
Inner beauty is the expression of love and compassion. (4th chakra experience). It begins with awareness of each moment just as it is. This allows one to recognise the destructive power of judgement. (2nd chakra experience). Each moment is beautiful. Inner beauty is the experience of presence without this experience needing to be other. We spend much of our time dividing our experience. In this way we filter out any experience of joy. We are like a battery that is afraid of being struck by lightening. We are made for joy but within our social consciousness the energy charge of joy would literally blow our minds. The experience of unconditional beauty would leave us feeling burnt out. Inner beauty requires you to be vulnerable. Take a moment this week to allow your feelings to be feelings without judgement.
7. Inner beauty is nothing special 
.Inner beauty is the experience of no thing. It means being prepared to be empty in order that the Beloved can pour unconditional love into this empty space. You cannot grasp inner beauty. You have, metaphorically speaking, to keep the window open. This is the window of your heart. All you are asked to do is be attentive. Allow the free flow of grace to enter. When the moment comes you will know. You will know that you are the beauty you seek. When you know this you have returned home. You have returned to what is called in Ireland “the home place.” This is a place of reverence and belonging. This is your special place.
Be your longing. Be beautiful. Look inward and find the source of beauty that you truly are. This will give you a glimpse of the timeless wonder you are. You will disappear. You will go into a beautiful experience beyond belief. This will be enough.
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