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.
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 transitions
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
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.
SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE - SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.
