Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, or in islands, or in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. There were no princesses or islands in his father’s domain, and no sign of God. The young prince believed his father. One day, the prince ran away from his palace to the next country. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore. “Are those real islands?” asked the young prince. “Of course they are real islands,” said the man in evening dress. “And those strange and troubling creatures?” “They are all genuine and authentic princesses.” “Then God must also exist!” cried the prince. “I am God,” replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow. The young prince returned home as quickly as he could. “So you are back,” said his father, the king. “I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,” said the prince reproachfully. The king was unmoved. “Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God, exist.” “I saw them!” “Tell me how God was dressed.” “God was in full evening dress.” “Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?” The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled. “That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.” At this the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress. “My father, the king, has told me who you are,” said the young prince indignantly. “You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.” The man on the shore smiled. “It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father’s kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father’s spell, so you cannot see them.” The prince returned pensively home and when he saw his father he looked him in the eyes. “Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?” The King smiled and rolled back his sleeves. “Yes my son, I am only a magician.” “I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.” “There is no truth beyond magic,” said the king. The prince was full of sadness. He said, “I will kill myself.” The king, by magic, caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the real prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses. “Very well,” he said. “I can bear it.” “You see, my son,” said the king, “you too now begin to be a magician.”
Author: The Storyteller
In the late 1960’s my wife was walking along Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill, London dressed in an outfit that could best be described as very colourful, although not untypical for the time. An old lady stopped her and said “My dear, I just wanted to tell you how lovely you look, you are brightening up the street”.She still remembers that compliment almost 40 years on. It shows the power our words have. Think back to an early compliment you were paid and remember how you felt. Then recall an early unfair criticism and the effect that had.
You could say something to someone today that will be a positive memory for them in 40 years time.
Why not take a slight risk and do it?
A woman wrote me asking for therapy … I wrote back and told her I’d see her, why doesn’t she call on the phone? She wrote back, “I’m too ashamed to call on the phone. I don’t think you could stand the sight of me. I don’t think you’d stand hearing what I have to say.” Then she wrote she’d like an appointment but would please give her an appointment well after dark and would I make certain that nobody saw her enter the office, or see her leave. I wrote back that I’d meet her wishes. I was really curious about a patient that fearful of seeing a doctor and so insistent. It took her about six months for her to get up enough courage to come after dark, and very reluctantly she told me her story. She was in college at ASU. She was writing on the blackboard and she passed flatus loudly, and she was so embarrassed she ran out of the room, went to her apartment, locked the door, drew down the blinds, and thereafter ordered her groceries by phone, and had her groceries dropped at a certain place where she could pick them up after dark. And she remained in her apartment six long months with the blinds drawn. I asked her her religion and she said she’d recently been converted to the Catholic faith. I asked her what she knew about passing flatus or breaking wind. She said, “It’s a HORRIBLE, AWFUL thing to do … AND TO DO IT PUBLICLY! Other people hear it. It’s just too awful!!” And she stays in her apartment for six months, ordering her food by phone and picked up after dark. I saw her a few times, always questioning her about her religious faith. And she was really a converted Catholic. People who convert to Catholicism are usually very, very devout. I questioned her extensively about her devotion to the Catholic Church and she avowed herself to be a TRUE Catholic . . . “It’s the only true Christian faith.” Then I asked her, “Who made man?” “God did.” “How did He fashion man?” “After Himself.” “And woman?” “He fashioned her from man’s rib.” “Do you ordinarily expect God to do sloppy work?” She said, “How can you speak so disrespectfully?” I said, “YOU’RE THE ONE that’s disrespectful!!” She said, “I am not.” I said, “I can PROVE you are.” I hauled out my anatomy book, showed her the cross section of the human body at the pelvic level. I said, “You say God fashioned man after His own image. These illustrations show you in detail some of God’s handiwork. I think the rectal sphincter is the most marvelous piece of engineering and I don’t know any human engineer who can fashion a valve that holds solids, liquids and air and can emit downward just air. I think you ought to respect God’s handiwork. And I want you to show some respect for God’s handiwork. I want you to go back to your apartment and bake some beans flavored with garlic and onion. And get into the nude. Beans are called whistle berries in the Navy and I want you to eat plenty of whistle berries… I want you to make LOUD ones, soft ones, BIG ones, small ones. I want you to prance around the apartment admiring God’s handiwork.” She obeyed orders and went back to school after first eating whistle berries.
A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they plagued him.
Finally he wrote to the Department of Agriculture. He enumerated all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question: “What shall I do now?”
In due course, the reply came: “We suggest you learn to love them.”
When talking about hills and valleys,
most people speak of descending into the valley as a negative thing
as in “entering the valley of despair after a mountaintop experience.”
But as I walked down the last hill before I approached my apartment,
I realized that I expended less energy and was cooler that when I was walking at a higher elevation just a few minutes earlier.
I felt refreshed and renewed by my brief valley respite.
And as I got mentally prepared to climb the final hill
I realized that valleys have two types of transition
descending and ascending.
The time spent in the valley determines the nature of the transition into the next phase.
How do you spend your time in the valley?
Do you squander your time of rest?
Do you complain about the slower pace?
Or do you use the time to prepare, reflect, refine, retro fit, and retread?
The valley does not have to be a resting place for victims, it can be a place of preparation of victory.
Will you be ready to ascend?
In a television interview the son of the author Maya Angelou was asked “What was it like growing up in your mother’s shadow?” He replied, “That’s funny, I always thought I was growing up in her light”.
Once Buddha was walking from one town to another town with a few of his followers. This was in the initial days. While they were travelling, they happened to pass a lake. They stopped there and Buddha told one of his disciples, “I am thirsty. Do get me some water from that lake there.”
The disciple walked up to the lake. When he reached it, he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the water and, right at that moment, a bullock cart started crossing through the lake. As a result, the water became very muddy, very turbid. The disciple thought, “How can I give this muddy water to Buddha to drink!” So he came back and told Buddha, “The water in there is very muddy. I don’t think it is fit to drink.”
After about half an hour, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink. The disciple obediently went back to the lake. This time he found that the lake had absolutely clear water in it. The mud had settled down and the water above it looked fit to be had. So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.
Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said, “See what you did to make the water clean. You let it be … and the mud settled down on its own – and you got clear water… Your mind is also like that. When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. It will settle down on its own. You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen. It is effortless.”
What did Buddha emphasize here? He said, “It is effortless.” Having ‘peace of mind’ is not a strenuous job; it is an effortless process. When there is peace inside you, that peace permeates to the outside. It spreads around you and in the environment, such that people around start feeling that peace and grace.
There is a theory that there are other civilisations out there far more advanced that ours. They started tens of thousands of years before ours did and so have had more time to develop.
The truth is they only started fifteen minutes before and the reason they are so much more advanced is because they never had to rush to appointments.
Once upon a time, there was a man who was travelling and came to a river. The river was very wlde and wild, and he wondered how he might cross the river in order to continue his journey.
First, he thought that he might try to swim the river, but as soon as he stepped into the river, he realized that the water was too wild and that the river was too wide, and that he would be swept away by the strong current.
So he stood on the river bank for a long time and looked across the wide river and thought deeply about what he could do. And his head was full of crazy ideas and worries, and he even thought about just turning back and going back to the place where he had come from.
Then he decided to build a raft and he spent some time finding the wood along the side of the river and building the raft by tying the pieces of wood together. But when he tried to sail out upon the river, he found that he was immediately pulled down by the current and his raft began to come apart. Quickly he swam back to the safety of the shore before the river could pull him down or that he would be washed away by the river to the sea instead of being able to cross to the other side.
And after waiting a long time, he saw some other travellers who were travelling along beside the river and he called out to them for help. Most of them wouldn’t even stop but instead passed on their own way. One did stop and told him that he was crazy to try to cross the river. That person had already decided that it was impossible and was turning back.
So the man stood frustrated on the banks of the river and wondered what was the best way to go forward, to cross the river.
Eventually, he decided to take a walk to get a new perspective – to see what the river looked like a little further along the shore. And he found something very interesting – something surprising that he hadn’t even imagined.
For as he walked, eventually he came around a bend in the river and ahead of him, he saw a bridge – a lovely old wooden bridge – that crossed the river.
So he smiled to himself and laughed a little at the worries that were already slipping away and he crossed the bridge easily to the other side of the river.
And when he looked back from the other shore of that river, it was strange, but it seemed to him that the river was much smaller than it had been before. He shrugged his shoulders and thought to himself that things can indeed look different from a new perspective. Even crossing the river didn’t seem like such a big thing after all.
And then he looked further beyond the river that he had just crossed, and he saw back in the countryside beyond – the place that he had come from – that there were many rivers. And he realized and remembered that he had already crossed many many rivers.
Participants in this experiment are fitted with a fake facial scar and told they are to be interviewed to see how their deformity influences the way they are treated. Just before the interview last minute adjustments are made to the scar but in fact, and unbeknown to the participant the scar is removed entirely.
Right after the interview, in almost every case, the participants were full of all kinds of examples of how the interviewer behaved negatively due to their “deformity”. Amazingly, in some cases the belief continued even after they were shown on video that the scar had been removed.