Inside-out and outside-in

The storyworld knows that our real power lies within. The storyworld knows too, that we often need some person, some creature or even some thing to help us bridge the not-knowing and the knowing of this truth. And to this end, as the writer Hannah Arendt so beautifully put it: “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

A businessman approached the Wise One. “All my decisions seem wrong, I never make enough money … you must help me. You are known for your wisdom; advise me about what to do differently.”

The Wise One simply gave him a tiny locked treasure chest charm, and said, “Take this with you everywhere, and shake it three times whenever you enter a new space or meet someone for the first time.” Somewhat skeptical, he looked at the tiny charm. “Oh well,” he thought, ”Maybe there is an exotic magic object inside which will bring me luck; no harm in trying it out.”

He carried the little charm everywhere, and in the space that he shook it thrice, waited, and paid attention, he noticed an opportunity here, a danger or pitfall there. A year went by and his luck had totally changed.

He went back to the Wise One and excitedly asked for the key. At first she refused, but he persisted, and she reluctantly opened the tiny little treasure chest. The man reached out and almost snatched it from her. He looked inside - there was no magical object within.

“Why … there’s nothing inside!” he exclaimed in shock.

“But there is on the outside,” she smiled.

The power of talismans to open us to our own capacities needs to be better understood, and this lesson is best communicated through Story, as in this beautiful Traditional one -- but modern tales too have had much the same point to make to a rather different audience, as in the story of Dumbo, the Flying Elephant.

Born into a circus, a baby elephant is rejected by the others because of his unusually big ears. Jeered at by children, rejected by the other performers, poor Dumbo is demoted to appearing as a clumsy, bumbling creature in an act with the clowns.

Only the little Timothy Q. Mouse befriends him, and devises a plan to make lonely little Dumbo a star. He gets a crafty crow to inform Dumbo that magic flying feathers are what really make crows able to fly, and if Dumbo had just one such magic feather, then he would be able to fly too. Plucking a feather out of a friend's tail and giving it to Dumbo, he says, "This is a magic flying feather for you." And wonder of wonders - Dumbo flies on his first try, and because of this, is made part of a more daring performance, where he has to leap from a high platform as part of the clown’s Fire Rescue act.

All goes well till one day, about to dive off the high platform in the middle of the act, Dumbo somehow loses the magic feather. Timothy Mouse, terrified, immediately yells and convinces him, "It isn’t really magic. You can fly on your own." And Dumbo, flapping his enormous ears madly, discovers in that moment that it was not the feather at all which had the power of flight, but Dumbo himself.

The feather was only a bridge to put him in touch with a gift that was his all along.

In our lives, we are in need of magic feathers in the form of talismans or beliefs that can help us reach new heights. Our lesson is to utilize them for as long as we need them, but recognizing them for the temporary gift they are, we are challenged transcend the need for an outer reminder of what has been ours all along.

May your magic feather help you discover the magic within.
Marguerite Theophil

More than true
Fairy tales are more than true:
not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
~ G. K. Chesterton

Helping to create our own reality

Reading the recent entries in my journal, I find I have been doing more than my agreed upon quota of moaning and groaning. In my reflection time after this, it struck me how much this attitude seemed to be inviting more of the same unwelcome stuff into my life.

I am fortunate that I do workshops on “Story and Healing”, because this time, while looking for stories to use for a coming session, I recalled several from different cultures that teach us about that in-and-out circle of what we put out into the world and what we receive from it. They teach us how we are co-creators in the Story that is our life.

While many would find it incredibly arrogant to say “We create our own reality”, mostly because it appears to ignore a Divine plan or intervention, we can certainly agree that our intentions, decisions and actions do help create – or shape - that reality in our lives.
All spiritual Traditions want to awaken us to this; the laws of Karma or Retribution, or the Golden Rule teach us this in different ways. And as Parker Palmer, a thought-provoking writer and educationist points out, all of them ask two related questions that help keep us awake to our own roles in this ‘creation’:

What are we sending from within ourselves out into the world, and what impact is it having ‘out there’?
What is the world sending back at us, and what impact is it having ‘in here’?

Traditional cultures illustrated this lesson through memorable and beautiful Teaching Stories such as this one from India:

Wanting to test the wisdom of his kings, Lord Krishna summoned King Duryodana, renowned for his power and might. While this enabled his subjects to live in plenty, they lived in great fear of his displeasure and punishment too.

Lord Krishna told him: "I want you to travel the world over and find and bring back to me one truly good man." Answering "Yes, Lord," he immediately set out on his search. He traveled far, meeting and talking to many people, finding out about their lives, values and actions, and after a long time, returned to Krishna saying, "Lord, I have diligently searched the world over for one truly good man. At heart they are mostly selfish and wicked. Sadly, nowhere could I find this truly good man you seek!"

Lord Krishna then sent for another king, Dhammaraja, well known for his wisdom and benevolence, and much loved by all his people.

Krishna said to him, “Dhammaraja, I want you to travel the world over to find and bring to me one truly evil man." Dhammaraja also set out at once, and on his travels far and wide, he too met with and spoke to many thousands of people.

After much time had passed, he returned to Krishna. "Lord, I have failed you. I found people who are misguided, who perceive things incompletely, who act blindly, but nowhere could I find one truly evil man. They are all good at heart despite their failings!"

And another story, this time set in Greece, tells us much the same thing:

Socrates used to sit beside the gates leading in and out of Athens, observing the flow of people. Once, a stranger came up to him and said, “I am thinking of moving to this city; could you tell me what kind of people live here?”

Socrates asked him, “What kind of people live in the city that you come from?”

“Oh, they are terrible!” he answered. “They lie, cheat and steal from one another. That is why I want to get out of there.” Socrates exclaimed, “Why, that’s exactly how the people are here! You’d better not move here; keep searching.”

Some days later, another person came to him to ask, “Sir, I would like to see and learn more about other parts of the country, and maybe to live here, but first could you tell me what kind of people live here?” Socrates asked this man too about the people back home. “Oh, they are good people, kind and courteous, and usually help each other.” The Teacher responded: “It is the same here. Go into to the city and explore it, you will find it is just as you imagine it should be.”

So, tell me again - what did you say the people are like where you live, where you work?
Marguerite Theophil

Our true inheritance
The stories that have been preserved by different cultures around the world
represent our true inheritance as human beings.
It is through listening to them and thinking about them that we inherit the wisdom
built up by people over countless generations.

This is why storytelling is, and always has been,
the foundation upon which true education is built.
~ Gareth Lewis

Shifting habitual patterns

Stories are often told to teach simple yet powerful truths.

One of my clients who had fallen into a pattern of obsessive worrying would show some progress and then get sucked down into a whirlpool of anxious despair – time and time again. This is what worrying is: trying to resolve problems that have not even had time to appear; imagining that things, when they do happen, will always turn out for the worst.

I once again saw the power of Storywork and Healing when we worked deeply with two stories that provided him with a more sustained breakthrough in his determination to overcome this troublesome pattern.

Here are the two stories. May they touch the minds and hearts of the worriers among you!

Maybe; maybe not
A Taoist tale tells of a poor but hard-working farmer who had worked his crops for many years, and managed to have a simple life. One day, the only horse he owned ran away, Hearing the news his neighbors came to sympathize: “What terrible luck!” to which he answered “Maybe; maybe not.”

The next day the horse returned, but with it were four other wild horses that the farmer tied up. “What good luck…” his neighbors exclaimed. The farmer replied to them: “Maybe; maybe not..”

Then the day after, his only son tried to clamber on and ride one of the wild, untamed horses and was thrown off and badly injured, breaking many bones, and unable to help the old farmer with any work. “This is truly awful!” his neighbors sighed. The farmer only said: “Maybe; maybe not..”

Some days later, officials came to the village and rounded up all the young men to fight a terrible battle for the ruler. The only young man they left behind was the farmer’s son. Naturally his neighbors told him how wonderful they thought things had turned out for him, but we can guess that this time they were not really surprised to hear him say: “Maybe; maybe not..”

Making a white horse fly
An angry king once condemned a man to the gallows. When the judge had finished reading the sentence, the condemned man begged to be allowed to approach the king, and requested him:

“Your Majesty, you are known throughout these lands as a wise man who is interested in everything that your subjects do. You learn from sages, snake-charmers and magicians. Well, I must tell you this -- when I was a child, my grandfather taught me how to make a white horse fly. Since there is no one else in the whole kingdom who knows how to do this, my life should be spared.”

The king immediately ordered a white horse to be brought before them. “To make this horse fly, I need two years working with the animal,” said the condemned man. “Very well, you will have two years,” replied the king, already somewhat suspicious. “But if this horse does fly at the end of this period, you will definitely be hanged.”

Overjoyed, the man left with the horse. When he reached his house, he found his whole family upset and in tears. “Are you mad?” his wife moaned, "How could you have made such a claim?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “For one thing, no one has ever tried to teach a horse to fly, and the horse just might well learn. For another, the king is already very old and he might die within the next two years. And then again, the horse itself might die in which case I’ll be given another two years to teach the new horse … not to mention the possibility in the two years of revolutions, coups d’état and general amnesties. And even if nothing like this happens, and everything remains exactly as it is, I will still have gained two years of life in which I can do anything I like, and a strong and beautiful horse. Tell me, does that seem little to you?”

May you find stories that unlock doors for you.
Marguerite Theophil

Making a connection from one pattern to another
Wherever a story comes from,
whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory,
the retelling exemplifies the making
of a connection from one pattern to another:
a potential translation
in which narrative becomes parable
and the once upon a time comes to stand
for some renascent truth…

Our species thinks in metaphors
and learns through stories
~ Mary Catherine Bateson

Creating your Story Storehouse

Why do we work with Story? Why have people over the centuries worked with Story?

Stories, while they delight and enchant us, help people see things in a wider perspective, make meaningful choices, work better in teams, live out of their declared values. Stories guide or invite individuals and groups to explore options for better living and working. And so we believe that Story is healing medicine.

As a Teller of stories, I am often asked by members of the listening group about just ‘how’ I knew this was the story they needed at this time. The real answer is – I never really know. But I have learnt that I need to trust the stories I choose and I must choose stories that can offer insights, not morals or prescriptions for living.

I use the gift and power of story in many areas of my work – with individuals, with groups of managers, educators, clergy or students – actually with anyone open to ways of learning that need not be usual or obvious! While it is helpful to know the needs of the audience, this is not always possible. I have come to understand that Story itself has much to offer to a variety of audiences, and I, as the storyteller, cannot always control the outcome. In fact, a lot of the time, I don't even know if or how an audience has been touched. All I can do is to hold this intent, and do my work in this light.

As in any work, if I have prepared myself over time – in this case by building a well-loved, well-used storehouse, I can, with some measure of ease an confidence, drawn on a particular story that will open people up to new ways of seeing, new ways of being.

Making the precious connection
Anyone can tell stories, but not everyone can tell stories well.

I try to explain to many would-be Tellers that it is simply not enough to ‘have a collection’ of stories, or stacks of books on Story. I have both of these – but I know that it is the many returns to a single story that builds up a precious connection.

I have within me a vast storehouse of stories that I have learnt to love over the years as they have taught me and I have learnt respectfully from them with each re-reading,
re-working and re-telling. And it is from my connection with the stories in that storehouse, that I try to choose a story that feels right for the moment, and I also choose a theme within that story to focus on.

I also believe very strongly that each telling gives me at least as much as it gives my listeners.

So I encourage those who love Story and those who would like to work with Story to nurture this interest by creating their own personal collection of stories that touch and inspire them.

Building your storehouse
A large collection of stories grows from that first story that enchanted you enough to want to tell others.

Different storytellers have different ways of collecting stories. Some just have a large collection of books, in which they stick in bookmarks to flag the stories they feel they can use. This needs lots of money – and a big house! The fact is -often in a whole, big book we find just one or two ‘right’ stories – and that’s if we get lucky.

Some Tellers I know actually make recordings of their favorite stories; again, storage is a bit of a problem, and so is the possibility of deterioration of tapes.

I prefer to write or type and print out the stories I think I could use. You can use loose sheets, a file-folder, or a notebook. Do whatever works for you.

Your sources can be books, listening to other tellers, or websites. I have found that some people are happy to have a collection of just ten or fifteen stories, and to use these favorites again an again. If that works for you – specially at first – then stick to these. Some - like me – love hearing new stories and using them, though we have our own stock of old favorites.

It’s important to know that the more stories you truly know well, the more you are able to ‘pull out’ a really suitable story, at the right moment, for an individual or a group. Story is for entertaining, yes; but the power of Story is its use for ‘healing’ and it helps to have a stock of healing remedies rather than to dole out your favorite ‘medicine’ that while it may not harm, may not do much good either.

In all of these cases, the key is: visit the stories again and again. Read them silently to yourself; read them out loud - to yourself or to others; tell them to different people of different ages; tell them differently. Really get to know them.

And may your story-storehouse grow, and delight you and all your listeners.
Marguerite Theophil

Growing story
Some are called to this healing art, and the best, by my lights,
are those who have genuinely lain with the story,
and found all its matching parts inside themselves and at depth ...
Persons such as these are immediately recognizable by their presence alone.

... Among the best of the teller-healers I know, and I have blessed to know many, their stories grow out of their lives as roots grow a tree.
The stories have grown them, grown them into who they are.

We can tell the difference. We know when someone has ‘grown’ a story facetiously, and when the story has genuinely grown them.

It is the latter that underlies the integral traditions.
~ Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

Those unlikely Wise Women

Having celebrated my fiftieth birthday, I have been welcomed into the company of The Wise Women, who believe that at this age, if we are grateful for the lessons these years have taught us, and find ways to creatively move on, supporting ourselves, those around us, and the environment in ways that are wholesome and nurturing - we automatically qualify for this honor-giving title!

In recent years, I find I am choosing more stories with witches in them, and I think this is related to a fresher understanding that those unlikely wise-women characters like Baba Yaga, and the witch in Hansel and Gretel surprisingly point to the culmination of a lifetime of feminine knowledge and wisdom.

In many traditions, Wise Women and Witches were Healers of different kinds, and equally wise and equally dangerous – they were usually burnt at the stake not for their wickedness, but for their power, and for daring to using the gifts of knowledge and wisdom.

Baba Yaga, of many Russian tales, is often represented in images as comic as they are scary – which is why children both laugh and shudder at her description. When you read between the lines (in learning from story we have another term: “learning from after the lines”; going past the words into reflection and images and insights), we find that she is not evil, but she is frightening. A witch figure had better be, or Vassilisa, Hansel and Gretel and all the other characters would hang around her and not go on to complete their own growth.

In our remembering, the witch dies in Hansel and Gretel, right? Well, she does and doesn’t. Most versions of the story, except for some very-tampered-with ones which have little sense of the symbolic anyway, don’t say ‘she died’. She is pushed into the oven where she no longer threatens the children. Some versions tell us that that the ashes or sparks fly up the chimney – may be just going on to the next story, as one Teller laughingly suggested! An older version tells us that the children find pearls and gems in the oven when the witch burns. They fill their pockets and go home with the "pearls of knowledge and gems of wisdom", left for them by the encounter with the witch. Vassilisa, after being scared silly at first, also receives light in the form of fire from Baba Yaga. She uses it to defeat her stepmother and stepsisters. Light is certainly a symbol for knowledge and wisdom.

Witches and such characters in Traditional stories teach us of a both/and reality. They often do this by allowing us to distance or ‘externalize’ that which is actually within us, so that by holding them out (or before us, so as to ‘see’ them better) we can lose or fear, stop denying their existence, befriend them, and then integrate them into ourselves with fuller, deeper and more compassionate acceptance and understanding.

To give ourselves the gift of unhurried listening to a Teaching story is to get to know better those fundamental configurations of our own timeless and vast human nature. We meet these in stories that are peopled with, of course, people -man, woman, or child, prince, pauper or mermaid; aspects of nature - mountains, rivers, animals, the great earth; abstractions or concepts –evil, good, impermanence, cowardice, honor, good humor, greed, nobility, wisdom.

Often these are personified, and sometimes the ‘personifications’ are easily identified, often they are not.

While both are useful, I often find the second type – the not so easily identifiable – are often the keys to our transformation. Their vagueness makes the somehow more outside-yet-inside, less easily plastered with hasty ‘oh-yes-we-understand-it’ labels. In this liminal, not here- not there place, we relax into acceptance – even if temporary - of meanings other than the ones we assign, and then, usually freeze.

Storytelling is a gateway through which our fundamental, inclusive, wholeness - beyond separate, black and white ‘realities’ of good or evil, beautiful or ugly - can return to us. In listening and in telling, “We let what we have been searching for finally find us.” The tales set us free to roam within the complex and truthful and healing patterns of essential and universal human nature. For a moment, or for longer if we so choose, we are set free from our anxious existence within everyday, divisive ‘consensus reality’, and blessed to find ourselves integrated - once again at Home.

May Story guide you to wisdom and wholeness,
Marguerite Theophil

What stories do
Stories tell us
of what we already knew and forgot,
and remind us
of what we haven’t yet imagined.
~ Anne Watson

How teaching stories really teach

Teaching stories in different Traditions are designed around certain assumptions. They may assume that we have a higher nature that we do not have regular access to, that we need to be made aware of doorways or gateways not in ordinary terms, but through metaphors, they even can assume that stories must be filtered through the heart before they can impact the mind.

Sufi teaching looks at the purpose, potential and meaning of life, and recognizes that we have an essential nature that is spiritual; we are on an earthly journey in order to uncover this essential self. Yet, though the potentiality for transformation of the self lies within us, it is not usually accessible because of our limited perception and our strong identification with our everyday, surface selves.

Sufis have traditionally spoken of the need to develop of an "organ of perception" which, once developed, allows a person to apply himself or herself more completely and effectively to life. One of the ways this development is best achieved is through Teaching Stories, a term used to describe those stories and anecdotes deliberately created as vehicles for the transmission of wisdom. While such stories are collected and transmitted in almost every Tradition, the way of the Sufis is particularly significant to any story-lover or story-worker.

Idries Shah, through whose collections and translations these stories have become most accessible to us, wrote that Sufi teaching stories are “”works of objective art” - used to transmit to us a Higher Knowledge.

Usually, we cannot perceive this Higher Knowledge because we are not really prepared for it. Our preparation can be helped by not only getting to know the stories, but also by re-visiting them and familiarizing ourselves with them; by “soaking in story” so as to be ready for their meanings to be revealed to us, slowly, as we become ready for deeper knowing.

In workshops designed around such stories, I find that most people want to ‘crack open’ the meaning of these stories; they are eager and in a hurry to get at the core meaning. It is hard for them to understand that with these kinds of stories, the timing is different for each of us, and that the stories give up the ‘higher level’ insights only after a patient engagement with them, through reflection and contemplation.

When we decide “Ah, this is the meaning,” we could end the chance of further, deeper impact of the story on our inner being. Allowing our logical mind to deal with teaching stories in a way which is customary to it, and imagining we have understood all there is to understand, we can find ourselves in a situation like the boy in the story who had dismembered a fly into its components and then wondered where the fly itself had gone.

As is often done these days, many Sufi stories and poems may be interpreted as being related to psychological processes. That is a valid consideration which is often useful for developing one’s understanding, but this does not mean that its meaning is fully drawn out by this method. It may contain a great deal more. We are too easily satisfied with surface answers, mainly because the more profound ones are often revealed slowly, over time.

Robert Ornstein, the renowned psychologist, says that teaching stories, with improbable events lead the reader's mind into new and unexplored venues, allowing her or him to develop more flexibility and to understand this complex world better. Psychologists have found that teaching-stories activate the right side of the brain. The left side of the brain we mostly use provides the 'text', or the component pieces of an event or experience; the right side provides 'context', the essential function of putting together the different components of this experience.

The poet Kahlil Gibran once said, "The real teacher leads you not to himself, but to the threshold of your own mind." Teaching Stories are known to act as these Real Teachers.

Knowledge passed through the heart
The Celtic peoples, for example,
insisted that only the poets could be teachers.
Why? I think it is because knowledge
that is not passed through the heart is dangerous:
it may lack wisdom; it may be a power trip;
it may squelch life out of the learners.
What if our educational systems were to insist
that teachers be poets and storytellers and artists?
What transformations would follow?
~ Matthew Fox

Inviting or transforming fear

Stories often teach us Life Lessons, not by lecturing us, but by telling us of people or creatures in situations that seem strangely familiar. Many traditions use animals and birds who behave in human ways, allowing us to make some ‘distance’ from the happenings that paradoxically give us more ‘connection’ with the lessons. One of the Life Lessons that is often addressed in Traditional stories is about how we are usually afraid of that which we do not understand, of how our response to fear is what keeps the fear strong, and well, fearsome. And how by shifting our response we can make that fear have less of a hold on us.

Long, long ago, Rabbit, known to be a fearless and respected warrior, was a great friend of Eye Walker, a witch with great magical powers.

Out climbing a high mountain one hot day, Rabbit declared, “I’m tired and so thirsty.” Eye Walker, picking up a leaf blew on it, turning it to a gourd of water. Rabbit drank it all, saying nothing. Later, when he said “I’m so hungry,” Eye Walker picked up a stone, blew on it, handing Rabbit a turnip that he ate with relish, still not saying a word.

They had almost reached the top when Rabbit fell, rolling all the way down to the bottom. Eye Walker used a magic salve which eased his pains and healed his broken bones in minutes. Still, Rabbit didn’t say a thing.

Some days later Eye Walker, hoping to go on another long walk, searched high and low for Rabbit, who was nowhere to be found.

A week later, she met him quite by accident. “Rabbit, why are you hiding and avoiding me?” she asked.

“Because your magic scares me. Stay away from me.”

“I used my powers to help you, and now you refuse my friendship!” Sadly, she added, “Though I can easily destroy you with my magic, I won’t, because we have been such good friends. But, from this day forward I lay a curse on you and your kind. From now on, you will attract what you fear, and your fears will come to you.”

A frightened Rabbit now shouts: “Eagle, don’t you dare come near me!” If he feels Eagle hasn’t heard him, Rabbit yells even louder, “Eagle, stay away from me, do you hear!” Eagle, now hearing Rabbit, can come find him, and kill and eat him.

An old proverb cautions us: What you most wish for and what you most fear will both come true!

If we believe that we can influence, if not actually create our own ‘realities’, then it makes sense that by wanting something desperately or not wanting something equally desperately – we give those ‘things’ a lot of energy to help them manifest in our lives.

Befriending our fears has often been offered as a solution; easier said than done, we hear ourselves say!

However, a popular set of children’s books shows us another brilliant and often effective way, by introducing us to The Boggart …

In Celtic mythology, a boggart (also known as a bogan or bogle) was a mischievous household spirit, given to making life miserable for those in whose houses it decided to stay. In Northern England, people believed that it should never ever be named, because if you did, it would not be reasoned with or persuaded, and would become uncontrollable and destructive.

In the Harry Potter books, a boggart is given a new twist as a kind of shapeshifter. When anyone looks at it, it changes shape to become whatever that person fears the most. Due to its tendency to hide in relatively small, dark, enclosed places, such as in closets, under beds, or in tree hollows, it is quite likely that the boggart’s natural form is fairly small; only when we give it any importance does it seem HUGE!

Now here comes the best part -- to make the boggart disappear, you can use the ‘Riddikulus’ spell, knowing that boggarts are weakened by laughter. This is achieved by transforming the image of your greatest fear into something else, something amusing or silly – therefore harmless - pointing a wand at the boggart and confidently saying: "Riddikulus".

What’s your Boggart? And how will you use the spell?
Marguerite Theophil

DIFFERENT AT THE END OF A STORY
We are different at the end of a story because
the soul has gone through a process during the telling,
independent of its syntax
and full understanding of its words.

~ James Hillman
RE-VISIONING PSYCHOLOGY

Working with Story

After my book was just about ready for printing, I was reminded - “This collection is great when you are working with the group. But what if someone wants to work alone? Can we have guiding reflective questions for each story?” Uh, oh. The very question that got me stuck very early on in this endeavor! Let me explain....

Story-telling and story-writing are pretty similar yet very different.

In writing, and in the subsequent printed word, there is a necessary, unavoidable frozenness of form. In telling, you are freed to provide very different emphasis or timing, in response to your spoken, or even unspoken, dialog with each audience. So the individual or group collaborates in shaping the nuances of the telling, the outcome and learning as much as the teller does.

When using a story with a group or with an individual, the Teller plus Group, or the Therapist/Coach plus Individual creates a ‘Field’.

This Field is like no other; it cannot be replicated even if the Teller/Therapist/Coach stays the same person. I have even experienced a slight change in Field working with the very same group when it meets at different times.

In fact, a sensitive teller will take a lot of care to choose a specific story for a group or for a person.

And it is magical to find that this choice will surface an issue, a search for meaning, or even an insightful direction for so many of the listeners.

I am cautious about providing Reflective Questions on each story here. Because, first of all, they may not be the reflection your own lifespace or journey needs at this moment. In fact, my belief is that it could, at times, interfere with your inherent capacity for insightful learning.

Levels and our Nurturance Needs

Also, each story has so many levels which can be said to be based on what I term a person’s current ‘nurturance need’. All are valid and useful.

One very simple delineation considers these levels as that of of simple listening to words (we can call this a ‘physical’ level, and it is very enjoyable, and sometimes that’s all we need at the moment), or listening through the emotions (sensing, intuiting), or through the intellect (more analytic), or at a deep spiritual level. Or a mix of all four.

On different days or times, you may be open to different levels in accordance with your own current nurturance needs. A question pitched at a level that is not relevant to you is of no real use to you. You need to rely more on the Wise One within you for guidance.

So here - rather than a set of frozen questions for each story - I would like to give you some suggestions to get the most out of the stories in this book (or any other book of stories). And I’ll also include some broad ‘lead-in’ questions you can work with.

My suggestions

Select one story at a time to work with. However, if you’d like to first read all stories at one go, do that, but then if you choose to work at the level of Personal Growth, work with just one story at a time. It’s good to ‘be’ with your story for as long as you feel you need to before you move to another. And you also know you can come back to a story as often as you like.

There is no ‘right’ order, though I have used my own order preference. If you need to do it differently, just flip through the book, settling on a title or a line of text that intrigues you, and go with that story.

The quotes before each story are from writers who truly understand the transformative power of story and so they can be stand-alone meditations/reflections.

There is a blank page after each story for notes. I find it useful, when I work with a story, to note down and date my insights, and again to note down and date further insights - either deepening or even changing ones - whenever I visit the story again.

I was taught as a child never ever to scribble in a printed book, and like many of you, sometimes longed to do just that. Now that I am a grown up child with my own book - it’s so good for me to be able provide you with some scribble or drawing space! If you still find this hard, you can use loose sheets or a notebook to record your learnings.

Something very important to be aware of is this: a story offers up insights and meanings when you respect it, not when you make efforts to impose your will on it.

Be gentle and patient with the story, and particularly, be gentle and patient with yourself. Working with story is not about telling you what is wrong with you - quite the contrary. Story helps you look at some facet of your life to reflect on, and move higher up the levels of insight, consciousness and personal growth.

Some very general reflective questions that work as triggers for reflection could be:

• Why this story at this moment in my life?
• Where has this shown up before/is showing up now for me?
• What parts of me are in characters in the
story, or in other parts of the story? (landscape, mood)
• What challenges/changes does the story
point to or demand?
• What questions does my mind/heart want
to ask just now? (these are really important; perhaps more so than answers)
• What image/picture comes to mind ? (and draw it right away; this is not the time to be at all judgemental of your artistic talent or lack of it!!)
• Go to the quote at the start of the story you just worked with ... Is there some insight when you read it now? (Sometimes there can be a connection; there does not always have to be. But do this only after you have thoroughly worked with your own insights, writing and drawing for the actual story, otherwise you are trying to force a meaning and this is not helpful.)

May you find ways to hear the story love the story, live the story.

Marguerite Theophil




Uniting Heaven and Earth: The Transfomative Power of Story has been re-issued by Vasu and Nisha Dulani’s
OCEAN BOOKS as Turtle Tales for Personal Growth. The proceeds from the sale of these books
support WEAVE’s various educational projects. If you are interested, please send a message to weave@vsnl.net and we can send you ordering details.

SOAKED IN STORY
In Sufi circles,
it is customary for students
to soak themselves in stories,
so that the internal dimensions
may be unlocked
by the teaching master
as and when the candidate
is judged ready for
the experiences which they bring.

~ Idries Shah, TALES OF THE DERVISHES

Why we must tell the story

It is so heartening to learn that some of our schools invite Storytellers for regular sessions, and one that I know of even has a full-time Teller on its staff. Sadly, in other parts of the country, in families of our traditional storytellers, the children make a break with the profession – most often because they barely manage to scrape together a living. Our Ajis, or grandmothers were our link with the world of Story, but these days with the decline in inter-generational living, we lose out on that as well.

Telling, we have believed must happen. Many cultures believe that if you have a story to tell – and don’t tell it – strange things will happen. Stories have unique and startling ways of making sure they get told!

A Kannada story narrated by A. K. Ramanujan, who collected and edited the most definitive collections of Indian folktales, is a wonderful example of this. This is how it goes:
There once lived a woman who knew a story. She also knew a song. But she kept them to herself, never told anyone the story or sang the song. Imprisoned within her, the untold story and unsung song felt choked, trapped. They decided to run away.

One day, as she slept with her mouth open, the story escaped, fell out of her, and taking on the material form of a pair of shoes, sat outside the house. The song too hurriedly followed, and took the shape of something like a man's coat, and hung on a peg.

This caused the husband to be very suspicious, specially when she kept insisting she did not know whose they were or where they had come from. In a rage, he picked up his blanket, and went off to the nearby temple to sleep.

The flames in the lamps of the town, once they were put out, did not really go out. They moved to the temple and spent each night there, gossiping together till the lamps were lit again the following day. On this night, all the lamps from all the houses had reached the temple - except one, which came in much later. “Why are you so late tonight?” the others asked. “Because at my house, the couple quarreled late into the night,” said the flame. “Why did they quarrel?” The flame told them the events. As he finished, the others flames asked: “But where did the coat and shoes come from?”

“The lady of our house knows a story and a song. She never tells the story, and has never sung the song to anyone. The story and the song got suffocated inside; so they got out and have turned into a coat and a pair of shoes. Seeing this made the husband furious. It seems they took revenge.”

The husband, lying under his blanket in the temple, heard the lamp's explanation. His suspicions were cleared. When he got home at dawn, he woke his sleeping wife and asked her about her story and her song.

“What story? What song?” she asked. She had, sadly, forgotten both of them.

A Korean story tells of a boy who, every night at bedtime listened to stories from a favorite family servant. But the boy didn’t like to share the stories he heard, and made the servant promise the stories would stay in that room.

However, when it is time for him to get married and leave that room for his new home, the servant hears the story-spirits plotting to kill the young man in revenge for keeping them locked up, and the faithful servant manages to thwart these plans of a story with poisoned water, one with a deadly snake, and another with a red-hot poker, and finally reveals all this to the young man who promises never to keep stories to himself, but to tell them to anyone who cares to listen.

Among the Cree of Manitoba, there is a similar belief that stories, when they are not being told, live off in their own villages where they go about their own lives. Every now and then, however, a story will leave its village and seek a person to inhabit. Some person will abruptly be possessed by the story, and soon will find himself or herself telling the tale out into the world, singing it back into active circulation.

Go tell your story; sing your song.
Marguerite Theophil

The stories that find us

Australian Aborigines say that the big stories-the stories worth telling and retelling,
the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life –
are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking
like predators hunting their prey in the bush.
~ Robert Moss, Dreamgates

An Introduction, A welcome note

I love stories. I love hearing them, I love reading them, and mostly I love telling them.
Stories and story-tellers have been among the most powerful influences in my life, and these days I feel privileged and blessed to claim my place in the long line of tellers who have gone before, and those tellers yet to come.

I feel incredibly blessed to have my story-telling great-grandmother, Rattanbai, around when I was a little girl. Rattanbai came from a Parsi family from Gujarat. Married to my Protestant great-grandfather Basil, she took on the name Ruth, and added Bible stories to her vast repertoire of Hindu and Zoroastrian stories and myths. These daily ‘tellings’ were interspersed with European fairy-tales. I thought the different stories all came from the same book Little wonder then, that I accorded them equal sanctity with the more scriptural stories she told us!

These days I like it very much that I can share with the groups I work with from my large collection of teaching stories from cultures and traditions from around the world. I work with many different kinds of groups – corporate groups, educational institutions, women’s circles, religious orders, therapy groups, dream-work groups, book study groups, student groups. Every one of these takes to story and learns from story.

People of all ages and from all walks of life have participated in my Story-related workshops: Storywork and Healing, Psyche’s Journey and Soaking in Story.

I have put together a few of my favorite Teaching Stories from all over the world in the book Uniting Heaven and Earth: The Transformative Power of Stories. This small collection came out of the many requests for “More”, when the workshop time and space limited us to just one or two stories. They are primarily for gentle reflection, and so this is a deliberately small collection. I like to call these Life Stories, because they are about life-lessons for each of us, and because they tell of each of our lives though they seem to tell of people far, far away.

One of the oldest books on story that I have read and continue to re-read is Ruth Sawyer’s ‘The Way of The Storyteller’, written in 1942. She writes: “I have been writing this book for a long time ... Now I believe it is the easiest thing in the world to tell a story, and the hardest to be a fine storyteller.”

While I find this to be so true, I have also learnt that any telling - if it includes an invitation to the listener to go deeper into self-exploration - can yield powerful learning and meanings. This is because mostly, the teller doesn’t need to ‘make a point’; it is the story that encourages reflection in the listener/hearer, who figures out relevant learnings for herself or himself.

The old way of asking children: “So what is the moral of this story..?” can often be so limiting, so freezing, so unhelpfully there-is-only-one-right-answer oriented, and often so constricting in the development of creativity and insightfulness.

Traditional story-tellers claim that there are seven levels to any story. As we become increasingly prepared to receive their deeper meanings by ‘soaking ourselves’ in them, they will unfold new perceptions. You can come back to each story again and again, at different times, and each time the interchange will give you something new.

May you bless each story you choose to work with, and be blessed by it in turn. And with every telling, may you remember and acknowledge the lineage of known and unknown tellers who have been caretakers of the wisdom and have conveyed this gift to you.

Many of the posts here have been published before – in shorter versions – from my work as columnist for the U.P.I.’s (United Press International) Religion & Spirituality Forum, and for The Speaking Tree of the Times of India, both of which showed me, from the many people that wrote in to me, the keen interest people the world over have in the Gift of Story.

May story bless and color your life,

Marguerite Theophil

Needing stories

… Sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. They tell us about who we are, what is possible for us,
what we might call upon. They also remind us we're not alone with whatever faces us
and there are resources both within us and in the larger world
and in the unseen world that may be cooperating with us
in our struggle to find a way to deal with challenges.

~ Rachel Naomi Remen