A Twist on a Classic Parable
You may have heard the classic two wolves parable, but probably not with an additional note my mentor shared with me years ago.
The Two Wolves parable goes like this…
An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life…
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
“One is evil – he is fear, anger, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
“The other is good – he is peace, love, joy, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.”
This advice will help you gain traction as you begin your inner journey.
As you begin to master the discipline required to vigilantly feed the white wolf it will take right up to the point that full mastery of your reactive nature is gained.
But for full mastery to be known, a little, but significant, caveat must be understood…
This harkens back to last week’s blog regarding recognizing and surrendering your identification with the act of choosing between the white and black wolf.
When we decide to embark on an inner journey, we generally accept the idea of just feeding the white wolf, but when the black wolf seems to be heading to its demise something interesting happens…
People rush to feed it.
This is because we have become accustomed (or identified with) the struggle to choose between the white and black wolf.
We don’t know what lies beyond this struggle.
As we get closer to only feeding the white wolf an unfamiliar sensation begins to arise.The peaceful space beyond the struggle that I talked about last week begins to open up and we don’t know what to do with that foreign/unfamiliar sense of stillness.
So we feed the black wolf to fill the space with what is familiar to us…the struggle to choose between the two choices!
Our main identity is with the struggle.
Peace is death for most of us.
When the content of your thoughts and energy are no longer filled with struggle, what, but peace, remains?
When we get close to the feeling of the black wolf’s presence is dying in our awareness, we have to be ready to face and accept “the peace that passes all understanding”, otherwise we will keep feeding bits and pieces of food to the black wolf in order to maintain our familiarity with the struggle.
This caveat to the parable may not be relevant in your journey yet. And if it isn’t, that’s okay. Keeping choosing to feed the white wolf.
Keep course correcting over and over again until you’ve come to a point where you’re creating a reason to course correct because you don’t know what is beyond the constant choosing between the two wolves.
At this point, start contemplating fully letting go of the struggle between the two choices as a way of opening up to the peace that lies beyond the struggle.
I realize this was similar to last week’s blog, but I thought coming from the angle of the two wolves parable would offer another access point to this lesson.
Always Shine Brightly,
Shanna
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