Two Wolves Parable
I’ve got an oldie, but a goodie for you this week…
Two Wolves Parable
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, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
“The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, 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.”
It’s my belief that we all, ultimately, desire to feed the white wolf.
It’s our core essence calling us back to ourself.
But the further we are from experiencing our core essence, the further we are from believing the white wolf is our core essence.
Beliefs in unworthiness create this divide, causing us to believe (and react as if) we’re the black wolf (at least some of the time).
Our belief in unworthiness lives on a spectrum, where our belief in (and capacity to feed) the white wolf correlates to how much unworthiness we’ve released.
The more we release ourselves from beliefs in unworthiness, the more real the qualities of the white wolf become to us.
It becomes easier to feel and express ourselves from these qualities. Which makes sense, because it’s us coming into contact with our core essence.
The opposite is true, as well…
The more we believe in our unworthiness, the more real the experience of the black wolf becomes (and the more we feel compelled to feed it).
We move further from our core essence…and the further we move from it, the less real our core essence feels to us.
The good news…
Our core essence is always here, whether we recognize it or not.
The parable points to our capacity to feel and experience it based on our choice to feed the white wolf.
This process of choosing the white wolf over and over again enables us to experience the reality of our core essence more and more.
No matter how entwined you feel in the black wolf’s qualities, your core essence is always available for you to know.
The main bridge between believing you’re trapped in the qualities of the black wolf and knowing the qualities of the white wolf is FORGIVENESS.
Forgiving yourself every time you feed the black wolf (i.e., every time you believe yourself to be or react from a quality of the black wolf).
Forgive and begin again.
Forgive and begin again.
Forgive whoever you’re blaming for feeling a quality of the black wolf.
And begin again.
Apologize to whoever received a reaction from the black wolf. And begin again.
Slowly get to the bottom of why you desire to feed the black wolf (or believe it’s your only choice in the moment).
Bring awareness to these root patterns and beliefs. Bring them to light to be understood and healed.
This entire process is a reclamation of personal power.
Believing in and reacting from the black wolf points to where you’re leaking your personal power…
…whereas believing in and expressing from the white wolf points to where you’re holding your personal power…
…so long as it’s a true expression from the white wolf and not a mimicked expression that’s trying to subdue, repress and/or override black wolf qualities.
The qualities of the white wolf can’t be mimicked to be real.
This is why you can’t skip the inner work to creates a true shift in what you’re experiencing.
It requires:
Self-awareness.
Forgiveness.
Desire to calibrate to the white wolf.
Commitment to this process.
I believe it’s the main call on each of our lives to know ourselves as the white wolf…or at least to make strides in inching our way to fully knowing ourselves as the white wolf.
I also believe there’s a call on our individual lives to live out the expression of our own capacity to know ourselves as the white wolf, however that looks for each of us.
A Call to the Heart captures the moments I began to reclaim my personal power and embody a new way of being…one that was more loving, more peaceful, more accepting of myself and more understanding of others.
It was me fully committing to the process of choosing the white wolf.
I share my process openly, vulnerably and personally by taking you through exact moments where I reacted from the black wolf and my observation, understanding and healing around how I chose the white wolf moving forward.
Always Shine Brightly,
Shanna
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