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The Wisdom of Fairy Tales
The deeper meaning of fairy tales, the deeper meaning of wonder tales, has been lost. The magic and mystery of this life’s journey has been lost with such a loss. The good news is that their loss is more often a forgetting. The wonder that fairy tales invite can be reawakened. Ugliness can be seen in another way. Service can be recognized as the boon tree from which all is given. The sorrows that are never said can finally be spoken. This invitation to wonder is contained within the stories of all cultures. These are not just quaint tales of old but maps of the journey of the soul into connection with the creative source of life. These stories are intended to spark the imagination and kindle the fire that needs no wood. This is our creative imagination and not simply our ability to think ‘about.’ The creative imagination creates through images more than words. Creative imagination is at its most powerful when it connects with symbol. These are not just shapes but powerful images that have deep meaning across most all cultures and all times. Most people when reading fairy tales take them literally, which means they are taking them at face value. The same thing happens when they read wisdom books intended to be invitations to the journey to Love. When this happens all sorts of strange things happen. The King begins to go around naked and tells everyone that he is wearing the most beautiful of clothes. Everyone in the kingdom is afraid to face the fact that the King is wearing no clothes. Then we meet with the innocence of a child who says it like it is. In all wonder tales and fairy tales the King or Queen are not just monarchs of a domain unless you want to take the story literally. Of course, these fairy tales have not lasted as long as they have because they are an amusing tales about a King or a Queen of some strange nation state.
The King and Queen are metaphors for your highest good. This highest good is beyond opposites. It is the nature of creation expressing in form. When the King or Queen is sick or disillusioned in anyway the land and people of the land suffer in some way. This may be represented by the prince or princess getting lost, sleeping for a century, or being isolated in a tower. So this is not just some quaint tale of old. This is also your story as well as our collective human story. We have, as individuals and as a species, lost our way. We have taken the road into the dark forest of separateness from our connection with Creation. In this forest we have learned to forget what is beyond. We can no longer see the wood from the trees. In the dark wood we try to make it better except that we rarely question why we are in this dark wood at all. Dark woods are a metaphor for the way we view the world and the connection between our own body in time, space and form. The invitation from mystics and soul friends is to come out of the dark wood and into a clearing where it is evident that within the light there is so much more. ©
Tony Cuckson 2008 |
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Question of Interest
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