New Teaching Stories I
Fairy Tales to Expose Our Current Madness.
Sometimes stories can make essences clear, that factual treatises can’t. Here are two stories of my hand, one old, one new, about our civilization, or perhaps rather, lack of it.
The Other Lion King
Rise
Deep in Africa once a lion was endowed, or rather cursed, with a very high intelligence and much power. He pondered his life and that of his fellow lions for a while. Sure they ate zebra’s when they happened to come by. But his lazy family always seemed to become lazy, as soon as their bellies were filled. So next time they went hunting he demanded they kill as many zebra’s as they could get, or else. His threats were enough to make them exceed his expectations. Yet after a while, even several kills wasn’t enough for him. They should aim for higher targets. So they drove the next zebra herd to a high cliff. These zebras had no choice to either fall to their deaths or face the teeth and claws coming for them. Hundreds of zebras perished. And with all the abundance in extra food, his lion tribe became the strongest of the plains. And so he declared himself the king. “Isn’t this my right?” the new lion king declared. And no one dared to object.
Lions of other tribes had to beg for pieces, as zebra flesh was becoming scarce. “Well we hunted them, so paws off, unless you recognize the king.” And many did. Once almost all zebras were gone, the powerful lion ordered his followers to switch to wildebeest meat, killing as many as they could in ever shorter times. And other lions were chased away by the ruling tribe. They claimed, look at the mouths to feed in our tribe alone. We can’t share, unless you join us, in the lowest ranks.” And so the might of their tribe grew. The leading lions celebrated their victories over their prey and other lions with huge parties. “Isn’t this my right?” the lion king declared. And no one dared to object.
Power
Yet many other lions became worried and thin. They found prey animals were harder and harder to catch. So they too started to hunt as much as possible, otherwise they’d starve. Some specialized in springboks, others in monkeys and the stockiest of them all hunted meerkats. For a short while the lions ruled the plains and lived in abundance. And all lions who had a big catch had to pay spoils to the lion king. “Isn’t this my right?” the lion king declared. And no one dared to object. Many even started to admire the lion king and raise their children to be like him. For they didn’t know any other way any more.
Then one day a very old and scrawny wildebeest came to the court of the lion king. “Your way is not the way of nature.” said the old wildebeest, “Your way is dangerous to us all, even to your own kind.” “Look around you!” said the lion king, “I have all the power and you have nothing. I am success and you’re a loser. You are just prey.” “Mmm,” said the old wildebeest, “You’re not a success, rather, you’re insane and poison to all the land; and you don’t know it.” Upon this the mighty lion roared, “What nonsense.” and he killed the old wildbeest. “Isn’t this my right?” the lion king declared. And no one knew any better.
Downfall
And then huge shortages of food began to pop up. The most powerful of lions made a treaty how much each tribe of lions was allowed to catch. Even the mighty hyenas fell in line and now served the lions. Those who broke the rules would be killed by the lion king personally. “This is for your own good. These rules of mine are here to protect us all.” said the lion king. “They make sense, because we all need to eat.” Many lions felt it wasn’t right somehow, but they couldn’t explain. Yet the king’s rules seemed to make sense given the situation, so they agreed. And thus all lion tribes cowered before his power, while his own tribe just took the biggest pieces of whatever was left. “Isn’t this my right?” the lion king declared. And no one dared to object.
Then a human king called all other species of hunters together and said, “The madness of the lion king, will surely kill us all, when there’s no food left. We must make an end to his madness. We must go to war or perish.” And all the hunters knew this to be true. The mighty hyenas openly broke with the lions and betrayed them. Then all the other hunting animals, tiny weasels, packs of hyenas and the biggest hawks, joined the humans and hyenas. And they all went to war with the lions. The war was terrible and all the lands were ravaged, until at last the lion king was beaten. And then the victorious human king called all surviving hunting animals together and said, “I know, food is scarce and we must be careful. Therefore we will gather all prey animals in corrals and breed them. Thus they have a future under our guidance, for their own protection against robbers. And it is also to our own advantage as hunters. But to make it work we make the following rule: whomever wants to eat meat, must come to our court and pay their dues, or else you won’t get anything to eat.” A shocked silence followed. “Isn’t this my right?” the human king declared, holding a deadly spear. And no one dared to object.
And to this day the lions, respect humans as equals, but hate hyena’s for their betrayal. The humans took the lions as a symbol of power, and copied all the tricks of the lion king and added more and more of their own. And since then, most humans never shared their power with anyone. The worst off were the hyenas. They now hate both humans and lions, because for all their servitude they never gained anything.
Comment of the sage: Insanity stacked upon insanity makes the whole world go crazy.
Comment of the fool: You’re just spoiling my joy in a successful career as a hyena.
The Essential Work
A new perspective
Once in a prehistoric village, beyond the clutches of the Roman empire, a hunter lived who wasn’t satisfied with his work. He lacked a passion for the hunt and secretly despised the killing he had to do for his work. He went to the shaman of his village and asked him for help. Through the help of the shaman, he found that his passion was to work with people, and help them to get in touch with their passion. So the hunter became a job coach. And in this new profession he became the most regarded of wise men in the village.
First many warriors and then hunters found their way to his hut, because they all found they too had a disgust for murder, let alone for fighting wars in foreign lands. They also had a disgust for gathering plants and berries like the women. They too wanted to be people bringing others to a higher level of existence, namely living aligned to their deepest passions. And soon all warriors and hunters changed profession, to do what felt good. They all became coaches, trainers and job coaches.
Then the makers of stuff and people who repaired roofs, found they wished to stop hammering and laboring all day, while the other men were involved in playful development and or purposeful dialogues. They too wanted to feel alive in deep connection with others. So they too went to coaching, to workshops and trainings with the hope of finding their true purpose. And all found it in this most wonderful experience of all: the help other people open up and shine their light upon the world. The positivity hormones rocked their world.
Now with the men at home, many women found that wandering the woods all day, picking up plants and berries, was kind of lonely work and it made your back hurt a lot. So they too went to the trainers, coaches and job coaches and they too found their highest passion was to work with people, to make them shine. Since there were already so many coaches, trainers and job coaches they discovered that the names for this beautiful work could be more precise and personal. So the women became workshop facilitators, personal development workers, passion finders, heart work councillors and purpose guides.
Growth Models
And while everyone was helping each other, in the most beautiful of ways, the children complained there was a lack of food and water. Yes, this and the lack of furniture and roof repair had the village slowly collapsing. Worried they sought council from the wisest of them all, the first job coach, who by then, had changed his professional name to entrepreneurial spirit developer. He helped them to expand business to a neighboring village. This neighboring village was found willing to do the hunting and food gathering in exchange for coaching and counseling. Soon the first village looked more beautiful and rich than ever before. And the inhabitants led each other and visitors through the most meaningful of sessions.
In exchange for food, repairs and goods, these neighboring villages found coaching, therapy and guidance and sometimes could even partake in the most spiritual of sessions. And these people too found a higher purpose to live than the lowly excitement of the hunt or plant gathering. They too wanted to be rich, like their neighbors. And the more and more people found their true passion of letting others shine and live aligned to their true purpose the more and more villages found they needed starting to sell their counseling to more and more neighboring tribes. Food became scarce again and important goods hard to obtain.
Then one day the first job coach turned entrepreneurial spirit developer found he had enough of all the talking and understanding. He went into the woods, and since he still didn’t care for the hunt, he started to gather plants and berries. He felt the air, the magic of the woods and loved the sounds of nature. And when he returned to the village laden with eatables, there were many people wanted part of his pickings. They expected to get it very cheap in exchange for coaching and true purpose work. He said “no, you pay me double the price”. The whole village was shocked. That a man doing lowly woman’s work dared to asked so much for such simple manual labour. The gatherer sighed. He knew they would for ever consider themselves more advanced than any basic workers. So he told them he had discovered a new spiritual path called ‘deep root work’. In this spiritual path people could get in touch with their own deepest nature, through the experience of the old ways, like the hunt, berry picking and or the repair of buildings. When he had finished people had heard a deep truth in his words and everyone started to follow his teachings. Soon again he was regarded again as the highest of wise ones in the village. And though his tribe lived now lived a more simple and basic live than before, once again their village flourished again and no one was in need.
Returns
Thus through the ideas of the hunter who turned himself into a job coach, turned entrepreneurial spirit developer, turned back to gatherer, everyone went kind of back to normal. Some things had changed though. There were also women who now hunted too, because they loved the thrill of the hunt. There were more men who found that the work of gathering plants and berries had a deeply satisfying inner peace to it. Others turned to repairing and making stuff, often more artistic than before. And all of them gave their work passionate and spiritual names so it at the least felt better than before. And perhaps that those cool names that they gave their essential work, at the least helped to get slightly better prices from the neighboring villages. And as a whole somehow their village became honored for the deep contributing work to the existence of their culture.
And all of them lived happily ever after in peace, until the Romans conquered their lands and introduced capitalism. The Romans forced the tribes to switch to a mono culture, forced indecent low wages upon them and took the best looking as slaves. Our gatherer even became a tutor slave for a rich and wealthy family who wished to understand and learn from the romantic barbarian spirit. But none of them took his learnings to heart. He was just a romantic ideal show. Meanwhile hunger and scarcity once again had returned to the village. The Romans took their gained profits, some would say robbed wealth, home. They claimed it was honest downpayment for, what they called, civilized counsel, development work, leadership and agile interim management. This wealth they took home was needed to pay off the large group of dream job coaches, passion guides and self development workshop leaders spreading passion and purpose in Rome. Although given the decadence in Rome it may also, just as easily, may have been spend on parties, drugs and military power. Who knows. Whatever, word has it, that soon after Rome fell and the Dark Ages began. But we can’t be too sure, as this all happened far back in time.
Comment of the sage: Well, we all must consider what role we play in this world.
Comment of the fool: Look who is talking? Will you now go and pick fruits? For I’m hungry.
- More (shorter) Teaching Stories can be found here. And here Mulla Nasruddin stories.
- ) The Essential Work was previously published here.
