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Which Frog Are You? by Hope Hewetson |
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ur workshop, "You are the Master," was
fantastic. It is a joy to watch people figure out who they really are, and move
out of old limitations that keep them prisoner. By request, someone wanted a
story I read in the workshop in the newsletter for more people to see. Itıs from
the wonderful book "Dialogues with a Mystic" by Andrew Harvey. Harvey tells the
story in reference to the difficulty of teaching spiritual truths to people who
don't believe that truth is possible. He talks of the prison of our mind and how
futile it is to try and understand spirituality with the intellect.The story he tells was told by the Tibetan Master Patrul Rinpoche. It follows: There was a frog that lived in a dank dark well. You might call that well New York or Paris or London or any of the urban prisons of the mind in which most of us live. The frog thought that the whole world was this dank well. One day another frog came to visit him from the sea. The two of them sat rather disconsolately on one of the mossy stones in the dank well. The well frog asked, "Where do you come from?"
"I come from the sea."
"What is the sea like? How big is it?"
"The sea is enormous."
"Oh, you mean about a quarter of the size of this well."
At that the sea frog clutched his sides and started to laugh outrageously. The laughter grew, and tears ran down his cheeks. The well frog said, "Well, what do you mean? It's about half the size of this well, as big as that?"
The sea frog laughed more, finally dried his eyes and said, "I promise you, you know nothing. You know less than nothing if you imagine that the sea could be contained in any way in this well. The sea stretches from one end of the world to another, it cannot be described but you can see it. I will take you if you want to see it."
The frog from the well was amazed by the fervor of the sea frog and he made the choice at that moment to go on a journey to the sea. It led through all the different valleys described by Attar in the "Conference of the Birds," the valley of love, bewilderment, loss and abandonment. One day when the frog from the well was pretty worn out, the frog from the sea took him to a hill, told him to close his eyes, walk up the steps. The sea frog said, "Now open your eyes."
The frog from the well opened his eyes and saw the vast luminous sea. At that moment his head exploded in a thousand pieces.
Harvey continues in his book: "Our civilization is almost entirely made up of well frogs who live in a pit of rationalism. We've been told again and again that all visions of the sea, whether Christian or Buddhist or Sufi, are infantile rubbish or fantasy or the opiate of the masses. But the frogs from the sea are amongst us and bridges of reason are burning in front of our eyes. And what is being born in the hearts and open minds of people all over the world at this tragic moment is something marvelous and completely fresh that cannot be contained, limited or explained by any of the words or dogmas or patterns of the past."
I invite you to use more of your sea frog awareness - the planet needs you!
-Rev. Hope Hewetson
Rev. Hope Hewetson is associate director of Psychic Horizons Center. Call Hope for a reading or healing, at 303-685-8991 or email hopi@frii.com.
