I've used the story below before on a blog but am sharing it again with a different point of view.
The Two Wolves
A Cherokee elder was teaching his grandchildren about life.
He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me… it is a terrible fight between two wolves.
One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, hatefulness, and lies.
The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, humbleness, kindness, friendship, generosity, faith, and truth.
This same fight is going on inside of you, and inside every other person, too.”
The children thought about it for a minute. Then one child asked his grandfather,
“Which wolf will win?”
The Cherokee elder replied…
“The one you feed.”
Today, this story took on a new meaning for me. I stepped back, stood at a different angle and read it again.
When I first read the story over a year ago, I thought “Ah, yes. For when we focus on the good in our life we will be sure to create more of that for ourselves”. And now it has taken on a different spin for me.
As most of you may or may not remember from my blog last week, I’ve been sitting in a place of “I don’t know”. Sitting in “I don’t know” has brought forth many opportunities that I know I would have never seen before if I claimed to know it all. It has also brought forth emotions that I am still not always comfortable with. Like the first wolf, I have experienced so much fear, anger, envy, sorry, regret and even hatefulness this last week. Of course, without knowing these feelings we would not know what it felt like on the other side where joy, peace, love, harmony, faith and so forth live. Just because this seems to be the case, it doesn’t always necessarily mean that we should embrace all of our emotions and feel them whenever we need to…or does it?
I wonder if we actually fed the first wolf with acceptance, forgiveness and compassion if that would make it less fearful. Imagine that part of you that sits in fear and regret and all of the other feelings that have been made out to be wrong or bad. What does that part need? Does it need to be ignored and pushed down even further or does it need to be nurtured and loved? Do you need to keep it surrounded by walls or set it free? If you did set it free, what would that look like and feel like? What if it was free to roam about in your psyche knowing that it was ok to be itself and not have to live in fear that you will shut it out?
Some of us have been repressing our feelings for so long that we aren’t sure what we are feeling. I know that has happened to me on many occasions. There have even been times where I have thought to myself “I don’t have time to feel right now”. This week I decided to keep a feelings log to be able to connect with the parts of myself that still might need a little acknowledgment and attention. Not only is it helping me to uncover parts of myself that I thought might not really be there but it is also helping me to realize just how much I do feel happy, joy filled, loving and loveable, no matter what is going on in my life.
And in the words of Neale Donald Walsh “if you want to know the truth about something, ask yourself how you feel about it…”
Sending you love and light...can you feel it?
Mary Laughlin Cunningham
LifeCoach/Writer/Speaker
http://life4ce.blogspot.com/
www.life4ce.net
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