The Power of Stories and Dreams
Unlike many of us these days, primal and Indigenous Peoples - many still living - gather every evening to explore and extol the lessons of the day and to enjoy stories of past heroes and great teachers who actualized their highest potentials, and who live on in daily conversation to inspire others – especially children – that they migh live up to such ideals in their lives too. They understood that it is the living word in dialogic relationships that bring understanding to life and keeps it alive in the heart. In this way, they taught by example that true intelligence comes of putting "our minds together as one mind."(Nelson, 2007)
"These stories are our seeds,” and “seeds are considered sacred… Seeds carry life from generation to generation without end. Through the seeds speak the voices of the ancestors. Each time we plant a seed, we become ancestors for the generations to come.”(OI, Nelson, xxiii) They may come from many messengers, but they share the same message.(OI, xvi)
The ancients developed this divine skill by way of careful reasoning, but also by way of illuminating metaphors, parables and mythology, which served as effective stimulants to insight and aids for memory.
The truth of such stories is not the material facts, as Manitonquat says, ”but the truth they speak to our inner understanding.”(OI, * p.8) The goal is to “follow our passion and listen to the deeper meanings within a story or watch for the hidden pattern that connects seemingly disparate things.”(Gregory Cajete, Ignite the Sparkle – An Indigenous Science Education Curriculum (Asheville, NC: Kivaki Press, 1999), see p. 338 in OI)
As the I Ching puts it, “We should search for the ancient wisdom between the lines and beyond the words.”(p.94)
“Because “oral/aural cultures…relied on voice, speech, story, listening, and memory rather than written text on a page for gaining and transmitting knowledge, Indigenous forms of education are usually based on storytelling.”(OI, Nelson, 4) Each story “shows us the full spectrum of being human – the good, the bad, and everything in between.”(OI, Nelson, 2) For even the “miss-takes” of heroes “show us what not to do. In this way, Indigenous education is more about observing things in action, understanding things in their context, and listening to the reflective rhythms and inherent wisdom that spirals through a story.”(OI, Nelson, 2007)
“The trickster," for instance, is "an archetype…in our oral traditions and stories, is a teacher and reminder of plurality, diversity, paradox, humor, surprise, and humility. Trickster forces us to retain an understanding of all sides of a story by revealing them to be coexisting parts of one greater whole – interconnected and indistinguishable.”(OI, Nelson, 292) “The trickster is a healer in a fragmented world.”(OI, Nelson, 291) Need all stories, just as need all perspectives on any object of knowledge to have the whole truth about anything. (*connect Heros Journey…same pattern…same character archetypes… trickster –“Part human/part spirit, both “reveals and conceals, creator and destroyer,”(OI, Nelson, 1) both simplifies and complicates.)
Prophesy is also a big part of Indigenous storytelling. “Prophesies do not predict the future but they outline the probable consequences of violating natural laws, of not heeding the Original Instructions.” (OI, Nelson, 7) In this, they are cautionary tales. And they become self-fulfilling when we assume the outcome to be inevitable, and act accordingly. And this can work both ways.
Stories and metaphors are very effective tools for teaching because they take root and keep working long after the teacher is gone. In this way, “All these cultural metaphors of proper behavior are activated in our minds.” (OI, * Martinez, et.al.,100)
“The process becomes something that is participatory, that is inclusive, and that gives people a deeper understanding of the variety of components that are required to create harmony within communities.” (OI, Armstrong, 72) “It’s a culture that is fiercely egalitarian, and this equalitarian ethos is reinforced in hundreds and hundreds of ways…through songs, stories [and] the way children are brought up.” (OI, Biesele et.al.,78) It helped each and all understand that “their most important natural resource is themselves, the mutual understanding and cooperation they can maintain among themselves… one of the oldest and most important human technologies for survival.” (OI, Biesele et.al.,83)
One story especially illustrates this: “There was a time…a long, long time ago, long before the white man – where a great Peacemaker” called Dek Anawidha “came among our nations and brought peace… The Peacemaker finally brought together the leaders of the original Five Nations: The Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayuas, and the Senecas. He had changed their minds,” showing them the wisdom of peace, equality, and the “power of good minds.”(OI, Lyons, 61) Thereafter, the people lived by “the Great Law of Peace.” (OI, Nelson, 9) “Here’s a fellow who actually belongs on the list of great philosophers of the world because he addresses two questions: How do we know when we’re thinking clearly? And what does it mean to pursue peace…”… “and his argument is, ‘We have the power of our collective minds so that we can create a world in which people do not use violence, but rather use thinking.” (OI, Mohawk, 55) That “knowing that unless they use their minds to solve their problems, the problems will get worse,” (OI, Mohawk, 56)
Indigenous Peoples have “honed, to a fine point of artistry, that method of getting along with each other… opening up your heart to each other, understanding where another person’s coming from when they’re feeling badly, and realizing that it depends on you to take that person’s pain seriously and try to do something about it.” (OI, Biesele et.al.,76) As Einstein once said, “Peace cannot be had by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”(fb) our OI remind us that, “Peacekeeping happens as a result of people coming to a solution whereby they understand one another.” (OI, Biesele et.al.,81) “Seeking union by force never works. Only with sincerity, with love and caring, will people come around of their own volition.”(I Ching, p.100)
“That’s the power of our traditional teachings.”(OI, Sam, 41) “There is a healing process that happens…”(OI, Sam, 41) “It is through these stories, that we were shown how to settle disputes and how to get along with one another, and to do this in a manner that makes both sides comfortable, a process whereby each feels that they had an equal say in the resolution process.”(OI, Sam, 40) “It’s an empowering experience!”(OI, Sam, 41)
The truth is, “Human beings became human, became homo-sapiens sapiens by cooperating… Cooperation was the relationship devised by our weak and vulnerable hominid ancestors to protect and provide for themselves.”(OI, p.25)
“This is how it was for all people before the coming of civilization.”(OI, p.25) They lived in circles, in balance with each other, in harmony with nature.”(OI, p.24)
There were probably exceptions, of course, because tribes, like people, have personalities, and once disrespect sets in by way of a few bad leaders or bad parents, a feedback cycle can develop and people become “neurotic or even sociopathic,”(IO, p.24) like those who listened to old Cheepii. When power is not distributed fairly, then “the need for power can unbalance and actually make a tribe,” like a person, in a sense “crazy.”(OI, p.24) But this is the rare exception, not the rule, among people who live in circles.
Films and novels that portray tribal life as filled with savagery and domination are “dramatic and commercial, but there is scant evidence for such a picture except the extrapolation the authors make from what they see as ‘human nature’.”(OI, p.23) “People conditioned by our culture think it would be human for those people to quarrel and to fight each other.” But this is a false picture of a people who, by and large, lived peacefully with themselves and their neighbors…”(Manitonquat, OI, p.25)
“I see a million years and more,” said Manitonquat. “The earth rolling around the sun. The people [are] sitting around a fire telling stories, wondering about the stars. They are not fighting each other.”(OI, p. 24-25)
Other ancient cultures employ this storytelling art as well. “Each of their [and our] ancestors “had different images, stories and prophecies, but the message was similar everywhere.”(OI, xvii)
For instance, Vedic sages told a story about a wishing tree called Kalpatura. This magic tree grants all wishes, along with all the consequences of those wishes. Naturally, as children will, most will shower the magic tree with requests. But as children learn, so do we all that with too much candy comes indigestion. And likewise, all desires come with an inexorable price, and those that bring bad consequences might not be worth their cost. The ancients understood that there is nothing wrong with wanting pleasure, but not all pleasures are good pleasures, at least not if they bring bad consequences. So a wise person will seek pleasure intelligently.
Kalpatura was like the universe itself, they were told, and its branches reach into every human heaert, so one must be careful what one wishes for. By way of this metaphor, they helped their young avoid mistakes and discern good from bad pleasures, because the universe will give us everything we desire, along with all the problems that may follow from those wants. This taught their young to look into the future and consider the long term consequences of their actions, and even their thoughts, for they may flow forward even as far as seven generations to come.
For this reason, prophesy is a big part of Indigenous education, for such stories served as cautionary tales. “Prophesies do not predict the future but they outline the probable consequences of violating natural laws, of not heeding [what Indigenous Peoples call] the Original Instructions.” (OI, Nelson, 7)
Socrates of all great teachers embraced this dialogic method of teaching, and revealed his openness to reincarnation in the process by way of a story about a man named Er. Er was a soldier who was thought to have died in battle, and for ten days lay with the other war dead. But just as they were about to light the funeral pyre, his body, which had been unaffected by decay, suddenly returned to life. And so Er lived to tell of what he had seen in the other world where he lingered between this life and the next. [10.614]
Waking was, Er said, like returning from a journey of a thousand years. For after receiving a fatal blow on the battlefield, he found himself in a beautiful meadow, where comers and goers gathered to talk together and to tell each other of the lives from which they had respectively returned and to relay what they had learned on their journeys.
Some talked of glorious joys, and some cried who suffered their memories .[10.614-615] Some told of suffering tenfold for every wrong they had done to anyone on earth.[615] They told of living ten lifetimes, ten times in a thousand years, however long it took to make right what they had made wrong.
There were four thresholds in the meadow, he said – two departing and two returning, one each by which the just ascended to and returned from heaven, and one each by which the unjust descended to and returned from hell. It was a most dreadfully horrible scene when some tyrant, trying to escape from hell, was sucked back into the vortex for yet another round of his dues.[10.615]
But for those who had lived well, a new cycle of life was awarded on a first come first serve basis, said Er, and genius and destiny were not assigned, but chosen.[10.618] And all were free to choose as they please, for there were an infinite variety of lives to choose from, so enough to go around, even for the last comer.[10.619] And virtue was free, so anyone could take as much as they wanted.
Some who come first, not having thought out the whole matter, choose lives of tyranny, in which they would be free to do whatever they liked. But the wise choice, as was reported by those who had learned the hard way, was a life which was undazzled by wealth and other temptations to do wrong, for which one would ultimately suffer yet worse terrors.[10. 619] ] And so, rather than foolishly choose pleasures that would be fraught with pain (usually chosen by those who had not been schooled by trial of experience), each in turn was cautioned to choose soundly from the first, that they might be truly happy in their life, rather than merely appear happy to others who did not know the true nature of happiness.
And those who chose an excellent and virtuous life, as Er told it, also chose the philosophical disposition, for the search for truth and wisdom is part and parcel with being good and happy. [10. 619-620]
This then is the knowledge we need, Er said, and we can forget all the rest. For true happiness involves the ability to discern between good and evil, so to choose always and everywhere, as the opportunity arises, the better over the worse, the just over the unjust life. [10.618]
This is what he’d learned, Er said, and the gift he’d brought back to share – that we should all put an adamant faith in truth and right to help us choose always the mean of any virtue, and to avoid the extremes of excess and deficiency. This is the way of true happiness. [10.619]
Er told of how, having chosen their next life, individual souls would pass eventually from the meadow toward center of the universe, which swirled in circles going opposite ways, one inside another, like a spindle weaving souls together, as if into the fabric of time.[10.616-617] Each went, with their guardian genius, and were drawn into the revolution of the spindle, ratifying the destiny they had chosen.
And as they went, they passed over the plane of forgetfulness and the river of unmindfulness. And those who drank forgot what they had seen and experienced in the meadow.[10.621] But Er had not, and apparently neither had Socrates, he tells us, for he found this story to affirm his own intuitions. For he had, we know, argued throughout his life that "it is better to receive injustice than to deliver it," for one's soul can only truly be harmed by one's own error and wrongdoing. Treating another unjustly, as we would rather not be treated ourselves, may indeed make their life more difficult, but rather than harm them, it may actually do them good, if they learn from it to to choose otherwise, that is, to treat others justly. Whereas one who delivers injustice will pay tenfold for the error, and may suffer endlessly until he learns to choose just and wisely. So perhaps the tale had been saved, Socrates says, to save us – so that we might remember to choose well how to live, now and through eternity.[10.621, p.397]
And this is all in keeping with what eastern sages call the inexorable “law of karma [that] renders the cosmos just,” and in the end, good. For just as all life inhales and exhales, so it stands to reason that life and death are complementary, and that “souls repair between incarnations according to their just deserts.”(Smith, 52)
But Socrates, like Buddha, would emphasize that is it not only in the next life that we pay for our mistakes, but from moment to moment in this life as well, not in extrinsic rewards, but in intrinsic goods, or their lack. So it is in our interest to learn as we go, and to make right whenever possible what we have, in ignorance, made wrong. For there is no sin, by this view, only error, come of mistakes made in evaluating and choosing what is and is not good, that is, knowing “what’s worth trading for what.” As the Vedic Hinds say, seeking pleasure is natural and healthy, but some pleasures may not be worth the pains they bring with them.
Years later, visiting Epidarus - a lush green sanctuary in Greece that had once been the home of Asclepius, the god of medicine – I learned that the ancient regime for good health involved listening carefully to one’s dreams for subtle direction, for it was in this way that the gods were thought to communicate to help us see what we need to remember in our waking state so to optimize good health and well-being. In this way, Socrates said, “the mind has the power to keep the body as healthy as possible.” Never perfect health, of course, for everything living must ultimately die - but as healthy as possible for as long as possible, which is the best one can fairly hope for.