Two Fairy Tales Reveal the Secret of LifeWritten by Tom Horn
TWO FAIRY TALES REVEAL THE SECRET OF LIFE When we were young we became acquainted with stories of Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. Both these little girls have encounters with wild beasts and one is eaten, whilst other gets clean away. Why were fates of little girls so different? If we knew reason, it might be useful in everyday life. When I first heard stories, I enjoyed them at face value and, like all children, did not possess ‘power’ to understand depth of meaning behind them. Then I grew up and, after much folly and suffering, began my search ‘in wilderness’ for meaning of life. One day connection between two apparently unconnected stories just came to me from out of blue. Bear with me as I recount tales. You will remember that Red Riding Hood’s head was full of kind and considerate thoughts. These had been passed on to her, like a virus, from her mother, who, in turn, had learned them from her parent. When Red Riding Hood was asked by mum to take some groceries to granny who lived in woods she jumped at idea. She was warned against talking to strangers and to keep to path. All went well until way became crooked at entrance to woods. Here she meets wolf; a beast that immediately suggests picking more berries and fruits for granny. Red Riding Hood finds idea irresistible and gathers a lot more produce. Meanwhile wolf creeps away to cottage in woods where he gobbles up granny. Then little girl arrives loaded down with groceries and fruits. The wolf is now in granny’s clothes and he promptly adds Red Riding Hood to menu. However, a hunter is nearby and he kills wolf and cuts him open, thus releasing two ladies. Now we come to Goldilocks. Here is girl who liked to roam in woods alone, eating wild strawberries when she was hungry and sleeping on dry moss when she was tired. The scene changes to cottage of three bears where mummy bear has been making porridge for her family. It is too hot to eat, so all bears go out for a while. A little later Goldilocks passes by and, because she is hungry and tired, enters cottage of three bears. You will remember how she tries all bowls of porridge, all chairs and all beds to find ones that are just right for her. She is asleep in baby bear’s bed when beasts arrive home. There is a commotion, but Goldie escapes and runs all way home. We are told that she never goes back to woods again. It’s great to hear those stories again isn’t it? What do you mean, you would rather watch ‘Prisoner in Cell Block H’ on TV? Listen, those stories reveal secret of life. The Red Riding Hood story depicts what happens when you ‘go too far’. You see, it is very powerful to exercise personal preferences or choices. Preferences are your own, but knowledge of right and wrong you receive from your parents or teachers. They pass their values on to you like a virus. You then find yourself like Eve in Garden of Eden, ‘eating of tree of knowledge of good and evil’. Having ‘gone too far’, both Adam and Eve were kicked out of garden and became powerless. Red Riding Hood’s mother, like mothers everywhere, committed an act of extreme folly when she told her daughter to keep to path and not to talk to strangers. Her daughter was then forced to abandon her own preferences in favor of a received wisdom. When this happens you have overstepped mark, you have been tripped over a threshold into a state of mind that becomes available to a living trend. This is what happened to Red Riding Hood. Living trends emerge spontaneously from increasingly complex conditions. In story, escalating complexity is symbolized when straight path turns ‘crooked’ at entrance to woods. (In story of Adam and Eve, ‘crookedness’ is symbolized by serpent.’) Also, in fairy tales, forest trees, straining towards light, depict living trends. Red Riding Hood meets wolf when path goes ‘crooked’. He tempts her to go beyond threshold of what is ‘just enough’ groceries for granny. So, having already ‘gone too far’ with her ideas of right and wrong, little girl now picks an excess of fruit. Red Riding Hood also has imperfect knowledge of motives of wolf. In general, there will always exist a state of imperfect knowledge between grown men and women – even if they are mentally compatible. This is due to existence of female fertility cycle. Because a man cannot know what it is like to be a woman, level of imperfect knowledge is high enough to make both parties available to living trends. In fact fertility cycle is often at root of those disembodied ‘forces’ called living trends. Red Riding Hood’s mum and dad were obviously living under spell of a living trend and had drawn their daughter into it. Because of connection of imperfect knowledge with fertility cycle, daughter is depicted as wearing a ‘Red Hood’. Therefore, to sum up, it is Red Riding Hood’s failure to ‘tap world lightly’, together with her received tendency to ‘eat of tree of knowledge of good and evil’, plus her ‘imperfect knowledge’ of motives of wolf, that combine to cause ‘crookedness’. The latter is sign that little girl is about to participate in a new living trend. She now enters world of living trends, ‘forest’ and gets to discover that ‘road to hell really is paved with good intentions’.
| | Virus of the MindWritten by Tom Horn
VIRUS OF THE MIND You’ve heard of ordinary viruses – those microscopic entities that get inside your body and replicate themselves. They war against your natural resistances and make you feel rotten. And through your coughs and sneezes they jump onto other people and make them feel rotten too. Well, did you know that there are other kinds of tiny ‘organism’ called viruses of mind? What is a mind virus and are they a danger to us? A mind virus is a tiny ‘seed’ of information that somehow lodges itself within our minds. It is a ‘seed’, which, in given individuals, falls on ‘fertile ground’, germinates and then takes on a life of its own. It is as if this ‘germinated seed’ or ‘fascinating idea’ had an unconscious ‘intent’ and that blind urge is to replicate itself. For example, you hear a joke and, before you know it, you find yourself with an almost irresistible urge to spread it around. You hear a catchy tune sung by a show-off and before long you have joined ranks of punters who have bought recording. In this way jokes and tunes spread themselves around world. Recently, in my neck of woods, children have been infected with Pokemon mind virus. In no time at all children up and down country have been gripped by a fanatical urge to purchase and save ‘pocket monster’ cards. It has been a retailer’s dream. I noticed another mind virus when it hopped over pond from America to England. This revealed itself when I saw large numbers of young people wearing same baggy ‘street cred.’ type clothes with baseball caps worn with peak at back. They had all been infected with a mind virus. When you find masses of people thinking, saying or doing some particular thing, you can be sure that a mind virus is at work. This happens when people fall under spell of an ‘….ism’. I’m thinking of socialism, conservatism, communism, monetarism, fanaticism, fundamentalism, Christianity..ism, etc. Mind viruses fill you with proselytizing zeal. You become possessed with a great desire to spread them far and wide and some mistakenly attribute this feeling to God. Some mind viruses appear fairly benign. But what do you do when idea becomes widely accepted amongst ordinary people that it is quite acceptable to create, on a weekly basis, piles of non-biodegradable waste, which has to be tipped into a big hole in ground? What are you to conclude when masses of people think it perfectly reasonable live in a world of plastic, neon, concrete, steel, brick and asphalt. Now these are a couple of dangerous mind viruses. We must remember that mind viruses, like our genes, do not spread because they are any good, but rather because they are good replicators. Now consider your treasured identity - that strange complex of imperfect knowledge, fears, ambitions and masquerades, your public and private ‘faces’, which you call your ego. It could be nothing but a nest of mind viruses that combine to cloud mirror of your awareness, to eventually sap your energy and to reduce your creative intent to that of folly. If you doubt this, just try to stop thinking for a few minutes and discover how difficult this is. You will find that you do not have thoughts at all, but that thoughts have you – in their grip! The inescapable conclusion is that a human being, with his or her genes and mind viruses, is simply a host to successful replicators. Is this not what we are? And, in our ignorance of this one fact, have we not just given in to urge to run amok on this wonderful self-organizing planet?
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