This is part 8 of a longer essay about spirituality, which I'm be posting here in installments.
I recommend reading the parts in order. Read Part 7 Here.
To start at the beginning of the series, go here.
Because spirituality is an adventure, it’s often best talked about through stories. Every culture before ours used stories to gesture at the largest possible truths.[1] We Westerners call these stories myths, fairytales, or folktales. Spiritual teachers have also commonly used stories and parables to convey wisdom. Just like reality itself, stories can contain logic, but they also contain more than logic. They speak to our brains but also to our hearts. Just like life does.[2]
Some ancient stories feel ancient, as if they’ve passed their expiration date. Others still have a glow about them. One of these is a Russian folktale called “The Firebird.”[3] It glows because it offers us an image of how spirituality helps us meet our moments—and make our lives infinitely richer.
The story, in part, goes like this: A king sends his three sons in search of the great Firebird. This bird is so splendid that just one of its golden feathers can illuminate a room as if it were lit up by many candles. As the brothers ride along on their horses, they come to a place where the path divides in three. A sign informs them of what awaits down each way. Down the first, you’ll be cold and hungry. Down the second, you’ll be safe, but your horse will die. Down the third, your horse will be safe, but you will die. What would you do?
The two older brothers don’t like any of these options and turn back. The youngest brother Ivan has always been considered the most irresponsible of the king’s sons—a daydreamer who’s the last to be picked for any important task. Ivan chooses the path where your horse dies.
Sure enough, after riding a short distance, a wolf appears and devours Ivan’s horse. Not knowing what else to do, Ivan walks on foot for a time. After a while, though, he becomes exhausted and sits down to rest. Suddenly the wolf appears again. This time, it speaks: “What are you doing on a journey so far from home?” When Ivan tells the wolf he’s looking for the Firebird, the wolf replies, “You could have ridden your horse forever and never found the Firebird. Only I know where it is.” The wolf then invites Ivan to do something interesting: jump on its back.
With this begins the next phase of Ivan’s adventure. It involves many twists and turns and eventually leads to undreamed-of happiness. None of it could have happened without the wolf. Not only does the wolf carry Ivan where he needs to go, but the animal gives Ivan advice about what to do when he gets there.
What does it mean to stop riding a horse and start riding a wolf?
First, everyone rides horses. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Horses, in the world of the story, are the conventional way of going places, at least for the wealthy. Horses are status symbols. They are large, stately, and impressive. They announce themselves with their neighing and clopping. They also tend to travel on well-worn paths and roads—places where other people have been before. Finally, horses are domesticated—groomed, fed, and fenced in by people.
By contrast, no one rides wolves. It’s not even a thing. As far as social convention is concerned, a person has no bond with a wolf. If anything, they’re considered our enemies. After all, they eat horses, and maybe the odd person too. Wolves go places humans have never been. They may cross your path for a moment, but then they disappear into the forest. There they roam freely, blending silently with shadows. They are at home in what for humans is an unknown, trackless wilderness. Wolves are mysterious and wild.
The horse is an image of those grand abstract ideas we find in our everyday conventional world: Follow the Rules, Work Hard, Get the Raise, Look Impressive, Hurry Up, Be Strong, Be Nice, and so on. These are the ideas most people ride around on, or try to—the ideas we think will carry us to success, respect, and popularity. They seem to make sense. They tend to favor sober planning, security, and conformity. Children are not born with these ideas. But most adults have learned to identify their essential self with them. If a man, for example, doesn’t feel strong, successful, hard-working, and so on, he tends to feel something is wrong not with his ideas, but with him. He thinks he’s glued to his saddle. Ivan’s older brothers fit this description. The path that leads to their horses dying is unacceptable. They are too identified with their horses.
Ivan has a looser approach to living: “What’s a horse, anyway? I can always get another one. Why not try walking on foot for a while?” To walk on foot is to be willing to go along in life without any grand ideas about what we should be doing. To walk on foot is a kind of meditation. We stop defining ourself as someone who gallops around to important-sounding meetings, appointments, and tasks. When we “get off our high horse,” we’re closer to the ground. We no longer experience life at a remove. We don’t push it away with the lances of our heroic ideals or the shields of our official titles. We are more in the moment, taking in life more slowly. We take time to notice the light through the trees; we stop and talk to the mailman, and we enjoy it.
Appreciating the trees and the mailman is great. But Ivan is still lost and he still wants the Firebird. So do we. Some dazzling, luminous goal beckons to our soul, whether we’re on a horse, a moped, or our own two feet. But when we have to walk, that goal can feel farther away than ever. So, while walking on foot can be a positive experience, it can also feel like defeat.
We call this feeling disillusionment. It seems that all our grand questing has amounted to nothing. If all our motivating ideas—even the idea of being a good person—turn out to be artificial social constructs, it may seem like there’s nothing meaningful left to guide us. We seem to be nothing more than a little lump of flesh called a brain, which is free to do anything it wants—even murder.
This is as far as the existentialists got. It’s also similar to the current scientific and postmodernist consensus about the human condition. We could call this attitude plain old atheism: Right and wrong, rewards and punishments—these are just clothes we dress up reality in. According to this outlook, being authentic means facing naked reality: I must acknowledge the only things I really know: “I came into this world and now I’m faced with choices. I can pass the buck to some outside authority or idea, but really, I have to choose.”
Spirituality agrees. We are free to do anything we want, even murder. According to spiritual wisdom, every person’s complete freedom is a fundamental condition of existence. Spirituality, like existentialism and atheism, faces naked reality. The difference is that spirituality faces more of reality.
Spiritual reality includes the wolf.
Next Up: How to Ride a Wolf
I'd love to hear from you! Subscribe above, or leave a comment below, to be notified of the next in the series.
Footnotes
[1] Western culture is unusual in that it presents its guidance/wisdom in the form of abstract ideas or “explanations.”
[2] We could think of our modern novels and stories as myths too.
[3] There are many versions in circulation.
Comments