Initiation of the Soul

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful fairy tale princess who sat alone waiting for a handsome prince to come along and rescue her. Well, that’s what you might think if you were in a patriarchal culture in which the rational, logical, literal mind-set was the predominant way of thinking, which of course we are. Since the fairy tale obviously isn’t meant to be taken literally, let’s remove those glasses and put on ones with symbolic lenses instead. Now we can look at the story differently. The princess represents the soul. During the “waiting” phase of her initiatory process, she’s not searching for solutions in the world, but is looking inside of herself. Real transformation doesn’t come from outer changes, but inner ones. This princess is going against the culture’s norms and beliefs; she’s challenging inherited patterns of understanding about herself and the world, breaking the rules, and bravely following her heart. The heroine’s waiting is finished when she learns to take back her power, when she can face any adversity with courage, and once she discovers a truth inside of herself that’s an unshakable knowing about her true identity. Then the prince arrives and it’s time to act on what she has learned, which means to embody her truth in the world. The prince in this scenario represents the energy of doing or moving forward. When the couple marries, it represents a union of the unseen and the seen, or the form and formless, which is a movement out of duality and into a higher state of consciousness. It’s time for us to reclaim this courageous heroine from the pages of these old narratives as she shows us how to navigate our souls’ journey through the terrain that we call life. Many of us have categorized fairy tales as imaginal and dismissed them as irrelevant. They appear to be silly outdated stories that paint girls as passive victims and boys as rescuers. In many instances, we haven’t even questioned that perspective. With our own personal stories, we have taken them to be solid, true, and unchangeable, without questioning them either. We have been conditioned by those who are caught in their own stories, and most of us don’t see things any differently. What if fairy tales contain truth, and our personal stories aren’t true? The impulse we call life wants us to know and live the truth of who we are. Each of us has a unique version of what’s possible for ourselves and our lives when we step out of the stories we’ve identified with. This is true freedom. This is what’s really happening to us every day. We encounter people, situations, and have dreams, all with one purpose, which is to release us from the limited stories we have erroneously come to believe as who we are. This is what stories, myths, fairy tales, religion, and dreams are really about. They are symbolically showing us how to wake up from the personal story we inherited and often have not questioned. Why are they symbolic? Because they speak in the language of the heart and soul, not the mind. Their agenda is to align the soul with a greater truth regarding its identity and free it from the old story. The journey in a story is intended to facilitate an inner transformation, which will result in an outer change. This is how we can evolve into the next phase of being human to inhabit a new world. If we want to save this planet and ourselves, the stories say we need to transform ourselves, and they are showing us how. Imagine growing up in poverty and believing for your whole life that you were poor. Then one day, as an adult, someone tells you that your parents are royalty. You might wonder how on Earth could that happen? Babies switched in the hospital at birth? Well, not quite. Our parents condition us from the time of our birth and we usually accept what they tell us. Our self, family, culture, beliefs, and world are shaped and defined by others. In many instances, that’s what we continue to believe. There often isn’t any reason not to. We might reject some beliefs as we get older—perhaps we leave their religion, embark on a career they disagree with, embrace more expansive views about gender, or date someone they don’t like—but most of us stop there, unless we have a reason not to. Not believe the story of us, that is. There is currently a resurgence of interest in personal stories: old stories, new ones, lived and unlived, what is and what’s wanted. We are becoming more aware of our stories and whether those stories are the ones we want to live. We are deciding if we want new stories and how to live them. Then there are the cultural stories that we live. Many of us share similar basic story lines, which are reflected in the cultural myths, fairy tales, and popular fiction, like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Wizard of Oz. The stories that resonate with large segments of the population contain symbolic information about the culture’s state of consciousness. Now imagine if hundreds of years ago a religion or society was being developed in which those seeking power wanted the people to believe the leaders had all the power. A time in which those in positions of authority wanted people to look to them for answers, to follow, and conform. But let’s just say, there were others who saw what was happening and that the truth was being concealed to further the agendas of a few. Those others began telling fantastic stories around the fire at night. In order to conceal these stories from those who were in power, the tales appeared to be silly, imaginative, and nonsense. And the stories easily passed under the noses of those in charge and down through the centuries to us today. The stories were collected from the fireside storytellers years ago when there was a concern that they might be lost or forgotten. The tales were written down and determined to be for children, but how to explain the horrific details of some stories? In a retelling of these versions, the gruesome parts were just omitted, and we ended up with watered-down remnants of the original stories. Some people think fairy tales and myths are imaginative stories that are irrelevant to adults and life. Some scholars suggest classic fairy tales are detrimental to the perception of women and young girls, because they portray them as passive, weak victims waiting for the strong, handsome prince to save them. That perspective results from looking at these stories literally.