subject: A Life That Isn't Driven - The Little Prince Series [print this page] Continuing Insight into Conscious Living from the Story ofThe Little Prince
The Little Prince wants a drawing of a sheep, not anything else.
He's emphatically not interested in elephants being digested by boa constrictors, no matter whether they are drawn either from the insideor the outside.
When people begin to be aware they have been living in the grip of the boa constrictor mentality of family and society ever since they were young, the first thing they want to do isanalyze what happened to them.
People thinkas I did for decadesthat if they can justunderstand what "made" them the way they are, they will be able to change themselves.
In his Namaste bookAlchemy of the Heart, Michael Brown dissects that word analyze: it's to see withanal eyes.
Analysisthinking about all the awful things that happened to usis part and parcel of the boa constrictor mentality, which renders this approach incapable of giving us the different quality of life for which we long.
No wonder so many work so long for so little change.
By thinking about our "issues," we may make some improvements but we will still be the same basically anxious person we've been for years.
A self-improved, well-analyzed version of the boa constrictor way of approaching life isn't very fulfilling.
The author ofThe Little Prince has begun showing us a peaceful, not-purpose-driven kind of life by introducing the image of the sheep.
Boa constrictors are an image of the way society functions: cunning, manipulative, controlling. Sheep in contrast are peaceful, present, just doing their thing without affecting anybody else in a negative way.
This same contrast between the way of the world and the inner life of Presence has already been portrayed for us by the picture of The Little Prince's amazing composure out in the heat and isolation of the desert, even though he has no food, water, or shelter.
The author points out that The Little Prince speaks slowly, "as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence," when he repeats his request for a drawing of a sheep. It's what the sheep represents that's thereally important thing in life.
The airman is struggling with the little fellow's request because he hasn't drawn a sheep before, just boa constrictors. Instead of a sheep, he draws his Drawing Number One, the picture of the boa constrictor swallowing an elephant as seen from the outside.
Sometimes when I hear so many who think of themselves as spiritual teachers, yet who are so plainly in the grip of the boa constrictor, encouraging others to try to change their thinking or in some other way modify their life, I want to respond as emphatically as does The Little Prince: "No, no, no!"
Ah, but then, The Little Prince is our own inner being, our true self, our essence. Only it can tell us, "No, no, no!"
We have to see it for ourselves. Anyone telling us from the outside is completely ineffective.
A Life That Isn't Driven - The Little Prince Series
