What did you learn about yourself from the Fairy Godmother? Of course, the above is a fanciful scenario, but the good news is that the Fairy Godmother is real! The Fairy Godmother is your own True Self. Look again at your answers to the questions on the What I Would Tell My Fairy Godmother exercise. Are there any answers there that are beyond your own ability to change? Why? Why not?
16.10 Killing the Goose
“Love people, not things; use things, not people.”
― Spencer W. Kimball
There’s a fairy tale called The Goose Who Laid the Golden Egg. For you who are unfamiliar with the story, it’s about a farmer who had a magical goose. This magical goose laid one golden egg per day. The farmer sold these eggs and made quite a comfortable living for himself and his family. But one day the farmer began thinking that instead of just having the one egg every day, wouldn’t it be nice to have a whole bunch of golden eggs all at once?
The farmer began to have many sleepless nights thinking of all the things he could buy if he could get all the eggs at once.
Finally one day his greed got the better of him, and he decided to kill the goose, cut it open, and take all the eggs at once for himself. So this is what he did.
But when he killed the goose and cut it open, there were no eggs inside. The goose produced a fresh new golden egg every day, but it took a day for the goose to produce it. Now that the farmer had killed the goose, not only did he not have a big pile of golden eggs, but the one golden egg per day that he had gotten in the past was gone as well. So for the rest of his life he had to work and scratch in the dirt just to get by.
We do not live in a sustainable society. Most of the resources that we take for granted are finite in quantity. Many cannot be replenished. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Little by little, we are killing off the goose that laid the golden egg. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool materialist must know this deep in the back of his or her mind. What sort of impact does this have on our individual psyches? On our collective conscious? A quick glance at the popularity of movies with apocalyptic themes will tell you that this meme is deeply imbedded within us.
What sort of impact does this knowledge have on the way we live our day-to-day lives?
The quote from Spencer W. Kimball reminds us to think about what’s truly important in life. How much of your own personal happiness comes from things? How much of it comes from your relationship with people? With nature? With yourself? Yes, a certain amount of material possessions are necessary to survive in life, but as the Beatles reminded us, “Money can’t buy me love.”
16.11 What’s Possible
What if you could create the whole world all over again? Think about the Fairy Godmother exercise. Suppose you had another Fairy Godmother who would restore the world to its primal state, with all the people and all the animals, and all the forests, but without all the factories, traffic, and industries that pollute the Earth, our Mother. Suppose you could start over with all the knowledge and technology we have right now. But imagine the technology would be applied in appropriate, sustainable ways that focused on people and nature instead of rabid materialism. What sort of world would you create?
There are a lot of top-down environmental efforts through legislation to improve our ecological situation. There is a place for such actions, but I don’t think that a top-down approach will yield results quickly enough to avert environmental catastrophe. I believe that what is needed is a bottom-up approach.
The game we’re playing right now with the environment is a no-win game. We need to change the rules of the game if humankind, and the planet, are going to survive and thrive. The way we change the rules of the game is to change the culture itself by changing our values. Material possessions are a necessity, but they are not a solution to all of life’s problems. If we change our values to respect the things that are truly important in our lives, then I believe that a sustainable culture will automatically emerge from the bottom-up.
Can you imagine a whole culture of people living mindfully and caring about themselves by caring about the environment? If that culture swept over the planet, what would that do for the mental and physical wellbeing of every person on this earth? Imagine a whole world full of people in touch with their own True Selves, living out the lives they were born to have! I personally cannot imagine a greater adventure.
This workbook contains the basic tools you need to bring about such a paradigm shift for you and your family. Take the lessons you’ve learned here. Apply them to your own life, and help your family and friends to apply them to their lives as well. If the whole world learned to live in an ecospiritual manner, in balance with and a part of nature, then the global environmental crisis would take care of itself. We would all be Masters of Two Worlds.
16.12 Walking the Path
We’re now coming to the end of our journey together. Whether you are completing this workbook as part of a class, or on your own, congratulations for all you hard work! You’ve learned a great deal about yourself, your relationship with others, and your relationship with nature. You’ve developed and created some tools that will help you along your journey. Now go out and do something nice for yourself…you deserve it!
If you completed this workbook on your own, and are interested in taking a live series with a trained facilitator, visit www.mindfulecotherapy.org for a list of trained facilitators in your area and registration information.
Now go forth and enjoy living as the person you were meant to be!
