Riddle of the Pathless Path



Each time I enter the semi circle that is gathered around the fire at the Benwiskin Centre I tell a story.  More often than not this is a new story that has come from a line of a poem that has or is presently inspiring me.

Included in these stories there is sometimes a riddle.  I am a riddle maker.  Children and adults love riddles but these riddles are not simply entertainment.  They are written to invite the listener into the direct experience of the greatest riddle of all - that although you feel separate from most everything that in truth you are forever One.

This is why the master storyteller Jesus Christ used parables.  They have to go beyond the rational mind which barrs entry to the experience of non-duality - that which is not either/or but both this and that at the same time.

Riddles and parables have  been important divices throughout the journey of the spirti.  The greatest riddles are those of the Zen koan such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping.  This riddle, however, isn't much fun for children and would in all likelihood send participants of a drumming workshop to have an early night.

So the riddle I am working with goes something like this. 

"Go to the placeless place and follow the forgotten path to the door of twixt and in between.  There enter the circle of gold and make the two one.  Do all of this without doing all of this and the light will return."

Answers can be sumitted via the comments on this page.

Living the One Glorious Life

How does one as an Irish Mystic Storyteller begin to craft a story. One way is to pay attention to that which excites you and to be faithful to that feeling wherever it invites you to go. It also requires commitment and the ability to trust the process. It means learning to be comfortable with "not knowing."

Sometimes a story will simply happen and you have it down on the page very quickly. At other times the story is a kind of birthing. It will simply happen if you pay attention to simply getting out of the way and not being over anxious. In Zen such and attitude is summed up in the beautiful wisdom saying "Don`t push the river."

Pay attention when ideas keep coming back that you have resisted. Sometimes you will spend time with a story, even work very hard at a story, and it comes to nothing. Actually, what happens is that the story is flowering in a different way and will bloom through another story if you trust the intention.

When you feel excited, more than your head is involved. Excitement is the equivelant of the yellow brick road that takes you to the wonderland of Oz. Follow the yellow brick road. This is a metaphor for the wisdom road within you. It is the invitation to travel the beauty of the real story you are here to share.

Your real story is far more magnificent and more glorious than you might ever imagine. Trust this beauty to express as excitement within the body and live the one glorious life you have come here to be. You are the real wonder tale waiting to be told.

Heading for a Strange Shore

I am engaged to tell a story at a Tibetan Buddhist Centre for their children’s weekend festival. I have been asked to connect the story to the image of a boat. This is because the children will be helping to build a boat over that weekend.

St Brendan - Edward Reginald Frampton

I tend to write stories for individual occasions rather than tell stories that other people have written and told. Each story I write has to work on various levels. The story has to entertain and invite both children and adults into a remembrance of their multi dimensional nature. This is the purpose of storytelling. It isn’t just entertainment but an invitation and an invocation to what is essential, meaning that which is of the essence.

So I take the theme of a boat and I am drawn to remember the song by the Waterboys called “Strange Boat.” I remember also the lines from a Leonard Cohen song called Suzanne that begins,

“Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river.
You can hear the boats go by you can spend the night beside her.”

I am also reminded that meditation is like sitting on the bank of a river watching the boats go by. The boats are a metaphor for our thoughts. Sometimes, in fact, more times than we care to admit, we climb into the boat and are carried down river and sometimes down the rapids. We get caught up in the drama and the trauma of our lives. In preparing to write this story these are ideas that immediately spring to mind.

Then there is the requirement of the audience to whom the story will be told. The story should include aspects that make the children choose a course of action. This is usually a course between playing safe or following the call of their heart. The call of the heart often takes them into those places of threshold that the rational mind says, “Don’t go there.” Such places are the dark wood, the enchanted forest, and the door in the back of the wardrobe.

So I take the lines from the Waterboy`s song Strange Boat which begins

We’re sailing in a strange boat,
We’re headed for a strange shore.
We’re sailing in a strange boat
We’re headed for a strange shore
Carrying the strangest cargo
Ever hauled aboard.

Here you have a beginning idea for a story. A story about a strange boat going somewhere strange and carrying a strange cargo. Children like strange. This is a metaphor for your life and for my life.

The strange boat can be considered our relationship to our body. The strange shore can be considered the shore of the timeless and our connection to Love. The strange cargo can be the beauty we radiate from within our hearts. For to many of us we have become estranged from our unique heartsong. We call our body strange because it is the wrong shape. We call ourselves strange because our sexuality doesn’t fit. We stay on the shore of time and space and we become alienated from the timeless beauty we are here to share.

A story can be a heartsong. It has to be a story that speaks to your heart and the longing of your heart. It is a kind of story that pulls you deeper than maybe your rational mind wants to go. This is the purpose of parable, riddle and mythic stories. They aren’t simply old stories they are timeless stories related to the journey of consciousness in form.

Such stories inform you but are not more information. They reach in and touch the vastness of your hearts potential to know and feel your connection with your timeless nature. This is, if you will allow it, your holy longing. It is your longing to remember the place where your heart knows its true homeplace. The purpose of the story is to remind you in the lines of the Derek Walcott poem.

You will meet again the one
Who has loved you all your life
The one who you give up for another.


Love after Love.
Derek Walcott.

Storytelling is there to invite you to come home to the one you think is stranger than strange but who has been given up for an image in the mirror that is more acceptable to the world. This is the image you call “little me” and by contrast to the vastness of who you are it really is so little. You are after all Love incarnate.