Ancient Tales Reveal Success Principles

For the past thirteen years, I have been researching, recreating, and performing world myths, fairy tales and folk tales. But some years ago, I began feeling the need to do more than just perform these splendid old stories; I felt a strong urge to write a book that would more fully draw out their spiritual and psychological teachings. And although I was not a mythological fundamentalist, believing every myth or mythic tale to be a mother lode of wisdom, I was convinced that many of these stories contained priceless gems that, if properly cut, could enrich contemporary living.

Thinking that the soothing world of nature would make an excellent midwife for the book I wanted to write, I decided to take several months off from my normal load of consulting and performing. I began searching for a house in the country and providentially found an odd little place that, in spite of its uniqueness, did not exceed my price range. Not only did it have a crooked fairy tale turret, but it was surrounded by open fields of wild grass. It also boasted a dark green pond that shone by day like an emerald mirror and sang at night with the passion of bullfrogs. With the bullfrogs, an occasional deer, and numerous cups of coffee as companions, I happily settled down to the task of writing.

But as the months passed, my happiness waned. I felt that my writing consisted of little more than esoteric ramblings that popped like shiny bubbles when touched by intellect's sharp fingers. Too, I sharply felt the lack of a unifying theme; simply presenting the life-affirming wisdom contained in ancient tales was too broad a task. Frustration deepened when, try as I might, I could not find a theme that would link together the ancient gems I was mining. Filled with doubt, my productivity plummeted. Soon, I stopped writing altogether. I was in despair when I realized I had no idea of how to accomplish my goal.

Certainly I had accomplished a deep dream before -- that of becoming a professional storyteller -- but I had little memory of how I had gone about achieving this success. At that time, I must have intuitively known what to do, but now I was stuck. I longed for some advice that would free me and get me moving again in the direction of my dream.

Searching for answers, I put my writing aside and embarked on an enormous reading project, ferreting out every book written on the subject of realizing personal and professional goals and aspirations. I visited bookstore after bookstore, relentlessly searching for principles and strategies that if practiced, would help me realize my dream.

Soon the house was overflowing with books drawn from a variety of disciplines -- psychology, New Consciousness, metaphysics, religion, and motivational training. I read day and night, taking in sentence after sentence on how to accomplish a goal. I read in cafes and restaurants, in the quiet of the house and outdoors beneath the trees, encouraged by the industrious ants scurrying across my page.

Then, one night several months after I had begun this reading project, I had a dream. It was an amazing dream, a big dream, a dream so timely and perfect it seemed a heavenly gift. In this dream, I was performing an old Chinese fairy tale about a fisherman who, after performing an act of compassion, receives a gift from a wizard. This gift, a tattoo in the shape of a turtle, enables him to see through the earth. Beneath its newly transparent surface, he sees shining piles of gold and silver -- heaps of treasure long buried and forgotten. As I told the tale, the stage in my dream, just like the earth in the Chinese tale, turned transparent, and piles of treasure glittered just beneath my feet!

When I awoke, I felt the currents of certainty coursing through my body. The hopelessness I had been feeling was gone. The dream had revealed the theme of my book; it had given me the thread that would link all the sparkling stones I had been gathering together. I now understood that my task was to illumine, through the use of mythic tales, the success principles I had been painstakingly gathering all summer. Unlike the vast majority of self-help books that simply told people how to accomplish a dream, it occurred to me that a storytelling approach would show them in a colorful, moving and inspiring way.

For several reasons, myths and mythic tales are excellent vehicles for communicating what we must do to realize our dreams. First and foremost, the accomplishment of difficult, soul-enriching dreams and tasks is the theme around which many of these ancient tales revolve. Climbing the slopes of a glass mountain to release a suffering captive or voyaging through the smoking gloom of the Underworld in search of a lost lover, are characteristic of the amazing feats performed by the heroes and heroines of the world's mythic tales. Unquestionably, these tales have a great deal to tell us about what must be done to complete seemingly impossible tasks.

These tales are also inspirational in nature. The miraculous transformations so many of them describe -- penniless beggars becoming kings and queens, mere mortals changing into gods and goddesses -- symbolize our ability to break free from limitations and deliver ourselves to a richer, fuller life. And because these tales teach in the mysterious picture-language of the soul, we easily absorb their message. It is not a coincidence that the world's greatest teachers -- the Buddha, Moses and Jesus -- as well as shamans and other visionaries of traditional cultures, have used highly metaphorical and symbolic tales as ways to impart their messages to us. When viewed metaphorically, these stories teach us how to spin the straw of our dreams into the gold of reality.

Some months after this enlightening dream, the time came for me to leave my mountain home. I remember my last moment there before leaving -- I stood gazing out the doorway, holding my half-finished manuscript in hand -- the manuscript that eventually would become The Turtle Tattoo: Timeless Tales for Finding and Fulfilling Your Dreams. From time to time, I heard the delicate splash and plop of turtles as they left their rocks and dove into the emerald pond, the water rings widening in their wake. A pair of butterflies floated by, and a dragonfly sparkled past the window.

Watching the beautiful scene, I felt wistful. Like the paired butterflies fluttering in the last September light, my days in this lovely landscape were almost over. Before long I would be back in the din of New York City; the gentle sounds of birdsong and insect buzzing replaced by the clang and clatter of the city. Melancholy overcame me as I realized I would no longer be able to watch the wind send shudders of silver across the grass, nor thrill to the sight of the blue loon sweeping low across the pond. There was no question about it; I simply was not ready to return.

And yet my reluctance to leave did not really matter. What mattered was this: I now knew with absolute certainty the principles I needed to follow to accomplish my dream. And because I had wedded these success principles to stories, they spoke to me in the vivid, powerful and inspirational language of metaphor and imagery. Because of this, I was confident that whenever I had doubts or ran into obstacles on my dream-realizing journey, the stories I had discovered would be my helping guides -- they would help get me through. "Give people facts and you light up their minds, but tell them a tale and you illumine their souls," declares an ancient Hebrew proverb. I couldn't agree more.

Margaret Olivia Wolfson is an internationally acclaimed storytelling artist, consultant and lecturer who has been performing and working with mythic stories since 1982. She has performed world myths and fairy tales with full musical accompaniment in theaters and educational venues throughout the United States, Asia, Europe, and Australia. For several years she worked at the Columbia University School of Social Work, designing a program that used mythic tales to teach life skills to various groups. She is also author of Marriage of the Rain Goddess, a moving story for all ages, inspired by a Zulu myth.

Adapted from the book, The Turtle Tattoo: Timeless Tales for Finding and Fulfilling Your Dreams, by Margaret Olivia Wolfson, Nataraj Publishing, 1996. (All Nataraj products are available through Hay House, Inc. For information, call 800-654-5126.)

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