The Three Fishes
The Sufi Masters were notorious for using metaphors and stories to teach. The following tale has been passed down from Sheikh Mohammed Asghar.
Three fishes once lived in a pool. They were: a clever fish, a half-clever fish and a stupid fish. Life continued very much as it is for fishes everywhere until one day came-a man.
He was carrying a net, and the clever fish saw him through the water. Calling upon his experience, the stories he had heard, and his cleverness, he decided to take action.
“There are a few places to hide in this pool,” he thought. “I shall therefore play dead.”
He summoned his strength and jumped out of the pool, landing at the feet of the fisherman, who was rather surprised. But as the clever fish was holding his breath, the fisherman supposed that he was dead: and threw him back. The fish now glided into a small hole under the bank.
Now the second fish, the half-clever one, did not quite understand what had happened. So he swam up to the clever fish and asked him all about it. “Simple,” said the clever fish, “I played dead, so he threw me back.”
So the half-clever fish immediately leaped out of the water, at the fisherman’s feet. “Strange,” thought the fisherman, “they are leaping about all over the place.” And, because the half-clever fish had forgotten to hold his breath the fisherman realized he was alive and put him in his satchel.
He turned back to peer in the water, and because he had been slightly confused by the fishes jumping on to dry land in front of him, he did not close the flap of his bag. The half-clever fish, when he realized this, was just able to ease himself out and, flipping over and over, got back into the water. He sought out the first fish and lay panting beside him.
Now the third fish, the stupid one, was not able to make anything at all of this, even when he heard the first and second fishes’ versions. So they went over every point with him, stressing the importance of not breathing, in order to play dead.
“Thank you so much: now I understand,” said the stupid fish. With these words he hurled himself out of the water, landing just beside the fisherman.
Now the fisherman, having lost two fish already, put this one into his bag without bothering to look at whether it was breathing or not. He cast the net again and again into the pool, but the first two fish were crouched into the depression under the bank. And the flap of the fisherman’s bag this time was fully closed.
Finally the fisherman gave up. He opened the bag, realized the stupid fish was not breathing, and took him home for the cat.
So, what do you think the storyteller’s intended outcome was? Can you retell this story using events from your own life?
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admin :: Jul.09.2007 :: metaphor, storytelling :: 3 Comments »
I still have to work out this story but first I want to leave a comment that says the material that is appearing here gets better and better. And it is more than enjoyable, it is practical and applicable.
Thank You again – I appreciate it.
Thank you Graham. I appreciate your comments very much. Is there any topic you would like to see more of? Or is there any particular technique you’d like to focus on?
Hi Allen, I’ll accept your offer to make a suggestion – something that has bugged me all my life and that I’ve never really got sorted out. It’s about dealing with conflict. And closely associated with that is dealing with situations in which I feel I am being evaluated. I think the common thread is about being at risk.
When I foresee something coming up, I find it very difficult to stop myself imagining all kinds of unfavourable outcomes and running endless scenarios through my mind.
I can try to reframe it as some kind of protection mechanism thru which I am preparing myself for possible eventualities but that doesn’t settle me down.
I think it comes down to having enough self belief to say to myself that whatever happens I’ll deal with it. That mind set is very helpful but not always easy to attain. Maybe I need to work harder at anchoring it.
So that is about the anticipation. But, of course, more often than not, what I anticipate as conflict never happens. But sometimes it does – and all the apprehension has done nothing for me but create self-doubt and I don’t handle things very well at all.
On the other hand, if conflict just happens out of the blue, I’m fine. I find all the NLP related things I’ve worked at, especially flexibility, just come into my head and I can usually find a win-win outcome.
As I write this, just the thinking it out, helps a lot. To get to a bottom line, I think I’m asking you to talk about dealing with dark imaginings. Does that make sense?