Fairy tales are rarely
about fairies and generally have an inner meaning. I have looked at several
famous fairy tales in the past including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by the Brothers
Grimm. Here’s another fairy tale—from Germany—involving a character
called Snow White: ‘Snow-White and Rose-Red’.
The tale goes something
like this. A poor widow lives in a small cottage by the woods with her two
young children, Snow-White and Rose-Red, whom she adores. There is a garden in
front of the cottage in which there are two rose bushes. One of the roses bears
white roses, and the other red roses. The symbolism of that is revealing. The rose represents the individual's unfolding consciousness
although, depending on the context, it has a myriad assortment of
additional meanings associated with it, such as purity, passion, heavenly
perfection, virginity, fertility, suffering and sacrifice, death and life.
In the context of this fairy tale, the white
and red roses represent the thinking and feeling aspects of our consciousness
respectively. Now, the two young
children, who play together and love each other dearly, are just like the above
mentioned roses. Rose-Red is outspoken and cheerful and loves to play outside
whereas her sister Snow-White is quiet and shy and prefers doing housework and reading.
The two girls love to go out into the forest where they like to sleep. On one
occasion, whilst sleeping unknowingly on the edge of a precipice, they are
awakened by a figure in shining white apparel (apparently, a ‘guardian angel’,
variously a symbol of power, guardianship, inner guidance and personal
transformation).
One winter night, there
is a knock at the door. Rose-Red opens the door to find a bear. At first, she
is terrified, but the bear tells her not to be afraid. ‘I'm half frozen and I merely
want to warm up a little at your place,’ he says. They let the bear in, and he
lies down in front of the fire. The girls beat the snow off the bear, and they
quickly become quite friendly with him. They play with the bear and roll him
around playfully. They let the bear spend the night in front of the fire. In
the morning the bear leaves, trotting out into the woods. The bear comes back
every night for the rest of that winter and the family grows used to him.
When summer comes, the
bear tells the family that he must go away for a while to guard his treasure
from a wicked dwarf. On parting, the bear catches his fur on the door-hook, and
it seems to Snow-White that she sees gold glittering underneath.
During the summer, when
the girls are walking through the forest, they find a dwarf whose beard is
stuck in a tree. The girls rescue him by cutting his beard free, but the dwarf
is ungrateful and yells at them for cutting his beautiful beard. He seizes a bag
of gold which lies behind him and hurries off angrily. The girls encounter the
dwarf several times that summer, each time rescuing him from some peril each
time, but the dwarf is always ungrateful. On the second occasion the dwarf runs
off with a bag of pearls. On another occasion he hurries off with a bag of
precious stones. Then, one day, they meet the dwarf once again and he is seen
counting his treasures. This time, the bear rushes out of the forest and
strikes the dwarf dead.
Instantly, the bear’s
skin falls from him, revealing a handsome prince. You see, the dwarf had put a
spell on the prince by stealing his precious stones and turning him into a
bear, but the curse is broken with the death of the dwarf. Snow-White marries
the prince, and Rose-Red marries his brother. And yes, as in all fairy tales,
they all live happily ever after.
Have you ever noticed how
many fairy tales involve a widow? A widow represents those who are cut
off, so to speak, from their true being as a person among persons. They are
people who have lost connection with their inner potentiality. In this tale,
however, there is still some contact with the elemental world represented by
the garden and the rose bushes.
Snow-White and Rose-Red
represent two different aspects or sides of human experience. Snow-White
(cf the white roses), who likes to stay indoors, represents the thinking part
of us that is introspective, introverted contemplative and meditative. Rose-Red
(cf the red roses), who likes being outdoors, symbolises the perceiving, more
extroverted part of us that is more interested in the outer world of sense
impressions. The fact that the two girls play together and love each other is
highly symbolic. It means, among other things, that these two sides of our
nature are equally important. Both are needed and belong together. In other
words, they are complementary. Never forget that.
The bear is an
out-picturing of us—body, mind and soul. There is the outer, physical part of
us and the inner mental and spiritual ‘parts’ of us. The dwarf represents
negative, evil forces, both within and outside of ourselves, that make for
separation, division and strife. These forces or tendencies within us must be
overcome if we are to grow into the persons we are capable of being and which,
in truth, we really are. The gold, pearls, and precious stones referred to in
the tale represent spiritual riches and wisdom—the non-physical things ‘not made with human hands, eternal in the heavens’
(cf 2 Cor 5:1). The dwarf is seen seizing, appropriating
and running of with these gifts, not realizing that they are not yet his by
right of consciousness. There are things that we must give up in order for
these gifts to be rightfully ours. That is an important lesson we all must
learn. Our false selves (the little ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’), in the form of our
various likes, dislikes, views, opinions, biases and prejudices, seek to
appropriate these treasures even though they are not yet ours by right of
consciousness.
Now,
the bear is not what it appears to be. Inside of it is a prince, that is, a
higher self—our true self. Here’s a famous Zen story
on the point. A distraught man approaches a Zen master and says, ‘Please,
Master, I feel lost, desperate. I don't know who I am. Please, show me
my true self!’ The master just looks away without responding. The man
begins to plead and beg, but still the master gives no reply. Finally giving up
in frustration, the man turns to leave. At that moment the master calls out to
him by name. ‘Yes!’ the man says as he turns around toward the master. ‘There
it is!’ exclaims the master.
Our true self is
the person that each one of us is. However, when we see and
experience ourselves we do not ordinarily see and experience the person that
in truth each one of us is. Instead, we tend to see and experience any one or
more of a number of self-images (those ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ held in our mind). At
one point in time we may see and experience the ‘little me’, or the ‘frightened
me’, or the ‘inferior me’. At another point in time we may see and experience
the ‘confident me’.
These ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ are nothing more than self-images in
our mind. They are images felt and experienced as real, that is, as the real
person that we think we are. Jointly and severally, these
‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ constitute in varying degrees our sense of
who we think we are, and whichever image is most dominant in your mind at any
point in time will constitute your sense of ‘me’—that is, what to you, in you,
is you—at least at that particular point in time. There is a feeling component
to these mental self-images, with the result that many of the images can be
quite strong and persistent over time and their persistency over time only
reinforces the mistaken belief that these images are really us. This also makes
change seem very difficult indeed. However, none—I repeat none—of
these felt self-images are real. They are not the real person
that in truth you are.
Fulton
J Sheen wrote, ‘Death
to the lower self is the condition of resurrection to the higher
self.’ That is what this fairy tale is all about. We must die to our false
selves so that we might become the real person
that we are. Some call that the ‘higher self’, but please don’t confuse that
with those little, false selves of which I spoke. The ‘higher self’ is the real
person that in truth you are. I am referring to a power and presence ‘not-oneself’.
You see, we are much more than just those pesky false selves—all those waxing
and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’—with which we tend to identify, in the mistaken
belief that they constitute the ‘real me’.
Freedom from the bondage to self comes when we get real,
that is, when we start to live from our true being as a person among
persons. We come to know our higher or real
self—symbolised in the fairy tale ‘Snow-White and Rose-Red’ by each of the
marriages that take place—as a result of thinking (Snow-White), perceiving
(Rose-Red), and overcoming the evil spirit of separateness (symbolised by the
destruction of the dwarf by the bear).
When this happens, you
become what the American psychologist Carl
Rogers, pictured left, referred to as a ‘fully functioning
person’. The mystics refer to this as coming to ‘know the Self as One’. Yes, we
are one with all Life, even though few know or understand what that truly
means.
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