Making creative choices in art and life: 3 fairy tale variations

Sifting through options to make a decision is something that each of us has to do at some point. When our choice is part of a creative process in work or life, in the arts or our psychic terrain, it can be very difficult. Something new will come into the world. Some type of transformation will take place. We're deeply invested in the outcome and there may be consequences.

The dilemma posed by the need to make a choice is a common feature in the tests and tasks faced by characters in fairy tales. The nature of the choice and the way it is accomplished in these stories provides useful metaphors for considering our present situations and the challenges posed by creative choices.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Myth Matters an exploration at the intersection of mythology, creativity and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide beautiful crazy world of ours, I’m glad that you decided to join me here today.

Today I want to reflect on a situation that I'm certain we've all experienced, one that may well have been a dilemma-- sifting through options to make a decision. This is a podcast about the mythic dimension, and about the power of images and metaphors in myths and stories to illuminate aspects of life, so I'm going to turn to several fairy tales for insight. Before I turn to the stories, let me say more to frame this topic of choice and creative choices, in particular.

Sometimes making choices is very easy, we have established preferences and/or the consequences of choosing are insignificant. It doesn't matter if we get it wrong, so to speak, or there is no such thing. Deciding on a meal from a meu, for example, or choosing a song from a playlist. But sometimes we have to make weighty choices, choices that are difficult for one reason or another and this is especially true when we're engaged in a creative process of some sort.  

Creativity is a process and an approach. It's not about the materials that you handle. It's a method and a spirit. The stages in the process and the skills and capacities that we need are very similar whether our project is to make something tangible or make changes in our life circumstances or state of being.  There are many outlines and step by step descriptions of the creative process. Different people conceptualize the creative process in a different ways. And yet, I think we can say that creativity involves the ability to respond, to make choices, and to take risks. 

Also, the ability to become familiar with the material that you're working and develop some skill in handling it. And the faith to keep working at whatever it is, the song or problem, although it seems like nothing or initially appears to hold little promise, to stay in the process with the intention and vision in order to make something, birth something, bring forth something unique.

A creative process is always a transformation of some sort, whether the result is a painting or a change in the quality of your life or nature of your being. The materials that are put to use, whether that's a paintbrush and a canvas, or a tomato, or a person's psyche, are put to a new use or they become something new. There may be a literal or metaphorical alchemy. The transformation is profound because it brings something new, and it's irreversible. And I think this is why creative choices about projects, problems and circumstances that are important to us carry such a big feeling of consequence.

We care so, we don't want to get it wrong. We don't want to waste something precious, or go in the wrong direction or lose the opportunity for something better. Because once you open one door, another closes. 

Fairy tales offer us some interesting metaphors and opportunities for insight into the creative process. They are tales of transformation. I think this is why we continue to tell them and love them and work them over for century after century after century. You can reflect on a great many questions and themes with the aid of a fairy tale, and you can focus on different aspect of the story. 

For example, you can focus on the details of the plot. You can look at what happens. You can also consider the layers of meaning in the metaphors, or the characteristics of the characters, the gender or intelligence or kindness or beauty of the persons. And you can look at the problem introduced at the beginning of a story and how it's resolved. 

This is where you'll see the transformation repeated over and over again. It may not be the theme that you pluck out if you take any of those other approaches. And yet, when you step back, you'll see that whether or you read a story as a commentary on healing a trauma or the marriage of opposites in the psyche or the hero's adventure, there is a renewal of the kingdom, as we say in the fairy tale realm. The story describes a creative process and the transformation of the elements, either the players or the situation in the story, results in a new state of things, of being. I think this is really cool and suggests something essential about humans.

In any event, keeping myself on track here and avoiding the temptation of many choice tangents-the early stage of a creative endeavor involves choices: what to do, how to do it, whether or not to do it. At the beginning of a creative process we're required to identify and select among the options. To decide on the parameters and course of action. This is obvious I know and yet, as I noted, it's easy to get hung up here when the choice matters.

The protagonist in a fairy tale is often required to perform tasks or pass tests that involve choosing. These stories offer interesting and useful metaphors for this stage in our own process. I want to introduce three stories that illuminate variations on our common dilemma. I think there are clues here about how to approach this early stage in the creative process in art and life.

The first story that comes to mind is Psyche and Eros, or Eros and Psyche. Technically in the gray area between myth and fairy tales, perhaps. The first recorded version of the story is in Apuleius’ novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century AD.

 This whole story is one that's easily read as one of transformation. But I want to focus on the very first test that Psyche, our protagonist, has to pass. So, if you're not familiar with the story, Psyche and the god Eros have fallen in love but they've been separated because she attempted to actually see him. She lit a light. The oil fell on his shoulder, he woke up, he left. 

Now Psyche is wandering around trying to figure out how she can be reunited with her soul's desire. Very important quest. And she is being tested by the goddess Aphrodite, who happens to be the mother of Eros. When they meet, Aphrodite berates Psyche and tells her that she's going to have to pass these tests. 

The first thing she does is to take this young woman out to her temple storehouse and shows her a huge mound of seeds. All different kinds of seeds. Wheat, millet, beans, lentils, all sorts of seeds. These are foods for her pigeons. The goddess order Psyche to separate all of the grains by type. To create a separate pile for each one. And then she tells her that she has to get this done before evening, so on a very short timeframe, timeline, and then she leaves. 

Psyche is completely overwhelmed by the task. It seems impossible. It probably is impossible. So, she starts to cry and a little ant appears. He sees Psyche and feels compassion for her. The whole colony appears and they start taking the pile apart and sorting it grain by grain. They sort all of these seeds by kind. And then when they're done with the task, they vanish out of sight, and Aphrodite comes back and sees that this is done. And she's not really happy. 

But my point is that here's an example of a process, a creative process of transformation that begins with this seed sorting and the help of the ants. What does this suggest to us? What are the seeds? Well, seeds are different possibilities. If you plant, depending on what you plant, you're going to grow any number of different things. They're a good metaphor for different options. They're a good metaphor for different priorities and motives, for feelings, for the potentials in a given situation as a seed is something that will grow and flourish into something else. 

So, the first stage here is that she's got to decide which of these to plant so to speak, and the first step is imposing order. Sorting all of those seeds is a way of imposing order and it requires discernment. How is this one different from that one. And we know that the ants are instinctual creatures. They naturally create order and community in the way that they live together. They come up out of the earth and they are methodical. They are able to discern these differences and just with diligence, get the job done. 

So that's one metaphor for this process of choosing. Sometimes we've got this big pile of seeds and we've got to impose order. We have to create some sort of categories. 

Now another story that comes to mind that frames this choosing a little bit differently, although it does still involve a type of seed, is the Russian fairy tale called "Vasilisa the Beautiful" or "Vasilisa the Wise." In this story, a young woman is forced into the forest at night, and this forest is the home to the Baba Yaga. The Baba Yaga is a combination I would say, of ancient earth goddess, life-death mother, and witchy crone. The Baba Yaga is a very powerful earthbound energy and she's scary. And she does eat human beings on occasion. Usually when she meets them.

Vasilisa ends up at the house of Baba Yaga and calls her grandmother, and Baba Yaga takes her in and who knows whether or not this witch is going to help her. But that very first evening after dinner, the Baba Yaga tells Vasilisa that she's going to go away the next day and that the young woman is going to have to complete a bunch of work. She lists a number of household chores and then she says, "And on top of all of that, you see that huge pile of corn, I want you to go through that and separate all of the moldy kernels from the kernels that are still good."

So here we have a situation that is very similar to Psyche's, sorting seeds as a test presented to her by the goddess Aphrodite. And yet, there's something different here, right? Because this is all corn. And here, the question is, what is moldy? That is what's gone bad, and what still good. So, we have our categories. In the case of Vasilisa though, this is still a daunting, overwhelming project. It's probably something that she wouldn't be able to get done on her own.

In this case, her helper is a doll. When Vasilisa was a child, her mother died and before she died, she gave her daughter a doll. She said, "Turn to this doll whenever you're in trouble and keep it secret. Don't tell anyone else about it." So, Vasilisa consults the doll and the doll tells her "Don't worry, everything is going to be okay." And when Vasilisa wakes up in the morning, the task of sorting the corn, and everything else with the exception of cooking a meal for Baba Yaga, is done because the doll took care of it. 

So here the question is, what is this doll? A number of people have put forth have a variety of ideas about this. The doll is some sort of a guide, or something within her, a secret capacity, something that she's been given by her mother, maybe it is her intuition. Maybe it is a genius or a daemon, to use the language that James Hillman employed. Whatever it is, she needs to listen to something deep inside herself that is not the conscious ego, not the everyday self, in order to complete this task, and she's going to separate the moldy and the good corn. 

Obviously the good corn can be ground into flour, it can be planted. A lots of things can be done to turn it into food, or new life. It has viability I would say, in the language of creative choices. 

So, then the third model that I want to offer you comes from a fairy tale that was collected by the Brothers Grimm called "The Queen Bee." In this story, we have three brothers. The two eldest are kind of jerks, and they've left home and gone off and wandered around and squandered their fortune. And anyway, their youngest brother, who is a very kind person, has gone out to find them, and when they reunite, they encounter different animals and every time the impulse of the older brothers is to do harm, and the youngest brother stops them.

They end up in a very strange kingdom, an enchanted kingdom. There's nothing living there, nothing is moving there. Nothing seems to be alive there except for this little old man who is presumably the guard. The brothers learn that there is a way to break the enchantment and they take turns doing this, and of course it is the youngest, the empathetic, the kind brother who ends up having the possibility of breaking the spell. The last thing that he has to do is choose among different options.

In this story, the choice is among three identical princesses. There are three princesses, they all seem exactly the same and they are all laying like stones in an enchanted sleep. Our hero has to discern which one is the youngest. The youngest princess, youngest representing the option that has the most vitality, and promise, the one that is going to bring forth the freshest life, the most strength.

Now all of these princesses, they seem the same. But there is one little difference between all of them, if you can discern it, and that is that each one of them ate something sweet, right before they fell asleep. And the youngest princess ate honey. Honey, that earthly elixir of the gods and humans. 

Well, this is not something that the young man is sensitive enough to discern and he has a helper. The queen bee of a bee colony that he had spared from his brothers torment earlier in the story, flies through the window, and she can taste the last molecules of sweetness on each woman's lips. She identifies the youngest princess and the spell is broken, and the kingdom comes back to life. And the young man marries the princess. 

So here again, I'm noticing that we have an instinctual helper, one that has a capacity that is very finely honed and not learned, in the form of the bee. 

Is there an area in your life where you are currently confronted by the need to choose among options to advance your process? Is there a situation where you've got to either assess your options, decide what criteria matters, get to the nuances, figure out what has the most life in it? If so, which of these stories most closely fits your situation? 

Because I could reframe this, all of these, looking at the metaphors of the paths to be chosen between and the helper, that is the model for the choosing as follows. We could say that maybe you're in a seed situation, where there are lots of different possibilities. And you need a way to distinguish between them and categorize them. You need to create order. Or you might be in a situation where you have to judge the viability and separate out all of the things that clearly won't work. You have to separate the moldy corn, what's gone bad, from the good corn. 

Or maybe you're in a situation where you're facing three enchanted princesses, where you have several options and they all appear the same. But of course, we know they're not, that there is something, some bit of magic, something special about the option that is the one that's best for you. Simply determining this and having an image for the nature of your choices can be really helpful. 

And then the story offers us some ideas about how to think about the nature of the task because those two things go together-- what you have to do and then what might be required to do it. We have a few different ideas in the form of the aunt, the doll and the queen bee because all of these can be seen as models for the capacities that you need, the help that you need. If you locate your scenario in the story, then what does that helper suggest? 

Now, there were many, many, many things that I could have said about the nature of the choices. Just listening, you've probably already had a bunch of your own ideas that I didn't mention. And what I'm going to say about these models will also be a gloss. But the first thing that occurred to me is that if you need to be like the ant, then you need to create categories and you need to just do it. Not worry about how the size of the pile, but approach it with diligence. And you may need to get help, right, you may need to find other ants who are willing to help you.

If you're in a situation where you need the doll, then you need to turn the decision, the choices, over to something deep in your self. And wait to listen to what rises up. We often call this intuition. But there's also, maybe it's an inner voice. And I think there's another element here, which is trust. Trust that the problem can be solved by something in you, that's not your everyday self. And trust that what is necessary will be completed in the right time.

And then maybe you need to be or to have the help of the bee. I would characterize this as having the sensitivity to discern the unique qualities of your choices, to move past the generalities and really, really become exquisitely intimate with the nature of your choices. And also, with the qualities that are, the quality that is essential to your creation. In my work with people, I find that we often stay at a superficial level when we are defining our needs and our objectives. And that might seem counterintuitive. I mean, I guess it is when you really think about it. But we get focused on how long it's taking, or how hard it seems like it's going to be and resist really finding that essential, essential flavor, for lack of a better word, the thing that is most important to the vitality of what you want to do.

So those are a few thoughts about what these fairy tales and fairy tales in general can offer us in terms of images and metaphors about the creative process and you know, in this instance, the first stage. The choosing stage, the deciding what to do. I hope that this helps you if you are confronted right now with the need to choose among options of some sort. 

I have a little bit of poetry for you, a few little short pieces that I'm really enjoying right now. Before I move to that, I want to stop to give a big welcome to new email subscribers:   Wes, Lori, Paul, Beckie, Elaine, Ron, John, Pam, Tracy, Ursula, Lewis,  Jamia, Nina,  Casey, Mikey, and Connie. Welcome to Myth Matters!

As I mentioned in the last episode, I am not going to be putting out new episodes quite as often as I have been in the past. So, if you want to know when they are released, and if you also want to stay abreast of new offerings of mine---I do a lot of consulting one on one with artists and other people who are taking a creative approach to life--- then you might want to subscribe, because then you will get my monthly newsletter. This will just keep you a little closer in the loop. 

If that sounds interesting to you, then head over to the Mythic Mojo website. That's where you can subscribe. You will also find a transcript of this episode, and information about my coaching and mentoring services, and Story Oracle, and all the other things that I'm doing. 

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And now these poems. The first one is called "Variation On A Theme By Rilke" by Denise Levertov.

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me–a sky, air, light; a being.
And before it started to descend from the height of noon,
it leaned over and struck my shoulder as if with the flat of a sword,
granting me honor and a task.
The day’s blow rang out, metallic–or it was I,
a bell awakened
and what I heard was my whole self saying and singing what I knew:
“I can.”

- Denise Levertov, from Breathing the Water

She is responding to a poem by Rilke, the first poem, the first stanza of the first poem, in Rilke's collection, The Book of Hours so I'd like to share that with you. This translation is by Anita Barrows, and Joanna Macy. 

The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.

--Ranier Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God in translation by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

And finally, from the Greek philosopher, Epictetus:

Caretake this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, this place, this challenge, this deed.
Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble.
It is time to really live, to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.

- Epictetus

Funny how these themes endure for years and years and years, across time and generations. We have so much in common my friends, the most important things I think we hold in common. If you have thoughts or comments in response to this episode, I would love to hear from you. You can post a comment on my Mythic Mojo website, or send me an email. I'd really like to know where this episode lands. 

If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and sustainable world. 

And that's it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.