Who do you follow?

Turil Cronburg from NLP Connections shared this compelling metaphor on her blog.  I told her that it was too good NOT to share with you here!

DO YOU WANT TO FOLLOW THE PATH OF THE PORCUPINE?

“Last winter, I was staying in a place in northern California in the mountains. One day I decided to try climbing one of the pointier peaks that had a small clearing at the top. It looked so lovely up there. So I started climbing. At the beginning of my climb, there was a wide, easily traversed, path that had been made by humans that I chose to follow. After reaching a bit of a clearing and a trickling stream, that wide path led me to a narrower, steeper path, which I had some difficulty following. But I persevered, and continued to follow my leaders who’d climbed the mountain before. They knew what they were doing, I assumed. So I followed, up and around the trees, and roots, and rocks and a few psychedelic mushrooms even (which I wisely left alone since I wanted to get to the top of the mountain for real, not just inside my head!). By the time I reached the top of the peak and the lovely clearing, I realized that my leaders who’d laid that path down were not at all human. I’d guessed that they were deer, instead, which seemed nearly as useful, though a bit more of a challenge, since my human legs and feet are less adapted to climbing steep slopes than a deer’s legs and hooves. I stayed up on the peak for quite a while, taking in the vastness of the mountains around me and the ocean below me.

When I finally started heading down the mountain to return to my home base (I was really looking forward to some hearty dinner after that vigorous workout!), I chose to follow a different path down that seemed less steep. Almost immediately, I ended up stuck in the middle of some scraggly bushes and was forced to scramble under increasingly lower branches. When the branches that the path passed under ended up being only about two feet high, and I found myself crawling on my stomach, I decided that my path-making leaders were most clearly far, far smaller beings than I, or even baby deer, and I faced the fact that I needed to turn around and look for another way to continue.
I did turn around, and chose to forge my own path back home, which while, difficult, did indeed get me to where I wanted to go. I got returned to a warm comfy place to sit down and enjoy my dinner while I looked up at the peak again and appreciated the accomplishment that I’d achieved of making it to the top. An accomplishment I’d made by choosing to initially follow the lead of those who’d been there before, and then choosing to go my own way when I noticed my leaders had gone in a direction that simply wasn’t taking me to a place that I wanted to go.

Some people believe that it’s a leader’s responsibility to lead people to where they want to go, while others know that it’s up to each individual to make our own good choices of when it’s time to follow the leaders who are heading in the direction we want to go, and when it’s time to create a new path for ourselves…

Where do you want to go? Has anyone been there before whom you can follow, or will you create your own path there and be the first to reach that point?”

Thanks, Turil!

Be well, and at peace,

Phil

Tags: Life, nlp, spirituality