Introduction:
Teaching stories relate events that are funny, foolish, bemusing, sometimes even
apparently stupid. But they usually have deeper meanings.
A good teaching story shows us the world, or ourselves, differently. A good story
will have levels of meaning. On first reading, you know something's there because
of your reaction -- a smile, a shudder, a laugh, a groan -- yet the strength of the
story is not always obvious or immediately visible. Here's a brief guide created
by Robert Ornstein on how to approach a teaching story.
The following story is a Sufi teaching story, about a character, the Mulla named
Nasrudin. Many Sufi stories about the Mulla Nasrudin have been gathered by Idries
Shah.
The Story:
A man was walking home late one night when he saw the Mulla Nasrudin searching
under a street light on hands and knees for something on the ground. "Mulla,
what have you lost?" he asked.
"The key to my house," Nasrudin said.
"I'll help you look," the man said.
Soon, both men were down on their knees, looking for the key.
After a number of minutes, the man asked, "Where exactly did you drop it?"
Nasrudin waved his arm back toward the darkness. "Over there, in my house."
The first man jumped up. "Then why are you looking for it here?"
"Because there is more light here than inside my house."
The Questions:
In The Psychology of Consciousness, Robert Ornstein suggests the following
questions for this story:
What are you looking for?
Where are you looking for it?
Are you looking in a place where there's a lot of light?
Contemplate this question: What is your key? What ideas come up?
Say, "I have lost my key." How does that question make you feel? What
does it mean to you? Where does it take you?
Then say, "My key is in my own house." Where does that take you and
how does it make you feel?
Ornstein puts the deeper level story together thusly:
"I am looking for my key -- which I really know is in my own
house -- in places where I know the key is not but where there is more light."