A simple question often comes up in therapy, and not only there: What am I nourishing within myself? Whenever it does, I think of a story by Idries Shah, “The Saint and the Sinner.”
A devout man, certain he knows the right path, takes it upon himself to set a neighbor straight, a man who cannot stop gambling. Each time the neighbor leaves for the gambling house, he adds a stone to a pile outside the man’s home, and for twenty years the pile grows. The gambler feels ashamed, yet he looks up to the one who keeps count and longs to be as good as he is. When both men die, the ending is not at all what either of them would have expected.
Not every weakness leads us astray. And not everything that appears strong leads to openness. What matters is whether we lose sight of our longing or allow it to guide us.
An intention can harden us when we use it to place ourselves above others. It can open us when it reminds us who we hope to become.
What are you nurturing, day by day? Does it draw you toward constriction, or toward openness?
The story is short and worth reading in full: Idries Shah, “The Saint and the Sinner,” in Wisdom of the Idiots (p. 75), which the Idries Shah Foundation makes freely available.