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“I’ve been terrified every moment of my life—and I never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” –Georgia O’Keefe
How do you find the courage and commitment to be true to yourself?
A relatively small happening in your life, a minor mystery or random thought, even an irritant, can be a moment of awakening and the start of your quest. In this Native American story, a busy little mouse hears a strange roaring in his ears. This experience has no place in his world. Other mice tell him that it doesn’t exist. But one day…
Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ~ Joseph Campbell
Transcript of the roaring in your ears
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to your life today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
The painter Georgia O’Keeffe once said, “I have been afraid every day of my life, and that has never kept me from doing what I wanted to do.”
This really struck me because I have a lot of admiration for O’Keeffe. I love her paintings for one thing, but also she was a woman who decided to live the creative life and separated from a very powerful man in order to do so. And she lived, a woman pretty much alone, in the desert in New Mexico, which I can really relate to– that call to the desert.
So, what I want to talk about today is the courage and the commitment that I resounds in O’Keeffe’s words. One of the central questions that we all face is how to be true; true to
your own self. How to be true to your own self, and to live with heart. That takes a particular kind of commitment and a certain kind of courage, and I have a story that I want to share with you today that speaks to that.
Now, in the last podcast, I told you a couple of jataka stories and I got a number of comments back. I’m very grateful to those of you who shared your response to those stories with me. And the interesting thing, and I’m mentioning this because it was the entry point for me into today’s podcast, is the number of you who said that it was the leap of faith in that Hungry Tigress jataka that was your moment. The leap of faith ,the moment when the Bodhisattva –that is the Buddha-to-be, he was a Brahmin in that incarnation– decided to sacrifice his body as food to the starving tigress in order to prevent her from eating her own cubs and thus acquiring a boatload of very bad karma.
The leap of faith. As I was thinking about that, I realized that the Brahmin teacher, Buddha-to-be in that story, had a very clear sense of his life path. He’d made a commitment to being an awakened one, to the being a bodhisattva. And so he was acting for the tigress and also acting for himself. Which raises this question of how do you know? Right? How do you know what is the central principle, the central truth about your own being and your own path, so that you can act with a similar amount of calm bravery?
Well, so let’s turn to the story and let it do its work. You know, stories are such an important opening into answers to questions like those that we’re posing together in this podcast. They provide images that seed the imagination, and the metaphors and the moments that you find in a story can be invitations to a deeper awareness, a deeper awareness of the knowing that resides in the substrata of our psyche.
That turn, making that invitation–that’s what I mean when I talk about the soul life or living the life of soul. I’m talking about accessing that substrata through imagination and attention to your own psychology, psychology, which means literally “a language of the psyche.” It shows up in dreams and synchronicities, in all kinds of ways. And in what we notice in these stories. A story then, can provide an opening into a very necessary source of vitality.
I want to give a shout out to my friend Jeff on Bainbridge Island, who initially introduced me to this story. It’s called “Jumping Mouse.” I found it then, in a collection that was edited by Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield called “Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart.” Online, I’ve seen this story of jumping mouse attributed to various Native American peoples of the plains. So you can find different versions of this online and I do believe the themes here really cross cultural divides.
So, sit back and relax and just let yourself listen to the story, and notice what you notice. That is as I say, an opening for you, that can be very useful in your own reflection and engagement with this story.
Jumping Mouse
Once there was a mouse, he was a very busy mouse, constantly searching for seeds, constantly feeling the grass with his whiskers, finding material to fluff up his nest, moving, moving, moving, moving in the company of other mice, always searching, always moving, always collecting. Busy, busy, busy.
But every now and again, he would pause for a moment, maybe lift his head, and he heard a strange roaring in his ears. It made no sense. He had no idea what it could possibly be. But as the days went by, he paused more and more often. And he heard that roaring more and more often. And it started to really bother him and generated a certain amount of irritation and also curiosity.
So one day, when he paused and he heard it, he turned to the mouse who was sniffing and doing his seed sorting nearby and said, “Excuse me, brother, do you, do you hear that roaring?” Well, the mouse didn’t pause, didn’t lift his head. He just said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I’m really quite busy here if you don’t mind,” and made it very clear that he did not want to have any further conversation. So our mouse turned to another mouse who was collecting some dry grass nearby and said, “Brother, could you just stop for a minute? Do you hear that roaring in your ears?” And the other mouse said, “Roaring. Don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing in our world that roars. I’ve got to get back to work.”
Our mouse decided to try one more time and he asked a third mouse, who had just peeked his head out of a hole in a cottonwood tree, if he ever heard a roaring in his ears, and that mouse looked at him very strangely and said “Are you? Are you having some sort of a problem?” and turned around and slipped back in to her hole. Well, our little mouse shrugged his whiskers and he decided that he might as well just get busy and forget the whole thing because it was clearly only in his head. But every time he paused, he heard that roaring.
And one day, he decided to investigate the sound. Just a little bit, just a little bit. He took a few steps away from the other busy mice. He scurried a little ways away, and stopped and listened.
And he heard the roaring. So he scurried just a little bit further, and he heard it! he still heard it. It sounded like it was getting a little bit louder and he was standing there listening very, very hard when suddenly someone said, “Hello little mouse.” Well, our mouse almost jumped out of his skin. He arched his tail and he was about to run away when the voice said again, “Hello little mouse, don’t be afraid. It’s I, brother Raccoon.” And the mouse looked up and sure enough, it was a raccoon.
“What are you doing all the way out here by yourself, little Mouse?” asked the raccoon. Well, our little mouse blushed and put his head down and he said, “I hear this roaring in my ears and I’m investigating.” “What it is roaring in your ears,” said the raccoon, “you know, I think what you hear little brother is the sound of the river.”
“The river?”
“Yes, the river. Walk with me, “said the raccoon, “and I will show you the river.” Well, our little mouse was terribly afraid, but he was determined to find out once and for all about this roaring. “I can return to my work,” he thought “after. After I find out about this river business. After I find out about the river and the roaring, then I can go back to my seed collecting and my dry grass sorting, and my nest plumping and then you know, I can even tell all of those all those other mice who thought that I was kind of nuts that there actually is roaring and there is a river and so I’ll even ask the raccoon to come back with me. So that I have proof, you know, independent of my own words.” “Alright,” little mouse said to the raccoon, “lead on to the river. I will walk with you.”
Raccoon took the little mouse down to the river. And he was terrified the whole time. I mean, the mouse saw and smelled so many new sights, and smells, and when he got to the river, my gosh, it was so big. He’d never seen anything like it. And it did roar. It roared and it sang and it rumbled and it thundered along between its banks. “Wow,” said the little mouse. It’s, it’s so powerful.” “It really is a great thing,” said the raccoon. “But now I need to go on with my day, so let me introduce you to a friend.”
He took little mouse over to a smoother, shallow little side eddie in the river where there was a lily pad, a very bright green lily pad. Sitting on it, almost as green as the pad, was a frog. “Hello little brother,” said the frog. “Welcome to the river.” Raccoon said, “I’m going to go now. Our little brother frog will take care of you.” And he left to go and look for food.
Now our little mouse came up to the edge of the water and looked in and he saw a frightened little mouse reflected there. “Who are you little mouse?” he asked the reflection, “Aren’t you afraid to be that far out into the river?” Well, the frog is the one who answered. The frog said “No, I’m not afraid. I mean, I have the gift of being able to live both above the river and under the river and when winter comes and it gets cold, you know, I go underneath the ice. But believe me, I’ve kind of seen everything around this river and I’m the keeper of the water.” “Wow, that’s really amazing,” the little mouse said.
“Would you like to have some very strong medicine power?,” frog asked him. “Ah, strong medicine power?” asked a little mouse, “Wow. Me? Sure, yes, I mean, if that’s possible.”
“Okay,” said the frog, “Then crouch down as low as you can and then jump up as high as you’re able, and you will have your medicine.” The little mouse did as he was instructed. He crouched down as low as he could and then he jumped up into the air. And when he did, he opened his eyes and he saw this amazing mountain off in the distance.
He could hardly believe his eyes but he just got a glimpse before he fell back to earth and he landed in the river. He got very frightened and he scrambled around on the muddy bank and got up onto the shore. And he turned to the frog and he said, “You tricked me.” Oh, he was so angry. “Wait, wait,” said the frog. “You’re not harmed. Don’t let your fear and your anger blind you. Did you see anything?”
“Well,” the mouse said, “I saw I saw a mountain.” “Oh yes, those are the sacred mountains,” said the frog, “and I think you have a new name. I think we should all call you Jumping Mouse.” “Oh, thank you. Thank you,” Jumping Mouse said, “now I’m going to go back to my people and tell them about this thing that’s happened to me.” “Return to your people,” the frog said. “It’s very easy to find them. Just keep the sound of the river to the back of your head. Go the opposite direction of the sound and you will find your brother mice.”
Jumping Mouse made his way back to the world of mice but unfortunately, he also found a lot of disappointment because nobody would listen to him. In fact, because there hadn’t been any rain and he was wet, the other mice were afraid of him. They believed that he had been spit out of the mouth of another animal that had tried to eat him. And so, they concluded, if he had not been food for the other animal who wanted him well then he must be poisonous and probably poison for them too.
Now, Jumping Mouse lived again among his people. But he was alone. And he could not forget
the vision of the sacred mountains. The memory of the glimpse of the Mountains, burned in his imagination and his heart. And one day, he went back to the edge of the river place. He looked up the bank and beyond, out onto the prairie.
He looked up into the sky for eagles and he saw the sky was full of many little spots, moving dark spots against the blue and he knew that each one of those was an eagle. But he decided then and there to go to the sacred mountains, and he gathered up all of his courage, and he ran as fast as he could out onto the prairie. And his little heart was pounding and pounding with excitement and fear and he ran and he ran and he came to a clump of sage. He decided to rest there and catch his breath, safe from the eagles for a time.
And while he was resting there, he saw an old mouse. This patch of sage where old mouse lived was a real haven for mice. Seeds were plentiful. There was nesting material. There were all kinds of things around to be very, very busy with. Old mouse saw him sitting there and came up to him and said, “Hello, welcome.” Jumping Mouse was amazed at such a place and at this mouse who lived out here so independently and in the midst of such abundance. “You are truly a great mouse,” Jumping Mouse said, with all the respect that he could muster. “And this is truly a wonderful place, and the Eagles can’t see you here.” “Yes,” said old mouse, “this is a marvelous place. I can see all the beings of the prairie. I have plenty to eat, a nice place to live and I’m perfectly safe.” “This is marvelous,” Jumping Mouse said again, “And can you also see the river and those great mountains?”
“Well, yes and no,” said old mouse. “I mean, I know there is a great river, but I am sorry, you know, the mountains, those great mountains that’s only a myth. There is no such thing. You really want to set that aside and you know, you’re welcome to stay here with me if you like. There’s everything that you need and it’s a very good place to be.” Jumping Mouse thought, “How can he say such a thing about the mountains, I mean, I’ve only seen one glimpse of those sacred mountains and it is not something that I am able to forget.” And so he said to old mouse, “Thank you very much for the meal that you’ve shared with me and for your advice, and for your kind offer for me to live here with you too, but I have got to seek the mountains.”
“Well, you’re very foolish mouse leave here. There is danger out on the prairie. Just look up,” said old mouse. “You see all of those spots. They are all eagles and they will catch you.” This was true and it did make it very hard for Jumping Mouse leave. But finally he gathered up his courage and determination and he ran hard again. He ran and he ran and he ran and it was almost like he can feel the eyes in those spots up in the sky boring into his back. But he made it then to a large stand of chokecherries.
And he could hardly believe his eyes.
This spot was nice and cool and spacious. There was water. There were cherries and seeds to eat. There were grasses to gather for nests, holes to be explored. There were many, many, many things to occupy a busy mouse. He was investigating his new domain when he heard very heavy breathing. He went to the sound and it was coming from this huge mound of hair with black horns. And he realized it was a great buffalo. Jumping Mouse, he could, he could hardly believe the, the great scale and power and dignity of the Buffalo. I mean, he was so big that Jumping Mouse could have crawled into just one of his great horns. He crept a little bit closer.
The buffalo said, “Hello, my brother. Thank you for visiting me.” “Hello, great being,” said Jumping Mouse. “Why are you lying here?” “I’m sick,” the buffalo said. “I’m sick and I’m dying and the only thing that can save me is the eye of a mouse. That is the only cure. But my little brother, you see, there is no such thing as a mouse. And so, I am resigned to my death.” Jumping Mouse was shocked. He was surprised that the buffalo thought that there was no such thing as mice but, but more than that, he thought, “Oh my gosh, one of my eyes, one of my tiny eyes …” And he backed back into the choke cherries to a nice, cool and quiet place.
And he thought about the buffalo. “The buffalo will die if I don’t give him my eye. I have two and that buffalo, he’s too magnificent of a being to let die.” He went back to where the buffalo lay, and said, “I am a mouse. I am a mouse, and you my brother are magnificent being. I cannot let you die. I have two eyes, so you may have one of them.”
And as soon as he said that, one of jumping mouse’s eyes flew out of his head, and the buffalo was made whole. He got up to his feet, shaking and stamping the ground with joy, shaking Jumping Mouse’s whole world in the process. “Thank you. Thank you little brother,” said the Buffalo. “I know of your quest for the sacred mountains and of your visit to the river. I can help you get to the mountains. If you run under my belly, I will take you right to the foot of the sacred mountains. If you run under my belly, you need not fear the spots. The Eagles won’t be able to see you.”
Well, Jumping Mouse ran under the Buffalo and he was secure and hidden from the spots but with only one eye, it was pretty scary. It was a pretty scary run and the buffalo’s, great, huge hooves shook the ground every time he took a step. And Jumping Mouse was a little bit afraid of getting crushed but of course, Buffalo knew where he put his feet.
When they got to the edge of the prairie buffalo said, “This is where I have to leave you. I can’t go any further.” “Thank you very, very much” said Jumping Mouse, and when the buffalo left he began to investigate his new surroundings. This place was even more lush, it was even richer in seeds and grasses and other things that mice like, than any of the other places he had been before. And while he was looking around and taking stock of this new spot, he came across a grey wolf, who was just sitting there doing absolutely nothing at all.
“Hello, brother Wolf,” Jumping Mouse said. The wolf’s ears came alert and his eyes shone. “Wolf Wolf,” he said, “Yes, that’s what I am. I am a wolf.” But the moment passed very quickly and his mind dimmed and it wasn’t long before he was perfectly quiet and still again. Jumping Mouse reminded him again, “Wolf, brother Wolf. “And once again, the wolf came to life for just a moment. And after a time, Jumping Mouse realized that the wolf had lost his memory, and so his sense of who he was. He went to the center of this new place and sat quietly and he listened for a long time, to the beating of his heart. Jumping Mouse thought about the Buffalo and the power of that one tiny mouse eye and suddenly he made up his mind. And he went back to the wolf and said, “Brother Wolf, please listen to me. I know what will heal you. It’s one of my eyes. You are a greater being than I am. I am only a mouse. Please take it.” As soon as Jumping Mouse stopped speaking, his other eye flew out of his head, and the wolf was made whole.
Tears of gratitude rolled down the cheeks of the wolf. But his little brother Jumping Mouse cannot see them, for now he was blind. “You are a great brother,” said the wolf. “Now I have my memory and I know who I am. But now you are blind. I am a guide to the sacred mountains. I will take you there. There is a great medicine lake there it is the most beautiful lake in the world. All of the world is reflected there.” “Please take me there,” Jumping Mouse said.
The wolf guided Jumping Mouse through the pines to the lake and led him to the shore. Jumping Mouse took a drink. They sat together and the wolf described the beauty that was all around him, and then he said, “I must leave you here. I must return so that I can guide others. But I will stay for as long as you like.” “Thank you,” said Jumping Mouse. “I’m very frightened to be alone but I know that you must go so that you can lead others to this place.”
Wolf left and Jumping Mouse sat on the edge of the lake, trembling in fear. It was no use running for he was blind. And he knew that now an eagle would find him. He felt a shadow on his back, and he heard the sound that Eagles make and he braced himself for the shock. And the eagle hit. Jumping Mouse went to sleep.
And then he woke up.
He was greatly surprised to find that he was alive. And now he could see! Everything was very blurry but the colors were beautiful. “I can see, I can see,” said Jumping Mouse over and over and over again. A shape came towards him and a familiar voice said “Hello brother. Do you remember how you got your sacred medicine power?” “Oh, yes,” said Jumping Mouse. “Then,” said the voice, “crouch down as low as you can and jump up as high as you can.”
Jumping Mouse did as he was instructed. He crouched as low as he could, and he jumped and the winds caught him and carried him higher and higher. “Do not be afraid” the voice called to him, “hang on to the wind and trust.”
Jumping Mouse opened his eyes and they were clear, and he went higher and higher into the sky. He looked down and he saw his old friend frog on the lily pad in the middle of medicine lake. “You have a new name ,”called the frog. “You are Eagle.”
You are Eagle. That’s the end of the story. And you know, it’s a deceptively simple little story about a lowly creature, a mouse, and yet there is so much that one could unpack. There’s the mouse, the journey, the frog, the other helpers, the metaphor of the eyes, the notion of vision, the transformation. I encourage you to spend some time with whatever detail in the story attracted your attention.
What got us going on this story together? There is that roar. I want to say a little bit more about that and what it has to do with those questions at the beginning of this podcast, the question of how to be true to yourself, the question of how to live with heart, the question of the commitment and the courage.
That roaring is a call, is it not? A call to the calling? The call that happens at the beginning of what Joseph Campbell described as the hero’s journey. Now, as Campbell outlined in his very famous book, “Hero with a Thousand Faces,” there might be many reasons that a person or a mouse would attempt to ignore the call. It may seem, could be, a very bad idea. And it also, on what I think is a more subtle level, may present a possibility that simply doesn’t have any place in your world view. In the case of Jumping Mouse, his call–that roar– was a call to his own self, wasn’t it? The transformation into the eagle, the journey to the mountain. These are metaphors for realizing your deepest spiritual aspirations; for becoming fully who you are. And we see that at the beginning, it wasn’t like someone came to the mouse and said, “Hey, you can be really incredible. You can actually be an eagle, you don’t have to live as a mouse. All you have to do is make this majorly scary and dangerous journey.” No, it started out as this roaring, this sound that had no place in the world as he knew it. That was both an irritant and a source of curiosity, something that posed a mystery. And his first courageous step was a step against his own disbelief and his own sense of who he was, and how his world could work.
Very great things can begin with very small moves. As I was thinking about this story, I thought of this example from my own life, actually something I haven’t thought about for a really long time. Years ago, when I was still running a national network of environmental and public interest organizations, living a life quite different from the one that I live right now, I got this idea that I wanted to make a paper mache tree. You know, not a three dimensional thing but a paper mache sculpture, a dimensional tree that I could hang on my wall. I wanted to make it out of paper mache and I wanted to paint it. And this was a completely bizarre idea. It had nothing to do with the way that I was living. I loved art, I studied art, but I certainly was not an artist. It was the weirdest thing.
But that idea I kept coming to me. I would go to bed at night and it would come into my mind before I went to sleep. And when I was driving on my way to work, it would come into my mind. And finally, I felt like I had no choice but to make this damn paper mache tree. I won’t attempt to tell you every move and every step, but I will say that that was the first piece of art that I made as an adult. And it was through art, that I discovered depth psychology, and it was through art and depth psychology, that I discovered myth.
So, I want to invite you to reflect on your own life and think back to a time when you may have heard a roaring, something small. You responded, or maybe there’s something going on right now, maybe there’s a roaring that you’re hearing right now that you’re ignoring, that you can make a turn towards. Wherever you are in the story, consider what happened, what is happening?
How does it feel? And can you take that moment in your life and set it in the backdrop of this story? Where are you on this journey? If you’ve begun it, are you resting with the old mouse under the sage bush? Have you seen the mountains yet? Have you met the buffalo? Where are you in this important process of listening to the roaring in your own ears and following it? To discover for yourself, what demands your commitment and can elicit from you an unimaginable measure of courage. If you would like to share any details about your experience with me, feel free to email me with your comments, your stories, your questions.
Before I go, I want to mention that I have a new offering online that operates on a principle very similar to the invitation that I make to you in this podcast, to meditate on your moment in the story. It’s called the Story Oracle and in brief, I offer one on one divination readings, using stories designed to help you tap into the wisdom of the story and that substrata of your own psyche, where the answers that you need already reside. There are more details about that at my website, www.mythicmojo.com. And I will leave it to you to investigate if that sounds interesting.
I want to welcome all of the new subscribers and give a major shout out to all of my patrons and supporters, the people who by virtue of their monthly contributions on Patreon, and Bandcamp, make this podcast possible. If you have the means and you’re finding value in Myth Matters, I hope you will consider joining them.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself in these crazy times. And until next time, happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life.
Useful links:
Link to Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart edited by Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/stories-of-the-spirit-stories-of-the-heart_christina-feldman/263139/#isbn=0062503006&idiq=4013951
