It has been said that children’s fairy tales have a deeper meaning than merely as entertainment and are also teaching stories. The teaching story when read or spoken can reveal hidden conditioning within us that creates confusion in our daily lives.
In the story of Sleeping Beauty, the evil Queen wants to kill Sleeping Beauty because the mirror on the wall threatens her vanity with not being the fairest of them all.
Last night I heard a director of a show I have entered talking about a really talented guitar player. I didn’t recognize the envy in me until I heard the phrase above.
I was awakened to the fact that it was a “not I” within me that had been hiding. Then I asked where it came from and discovered it was childhood ideals taught by church and parents. We were not allowed to say or think that we were good and worse yet we were not allowed to love ourselves.
So we were to speak with humility even if we didn’t believe it in order to escape disapproval and judgement.
Further, this set up a field for us to compare ourselves to anybody thereby creating unpleasant emotions of insignificance and judging ourselves rather than seeing we are all very different which is beautiful because it gives rise to different tastes and different talents—all needed in this manmade world.
The other field it sets up is one of competition. Though competition if viewed as a motivation to practice to get better at what we love and want to do, it is harmful to my way of thinking that only one can be best. That leaves everyone else feeling a lack. This has been observed as really harmful wit setting ideals and goals of winning evidenced by contests, races, beauty pageants and the like which set up joy for only the winner and the rest are beset with unpleasant emotions which are destructive to the human body for an impossible ideal.
Further, this concept sets up an internal war of conflict, struggle and resistance. Instead of acceptance of what is and agape for self and others.
A simple definition of agape is that of seeing all others as doing the only thing they can with what light (conditioning) they have experienced in their lives so they feel they are right, proper or have justified their behavior.
There is a better description on the webpage. https://marshasummers.org/innerman/agape.htm