Alongside the parade of major civilizations and the processions of the great religions, the tracks of folktales and folk myths can be found. These little tales that often are dismissed as being simple draw upon traditional wisdom, draw upon Earth knowledge and archetypal themes. And whereas the great myths and the epic sagas of civilizations tend towards dramatic conclusions and even apocalyptic endings, the more humble folk myths and folk tales tend to escape the grand finales in order to live another day. Survival is a key note of folk tales, which can offer ways of understanding times of radical change, along with hints of how to survive periods of disaster.

In that sense, the folk in folktales are the original survivalists. They represent the long term memory, and even the primal imagination of humanity. They try to remind us that all that this has happened before, that people have faced the end many times and that humanity has lived to tell the tale. They often carry an awareness of the little redemptions that keep things going along, even when everything seems about to collapse all together. Unlike religious narratives, or scientific theories, folktales and folk myths do not require that we believe in them at all. And although they are frequently drafted into religious texts, and parables of morality, no one can truly own them.

In folk myths, it is not uncommon for animals to communicate essential knowledge as if to suggest that the wisdom lacking in human culture might be waiting to be found in the realms of nature. When the ideas and beliefs of a given time or a given culture wear thin and fail to carry the collective imagination of people, these age old stories can continue to encourage, to inspire and to instruct those who are willing to listen.

I think of these old stories and the wisdom that they carry often because these days we are in a folktale condition again, as we face seemingly impossible challenges and overwhelming tasks in both the realms of nature and the realms of culture. And like characters in an old story, we cannot simply escape the trouble that we find ourselves in. The only way out is to go through it. And the only way to go through it is to find some wisdom right here on Earth, the kind of wisdom offered by the enduring characters found in the timeless territories of folk myths.

Modern sciences have tracked the origins of human life all the way back to its roots in ancient Africa. And not surprisingly, the folk tales and folk myths of ancient Africa are the source of a multitude of tales about the origins of life, but also about the origins of death. Everything has to have a beginning, and in the ancient imagination of people, even death, which seems to be only about how things end, also had to begin somehow. It is meaningful to me, and may be helpful to all of us to know that some of the oldest origin tales involve a mistake that was made about both the nature of life on Earth and the origins of death.

One of the many tales about the critical mistake made at the beginning during the creation comes from the Akamba people of Kenya. The narrative starts right after the Earth had been created, and humans had been newly formed. And even while the resonance of the beginning was still fresh, the creator wanted to send a message to reassure the first people that death was part of life, not simply the end of it. At the moment, when the creator decided to send the message, it happened that both the chameleon and the weaver bird were near by,so the creator decided that one of them should carry the message to the first people.

It was the nature of the weaver bird to talk rather incessantly. And some things said by this prolific speaker were true, yet many things were not. On the other hand, the chameleon, who frequently changed its appearance, spoke very little. When the chameleon did speak, there was a higher proportion of truth in his words. So the creator decided to send the chameleon to bring the important message about death to the first people. The essence of the message was that even if people died, they would not die all together. That is to say the creator wished people to understand that they might rise up again after the experience of death.

The chameleon was happy to carry the message and set off on the divine errand. Although the chameleon had a great capacity to quickly change its appearance, it turns out that it was also in its nature to travel rather slowly. Meanwhile, the weaver bird had overheard the entire conversation with the Creator, and like many who would come along afterwards, the Weaver bird had a strong desire to be known as a messenger from God. Although the chameleon had a head start, it traveled rather slowly, and the weaver bird flying quickly arrived just as the first people had gathered to hear a message from the chameleon.

Like many who have to deliver an important message, the chameleon began to stutter. And seeing the opportunity, the Weaver bird intervened and spoke right up saying, what the creator wants you to know is that when people die, they will perish like the roots of a tree. That is what God wants you all to know. The chameleon tried to argue that the message of the weaver bird was mistaken. The message from the creator told the opposite story, that even if people died, they could rise up again after death.

Hearing these contrary messages, the first people became confused and began to argue themselves about the meaning of life and death on Earth. In the midst of all the confusion, people didn't know what to believe. And at that point, the magpie, who happened to simply be flying by offered an immediate opinion. And that bird said that the first message, the one delivered by the weaver bird, was the wise one. By then many people just wanted some relief from all the tension about the meaning of life and death. And the seeming certainty of the two birds convinced most people that death simply means the end. So despite the original message being sent by the Creator, most people came to believe that the presence of death simply meant a complete end of life. The creator had sent the right idea, but people got the wrong message.

One of the important messages delivered by this story is that the troubles in this world come not from some original sin, but rather from an original mistake. Of course, the confusion caused by that original mistake continues to be the way many things on earth go until this day. Most people still believe that death simply means the complete end of life. And that simple sense of finality tends to become enhanced and intensified whenever it seems like life has become dark and things are falling apart. The confusion caused by that original mistake also continues to be the way that many things on earth go until this day. Too often, those with the appearance of certainty become elevated above those who show signs of uncertainty or doubt. Yet, to doubt is human. And to be without doubt is to claim a certainty that is godlike and when people do that, life becomes more divided than it needs to be.

When times become hard again and when life is filled with confusion and uncertainty, false certainty can become more highly valued than the honest truth. This is especially the case when the truth is more challenging to face or more difficult to understand. And right now, just like back at the beginning the truth about life and death on Earth can only be found by standing in the tension between those two things long enough for the underlying, life-enhancing message to appear.

According to the old folktale, there have been false prophets from the very beginning. And in the strange way of the world, the chameleon, often known as a trickster, who is constantly changing appears as the real truth teller. Chameleons can seem to be unreliable because they change colors and alter their appearance. At the same time, chameleons were known to repeatedly renew themselves by shedding their skin, so that the chameleon is a naturally born symbol for embracing change instead of resisting it. The inherent capacity to transform and evident ability to renew are what aligns the chameleon with the deeper message that the creator of this world wanted all people to know.

It's also helpful to know that chameleons never stop growing, they transform throughout their lifetime. Like the serpents that shed their skins in order to be born again through sloughing off the old life, the chameleon is symbolic of the core mystery of life on Earth. And that ancient and immediate mystery was placed in many stories so that many people could find it and begin to understand it. And the core mystery simply put, is the age old pattern of life, death and renewal that secretly sustains both the realm of nature as well as the realm of human culture.

There are reasons why the truth is often placed within stories that speak in the language of symbols. The core truths of life can be hard to hear, and even harder to hold. Although essential to life, the mysteries are also difficult to communicate directly and thus can easily be misunderstood. This world turns out to be a living mystery, and part of the hidden message is that it is a mystery trying to be revealed. Mythic stories can be seen as a series of lies that reveal the truth. And when it comes to the issues of life and death, symbolic imagination becomes essential if the deeper truths would become known.

Unless the metaphorical sense of the story is engaged, the deeper meanings fail to become known, just as happened to the first people apparently. The sense that things can truly change and that life can be renewed is governed not simply by hopes for a better world, but by the possibility of understanding the nature of transformation. The word transformation means to move from one form to another, in the way that it appears to happen to chameleons and snakes. This kind of transforming requires a shedding of the old way of being and the revelation of something that was hidden within.

The essence of life is not simply change but an alchemy of existence that requires that something must die in order for something else to be born. So that the original message involves the hidden truth that death is not simply the end of life, but it is also in the middle of life. And it is in the middle of all the confusion and the chaos that the capacity to truly change or transform becomes possible. Unless we can recollect and reconnect to the psychological and spiritual sense of the life, death, rebirth mystery, we will fail to understand the times in which we live and we will find ourselves overwhelmed by the flood of changes and by the rising tide of misinformation and outright falsity.

The message that is so cleverly delivered in the old folk myth about the nature of life and death can also be found in most of the great myths of the world, as well as at the center of most religious beliefs and at the core of many great changes in the history of human culture like the Renaissance. The message is there because it is the core message about life on earth. It has to be in many places because it has to become known by many people. However, the original mistake keeps being repeated, and the message gets lost, especially when the time comes not simply for change but for a true transformation of life on Earth.

We are living in a time of upheaval when anything or everything can become conflicted, divided and polarized. It becomes easy to be lost in all of the confusion, the uncertainty, and to feel discouraged by the willingness of so many people to accept and even defend misinformation and false beliefs. However, just as in the story, it is in those contrary, contrasting, opposed conditions that the underlying message, the genuine message about life and death tries to become known again.

The fault of falling for false narratives has happened many times before. And although experiencing those kinds of conditions can be disheartening, there are also ways to understand it. Avidya is an old Sanskrit word that means ignorance but more than that, it means delusion. It also can be translated as being unlearned or being unwise. In all of those senses avidya describes what we are going through collectively, in these dark times when the issue is not simply ignorance, although that is an issue, but also delusions that are now often called conspiracy theories and tend to capture the minds of many people.

Avidya names the inner contradiction that can cause people to live in deep self denial, and even to defend their own blindness. Deeper than the memories of early life trauma, there can be found this avidya, this basic ignorance of who we are in our essence and the underlying reality that secretly connects everyone and everything in the universe. Avidya in Sanskrit is the opposite of the word vidya, the root of which is vid, which carries meanings like to know, to perceive, to see, to be able to envision and to understand. Avidya is a fundamental blindness about reality, not simply a lack of information that can be resolved with some new facts, but rather a veiling of the truth, and a darkness that can befall not simply individuals, but entire groups of people.

Just as in the old tale of the origins of death, the effect of avidya is to suppress the true nature of things, and to present something else in its place. Right now we could say that is happening to many people on earth. And the old folktale says that it has not only happened before, but it also happened all the way back at the beginning. In modern mass cultures, there is a greater tendency for people to derive their sense of self and of self worth from collective entities such as race or nationality, religion, or political affiliations. Having identified and more often over identified with collective ideas and values, people can feel deeply betrayed and personally diminished when the world becomes a place of radical changes that affect all aspects of human culture.

The growing levels of collective anxiety and uncertainty about the future of daily life can trigger an almost desperate need to be part of a protective group. And that desperate sense of a need for security and certainty sets up the willingness to accept not just disinformation, but outright false ideas in order to avoid the sense of losing one's identity and feeling lost. What we might all the veil of avidya causes a kind of trance state in which people become only aware of what's on the surface of life, while being increasingly distanced from their own deeper self, and the underlying realities of life on Earth.

If we imagine that we are at the place in the old folk myth where many of the people are becoming overwhelmed with the intensity and the endurance of the division into opposing sides, it becomes easier to understand how characters like the weaver bird and the magpie not only keep showing up, but become elevated to positions of authority and leadership. It also becomes more clear how arguing with people who have accepted the mistaken, misguided message and have embraced it and to one degree or another, replaced their own sense of self with it can be not only exhausting, but possibly futile.

Eventually the question becomes where do we turn when the outer conflicts intensify and the inner anxieties and uncertainties multiply? And the old folk myth suggests that we turn back to the beginning, that in a sense, we return to the origins of life, and the origins of death, and the message trying to be delivered by the Creator, or if you prefer by the archetype of creation.

The loss of shared truths in the outer world must be balanced by a greatest sense of inner truth in the heart and soul of each person. This kind of awakening within involves a conscious connection to a deeper sense of self, which then becomes the unifying factor in each life. The real challenge has always been to become truly oneself in the midst of all the conflicts and confusions in the outside world. When the center cannot hold outside, and everything becomes divided, the individual must find a deeper sense of psychic ground and inner meaning to turn to in order to avoid the sense of overwhelm and despair that can come when life seems to fall apart. We need to tap the deep resources of our own self and soul, which can connect us to the timeless roots of imagination, but also to the endless energies of creation. In the old ways of understanding things, creation is not something that happened way back before time, but rather, creation is the ongoing process of life on Earth. And we are each secretly being invited to join in the process of recreation, which is the essence of the mystery of transformation.

Like the chameleon in the story, we have to become more comfortable with many changes happening at the same time. And although we may suffer great uncertainty and have our doubts, we need to find our own individual connections to the message that secretly echoes in the soul of each person. That is to say, that death is not the end of everything, but rather it is often the center of everything trying to change and renew. And we are each at the level of our deeper self or soul, recipients of the message that life can renew. And we are also by virtue of the archetype of creation, inheritors of the capacity to not simply change but to transform our own lives. And as many ancient stories say, all change begins within, and when enough people change from within, then the world outside can also change. And an echo of that original message that still has a hard time getting through to people would be, what changes the soul, or what changes enough souls, can eventually change the world.