Today's reflection has been written by Head of Listening Service, Nicola James. Trunks and Tales This is the story of the elephant who never forgets. My mother is losing her memory and is returning to childhood tales that my sister reads to her each night. This morning I am remembering one such - the familiar story of the elephant. Take a group, any group of people, ask them each to close their eyes and place their hand on the same elephant. What each person feels beneath their hand and how they interpret it is determined by where their hand happens to fall. A hand on the tail is perceived as a snake and so on - different beliefs based on experience, all correct from where they stand, but actually all the same elephant. This story reminded me of being in teams: from our first families, to peer groups, seminars and sometimes later our own families. How gloriously blended we are. And yet, each person with a different hand on the same matter. But what is this elephant we each share part knowledge of? What do we see when we open our eyes? Nothing like the perceptions we had formed in our mind’s eye. The creature we had imagined has been a projection of events past thrown into present substance and on whose presumptions we shape so much of our future. Our powerful imaginings are, in psychological terms, ‘introjections’ – the formative experiences we have had are internalised and take whatever fixed shape we conceive them to be, projecting them out into the world as both our positive and negative prejudices which can open or limit our choices and our lives. The collective of our individual projections becomes the team’s ‘group dynamic’ as together we try to make sense and shape of the team in which we find ourselves. Yet most groups persist, however hard it is, gathering around, learning by experience to see directly with the heart’s eye rather than with the mind’s. We also learn to wait and so better discern what is projection and what is not, where truth lies as we poise, child-like, waiting for our group’s story to begin. Then if we allow it, into the stillness the elephant comes, tentatively at first, but evidently now bejewelled, every colour of the people in the room and beyond – all part of the same creature. It carries us all over the world, on its strong back and trunk and tail and we are borne along together and are glad. The elephant has come to us with tales and memories of the longest journey, its great Spirit weaving our stories into its own. Later, we may go back to the quiet place and find the elephant gone. We know it was there and because of this we know to wait, seeing with our heart’s eye - it comes into view - never the same elephant, but brilliant and bright in hue. And it is of course a real elephant this time! This is the story of the elephant of the Creation Story who never forgets us. Image This article was published on 2024-06-24
