"God made man because He loves stories.*When God lived, and man belonged, psychology was no more than "a minor branch of the art of storytelling and mythmaking." Today each man must work at telling his own story if he is to be able to reclaim his personal identity.
Should he start out on a psychotherapeutic pilgrimage, he sets out on an adventure in narration. Everything depends on the telling. The "principle of explanation consists of getting the story told - somehow, anyhow - in order to discover how it begins." The basic presumption is that the telling of the tale will itself yield good counsel. This second look at his personal history can transform a man from a creature trapped in his past to one who is freed by it. But the telling is not all.
Along the way, on his pilgrimage, each man must have the chance to tell his tale. And, as each man tells his tale, there must be another there to listen. But the other need not be a guru. He need only rise to the needs of the moment. There is an old saying that when ever two Jews meet, if one has a problem, the other automatically becomes a rabbi."
* as originally told by Elie Wiesel, The Gates to the Forest 1966 Holt, Rinehart, & Winston
The book that quote comes from is called If You Meet The Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! written by Sheldron Drake in 1972. I've not read it yet, but it sounds like it might be interesting -
"The Zen Master warns: "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him!" This admonition points up that no meaning that comes from outside ourselves is real. The Buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it. Killing the Buddha on the road means destroying the hope that anything outside of ourselves can be our master. We must each give up the master without giving up the search. The importance of things lies in the way we have learned to think about them. How often we make circumstances our prison and other people our jailers! At our best we take full responsibility for what we do and what we choose not to do. The most important struggles take place within the self."
