Rainmaker

Carl Jung used to ask all his students, whenever they were lecturing to a new audience, to always tell the story of the Rainmaker, he considered it so important.

Richard Wilhelm, was a Sinologist – an expert on China. He had the distinction of translating one of the oldest books in China : the I Ching – the book of divination.
He was living in a Chinese village at the time when they were in the midst of a drought. The villagers had tried everything – prayers, sacrifices, chants… nothing. No rain. “Well, they decided, we have no choice, we have to send for the rainmaker.”

And so they did. Now Wilhelm was very curious – what sorts of miracles could he perform, and what would this look like. So he made sure he was there when the man arrived. So up the road comes this cart pulled by a donkey with a little old wizened man inside. When the cart stopped, the old man put his head out, sniffed the air, made a sour face and asked to be put up at the edge of the village. Which they did. No one saw him for 3 days, and on the 3rd day it not only rained, it poured.

Well! Was Wilhelm impressed . He hurried over to see the old man in his hut, saying to him. “That’s wonderful, so how did you make it rain?” “ Make it rain? Me? What nonsense! I just saw, when I arrived that these people were so far out of themselves, that it took me three days to get back into myself. Then of course it rained!”

Jung insisted that this story be told as often as possible to illustrate how much control over our environment we actually have. How much of our lives really depend on our inner life and how settled we are in ourselves. Being calm, centred, and “in” ourselves is incredibly important for our own well being and the well being of the world around us.

One of the most important points I’ll be making when I present before the TDSB and the Provincial government regarding a new elementary school curriculum, is that inner time is just as, if not more important than outer time. To educate children to start to be aware of their inner life, not just be pulled hither and yon in their outer life, with obligations, and rules and demands, should and have-to and even increasingly more and more demands as they age.

There needs to be that balance in every life, the realization that the outer is merely the manifestation of the inner. And to determine to nurture the inner. To be “in themselves”.

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