The Tale Of The Two Pebbles
For Every Problem There Is A Solution
Many years ago in a small Chinese village a farmer owed a large sum of money to the local moneylender, a thoroughly unpleasant man who fancied his beautiful daughter. When the farmer fell behind with his payments, the lender called in the loan and demanded that the whole remaining sum should be paid at once. As the farmer could not possibly do this, the lender proposed that if he could marry the farmer’s daughter, he would consider the debt as paid in full.
The farmer and his daughter were so horrified that they could not accept this offer. So the cunning lender asked: ‘How about allowing providence to decide the matter for us? If I place a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag, your daughter needs to pick one of them.
• If she picks the black pebble, she will become my wife and your debt will be paid in full.
• If she picks the white pebble she does not need to marry me, but your debt will still be fully redeemed.
• If she refuses to pick a pebble, you have to go to jail.’
The three people were standing on a pebble strewn path in the farmer’s field and whilst explaining what he had in mind, the moneylender picked two pebbles from the ground. Ah, but the girl was a sharp-eyed one, she noticed that the lender had chosen two black pebbles. Putting them into his bag, he turned to her and asked her to pick one of them.
The situation is a dire one. Imagine you are the daughter. What are you going to do? Or if you had to advise her, what would you tell her? It seems she has three options:
1. She refuses to take a pebble and her father goes to jail.
2. She speaks up and reveals that two black pebbles are in the bag and therefore exposes the money-lender as a cheat.
3. She picks one of the black pebbles and sacrifices herself to release her father from his debt and save him from imprisonment.
Hesitating for a moment and listening within for her inner guidance, she knew intuitively what she had to do. She put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble without actually looking at it. Seemingly sunk in thought, she fumbled with it for a moment and as if by accident dropped the stone onto the path, where it was immediately lost among the other pebbles. ‘Oh, how clumsy of me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Please, forgive me. But never mind, if you look into your bag at the remaining pebble, you will know which one I picked.’
As the pebble had been a black one and if the lender had been an honest man, it would have been safe to assume that the girl had chosen the white pebble. She knew that to save face, particularly important in China, the moneylender would rather die than admit his dishonesty. This is how the an apparently impossible situation as if by magic changed into a highly advantageous one.
The tale of the two pebbles is an old one and belongs to the realm of fables. Earlier interpretations connected it with the art of lateral thinking which, by definition is the solving of problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. In my view the pebble story has nothing to do with this kind of thinking and everything with intuitive knowledge and inner guidance. Could this perchance be what lateral thinking really is?
Come to think of it, it seems to me that whenever we do think laterally, it is our Highest Self who makes us work in order to practise and develop the skills of our earthly minds more fully. It is doing this by guiding us step by step through the field of knowledge that is familiar to us, until in the end – for a long time unbeknown to us, with Its help – we come to some surprising conclusions that may lead us into finding some quite unique and ingenious solutions for the problem in hand.
Be that as it may, I perceive the tale as an allegory for showing us how, with the help and the will of God and the Angels, solutions can always be found, even for the most difficult and complex problems. All we have to do is pay attention to our inner guidance, for that is the way our Highest Self communicates with us. Its protection and guidance is there for each one of us at all times, ready and waiting to be called upon. No matter how learned any small earthly self believes itself to be, genuine wisdom of the kind that appears in this tale has its origin in the wise one within. That is the only one in the whole of Creation who knows the answers to all our questions and can intuitively provide us with solutions for every one of our problems.
Therefore, let’s start each new day resting safely in the knowledge that by listening within we shall never be lost and always be finding our way. May each remaining day, week, month and year of our present lifetime be filled with positive thinking and sound decisions. And may the living God within grant all of us the intuitive wisdom that lifts our thinking above the boxes of our world.
* * *
The above is a chapter from ‘Astrology As A Lifehelp In Relationship Healing’.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘Astrology As A Lifehelp In Relationship Healing’
