Once there was a woman, (and that woman was me) who went to a personal development course to further chart her path in life and take a look at some things that were not working and why. One of the things that was not working was her prosperity and happiness level. Her self esteem sucked, and because of that low sense of self love she tended to attract bad events, which made her feel even worse, which attracted more bad events.... each time it got harder to pick up the bits of faith and start again.
    Feeling stuck, she attended the course thru a mercy loan from a friend.

At this course, she learned to call a 'round and round like a rat in a cage' pattern like that a "negative effect cycle". So she spotted the cycle and knew from long ago that she 'attracts that which occurs', but recognizing that she had the cycle only made her feel worse. She inwardly browbeat herself for having the negative cycle and low self esteem in the first place. It was something she considered herself "too spiritually evolved" to have in her head.

Fortunately she realized what she was doing... the in-effectiveness of continuing that thread of thought. It was simply more of the same cycle. Shit! Feeling a bit trapped by her own mental behavior, she put up her hand and when the microphone was brought to her, she stood and related to the 150 or so gathered in the room, the stuck place she was in. Then she sat down and gave the mic. back.
    The facilitator smiled, and related back to her an approximation of what she had said, to be sure he and everyone had understood her clearly. He was a sweet, wise, witty and wonderful fella by the name of Jim Sorenson.

Then he told a story about a fish.
    A beautiful sleek, fat Northern Pike, predator fish of the cold northern Canadian lakes.

It looks like an alligator with fins, one quarter of it's body is head, jaws and sharp teeth... the rest fins and a body built for speed, dark dappled green to hide it from unwary prey. No brain at all, hardly. An almost purely instinctive creature.

This fish had not gotten away... it had been caught live, and was being used in an experiment by a place of science that was studying the behavior of fish.
    They put it in a wide roomy tank, and dumped in lots of live minnows. They watched as this fish -Zoomm- scooped up the minnows and ate them like nothing. Swam straight at them and scooped them up un it's huge jaws, swallowing them live while zooming after the next one. Nature's creature in it's element, doing what it was meant to do.
    The scientists took notes and made films of the speed of it, and it's lunges at the minnows, and how it seemed to keep on eating as many minnows as they put in the tank.
    The more minnows it ate, the more energy it had to catch and eat minnows.
    The Pike thrived. The experiment continued.

The scientists let the Pike eat all of the minnows in the tank. Then they placed in the tank a tall cylinder of bulletproof plexiglass, taller than the depth of the tank, and put the minnows inside of the cylinder.

The Pike saw the minnows and zoom- the famous lunge towards the bait that has made it such a popular sporting fish... WHAM!! as the Pike bounced off the bulletproof glass...

The Pike seemed to give it's head a shake, and went after the minnows again, a speedy lunge, and another reverberating recoil as the great fish bounced off the transparent barrier between it and it's proper food. Again and again it lunged, a kamikaze fish in it's lack of understanding the simple barrier that blocked it. It's nose grew ragged, still it bravely went after the minnows, half stunned by it's own efforts, bashed senseless against the plexiglass, it still continued going after it's prey.

After days of struggle the tired hurt fish circled the invisible barrier, only occasionally becoming desperate enough to try to get the minnows again. Finally, it ignored the minnows altogether, swimming aimlessly around the tank.

This was the point of the experiment the scientists were most interested in. They removed the cylinder, and dumped in tons of minnows. They made videos and took notes as the Pike continued to ignore the minnows. It's instincts had been broken. It starved to death in that tank, surrounded by schools of it's favorite food swimming freely within reach of the big sharp jaws that nature had given it to survive.

Hearing this story made me angry.
ANGRY!!
Red and white hot rage filled my body, outrage that someone would dare to take this beautiful sleek creature of Goddess, and treat it so badly!

What a horrible thing to do to a fish!!

I have caught Northern Pike and eaten them, as a child, that is why I know them so well, and I was OUTRAGED that someone would take such a gorgeous wild living creature and so turn it against it's instincts that it starved to death in the midst of plenty...

That last thought for some reason gave me pause... it rang oddly in my mind.

... and there was the still, small voice that observes, and it said to me ironically, "why are you so upset about it?"

And my jaw dropped open in a light dawning on a whole big realization that I WAS the fish. Holy Shit!! My rage evaporated in an awe of compassion for my own wild instinctual self, so bent out of shape by life events I wouldn't dare eat a minnow if it bit me on the nose.
    The laughter and tears came that are the mark of real truth, and understanding of truth...

I was the creature that had been so turned against it's instincts that it starved in the midst of plenty... I had bashed myself bloody against glass cylinders long ago, trying to fulfill my needs... and the barriers were long gone, except in my mind.
    The negative effect cycle, of self criticism and failure, my instincts turned inside out by my formative life experiences. These were the shadow memories of the hard plexiglass walls of my past.

I felt a huge wave of love and forgiveness for all of my failures, missed opportunities and self sabotage strategies. Understanding.
    Remembered frustration turned to wisdom as I realized love for my inner fish... and that I am not a fish... I could regain my instincts. Learn to recognize the barriers of my remembered pain, and patiently learn to dissolve them, one by one. I knew it would be like learning to walk over again, I might fall 1000 times before I got anywhere.

I knew I would need something to hang onto to remind me to forgive myself, to be gentle every time I fell into the downward spiral of self criticism and worry that had been my programming.
    I chose a memory of my anger at the unjust treatment of the fish, a mantra against self criticism: "What a terrible thing to do to a fish!".
    My inner fish asking for mercy, to be rehabilitated and treated with kindness.
    That was years ago, and I did fall down a lot more than 1000 times, sometimes I still do fall into the self judgement, criticism and worry trap. The mantra, repeated so many times over years gradually softened into a reminder: "Be kind to the fish".

There is a beautiful, strong sleek Northern Pike in my mind, and it swims free in a clear mountain lake, and Goddess provides all of the minnows it's wide jaws can lunge and snatch. And it does eat up the minnows with speed and grace, as Goddess intended for it to do. And if sometimes, across it's dim fishy memories there is a flash of fear in the minnow's sparkle, as if hard invisible barrier lay between it and it's dinner, the next flash of sunlight will show the minnow clearer, and the old memory of pain will not hinder the fish from it's meal.