The Two Wolves
A while back I saw a post on social media that shared a piece of ancient Native American wisdom.
It said, “Inside each of us are two wolves. A good wolf, and a dark wolf. They are constantly at battle with each other. The one that wins, is the one you feed.”
Now whether or not that is in fact from Native American heritage or just something someone made up because it would be cool is yet to be determined. After all, I saw it on the internet, and we all know the famous quote from Abraham Lincoln that stated “You can’t believe everything you see on the internet.”
The fact is, that it is nonetheless a powerful metaphor.
In Jewish mysticism we have a similar concept. Every man (in this case referring to humankind) has two souls. A godly soul and an animal soul.
How these two souls are practically defined and their correlation to day to day life is a discussion for another time. The short if it though is that the godly soul is driven by more spiritual motivators, while the animal soul is driven by more physical motivators.
There are those people out there who would say that we must stay away from the physical, that physicality is bad and we must live a purely spiritual life.
There are those who may feel the exact opposite, that we must live a life rooted in this world and this world alone.
We can go our entire lives fighting this battle, being pulled in two directions. Should we be more spiritual? Maybe we should be more physical? How do we know which one is right or wrong.
The answer…which one are you going to feed?
At any given moment we could need one or the other. Sometimes both at the same time. The tricky part is learning when to feed which side.
There are times in our life when we need to be more spiritual. Other times when we need to be more grounded. And then there are times when we need both.
The wolf you feed, and the path you pursue depends on the direction you need to go. At the end of the day you need to feed the wold that will get you closer to your goals. You need to tap into the area where there is lacking. Fill it up, and use it to fuel you moving forward.
Find your inner wolf. Feed it.
