Skillful deception

The Seven Shapes understood that until the writings of One Daily Tale reached the majority of the Espers, many would continue to act unaware of their own inner Shadow—and how it often moved on their behalf.

Eklea, the Shape of Awareness, perhaps had the most difficult task: to make it clear that skillful deception by others could be used. For some, empathy might be lacking, or they might not yet have studied the courses on wisdom by Vati, and so they could still act with only their own selfish goals in mind.

“So, how do you perceive this kind of skillful deception?” asked a young Esper.

“Here is a little story. Long ago, in a faraway land, a cunning king offered a monkey three chestnuts in the morning and four in the evening, which made the monkey angry—but then he changed it to four in the morning and three in the evening, which made the monkey happy.”

“The difficult part isn’t only to recognize the king’s cunning; it is to see how we often act ourselves like those monkeys, flattered by words or gifts, blinded from seeing the truth.”