The Man, the Woman, and the Lake

Part 1.

    A man stood by a lake staring at himself.
    "I am so sad," thought the man.
    A traveller passing by noticed the man standing there. "I am beautiful!" The traveller exclaimed. "Come see all the people that call me beautiful!"
    Curious, the man followed the traveller as he showed him all the people that called him beautiful.
    "All of these people call him beautiful," thought the man, "so he must be beautiful." The man looked at the traveller and saw that he was happy. "I am unhappy," the man thought to himself. "If everyone called me beautiful I would be happy."
    The man then looked at himself. "I am not beautiful. No one will call me beautiful and I will not be happy if I am ugly." Looking around and wondering how he could make himself beautiful, the man noticed the mud on the ground and himself. "This mud makes me unclean," he thought, "but it also hides my ugliness." Thinking this thought, he took some mud and covered all of the parts of himself that he thought other people would consider ugly. He then went to the traveller and presented himself.
    "This man is beautiful!" The traveller exclaimed. All the surrounding people agreed.
    "It worked," thought the man, "but now I am unclean! How can I be both beautiful and clean?" Wondering this, he looked again at the mud. "If I cover my eyes with mud," he thought, "then how will I know it I am clean or unclean? I will have to rely on what people tell me I am, because I will not know myself." Having decided, the man took some of the mud and covered his eyes with it.
    "Now I will always be happy," thought the man, "because I am both beautiful and clean." For a long time the man went through life in this way: whenever someone told him that there was a spot on him that was not beautiful, he covered that spot with mud. He would then spit mud in their ears and tell them, "I was always this way," adding a little more mud to his eyes.
    As time went on, and as the man met more and more people, his list of admirers grew and grew.
    "All of these people tell me I am beautiful," thought the man. "Everyone thinks I am perfect! No one can find a flaw with me. I cannot find a flaw with myself, so I must be perfect! I must be a god!"
    The people that knew the man praised him highly with their mouths and so the number of his followers increased greatly.

Part 2.

    One day a woman saw him add mud to himself.
    "He is not a god," she thought. "He is just a man." She said nothing though because she knew that no one is a god and everyone adds mud to himself.
    "I have added mud to myself," she thought. "I cannot despise him for something I have done myself."
    Time went by, and the woman watched him add more and more mud to himself.
    "I have never done this," she thought angrily. "This is not right." Thinking this thought, she confronted him.
    "You added mud to yourself!" She yelled at him. The man was taken aback.
    "I added mud to myself?" He wondered. Then he remembered that he was a god. "Gods do not add mud to themselves," he thought, "so she must have been wrong." Turning away from her, he put some mud in his mouth.
    Turning back to her, he spat it into her ears and eyes. "You are wrong! I did not add mud to myself!"
    The mud covered her ears and she did not hear the lie in his words. The mud that went in her eyes hid the mud on the man from her sight.
    "He is not lying," she thought to herself. "He truly believes that he did not add mud to himself. I cannot see any mud on him. I must have been wrong." More time went by and the woman spied him adding mud to himself again.
    "You did add mud to yourself!" She yelled. "You were lying to me! I am a fool to have trusted you!"
    "Did I?" The man wondered. "Perhaps I did. She can see me. I cannot see myself. See must know me better than I know myself."
    The man spat some more mud in her ears. "I did not know what I was doing!" He wept. Pleading with her he begged, "Please forgive me!"
    The mud covered her ears so she did not hear his insincerity. She forgave him but warned him not to do it again. The man promised that he would not do it again, but now he was afraid. "I did not know I was doing it," he thought, "so how will I know if I do it again?" He voiced none of his fears to her though, and added a little bit of mud to his chest.
    As the woman watched the man continue to add mud to himself and saw the sincerity of each his following apologies, she realized that he was blind to what he was.
    "I will show him that he is blind so that he will see himself, because he has hidden what he truly is from me." It took many confrontations for him to admit that he was blind and then even more for him to realize that she did not know who he was because he had hidden himself from her. "I am blind to what I am and have hidden myself from everyone else!" He cried. "How can I know who I am?"
    Desperately he tried to claw the mud from his blinded eyes, but it had been there so long that it had hardened to clay and refused to come off. Despairing, he wandered blindly until he found himself back by the lake.
    "Please help me!" He cried to the lake.
    "Dip your face in me," he felt the lake saying to him. "I will show you who you are."
    Racked with grief and agony, the man plunged his head under the surface of the water. Coming up gasping for air, he looked at his reflection. "I am filthy!" He wept. "I am covered in mud!"
    "Give yourself to me," whispered the lake, "and I will make you clean."