We are a species enamoured with and mesmerized by our own stories. Our myths and unwinding recollections permeate not only all that we do but all that we seem to become. And yet, ’story’ can only live in the past or the future while our body can only live in the moment of the current breath.
We live in the ’now’ where there is no story – there is only the experience of the moment. The story of the experience is not the experience itself. The map is not the territory. We’re born into family systems that design the story for who we are supposed to be and unless, as adults, we choose to test that story and create a new one for ourselves, we’re stuck with it as ‘fact’ or ’truth’ or ‘reality’.
Our stories demand two things: language (visual or auditory cues); and the necessity of removing ourselves from the presenting moment and journeying back into the past or out into the future. We must leave ourselves. We must leave our ability to sense and calibrate for the moment we are in, in order to bring our stories to life. Both of these separate us from the moment; create distance in time and space; and lead us to being the ‘recounter of’ …. the observer to…. our experience – and powerless to have impact. No good can ever come from abandoning the Self.
The past – and its story – is not a roadmap to the future. Simply tracking the past and logging its corresponding data makes no difference. What does matter is not the recognition of that data but the degree to which we digest and metabolize the lessons it has brought us, for our own evolution. If we learn from the past and we further become and we evolve, the evolution proves useful – but the inventory is not.
I need to make choices based on my direct experience and not on the stories that I’m being told by others or telling myself; based on my direct experience of my own calibrations of what’s going on around me and choose from that. I need to notice how what is going on around me is a reflection of what is going on inside me. And perhaps most of all, I need to stop relying on the stories that others tell no matter what supposed authority they might represent.
Imagine a life without any story, at all! Imagine a life lived fully in each passing moment…. from one breath to the next… allowing what presents to lead. For that, we would have to develop capacity for welcoming the unknown; develop comfort in chaos; and trust in the genius of our own body to take the lead. I have lost my desire to calibrate and interpret the illusions/stories of others. Those are for them to recognize – or not; and to either learn from and discover the greater ‘me’ that awaits – or not. What now draws me is to find the key to, at will, remove myself from my own self-designed and self-imposed illusions. All the rest is the waste of a good life.
The story I shared in my email of a few minutes ago to you and Sheila and the others I have been journeying with through the WEL-Systems BOK has no significance really to anyone else. A story yes, and a timely discovery in light of your words here. A soundbite out of time, triggering a flood of memories, indicative of the inspiration and environment I steeped my 17 year old self in. It is exactly the digestion of the notions I held then and how I have metabolized those notions (along with many others) over the last 45 odd years. Hah! So strangely invigorating; absolutely keys to my personal evolution. Yes Louise you are right if we learn from the past and we further become and we evolve, the ‘story’ may prove useful, freeing even.