Living Our Stories
“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” — Richard Powers, The Overstory
My curiosity these days is wrapped up in exploring how the stories we tell ourselves about living, particularly those running constantly in our subconscious minds, shape our perceptions of what it means to be alive, and how each choice we make about where and how to pay attention feeds one of those stories. Learning to notice how our reservoir of physical energy is fed by the quality of attention we pay to whatever we choose to focus on can help uncover those stories. Learning to notice the habitual actions we take in response to that energetic effect provides an opening to the point of power that always and only exists in the present moment, where choice is possible. Practicing paying attention to the body’s energetic response to where the mind’s focus lands gradually makes it easier to briefly pause before acting, then choose whether or not to send the particular ripple effect of any potential action into life’s communal flow.
Kahlil Gibran said: “The body is the harp of the soul.” We can learn to play that harp beautifully with ongoing, deepening practice, sending out ever more clear melodies of resilience and love by tuning into the body’s energetic responses to perceptions and choosing where and how to pay attention. Habitual thought and action patterns create physical brain synapses, which can be fed or allowed to whither depending on how we tune into the subconscious stories they hold. A continuing exploration for me asks the question: How can various kinds of speech and action support resilient life in ourselves, our families, communities and throughout the wider diversity of interconnected living beings?
Over the course of my life I’ve learned that some stories serve to open minds and hearts to mystery, wonder, joy, love and creative interdependent thriving. Others set and reinforce thought boundaries to insulate minds and hearts in search of safety and security, closing them to the possibility that elements of broader, deeper truths are contained in some of the ideas that challenge those imaginary boundaries. To cement an illusion of safety and security for these physical bodies, and the selves so often associated with them in this confusingly complex world, strict limits on curiosity and exploration are often demanded by those offering stories to support that illusion. Strictly bounded stories like these create community by designating ingroups and outgroups, depending on where those limits of curiosity and exploration are set. That division motivates the ingroup to righteously defend against the spread of ideas held by the outgroup. Over time that defense also leads to accusation, which inevitably fosters increasing levels of fear and violent rejection of everything about the outgroup, not just their ideas. The intensity of that rejection correlates with the level of fear of “the others” ignited by the ingroup’s stories.
Many people are becoming increasingly afraid as a result of wider access to information about the momentous challenges humanity is facing everywhere on the planet, from climate change to overpopulation to ever-increasing numbers of species extinctions and the disastrous effects of the global military industrial complex that only a couple of generations ago looked to most people like a great engine of progress. As a result we live in a time when perceiving the world in ways that foster resilient community within the intricate natural web of diverse cultures and bioregions can be hard to find and sustain. A safe, respectful, civil and culturally acceptable space for seeking and hearing the heartfelt stories of those whose belief systems contradict our own is too often missing. In the din of accusation and defense, many cultural stories have become rigid, brittle and ultimately violent.
A daily creative writing practice has long been my most reliable tool for imagining a path out of that mess and into a future that will instead support cultural stories of all kinds to flex and bend enough to weave something life-giving and new from humanity’s common challenges. This practice is my way of tuning into the harp of my being in search of stories that can serve thriving planetary life rather than divide humanity and defend against the natural world, which produced life and is too often imagined to be separate from, less important and completely other than the human community.
My writing practice involves showing up first thing in the morning nearly every day, for at least an hour, following some meditation time before rising from bed. After brewing and drinking one sacred cup of caffeinated coffee, I read a few pages of challenging nonfiction to uncover the well of inspiration from which words rise to the surface and flow without judgement onto a virtual page. On other days, like this one, I return to play with those words in an unrestrained editing process, staying with the wordsmithing dance until a heart-felt resonance tells me the message is complete. Partially completed pieces are often put aside to be revisited later, awaiting ideas more alive with energy in a future moment, creating a wealth of potential editing projects to intuitively choose from as the spirit moves me.
Writing this way goes hand in hand with listening to something that feels far more mysterious than my own mind. Some would call it soul or God. I call it the living mystery or simply, life, because the longer I live the clearer it becomes that the creative source enlivening me and everything else is better left unnamed. Names create boundaries for imagination. In order to stay open to the ever-flowing dance of that which connects awareness to all aspects of life’s intricately complex process, so rife with paradox, I must hold it as an eternal mystery, an idea that ignites imaginative joy and connection to curiosity, which continually feed my resilience and bring me alive. Leaving it unnamed and undefined allows me to stay connected to the wonder of the free flow of ideas that continually move and morph within experience, thought, emotion and dream.
This intuitively led approach to writing, described in various ways by many writers before me, is now firmly embedded in daily life, grounding and sustaining my attention to experiences of all kinds, and strengthening the qualities of humility, gratitude, wonder and joy. This practice has increasingly led me to understand, perceive and experience these qualities in every moment, right alongside the inevitable fear, grief, anger and pain of any human life.
Difficult emotions can stop me in my tracks. However, attending to experience this way and writing from the place of mystery helps me to move through them more smoothly; letting the words produced by stream-of-consciousness writing lead me into the stories lying behind these physical experiences, integrating the knowing of both head and heart. Gradually the strength of the challenging emotions diminish until sooner or later they completely dissolve, allowing me to balance momentarily on the beam of equanimity between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and fear.
Developing the capacity to write in this way as Reflections on Life’s Illusions took shape helped me to imagine the possibility that this kind of practice might also be a resource for accessing bridging language to shed light on a middle way between the deep cultural divides currently causing so much pain and fear in this country and around the world. Searching for words to foster healing and mutual respect, caring community and creative resolution of the existential challenges now facing all earthly life is what keeps me coming back. Even if any glimpse of a path forward remains elusive to you after reading my stories, I hope they inspire you to try to tell your own and to listen to others’ stories in ways that open doors to connection and compassion that only you can discover and offer to Life in this critical moment.