Do you believe in a part of you who,
Behind the stories you tell yourself,
Knows and remembers who you really are,
Why you are really here,
And who in your heart you are made to become?
I do,
Not because it's a story I have told myself,
But because this part of me is like a theme that has consistently revealed itself in my life.
It has shown me on countless occasions that regardless of the stories I tell,
There are truths I cannot deny.
What our soul story is,
I call spiritual narrative,
And living a true story is what I call living in harmony with it.
What is spirituality?
Traditionally,
Spirituality is our relationship with God.
For some of us,
We are spiritual without believing in traditional portrayals of God.
So spirituality is about our relationship with the unseen or metaphysical in our lives.
What inspires spirituality is reverence.
Reverence for what is sacred in life.
Our individual spirituality is the evolution of who we are through that reverence.
As deeper understandings or virtues develop,
How we practice those virtues in our lives becomes our spirituality.
What is a narrative?
By definition,
A narrative can be any story,
True or false.
Yet to me,
A narrative is better described as what connects all the stories,
Characters,
And events together with the overall theme.
What is our spiritual narrative?
It is the story of the sacred in our lives.
It is the story of our truest self that we realize through our spirituality.
Our spiritual narrative is what brings together all the stories,
Characters,
And events that we've lived to relate a theme about our life's purpose and meaning.
We don't have to wait until the ending to know what our spiritual narrative is.
Knowing with deep awareness why we are here and the intentions of our own soul can help us to live with greater clarity,
Happiness,
And creativity.
Your spiritual narrative is your soul's story.
It is why you are here.
It is to experience what is ultimately most sacred to you.
Like a character in a story,
You have a lot to say about what happens,
But you have little to say about what the story is truly about.
The plot,
The support of castes,
The epiphanies along the way,
These are all examples of the spiritual narrative in action.
Your spiritual narrative is the one story that is true about you when all other stories seem to end or transform.
It is the last story standing.
It's your story of love and of living,
Of joy and of transformation.
The themes of your story belong to everyone,
But when you live fully,
They become uniquely your own.
To be able to answer for yourself,
This is what my life is about,
Is to bring to your everyday living such a greater quality of being,
Decision making,
And priorities that your spiritual narrative becomes stunningly clear and consequently,
Your life more radiant.
Narrative or story is a great metaphor for living a meaningful life.
When I first began delving into this topic,
The question,
What fictional character do you most identify with,
Was on my mind.
The character we choose may be because they have certain characteristics we do,
But just as likely it is because we identify with their narrative.
We identify with the character,
But also his or her plot.
We may identify with Harry Potter,
The orphan discovering who he really is,
Or Dorothy wanting to get away from home and then wanting nothing more than to return,
Or Scrooge experiencing retribution and realization for misusing his life.
At the heart of a narrative is a theme.
Love,
Hope,
Inspiration,
Peace,
Courage.
Spiritual narrative isn't about a purpose we must fulfill,
It's about living in alignment with our purpose and what ensues from that,
Which I call our true story.
To live in alignment with our spiritual narrative is to have a byproduct of a true story which can be our life's joy,
No matter what the contents.
Our spiritual narrative is not our destiny,
It is our soul's purpose.
In other words,
Our spiritual narrative is not our fate,
But our calling.
As we realize it and practice it in our lives,
It helps us to evolve,
And it evolves as well,
Through our living.
Why do we tell ourselves and others the stories we do about life and who we are?
Certainly,
Stimulating events both exciting and dramatic play into memory formation,
As does the validation of what we want to happen or become.
Yet,
There also seems to be something greater afoot,
Something mysterious.
It is that narrative of our lives,
Which is clearly not in our control,
That seems to reveal our story to us as if it already knew the most essential parts.
In a screenplay for Cinedoke,
New York,
Charlie Kaufman points out that for all the people in the world,
No one is an extra.
They're all the leads of their own stories.
They have to be given their due.
Spiritual narrative is about identifying your truest story,
Releasing those stories that seem to distract you from it,
And moving forward in your life with spiritual clarity and a focus on fulfilling your soul's calling.
How do you discover your spiritual narrative?
You listen.
You watch.
You sense connections.
You be present.
You talk about it.
You see both sides and in some cases combine them.
You believe in it more than how you articulate it.
You find it is not brand new,
But it has always been there.
Telling Stories We all tell stories.
Long stories,
Short stories,
Never-ending stories.
Fictional stories,
Non-fictional stories,
Stories passed down to us from previous generations.
Stories about how things got the way they are and how things are going to wind up.
In the stories I've told myself,
I've played countless roles.
I've been the victim,
The hero,
And probably even the guardian angel.
In someone else's story,
I've been an extra without a single line of dialogue,
The enemy,
And maybe,
If I'm lucky,
The one who got away.
If my life were the Wizard of Oz,
I've been Dorothy,
The Scarecrow,
And even a flying monkey standing in Dorothy's way of her conquest to retrieve the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Telling the same story over and over again does not make it true.
The story we tell ourselves,
However,
Does form our character and influences our experience.
Even though the story may never become reality,
The way we live will emulate it as if it had.
If my story is that you don't like me much,
Even if you like me just fine,
I will experience otherwise.
That look you didn't mean to give,
That event you forgot to invite me to,
That attention you give more to someone else,
My experience is no longer based in reality but on an imagined cause.
I once worked with a woman named Crystal who had a central story she told herself about her love life.
God,
She said,
Does not want me to be loved.
Her story went like this.
Crystal was born a daughter,
But her mother really wanted a son.
Her mother often called her homely.
The reason,
Her mother explained,
Was that she was supposed to be a boy.
In her late teens,
Crystal did meet someone and they married and had a child,
But it didn't last long.
He left her as well as his fatherly responsibility.
Although she had her son,
She was alone again.
Crystal had a couple of boyfriends.
They moved in and out of her life like the seasons.
When they needed a place to stay or someone to love them,
They headed Crystal's way.
Crystal was an incredibly loving person.
Each boyfriend seemed to understand Crystal's belief that she was not meant to be loved.
Crystal told me,
They came because they knew they wouldn't have to give me anything in return.
Hearing Crystal's story and how much of her life was based on it,
Her self-esteem,
Her relationships,
Her spirituality,
I certainly had compassion for her.
There was only one question I could ask,
However.
What if you're wrong and God does want you to be loved?
This idea not only fundamentally challenged the way Crystal lived,
But also her sense of purpose.
Crystal was only 40 years old.
There was time for meaningful love.
This significant change in our lives doesn't come from creating a new story,
But simply by having a willingness to let the old story go.
Sometimes,
When we let things be,
They become not only what they really are,
But what we really want.
When we distract ourselves from our own true character and become entrenched in the role of victim,
Martyr,
Or judge,
What we truly want in our lives and our relationships becomes greatly separated from our heart's desires.
Instead of wanting our truest intention for harmony in a relationship,
For example,
We may develop a desire for our spouse to be untrue in her love for us,
Or to only care about herself in order to support the victim character we are playing to be right.
Many times,
Instead of having an honest conversation about how I feel in a relationship,
I have instead created a drama that in reality was an exit strategy from telling the truth.
This is an extreme example,
But people often do this in minor ways all the time.
We judge our everyday life based on moods,
News stories,
Or what someone said to us.
Instead of living in line with our priorities and values on any given day,
We sacrifice ourselves to a negative event around us.
Psychologist Alfred Adler said,
Meanings are not determined by situations,
But we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.
This statement reminds us that meaning lies not within our circumstances,
But within ourselves.
This means that what I think something means and what you think it means can be different.
A family of three are having dinner.
The child acts up and the wife tells them to quiet down.
The husband defends the child by saying that he wants to hear what he has to say.
What this event means depends on the story each of these three characters are telling themselves.
What happened for the wife was a validation of the story that her husband does not support her,
Is not on the same page with their parenting,
And in some ways is not a good father.
What happened for the husband is a validation of the narrative that his wife is abusive,
Stern,
And doesn't listen.
What happened for the child?
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Who was right and who was wrong?
For the child there was nothing to be wrong or right about.
For the parents there was something to be correct or incorrect about because of the story they were seeking to validate.
For this couple's marriage,
If both parties aren't seeking an outcome of mutual love and support,
They will continue to struggle.
Yet even behind that story,
There are two individuals with two deeper narratives going on.
The circumstance of the dinner is not meaningful in itself,
It is the environment in which meaning happens.
This doesn't make it meaningless,
But filled with meaning.
Not a type of meaning full of answers,
But of the potential for interpretation.
There are stories lurking in each of us,
And all of them are yearning to be proven true or false.
It is up to us to clarify for ourselves whether or not it is the truest story we want to be told and experienced,
Or something else.
Is it possible in this story that there is an underlying meaning to the whole event,
Regardless of the tales being told?
Yes,
I believe there is,
Based upon understanding the collective themes these individuals and all of us are trying to realize at the deepest level.
They are themes of the life our souls seek to experience and embody such as love,
Freedom,
And harmony.
Our spiritual narrative is the truth behind all the stories and beliefs we tell ourselves,
A narrative that longs to be told and experienced.
The couple may fight and fight,
Believing that the problem lies with the other person,
But deep down,
A spiritual narrative exists that whether they stay together or not is steering both of them to a deeper understanding of the meaning of love,
Life,
And relationships.
Life won't tell our story for us.
It is up to us to live and understand.
However,
When we become clear not only to the truth of the situation,
But more importantly,
To the truth of ourselves that is always present,
We have the opportunity to live an honest story,
A true story that can have us feeling that we are experiencing a more whole narrative for our entire life.
In Game 6 of the 2011 World Series,
The St.
Louis Cardinals were down to their last strike against the Texas Rangers.
The Rangers had a 3-2 game advantage in the best-of-seven series and were about to become World Series champions.
Up to this point,
The story was fully in support of a Texas victory.
The childhood dreams about to be realized,
The team who everyone counted out was proving the critics wrong.
Then the Cardinals tied the game.
In extra innings,
Texas took the lead again,
But again St.
Louis down to the last strike tied the game.
Cardinals third baseman David Freese broke the tie with a home run in the 11th inning,
Winning one of the best games in Major League history,
The momentum of which helped the Cardinals win the 2011 World Series.
After the Cardinals win,
A friend posted the following on her Facebook account.
Congratulations Cardinals,
After all the critics said it couldn't be done,
You proved them wrong showing that if you believe in your dreams,
Anything is possible.
The story had changed.
For St.
Louis and their fans,
New stories had to be told to explain the fact that they just won,
In dramatic fashion,
The 2011 World Series.
But what about the poor Rangers?
What becomes of their story in all this?
The better team won this time?
Let's work even harder and get them next time?
They could call themselves losers,
But that wouldn't be the truest story.
They could call themselves victims of fate,
But that wouldn't be the truest story.
They could say it is their destiny to win the World Series.
But that too would be untrue.
Most likely,
Sparing some dramatic flair,
The team told themselves the story most in alignment with achieving their goal.
What was probably the most true story was their collective desire to succeed.
The consensus would then become that the loss was an essential part of the story of their success.
It is similar with our lives.
Our successes and our failures,
When we are positive,
Go together to tell the story of where we want to go.
Even if we are not sure of where we are going,
The destination is clear.
We want to succeed.
We want fulfillment.
We want to love and be loved.
How it's going to happen is part of the joy of the spiritual narrative.
Part of what makes our life narrative spiritual is that it is beyond our conscious control.
Although we tell ourselves stories and our choices influence what will occur,
The story is ultimately not ours to tell,
So much as to live.
No one's spiritual narrative is to fail.
The true theme of any person's life is to succeed,
To become more truly who one potentially is.
All that being said,
We all fail and we all make mistakes.
Yet when we are clear about our spiritual narrative,
Even our mistakes come together to point us in its direction.
When we truly understand our spiritual narrative,
We can embrace not only our successes,
But also our mistakes and failures.
A friend of mine related a story to me about his father.
In a job interview,
His dad would tell the interviewer,
I've made more mistakes than anyone else applying for this job.
What was he implying?
Not that he was the most accident prone,
But that since he had already made the mistakes,
He was the least likely to make them again.
He had learned his lessons and was therefore more capable than the other applicants.
The simple truth is,
Outcomes don't tell stories,
We do.
We lose a game,
That's the end of the story,
Or is it?
A relationship comes to an end,
That's the end of our love life,
Or is it?
It is how we respond to the outcomes of our lives that carries the story onward and provides us with a greater opportunity to truly experience and embody our spiritual narrative.
When it comes to our spiritual narrative,
It is not its responsibility to tell itself.
We have to make it true.
Our spiritual narrative may not always come about the way we imagined,
But with the right amount of faith and dedication,
We may find it comes out even better.
How do you respond to the question,
Where do you come from?
Many of us may answer with a location,
A small town,
Another country,
Or the mean streets.
There's no doubt that people often ask us where we're from in order to gain insight on our background,
And often we will let people know where we are from to provide insight about our character.
Others of us,
When asked where we come from,
Will think of our upbringing.
We'll share about our family and the values and love our parents gave us,
Or the dysfunction and abuse.
Many of us have strong ideas about who we are based upon how we were raised.
Then there are those of us who describe where we come from based upon more current circumstances.
A relationship that didn't work out,
Or because we can't seem to find a good job.
The thing about all these answers is that they mean we have built strong stories about why we are the way we are and why our lives have played out the way they have.
Stories may be a positive part of where we come from,
But they may become perilous when we use them to describe our life's direction.
J.
K.
Rowling's character,
Harry Potter,
Grows up initially believing he is an orphan and no one special.
In fact,
He is treated like a second-class citizen in his own family.
When Harry discovers he comes from a lineage of wizardry,
His life begins to change.
The difference between fiction and our real lives is that,
In most instances,
Discovering the truth is not as convenient as receiving a letter with an invitation to Hogwarts.
The calls are more subtle.
It takes a teacher seeing something special in us,
A hero we believe in,
Or an idea to immerse ourselves in,
To inspire us to live a truer story.
Not in someone else's myth,
But in cultivating our own calling for how we want to choose and live in the world.
When a story is about where we come from,
It is healthy in that it gives us insight into how we've arrived at where we are,
But it can become unhealthy when we use it to foretell what will return to us in the future.
When our stories are used to explain why I'm like this or why life will never change,
Our stories are incomplete drafts,
Crumpled up papers in the wastebasket of a once-creative author who comes down with severe writer's block.
If you want to know what resistance is,
Try to take someone away from their story.
"'You don't understand where I come from,
' she'll say.
"'You don't understand what I went through,
' he'll say.
"'You don't get the pain I endured.
' And he'll be right,
Of course.
But I'll say,
I'm not trying to tell you that you weren't in pain.
I'm trying to help you from continuing to be.
" We can't change whatever psychological pain was inflicted upon us in the past,
But we can stop the pain from continuing.
We have to ask ourselves if it is the action or the story that is hurting us now.
Life has failed me.
As much as I sympathize and as much as I can relate to this,
No misfortune is excused enough to fail ourselves.
When we feel that life has failed us,
It's often because we've based our self-worth on a particular outcome and because we've bought into the story of who I am isn't good enough,
Or I'm unworthy of love,
Or something is wrong.
No matter how good our intentions,
When planted in soil with roots of distrust and lack of self-confidence,
Even the purest seeds grow thorns.
When asked where we are coming from,
Is it possible to respond with an answer that shares the truth of who we are?
What difference would consciously living from the true story about ourselves make in our lives?
Many of us who at times feel our lives are lacking a particular quality,
Or that we are lacking in spirit,
Are often likely to point the finger to something being wrong.
Take something like abuse.
For some of us,
Being abused is a past experience.
Yet the abuse hasn't stopped.
It continues on in our psyche.
We can't change the abuse,
But we can make it stop.
Even if it is a no we say to ourselves every day for the rest of our lives,
We can stop it.
Anyone can be victimized,
But no one can make you a slave to your own past.
This does not mean we do not have to live with the memories of things we would rather not have to,
But we can cease allowing these memories to inform us of who we really are.
It would be insensitive to say that these conclusions are inaccurate because they come from real life experiences.
Every belief we hold is true,
And every negative emotion we have is there for a reason.
The question we must ask ourselves is,
Is it reason enough to continue to interfere with my life?
As a child,
I was convinced at one time that I was a robot the family had purchased from Kmart.
If I was not good,
The family was going to take me back to the store and replace me with a new model.
This is humorous to me today,
But at the time,
A frightening idea.
It meant that I wasn't real.
It meant that I could lose my family.
It meant that my continued residence would be based on my behavior.
In short,
I was replaceable,
And that the place I really came from was generally known as a second-rate target.
It doesn't take much to influence a belief or feeling in ourselves that,
Although formed in fiction,
Becomes real in our consciousness,
Playing out in our relationships and choices for the rest of our lives.
Even today,
As much as I am usually a confident and mindful person,
I am sometimes also a little robot who doesn't want to get taken back to the store.
Our stories aren't just in the past.
They speak to our beliefs and to how we define who we are in the present.
Remove the past and who would you be?
Like a worrier who no longer has a worry,
The only thing different is that your story is less entertaining.
The worry wouldn't go away.
The hurt wouldn't go away.
Just what happened would go away.
Just the story.
This is not to take away the facts of our past.
Yet,
We should remember that the closest thing to changing the past is transforming our version of events.
The biggest difference between what was then and what is now is what you know now.
There once was a man who,
In his boyhood,
Dreamed of being a doctor.
If I could just save one life,
He thought to himself,
My life would have been worthwhile.
He never became a doctor.
However,
He struggled in school and his parents talked him into going into the family business.
His family also pressured him into marrying young.
His wife was somewhat shrill and scared.
The man came to enjoy his life,
But his regret of never fulfilling his dream weighed on him heavily.
His wife,
However,
Thrived.
She overcame her inhibitions and found great success due very much to her husband's help.
One evening,
Late in his life,
He confided to his wife about his sense of failing over never becoming a doctor and his desire to save lives.
Darling,
His wife said,
I hear you say that you have never saved a life,
But please know that you have saved mine.
People say you can't change the past,
And although I get the point,
It sounds as cynical to me as saying you can't change a person.
Yes,
A person must change him or herself,
But that doesn't mean people never change.
In a similar way,
We have to let go of our stories about the past to let them become what they will be.
In releasing our judgment about the past,
And yet being sensitive to our experience of it,
Our past can come to mean something totally different to us today than it did yesterday.
What was once your greatest failing can lead to your greatest inspiration.
What was once your darkest moment could be the moment that propels you into your life's purpose or the experience that provides you with the compassion you need to support others.
Maybe the idea that you can't change the past isn't altogether true.
The past is a memory,
Yes,
But it is something we have a relationship with,
Just like with a person.
We can't change the past in and of itself,
But we can shift our relationship with it,
Resulting in our past having a different purpose and meaning.
There have been times when the past and I have not gotten along.
I was always trying to change the past and the past was always holding me back.
But when I could accept the past as it is without judgment,
And hold myself to the present,
The past started working for me and no longer against me.
My hurts,
My failures and my bumps and bruises,
Were no longer my defects.
Instead,
I discovered my wisdom,
My empowerment and my unique training to be of service to others and myself.
Is life best lived in accordance with paranoia?
No.
Is character best defined by childhood inadequacy?
No.
Life is to be lived in a way that seeks to limit it the least,
Listen to it the most,
And to go with the flow.
Therefore,
There is wisdom in the idea of stripping ourselves of the stories we've told ourselves to see what truth remains.
To live a true story,
One must no longer defend imagined causes with their real consequences,
But begin to look for truth where authenticity and reality meet.
Though we actually live in what is,
Said the author Stephen Mitchell,
We think ourselves into what isn't.
Some of the stories we tell ourselves lead us to dread and others to achieving our goals.
The most solid way to success is to be as true as possible to what is.
Only then can we attune with that deeper part of ourselves that knows our story,
Our spiritual narrative,
And live in accordance with it.
Is your life a true story?
Is it a true story or is it based on a true story?
Perhaps your life is based on someone else's story.
Maybe it is based on a series of fictions.
Think through,
Thoroughly,
The tales you tell yourself and others about who you are and what life is all about.
Are they true?
Feel the effects of experiences past and listen closely.
Is this what really happened to me?
If your story is not a true one,
Does that make you unreal?
If I am living in a series of mistruths and lies to the degree that the character I play in the majority of life's instances I would rather not care to recognize as me,
It is hard for me to see that I am my real self.
If I am living falsely,
Of course I am not somebody else.
But can I really say I am my true self?
No.
Who I am being is based on false pretenses that keep me from being my true self and living my true story.
Paramount to being your true self is living a true story.
Some would argue that we are living true stories no matter what distortions we amuse ourselves with.
We live in the real world.
How could any of that be fiction?
Of course it's real.
William James,
The father of developmental psychology,
Once said,
It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own.
The world is not made up of our perceptions,
But our stories about it most certainly are,
And therefore they color our experiences.
Have you seen this alternative TV Guide summary for The Wizard of Oz from Rick Polito?
Transported to a surreal landscape,
A young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
When it comes to your life,
Ask yourself,
Am I just making up the story as I go along,
Or is there a true story taking place,
Regardless of whether or not I experience it?
For those of us who have been making up stories for so long,
It seems as though we ourselves have become a fiction.
Discovering our true story sounds frightening.
It's like reading a mystery novel knowing the outcome is going to affect us personally.
To do the work of articulating a story that,
If not factual,
Is at least a little closer to the truth,
We give ourselves the opportunity to live a more authentic life.
Like a hero in a detective novel,
The case may appear clear-cut to everyone else.
A suspect could be in custody and all can look just right,
But we know there is more.
To investigate may be to rustle feathers and those around us may not want us to bother.
What do we say?
We have to follow the truth,
Wherever it leads.
If we want to discover our true story and live it,
We have to do just this,
Commit to the truth,
No matter what or whom it proves false.
No matter how it impacts our character or an outcome,
We have to be willing to do whatever it takes to reveal what is true.
In the words of Sherlock Holmes,
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere common places of existence.
If we could fly out of that window hand in hand,
Hover over this great city,
Gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on—the strange coincidences,
The plannings,
The cross-purposes,
The wonderful chains of events,
Working through generations,
And leading to the most outré results—it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.
A direct correlation exists between living a true story and being our truest self.
An authentic way of living and being go together.
Like a good story,
They tell each other—the character the tale and the tale the character.
If either of these is lost or misconstrued—the authenticity of the character or the story—they must be reconciled.
This is the beginning of all great adventures,
Fiction and non-fiction.
The character either doesn't know who he or she is or has forgotten.
The byproduct of this realization is success,
Heroism,
And the truth.
In our own lives,
Realizing and living our truth is the first step in living with a narrative for our life that harmonizes all aspects of self—physical,
Psychological,
And emotional.
In the Harry Potter series,
Voldemort's presence has shaken the natural order of things at Hogwarts.
Harry is called upon to embody his truest possible self in order to set things right.
In Star Wars,
The Empire's disturbance of the Force has called young Luke to realize his true self,
Embody his Jedi nature,
And save the Republic.
In every romantic comedy I've ever seen,
Two individuals dismiss the existence of love,
Only to uncover and embrace their true desire for it.
In these examples,
The true story is the way things should be.
Hogwarts in its natural order,
The Force in its fullness without disturbance,
True love—this is the state the story is always trying to get to,
And every character,
Good or bad,
Can't get in the way of the ultimate theme taking place.
Like any story,
Narrative reveals itself over time,
Often without the character's knowledge.
It is no different in our everyday lives,
Yet is it possible to become aware of the overall narratives of our lives while we are living them?
Can we know what our true story is about?
Could there be such a thing as a spiritual narrative that,
Like the promise of a hero,
Follows,
Guides,
And inspires us?
Such a narrative does not reveal every aspect of the plot.
Instead,
It confirms for us what it means regardless of what happens.
While our life story will always fundamentally be true,
There is no guarantee our truest self will ever be fully realized or understood.
We must do the work to stand up for our higher truths in order to realize them.
When Rosa Parks made the decision not to go to the back of the bus,
She was standing up not only for her human rights but for her true self.
She would later say,
I had given up my seat before,
But this day I was especially tired.
Tired from my work as a seamstress,
And tired from the ache in my heart.
The choices to deny our true selves are many,
Especially living in a society that may tell false stories about who we are.
If the messages we receive from our life is that we are inadequate because of our gender,
Or our class,
Or whatever it may be,
Lacking knowledge of our true story can painfully fall into validating that narrative.
The ache in our hearts is that part of us that knows better.
When we have an awareness of our spiritual narrative,
The truth about our soul and what the deepest part of ourselves wants to accomplish in our lifetime,
The false stories don't disappear,
But we are less likely to be fooled by them.
We are more likely to live our truth,
The byproduct often being that we inspire others to do the same.
When we choose from the integrity of ourselves,
There may be consequences,
But we have also come back into integrity with ourselves.
When it comes to being an agent of change in our own lives or in our societies,
There may be no more powerful thing.
Even in this world,
More things exist without our knowledge than with it,
And the order and creation which you see is that which you have put there,
Like a string in a maze,
So that you shall not lose your way.
Cormac McCarthy The stories we tell ourselves are indeed like a string in the vastness of our lives that we utilize to tell ourselves where we've been and to remind us of where we want to go.
When it comes to the people we know the most,
We are less likely to see characters and more likely to see stories,
Time and memories shared,
Or perhaps even resentments.
Yet,
Generally speaking,
We still seek truth.
We are not seekers of a story to tell ourselves to get by.
We are deeper than that.
We seek truth.
Therefore,
We seek the true story.
This often means being willing to expand our perspective and having faith in the wisdom of what we do not yet know or understand.
The true story is not a string in a maze.
It is the path we uncover.
It is the revelation of a narrative that has always been there.
Where it leads we do not know,
But it is enough that it is leading us.
The question is,
Can we trust it?
The man I got out of the friction game we were playing and connected with them.
There was no more competing,
No more who's done better,
Only an honoring of the power and sincerity of this man who was certainly the better of the two of us in that moment.
The story of our bickering and competitiveness was a true story on one level,
But on a deeper level our souls shared a similar path.
We had used each other for our own growth.
At the heart of our relationship was love and admiration.
The comedian Steven Wright pointed out this contradiction in a joke about death.
My goal in life is to live forever.
So far,
So good.
So when someone tells us to be ourselves,
We tend to concur with a supporter,
But in the back of our minds we think,
But I am myself.
Just be yourself means to be authentically you,
Without unnecessary inhibition,
Anxiety,
Or insecurity.
Just be yourself.
It is an appeal to our souls to be true.
Indeed,
It shouldn't be hard.
It should be easy.
And it can be,
But for those of us who have spent our entire lives oppressing ourselves,
It is painstaking.
Just being ourselves is often the key.
If you feel something is missing in your life and something feels lacking,
What's missing essentially is not the lover or the friend,
The money or the career,
The past or the future.
What's missing from your life is you.
If something is missing from your life,
Search first for yourself.
Fully paying attention to and participating in the world around us brings about a sincere experience of who we are,
Which,
In turn,
Calls life forth in a way that brings harmony.
The therapist,
Carl Rogers,
Once wrote,
Each individual appears to be asking a double question,
Who am I?
And How may I become myself?
This is a perplexing point of view for the person who thinks,
I am who I am.
Rogers claims that as individuals we are more content as processes than as products.
We are not fixed selves,
But essentially consistently becoming selves.
At the level of our everyday consciousness,
We live as much in our potential as we do in our reality.
Like reading a novel and not knowing how it will end,
We do experience regular foreshadowing,
Insights into the theme,
And moments so complete in and of themselves that we don't need to turn the page.
The question of who we are and what we will become shows the interrelatedness between ourselves and our life stories.
We are not expressions of our story in this sense,
But we do find that our stories are unique expressions of ourselves,
Even in how they embody the archetypal roles and stages of living and dying,
Leaving home,
Parenthood,
Retirement,
Etc.
The self is not static.
It is continuous and evolving.
It is created,
Yet consistently creative.
It is both form and formless.
We are the unique point,
We might say,
Where the totality of ourselves comes together.
Our lives are like a fine novel,
With chapters,
Themes,
Supportive characters,
Trials,
And an overall narrative.
Yet,
Our lives are much more complex than even the finest novelists could articulate.
One distinct difference between our real lives and fiction is that the novelist uses the illusion of chronology,
A beginning,
Middle,
And end.
This helps to start and finish the book,
Add page numbers,
Create an outline,
Keep the publisher calm,
Embark on a potential series,
And so on.
Our lives are not like this.
The papers are not numbered,
The chapters do not always have clear headings,
And in many cases they can remain unfinished.
Neither do they always line up,
Chronologically.
Our lives do not begin with,
I was born on,
But with where we realize we want a story for our lives.
We may look back for a beginning,
Or set an idea for an end,
But our story is only told now.
Although for our own convenience,
We will often say our life begins at birth and ends when we die,
Most of us know this isn't the whole story.
It is an illusion we again grant ourselves for the purpose of explanation.
What makes our lives so layered and complex,
And longer than even Tolstoy could muster?
Unfortunately,
It is not us,
Or at least us in the common use of the term,
It is our spiritual narrative.
It is the composer of the plot.
It is that which makes us want to turn the page.
It is so strong that it needs no beginning or end,
Because it is what it is.
It will weave characters together and stories to share,
And make comedy and tragedy.
Who are we,
Not just as a character,
But observer of the narrative and its progressing themes?
We are like the reader,
And we experience the work.
For each of us,
Our life should be the greatest story ever told.
A good storyteller never concludes anything through an ending.
Each page should allow the reader to conclude what is happening,
While at the same time assuring herself that she has no idea how it will all wind up.
This applies to our living as well.
We foolishly often do two things.
We either consistently give away an ending to ourselves when we don't know what is really going to happen,
And proceed to act like it will,
Therefore missing the point of our lives.
This can lead to limiting choices and ways of life,
Decreasing excitement and increasing bitterness.
The second way that,
Like a bad storyteller,
We will try to save the best for the end.
We forget that the end is an illusion.
Again,
We can live like a finely written story wherein every point is an opportunity to view the whole as we can see it.
Although there may clearly be more to tell,
The story itself can consistently be complete.
The media guru Marshall McLuhan said,
Nothing is inevitable as long as one is willing to be conscious of what is happening.
There are no clever endings.
The better term may be beginnings,
Opportunities where we get clearer on what is happening and then step into the realm where nothing is inevitable.
Where words are insufficient,
That is where the power of story comes in.
The earliest myth makers realized this.
How do we explain the sun?
How do we explain creation?
How do we explain duality?
The best couples realize this.
They don't make up stories about themselves,
But don't fear exaggerating a little either,
To explain the depth of love between them.
They also remember the little things that too many of us pass over.
We don't stop to articulate them.
Scientists seek to do this too.
They use whatever means possible to tell the true story,
And yet,
They fail to have understanding when they are unwilling to accept what Socrates always sought in his work on philosophy—a likely story.
A likely story,
For better or worse,
Is often the best we can do.
Is this not the art of the truly great storyteller,
Or the painter,
Or the musician,
To introduce us to what isn't there and to articulate what is?
At the heart of our true story,
And therefore our lives,
Is its theme.
You can't always know this through a brief study of characters and plot,
But through interaction.
It's about understanding synchronicities,
Objectively viewing the story and reading deeply between the lines to take in its meaning.
The great author Flannery O'Connor stated,
When you can state the theme of a story,
When you can separate it from the story itself,
Then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.
The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it,
Has to be made concrete in it.
A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way,
And it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.
You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.
When anybody asks what a story is about,
The only proper thing is to tell him to read the story.
The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning,
But experienced meaning.
And the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully.
Where O'Connor states a story,
We might as well place our lives in that context.
Our story isn't just something we do,
It's our way of becoming who we are.
It is our way of telling ourselves.
False Narratives The science fiction writer Ursula K.
Le Guin said,
The unread story is not a story.
It is little black marks on wood pulp.
The reader,
Reading it,
Makes it live.
A live thing.
A story.
Could the same be said of our lives?
That the unknown life is not a life,
But a mark in time and space?
It is awareness of our spiritual narrative that gives our lives meaning.
It is the quality of the consciousness we cultivate in our lives that helps us reveal the deeper meanings and subtleties of our experience.
A few years ago,
I stopped a practice unfitting for me.
I stopped trying to produce a fruitful relationship in a non-conducive environment.
That spiritual talk for,
I stopped hitting on women in bars.
I had the following experience several times.
Hi,
I'm Josh.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Well,
I'm just really into not knowing what I want right now and figuring things out,
Said whatever her name was.
I was frustrated that not knowing what one wants seemed to be a fad.
I wondered what it was that Starbucks might be putting into its frappuccinos or what subliminal messages might be playing in Jack Johnson's songs.
I quickly realized that my frustrations were being misdirected.
I was frustrated with myself.
I was the one trying to find a fruitful relationship at the bar.
I was the one going to the apple tree and expecting it to grow oranges.
Both of these examples,
The woman who is really into not knowing what she wants and my trying to find love at the bar,
Are examples of living false narratives.
For the woman,
It may be because she's imitating other women who don't know what they want as an excuse to avoid responsibility for choices and behavior.
As for me,
I may have fallen into following a guy ritual.
Invest your time and treasure into something that,
Besides a headache the next morning,
Will rarely provide meaningful results.
This kind of false narrative is a sort of pulp living.
The pulp novel was popularized in the nineteenth century as a book which focused purely on entertainment.
Cycling through the same plot elements,
It employs a formula that works well.
Guy gets girl,
Hero saves day,
And repeat.
Pulp authors were known in some instances to write dozens of books a year.
Pulp living is not quality living.
It lacks awareness and seeks only to experience the same thing over and over again.
Of course,
Pulp writers could set a romance novel during World War I or introduce a new,
Seemingly more powerful villain into your comic book.
But the outcomes would still be the same.
Unfortunately,
In our lives,
The outcomes are often not that we are heroes,
But instead,
Are experiencing dramas that leave us feeling lifeless,
If not soulless.
Like the pulp novel that is meant to be read only once,
The pulp life is the disposable life.
As the pulp novel seeks to entertain,
So does the pulp life seek only entertainment.
It requires no meaning or intimate connections.
Living not for the eyes of the most knowledgeable,
But for the eyes of the masses.
The pulp life tries its best to fit in.
How do we live a deeper life?
We live not for entertainment alone,
But choose to seek meaning.
We live not in the eyes of the masses,
But develop our own vision.
In The Matrix,
Neo is given a choice.
The freedom of knowing the truth about life and the challenges that come from that knowing,
Or a life of ignorant pleasure.
Morpheus offers two pills.
Take the red and be free,
Or take the blue and return to the Matrix,
And forget that the choice ever happened.
In our daily lives,
Knowing the truth or living in ignorance is a choice.
Or is it,
Perhaps as if we take both pills?
We must find balance in two worlds,
And through our own diligent efforts,
Bring them both together.
If we are not living our lives mindfully and authentically,
Then who or what is?
Someone or something else.
If we do not think for ourselves,
What thinks for us?
Someone or something else.
This could be the groupthink of Americans,
Or of a religious group,
Or of high school girls across the nation,
Or how the hero might think in the last movie you watched.
Not what you think,
But knowing what you think is the foundation of genius.
It is not until we take ownership of our minds that we can begin taking constructive responsibility for how we live.
There are some conclusions we come to in our lives that are harmful.
Life will never be as good as when,
I failed,
It's over,
I am not deserving.
They nurture our victimhood,
Our resentments,
Fears,
And judgments,
And misconstrue what the truth is about ourselves,
Our lives,
And others.
In reviewing our life story,
We will find parts where our spiritual narrative envelops us and carries us along.
We will certainly also find places where we've lost our spiritual narrative and it seems as though our souls and its table of contents has vanished.
Our true story becomes lost in falsehoods and narratives not truly our own.
Reclaiming our true story involves setting ourselves free from any place our true story does not rule and releasing ourselves from falsehoods we've endured or mistaken as true about ourselves.
For all my failings in life,
One good thing I can say about them is that they are consistent.
There is the line in a Jackson Brown song,
These Days,
Which goes,
Don't confront me with my failures,
I have not forgotten them.
Our lives give us the opportunity to make the same mistakes and my mistakes are generally ones of inaction.
Not speaking up,
Not drawing a boundary with someone,
Acting out of fear instead of confidence.
I don't think life continues to confront me with my failures in order to be mean,
But I continue to bring them to life so that I might have the opportunity to overcome them.
The truest lessons of life are not moral lessons,
Be kind to others or don't steal,
Nor are they lessons about the ways of the world,
Survival of the fittest,
Or money doesn't grow on trees.
The truest lessons of life are lessons about who we are.
Who am I really and what happens as I evolve?
It is in this learning that I believe we find ourselves growing into a greater freedom,
A greater sense of who we are,
And a greater sense of living.
Our stories don't progress by waiting for things to happen,
They progress when we ourselves step forward.
We live a false narrative when,
Intentionally or not,
We live a story that isn't our own.
When you try to retrace the steps of your mother or attempt to live the life you think she wants you to live.
When you think less about yourself because of a bad experience and start playing the role of victim.
When you deny your own passion and conscience and try to live on the best people list in the eyes of the world.
When you separate yourself from your own uniqueness and passion and fall into the default activity of your gender or your class or your culture.
When you refuse opportunities to answer a calling in your life in an attempt to feel safe in your self-created bubble.
Our true story always exists,
Just as we may find that the truth is always around here somewhere.
As it is a part of who we are,
It will always call us,
Yet we can become deaf to it.
The truth will never give up on us,
But the truth is not like a lover who will follow us down as low as we might go and compromise itself.
The truth cannot regress in order to suit us.
We must evolve to understand it.
If we do not think for ourselves,
Something else thinks for us.
When we don't truly live our own lives,
We will find ourselves mistakenly trying to live someone else's.
We may try to fulfill a parent's narrative.
We may so avoid the call to be the hero in our own story,
That we slip into a stereotypical character,
Be it a sidekick or a villain.
All character types are as true to life as they are in the movies.
Our truest character only emerges,
However,
When we become an authority for our own purpose.
How do we tell the difference between a false story and our spiritual narrative?
In one sense,
It is as simple as asking ourselves,
Is the story I am telling myself and are the choices I am making in accordance with my highest values?
If the story you are telling and the choices you are making are about something else,
Then it is not your true story and you are out of alignment with your spiritual narrative.
If our stories are focused on whether something is a success or a failure,
We may also be caught up in a false narrative.
Our spiritual narrative does not know success or failure.
It is not concerned with outcomes but with realizing the soul's theme,
The love you seek to embody,
The wholeness you want to exemplify,
The intimacy you want to create.
A spiritual narrative isn't about what you might accomplish.
Rather,
It is about how you are becoming more fully who you are.
There are no heroes or villains,
Victims or perpetrators,
Winners or losers.
We are also losing contact with our spiritual narrative if we are in judgment about what we believe should have happened by now or will never happen.
Our spiritual narrative is timeless.
Our story is how it expresses through time.
Although passing through time we have moments on mountains and in valleys,
Or in comedy or tragedy,
The spiritual narrative has our highest and best in mind.
Our spiritual narrative has always been there and it continues to evolve as we embody and understand it more deeply.
Among the evidence I see for spiritual narrative is that even when I am caught up in believing and living a false story for myself,
My spiritual narrative is still there.
The spiritual narrative is always the stronger story.
And as,
In any good story,
When the hero falls asleep or gets trapped or forgets why he or she is here,
The spiritual narrative has a way of reminding him or her of the true story.
In Gnostic Christianity there is a fable called the Hymn of the Pearl.
A young prince is sent on a journey to retrieve a pearl from the bottom of the sea in Egypt.
He is dressed in the finest clothes of his homeland.
When he arrives in Egypt he starts towards his objective but gets distracted.
He gets caught up in the culture.
He changes his clothes,
Gives in to the offerings and forgets all about why he is really there.
His family from back home sends an eagle with a letter attached.
At first he doesn't even remember them.
But it is a reawakening.
It reminds him of who he is and why he is there.
He immediately goes to the sea,
Lures the serpent to sleep,
And retrieves the pearl.
The prince in the story represents each of us.
His homeland is the heavenly realm our souls come from.
In the story,
Egypt symbolizes the world and the senses.
The pearl under the sea is the truth of who we are,
The one in which we must dive deep within to retrieve.
We all live in the world,
But we can't avoid creating a story.
The question is,
Will that story take us closer to self-knowledge and true living,
Or further away?
