Hi Friends! At the heart of my faith in humanity is a deep regard for the human story, and the belief that it is fundamental to a true spirituality. In the spiritual communities that I explored, there was a way in which our story was so negated and ‘turned around’ that there was nothing left of it. I understood the value of looking at our story from a broader perspective, but all too often the ‘turn around’ practice (i.e. Byron Katie’s work)—which had value in certain contexts—seemed to be designed to deny the validity of our story altogether. And this made no sense to me, given that it was at the heart of my story that I learned lessons, found purpose, made meaning.
It’s one thing to briefly detach from personal story in the hopes of gaining a different perspective or giving your nervous system a break. It’s quite another to deny our storied roots altogether. What will we stand in, then? At a time when our stories have been shamed and shunned in the spiritual community and the culture itself, it is all the more imperative to revive them and make luminous their sacred, transformative properties. Our story is not an illusion, as many would suggest. It is the ground of our being, the field for our soul’s transformation, a living vibration that echoes on, the mystery that threads right through our history. Story is where we come from. Story is what roots us in the present. Story is how we arrive at the next place intact. A spirituality without story is like a body without breath. Dead to the world.
I went through a fairly effective writing phase some years ago. I was writing one clarified quote after another, and immediately sharing them in social media. What I found interesting was that many people would remark that I was “channeling.” At first, I imagined this a good thing. As though I had somehow formed a bond with the Divine, and the Divine was using me to bring their message through. But then, I arrived at a different perspective. I had worked long and hard, and overcome much, and whatever insights I had arrived at did not come from the beyond. They came from within me, from the heart of my imperfect lived experience, from the depths of my story. And then I looked closer at many of the ways that we associate moments of achievement with something beyond ourselves: “Her performance was out of this world”, “He rose above his circumstances and channeled greatness,” “Her genius is heaven sent,” “They have found their DIVINE purpose.” It is as though we are only allowed to own our mediocre achievements. Anything clarified or brilliant or awesome had to come from somewhere beyond our humanness. Little wonder our views of enlightenment and awakening are frequently associated with transcendence. We haven’t been taught that we are the marvel, and that our lived and learned experience is the source of our most profound creations. If we don’t come to get this, if we continue to bury our magnificence below a bushel of judgement, we will continue to look for our greatness outside of ourselves, and our species will never actualize its possibilities. Yes, there is brilliance everywhere, but brilliance begins at home…