Your story is your glory! So says self proclaimed guru Jeff Brown. What a rallying call to remain in perpetual delusion. Especially when this post included a quite arrogant dismissal of those who have experienced a powerful and transformative release from what bound them with the grand sweep of ‘This is not enlightenment, this is disassociation’.
uh huh.
What did people mean by ‘Story’ in this context? NO IDEA! This looked like a very fertile thought to work with. Thanks to Jeff Brown for providing me with the idea, one which does not sit with me, especially as this self proclaimed modern guru has begun to take pot shots at so many others, ridiculing, criticising and mocking their ideas when they do not align with his own. Marketing at its best? Red flags, for sure!
First step is to look at this concept of our ‘story’.
What is that?
Definitions of Story:
1: An account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment
2: A plot or story line
3: An account of past events in someone’s life or in the development of something
4: A particular person’s representation of the facts of the matter
5: A situation viewed in terms of the information known about it or its similarity to another.
Or a fabrication as in the child admonished for ‘telling stories’.
When I was first confronted with the concept of having a ‘story’ I had no idea what was meant by this. I admit I was mystified and challenged, yet in a subterranean way that felt right.
First I would like to acknowledge the validity of everyone’s lived experience, including my own.
Secondly, I also acknowledge the power of Story.
And this is what I finally came up with:
My ‘Story’ is a web of words, thoughts and inherited beliefs woven in and around the fabric of my experience.
It was not the experience I needed to look at. It was that web all around and through it. When the weight of Story includes constant retelling, it becomes dense enough to feel like truth. the web gets stronger, the hold of the past gets stronger. How does this affect the present? Energetically. Just picture yourself trying to walk when tangled up in a web. With all due deliberation, I have decided that my story is not my glory! As Byron Katie asks:
‘Who would you be without your story?’
Now that is a good question! Happy unravelling!