the human group - session 20 - the power of story
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What character do you most often identify with?
Going around the circle most people identified with different coloured outsiders or underdogs; the surfer, traveler and nature girl. Most people could not completely distinguish their character and this simply signals the complexity of archetypes we have within us.
We then went into the reward and cost of identifying/attaching ourselves to these characters. Many of the humans in the circle described separation and isolation from the mainstream being a cost, yet discovering new ways of being and having extra-ordinary experiences was definitely the reward.
Distinguishing ourselves from the crowd in order to be acknowledged for existing perhaps?
Yet in the holy grail quest of becoming someone we have lost the connection with the contrasting society we broke away from. There was taste of disgust among part of the group when exploring the opposite to our character as a symbolic representation of what we do not acknowledge and suppress within ourselves; the shadow. Acknowledging this part of ourselves that is unrecognised can bring whole aspects of our character into conscious action in the world.
Who is the character you despise most often within society, on screen and in the books you read? I request you to be curious when your aversion is stimulated.
A new human participating for the first time shared his rewarding discovery of being curious. He had various segregated social groups that he carefully curated his own character within. This created a huge stress in fear of the groups eventually meeting. He then took it upon himself to do a facebook video everyday for 30 days. In the process of doing this he discovered the inauthenticity around the stories he had around being himself. As he continued to share authentically he discovered more and more stories. E.g I do this and I don’t do that. I am the kind of person that drinks tea, I don’t like hippies, I am a jock, etc.
In mapping himself with a live video each day, not knowing what he was about to say, he began to discover the static habitual stories to which he attached his identity. He has now done a video everyday for over a year and developed a multi-step process to transform the story.
I cannot fully recall the totality of it, however, it goes a little something like this; realisation, neutralisation, stimulation and transformation.
For example;
I hate public speaking, I get sweaty, and anxious with butterflies in my tummy - this is a story (realisation)
I get sweaty with butterflies in my tummy when I speak in public - take away good/bad (neutralisation)
I like public speaking and I get sweaty and butterflies in my tummy - introduce positive meaning (stimulation)
I am awesome at public speaking and I get so excited, covered in sweat and butterflies in my tummy - experiencing public speaking and themselves within a new story (transformation).
This action was brought about through this human’s observation of his life not reaching the potential that he knew lay dormant within. Inner turmoil due to not living or even attempting to live out the dreams we have seems to be a very common story; an epidemic among our comfortably numb society.
How do we bring this kind of transformative work to the larger population?
Be the transformation you wish to see. Do the work and lead within your own immediate environment.
Write the new story, the new myth that inspires individuals to then manifest as the characters within the story.
A meta-narrative that supports our evolution and continual striving for our betterment and potential is being asked for as the space is cleared with the deconstruction of religion by our imbalanced focus on the quantitative and the literal.
Removing these seemingly dogmatic belief systems has provided us with the objectivity to see the necessity or power of such stories.
Do we need a new religion? Or just a great story?
Perhaps we underestimate the power of the Harry Potter books in creating magical lives within our world?
A hunger for transformation is on the tip of our tongues and manifests as a swirling confusing dissatisfaction in our belly. This irrelevant story is becoming cancerous upon our own bodies as well as the greater body we live within; the environment.
There is a new story being written that is dynamic and freeing from the static ideas of ourselves, one that introduces an ever present liminal state in which we don’t know who we are at any given moment inducing a listening to ourselves and those around us. Our perspective is aligning with a perennial perspective that has been ignored for sometime. We all have it within us tied to our indigenous origin and the ever present power of the feminine.
What are we capable of when we write our own story?