The Power of Our Story

Our stories are the heart of our very being.  They are our life blood.  They are the maps to our survival. In each breath we take we are uniquely creating a story of our life, and as we connect with others in our life, we are spinning a quilt of collective stories of our human existence from birth, to the trials and tribulations of our development, to joy, pain, death, and beyond.  Without sharing our story and being deeply captivated by others’ stories, what are we doing but slowly losing our spirits?  We connect and keep our spirits alive with our stories.

Throughout human history we have sat around campfires and other circles of life, and ignited our spirits with sharing the soul threads of our essence and creating a collective work that all of us today pull on again and again for guidance, comfort, and joy.

Every time I share a story, whether face to face or virtually, I feel my heart open even more.  I feel expanded, spacious, and immediately connected to the cosmic order of our relationships in ways that aren’t obvious at the time.  There’s such a divine quality of love present when I share my story, which then becomes our story. The notebook or the conversation at that point feels like home.

Anthropologist, Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., discovered in her years of research of indigenous cultures and rituals that shamans had 4 criteria that determined soul loss, and one of them was the disinterest in our own and others’ life stories.   So if our stories are the life blood of our essence, why then is it so hard in today’s culture to share our story?  When did we become afraid to share in the beauty of our stories?

Sometimes I really have to practice letting go of my fear and vulnerability.  I must walk through that primal sense of fear that I will be destroyed if I share pieces of myself with the world.  It’s the fear of the unknown and we are still driven to protect ourselves from dangers even if only perceived.

There is an image we have created for ourselves, something in yoga we call the ego self.  When we become attached to this image of who we think we are, we will do anything it takes to keep the image of ourselves alive, sometimes even destroying relationships with important people in our lives, and ultimately destroying our selves.  And sometimes in this perceived threat-must-save-my-ego-image-life-at-all-costs, we destroy the possibility in sharing in the beauty of our stories and connecting to the delicious essence of who we really are, individually and collectively.

And who is this person that we all really are?  We are not our clothes, our labels, our gender, our politics – these are social constructs that we created meaning for and attach ourselves to in order to give our life more meaning and organization, perhaps even a sense that we have more control over our lives since we have studiously created important sounding constructs that give us meaning.  But really, the deep meaning, the meaning at the end of the day when we are standing completely naked in front of each other is that we are living, breathing, and evolving social beings that are love, are compassion, are humility, and we are life.   We are not separate from creation; we are part of creation.  We are divine love in space and time right now eager to share our story to keep on living and breathing and loving in our stories.

Listen to the conversations you find yourself in next time, if you listen carefully, if you listen with your soul ears, you will see and you will hear that all anyone is really doing is trying to share their story even if it’s wrapped up in ego image self-protection paper.

Don’t wait for the right time or moment to share your story, share your story now.  We all have an important story to tell to assist in the evolution of our humanity back to a place of timelessness.  Your story, my story, our story, that’s our modern medicine that will save us from the tragedy of walls, separatism and otherness.

Ignite your spirit right now and weave your precious story into the thread of our collective consciousness so all our hearts can be opened just a bit more so we all can find ourselves in a space and time with no names, no attachments, no walls, but just in our very essence, where we feel completely naked and connected in the creative moment of love.

In the words of the great light and love leader of our lifetime, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”  Maya Angelou

Om Shanti Om ~ Athea Davis

Athea