Your beliefs become your biology - who is writing your story?
As the year comes to a close, we are all thrust into the edges of our own capacity to reflect backwards in time, upon the events and experiences of the year up until now. What happened? Where there experiences that I didn't prefer? What was lost? Gained? What still needs space to process and integrate? What was beautiful that calls for a deeper gratitude?
For me, the year is ending with a bit of anxiousness that was born from a new level of surrender to never really being able to "control" the events and outcomes of life. This is a fundamental truth, that we can't control... but, we can choose how we tell the story, that ultimatley changes the whole experience.
On my drive home for Christmas, I listened to Adyashanti's "Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness" as I meandered through the windswept and snow dusted fields of central Washington. This whole recording is a life jacket for anyone who experiences the many faces of unworthiness, which I believe is most of us. During this talk, he shares about the nature of the inner dialogue, and poses the question "Where are you creating stories out of judgement?. As author and modern day mystic Carolyn Myss says, this is the place where our "belief becomes our biology". And, in perfect timing, we were on week 3 of TRUTH TRAINING as well, where we talk about the "language of reality". So needless to say, this 5 hour drive became a potent contemplation chamber of what's really alive here in this moment - what are the stories I tell myself, and how do they influence the way I experience my life and the reality of it's happenings?
Adyashanit spoke on how to look into who is dictating or narrating the stories of our lives. I looked up the word "dictation", to explore it's use in dictatorship. It simply means to speak, and in dictatorship, it's the experience of being the only one speaking. I began to wonder what parts of my own personality, the many sorts of selves that make up the wholeness I AM, and what voice has become the dictator? This is a hard question to ask oneself that requires some clever humility and honest self awareness. A few answers arose as I drove along the road...
The voice that becomes the dictator is often the voice that has the most charge behind it, the most amount of data or reason, or the voice that seems to hold the greatest "power" by way of holding the most amount of consequence. When we are talking about unworthiness, an overarching theme that covers most of our pangs of human suffering, we are talking about a deeply rooted confusion that we could even ever be unworthy of, let's say, love, in the first place. Adyashanti talks clearly on the impact of religion and the collective narrative on the original sin, the core belief we are inherently bad. There's anthologies of healing that are being written and implemented to uproot and exterminate this insane experience, but the truth is, we all carry it. Somewhere deep in our bones, we all have some shard of belief that we are not good. This is also one of my loudest voices...
But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And as a means to balance the unveiling of some negative story telling - this is in fact, a normal and necessary part of our human experience. We are here to know the old wounds and windings of separation, but not get stuck there as the only option. What I have learned in my experience as a breath-work practitioner, is that the world is fundamentally paradoxical... the inhale and exhale being inextricable of eachother. Beautifully paradoxical. Hopefully paradoxical. This means that the equal and exact opposite is always and already true. In the nature of the negative self belief or fear story playing it's self out on a loop, we can remember this truth of life. The opposite is also always at play! There is more than one experience happening at a time, usually a lot more.
*There is a lot more to say about the. nature of paradox, yet for cohesion, I shall leave you to explore than never ending topic at your own will - and I hope you do, it changes everything*
This means we get to remember something deeper and greater than the loudest narrative running and creating our personal mythologies. We are beings of story - we create them, and are created by them. And like any good story, HOW they are interpreted makes the greatest impact. We can easily see the way this has played out in the example of the bible - one story, many different ways to live it. This is the wisdom of my end of year reflections.
What's been coming up for me is to learn how I can earnestly look at my fear stories and see them, give them the talking stick for some time, and listen with an open heart. But, the task is not to believe everything I am being told. How many times do we have to learn this in our modern techno-cratic world, where we never know who is right or wrong or neither or both? Where there is enough data and backing to support any and all claims in any and all directions?
A way to practice invoking a more beautiful narrative that would then birth a more beautiful experience of your life's stories and experience is to remember that, we have the power to also tell the story from the lens of the best case scenario! This may sound ungrounded or blindly hopeful, but couldn't the same be said for the fear based narratives that then become self fulfilling prophecies? We don't get to control, but we do get to choose. And, we have to practice coming back into the power of our choice to choose the reality we want to create and live in.
We are the storytellers, and we are also products of the stories. We are the creator and the creation.
We don't need to reject or repress our negative beliefs, because as we have learned from mythology, they then gain more power and prowess to cause harm and wreak havoc on our lives. When we open our heart and feel the negative beliefs running around and causing pain, the task is to sit down, listen to them, love the hell out of them (this is a clever use of words here), and tell them a more beautiful story that could also be incredibly true.
Truth is multifaceted depending on where you're sitting in the room. My inner child might think that it's true that I was abandoned and unloved. But my wise elder might also think it's true that I was given the exact experience I needed to become a deeply loving and attuned person. My inner rebel might also feel that's its true that because of this, I can't trust love and so it's not worth even trying. As you can see... it's all true, and it's all you. But you get to choose who narrates your story. Knowing your inner archetypal landscapes here is helpful.
The old narratives are often deeply imbedded in our collective unconscious and conditioning and take some time to mingle well with the emergence of a greater and more holistic possibility to the art and skill of not only story telling, but story listening.
This year, I ask myself, and for those of you who read this, where are the cracks in the story, where a new light can get in? We are in the times of writing new myth and story and biography that includes the beauty and trust and perfection of it all, as well. This is not the norm, and thus it can feel like pushing a boulder uphill at times, heaving and shaking from the weight of the old way bearing down on you. But this is what's required to make radical and beautiful change. We have to shift the stories that we tell ourself that inherently bleed out into the way we tell the world what it is also.
This is gentle work, the happens in the quiet of your mind just before you drift off to bed or in the flittering of your heart when you see the eyes of the one you love. These stories rage even louder when life get's good, for some reason, as if they are clawing at the walls of the way things are demanding that no change will happen. We all know the power of a story, and the death that can come when it's challenged. Something indeed must die for a new story to be told.
Stephen Jenkinson talks about the truth of the word "blessing". It's etymology is more along the lines of a blood shed, a death, a sacrifice, and ending. This ending is required for something new to be born. When two people wed, there is a death of the individual narrative and a birthing of a shared one. What stories and how they are being seen need to die in order for a more beautiful one to be told through the cellular radiance of your being?
This end of the year only brings up questions in my heart, and for that I am grateful.
I am sharing them, with you as kin, and hope they serve you well:
Where have I become my resentments?
How can I encounter my own experience with new eyes?
What stories am I living by, and can I see them without judgement?
What am I telling myself that makes me feel unworthy?
What voice has become the dictator of my life?
What is the miracle paradox story that I can make space for in my life moving forward?
With love, and a new pen to write with,
jenny
