Stories & Fields

We all have our stories. You know, the story about how a particular turn of events went down, which when strung together with all the rest forms the story of our life. The stories that play over and over and over again in our heads ad nauseam. Yes, I have such things. For most of my life, my stories never made it out of my head. Yet life has a way of calling us out, pulling at us, pushing on us, driving us nuts until we surrender. At least that’s how it’s been for me. There were little toe dips in the deep end in early adulthood, but any (near) complete gushing out would have to wait until much later- and even then only to a trusted few. Not that I wasn’t practicing my storytelling in the meantime, because boy was I!

One of the interesting things about stories is how compelling they are. So much so, that it would be accurate to say that we are our stories. Or more accurately, our stories are who we perceive ourselves to be. Our story is our identity. There is nothing wrong with this per se, in fact one might argue that it is a condition of being human. The same is true, in fact, for an entire group of people. Our collective story is what we call culture. It’s a bit hard to imagine living either without our own story or without a culture, nor am I sure we would want to. Our stories are how we make sense of things, how we connect the dots, how we do the most important thing that we do- to connect. To connect is to love. So from this perspective, I say by all means… tell your story.

Sharing my stories has proven extraordinarily helpful in my own personal evolution. One of the reasons is that the simple act of saying it out loud helps to bring whatever energy or patterns that a story is carrying out of the subconscious realm and into the conscious realm. Another is that sharing it with another can help bring clarity to the experience, regardless of the other person’s response or maybe sometimes because of it. Most importantly, sharing enables us to do that all important thing- connect. We find out that our experiences aren’t so outlandish, or then again maybe they are, but still not so much that it makes you seem like an alien being. Telling our story is crucial.

To not gloss over my first point about bringing the story to the conscious realm, this is what enables us to examine the energy and patterns that otherwise dominate our continued experience of life. One of the main realizations as we do this is that our personal stories have been to a large degree predetermined by the cultural story that we were born into. Maybe that is a great story, maybe not so much. Either way, what is gained by bringing it to light is your own creative powers. When we gain control over our own story, we get to write anything we want. Who wouldn’t want that??

All that is a lead up to where I find myself these days after a good fifteen years of intense storytelling, which is… tired of it. I’m tired of my same old stories. I mean really, how many dang times can you watch the same dang movie or read the same dang book?! Good grief. Enough already. There was a time when the energy of these stories demanded to be told and to be heard. Now… not so much. If you want to know these days you are more likely to get a yawn out of me! I don’t think that one situation is better than the other, just that each should have its day. I’ve already talked about why the former is important, so let’s talk about this new one.

I am actually feeling a little excited about this turn of events. My intuition is telling me that what it means is that I am ready for a new experience. It is signaling to me that actually, I am under no obligation to remain trapped in the past. Sure, my story to date has set deep patterns in my being that will likely always remain familiar to me. But all the same, I can create new patterns. I can tell new stories. I can tell whatever story I want to tell. That is my divine right. I can even tell a different story about things in the past! Think about it. We are required to edit the world as we are taking it in. Our senses simply cannot process everything that is happening. Once something is in the past, we edit even more to make sense of it, to fit it into our one, neat story of self.

The problem lies in the fact that we forget we are editing. We forget that our perspective is grossly limited in the first place. We are always only seeing an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the whole picture. Yet we have convinced ourselves that we are seeing with perfect clarity. One of the reasons that it is so important to share our stories out loud is to help both ourselves and others to gain a more complete picture of events. Of course, that only happens for us if we listen with an open mind, recognizing that there are infinite more perspectives of any turn of events. I had an interesting experience recently that brought to light that one of my ingrained stories was leaving out a whole heap of my childhood experience. This was my gymnastics story. Gymnastics set up a significant portion of my worldview, including challenges, approaches, patterns, etc. It wasn’t that my story was incorrect. It’s just that it was, well, edited. What was left out was practically all of the joy, the fun, the good times. Those stories didn’t make the edit. They only came out during my recent gymnastics team reunion. I either hadn’t told, hadn’t thought of, or had forgotten altogether some of these stories. And the fact that I had is as significant as what I had elevated to being important enough to be included in my official storyline.

You see for the book to make sense, one chapter has to flow from the next. That means that my story was going to be about trials and tribulations rather than about joy and celebration. Ugh. No wonder I am tired of my stories! And it’s not that I have to start completely over. There is some really great stuff in my book so far. Trials and tribulation, yes, but also triumph for sure. Challenging, yes, but also mystical, miraculous, and mind-blowing. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. It has been exactly what it needed to be to tell the story that I am here to tell. It’s just that maybe I need to keep working on it. Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick with my edits. The truth is, I have no idea what the ending will be. I don’t know the path ahead even. I don’t know what my experience will be, what it will mean, or who it will touch. There is nothing but unknown ahead. And that’s cool. It wouldn’t be possible, though, if I hadn’t already exhausted the old stories.

This leads me to what has been in my awareness over the last couple of weeks. There is a direct link between our stories and the field that we are creating around us. You’ve probably heard about this phenomenon through concepts like we attract what we are thinking/being, we see what we expect to see, we get what we expect to get, etc. It’s all of that Law of Attraction stuff. Perhaps you’ve tried that out. Maybe you’ve had success with it, maybe not. Either way, I think the key is that it’s not just about the stories we are telling ourselves, it’s about the field that we are creating because of it. We could religiously repeat the story we are wanting to experience in our head and police any deviation from said story in our thoughts/words/actions. But I dare say that if we are working that hard at it, we aren’t really believing it. We are trying too hard. And the Field knows. We can’t hide the truth from the Field. It knows how we really feel. And besides, this overworking reveals an underlying attachment to an outcome that the Field may or may not deem to be in the best interest of our story. So we are likely to be disappointed.

So instead of trying to manifest a certain reality, these days I find myself just trying to focus on my field. What story is playing in my head from moment to moment and what sort of field is that creating around me? You get this field thing, right? It’s your personal energy field, which is inextricably and profoundly connected to the Field (everyone’s and everything’s field in totality). Really, when we think about it, the ultimate goal- at least, o.k., what I think about it- is to just be in a state of interbeing with the Field. To me, nothing really matters beyond that. Whatever happens, happens. So what? To me, this state of interbeing is joy, is love, is enlightenment. That is consistent with what the wisdom traditions say. What more could we want? I think it is important to say that this in no way rules out experience itself. It simply opens experience to a potential greater than anything we could imagine on our own. And that is really cool.

Now to be completely real about this. That just made it sound way easier than it is, or at least than I find it to be. As I am going about trying to bring awareness to my field, I am finding that it isn’t all that great these days. It certainly isn’t where I would like it to be or on par with where I know it could be based on past experiences. And I know that my experience is being subdued because of it. This week one of my students asked me gleefully how I was doing before class started. I answered honestly. “I am o.k.” He immediately shot back “Why just o.k.???” Mind you, this was one of my Ecology & Man students and they perhaps tend to think of me as their guru. Trust me, I am no guru! Nor do I aspire to be, nor do I want anyone to think of me that way ever. So an honest answer he got. I replied, “Well, that is a great question. What I am working on these days is trying to be aware of the field that I am creating, and I am noticing that I am not always doing such a great job with that. So I am working on it, but for the moment I am not doing such a great job with that!” “Oh!” he replied, “that makes sense.” “How are YOU doing?” I asked. “Stupendous!” he exclaims. “That’s great! I am so happy to hear that,” I reflect back to him. Good. So good.

This student just happens to be a quiet football player, who doesn’t say much in class, and who just days before had pulled his hamstring which was going to set him back a few weeks. I have been talking to him lately about his personal experience in football and how it has defined him for his “story of self” project for the class. The class before I had chatted with him afterward about his injury and encouraged him to give it time and space to heal. I would like to think that just the fact that he had been heard and seen and not simply dismissed for a dumb jock led him to this moment of sincerely asking me how I was doing. And, I think he appreciated my honesty in return. I think it helped him to see that I am human just like him. This is how our stories connect us. This is how we weave our collective story. And, I believe, this is how we will change our field of possibility. This is how we will create a viable future for humanity- one story at a time. The trick is to not get so caught up in the story that we don’t notice the field that it is creating. In short, I am thinking that my best bet is to focus on my field first, from moment to moment, and just let my story tell itself. We’ll see how it goes!