Not one to slaughter grammar lightly, I still had to go with that title, as this episode is about one of the most underestimated, or, at least, publicly berated forces within the universe. Mind you, there is a cast of people excluded from this way of seeing things – and I am one of them. 

Once upon a time, I studied literature. Comparative, Newer English and American Literature, to be precise. It is not that there weren’t other topics I was interested in, but that is what I settled for and whenever somebody asked why or, usually, “But what can you do with that?” I would give a flustered answer that wasn’t really one and, more than that, most certainly not the real reason why I did study literature. The true reason why I studied literature, back in 1992, was that it was the field of study that I perceived to hold the most TRUTH. And I am a 7th chakra intuitive, so when I talk about truth, I usually mean TRUTH, i.e. absolute truth. Now absolute truth is always a conglomeration of subjective or personal truth and, at the same time, pre-existent to all personal/subjective truth. You could also say post-existent, that is basically the same thing. The problem you are now experiencing with the previous sentence is merely one of perspective. (Which is why the next Episode will be about perspective, again.) You kind of need to manage a mental squint to see both at the same time. But wherever you do see both at the same time, wherever, indeed, something even touches on both simultaneously, a form of magic occurs, in this case the magic of storytelling. 

I could not have told you that back in 1992 or in any of the years following. All I had was an ability to mentally squint and a sponge-like willingness to soak up as much truth as I could find, often between the lines or in unexpected places. I will have to tell you that a decent novel can hold as much truth as a Bible, and will go on to say that this even applies to good comics. But there are writings like the Apocrypha or the Veda, the Edda, all those big leathery volumes of philosophical teachings, of psychoanalytical learning that I would drop into and emerge 500 pages or so later, like a deep-sea diver on a mission for rare and unpriced pearls of knowledge …. Still, fundamentally entrapped in the old paradigms of truth and learning, but still innately aware that there was a beyond, that I was carrying that beyond within me. 

Nor could I have told you then that I was basically trying to find a match to what was already within me, a justification for my existence, so to speak. The later had a clearly spiritual ring, but had never found anything to answer its call in the world without. Not in religions or people representing them. I always loved churches or temples alike. The ones with nasty energy are a rare exception. But I am diverging. It was not until 2011 that I personally began to notice that there were people labelled as spiritual popping up in the here and now that I could actually squint at and say: Yes, there is truth in what you emanate. 

To return to my topic, by now you will have figured that I do not consider stories or story telling in any of its forms to be trivial. Indeed, they are most important. And, they are what our current reality is all about …. They are what all reality is all about. Sorry for being the one to break this to you. 

Why is what we are experiencing all about stories? Well, you already know that it is all about information. It is foretold that the age we live in will be called “The Information War”. But I will give it straight to you that the term information in the way it is presently most commonly used is a post enlightenment euphemism for a story, i.e. a story that is supposedly without personal perspective or focus. A synonym for data, but already assembled in a certain unquestionable way. Be aware that it is far from being such. 

In Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information, Luciano Floridi writes: 

The reductionist approach holds that we can extract what is essential to understanding the concept of information and its dynamics form the wide variety of models, theories and explanations proposed. The non-reductionist argues that we are probably facing a network of logically interdependent but mutually irreducible concepts. … Both approaches, as well as any other solution in between, are confronted by the difficulty of clarifying how the various meanings of information are related, and whether some concepts of information are more central of fundamental than others and should be privileged. Waving a Wittgensteinian suggestion of family resemblance means acknowledging the problem, not solving it. 

[from: The Meaning and Etymology of ‘Information’, in The Informational Turn]

Originally, the latin root of information was linked to the idea of passing on knowledge that was derived by putting order to something by means of conscious thought. Literally, it does mean putting something in to a form that can be distributed. What if I tell you that to this day the most common form this is achieved is through stories? And why is there so much resistance to this being the case? Because stories are mythical. They mix what is real and what is not. And our entire reality, at least the dominant culture reality is based on the assumption that there is such a thing as a fixed, clear cut out and (physical) reality and that, if we cannot see this reality, it is our fault solely and probably down to our innate shortcomings as are: our senses, our feelings, our thoughts, and, most dangerously, our experiences. Because none of these should be at any moment allowed to override “reality”. Here you have the dominant, conditioned story of everything. 

But, in case this makes you feel threatened, this is a most reductionist version of things and I advise you to generally ignore any implications in this direction, as they are rarely, if ever, uttered by truly informed or dedicated people, no matter their creed or profession. There actually is a story line that is very currently palpable of the “informed” people’s (self-perceived) fear of the stories of the “uninformed” people. Don’t fall for it. Like many stories out there it is a trap. 

But before I go on making you fear stories, which is far from my intention, let’s take a fresh look at them. We all know mythology on a cultural scale and how it is a basic constituent of the same. In some indigenous cultures though there is also a form of personal myth or story. This is a kind of yarn that defines through both its elements of history and those of free narrative a sacred and very personal safe space of truth and identity. The most important component here is that it rings true to the owner of the story on a soul level. It connects the individual to the continuum of the now flowing into the ancestral story, which is why it will often start before the birth of the person telling it, which to traditional Western concepts would be unthinkable. 

In Waldorf pedagogy, there is something called the birthstory. It is based on whatever the parents recorded or found noteworthy of their child's arrival in this world. This is woven into an incarnation myth by the kindergarden teacher and told at the child’s birthday celebration every year. It invariably starts with the child’s pre-incarnated souls sitting in Heaven with the angels, looking for the ideal family to come in to. This conveys the process of incarnation on a soul level in a form that appeals to children, but, most of all, it is a form of empowerment, like all personal stories. The child did not just happen to be, it came here for a purpose. The former is the powerlessness and struggle of the material world, the latter is the intentionality and freedom of the soul. 

The concept of the personal story as a sacred and safe space is a highly commendable opportunity of creating reality and embracing diversity. And, most of all, it puts an end to the unconscious parental destruction of the creative impulse of self-definition within the child. The stories a child brings into this world should never be tampered with. In a way this can be seen as the initiating spark of an ideal society, where all stories are accepted and embraced with love. 

What you have to understand about stories is that they are neither good nor bad. All manifestations that have a ring of absolute truth are, so to speak, pre-judgement (which is human). There is no good or bad inherent here, because stories exist even before the concepts of good and evil. What this means on an earthly plane is: you can potentially do great good and great evil with stories, buhut not nearly as much as people who try to do so would like to think, firstly, because all stories are merely fragments of a longer story, secondly, they ultimately all spring from the same consciousness and, thirdly, they had a consciousness, form, even traditions long, long before the people who repeatedly think they are creating them. This is why only the unspoiled personal story holds actual uniqueness. But then again that is not what stories are about. Stories truly are about creation. They are the building blocks of our world. Or, rather, if you take the archetypes to be the building blocks of this world, the story is the form or constellation in which these archetypes are cast. From the gnostic point of view that would be one and the same thing, as the Archai are not only spirits of personality but also of time, i.e. they naturally manifest in a linear form, as evolution or mythology. In plain words: it is all about how they act, interact and evolve, rather than about what they stand for. Contrary to popular belief what they stand for is not fixed but variable, if not arbitrary. The story really is the given. 

The most important for anybody to know here is that no story is in need of validation. A story is a metaphorical vehicle of truth. It is a form of art, and as such always aspiring to come into as much affinity to absolute truth as it can within the incarnation of a personal truth/words/ideas/poetry. It is an approximation to absolute truth, which is the truth that is true to ALL individual perspectives. As such it exists in a realm far beyond what most science today is even capable of thinking. It embraces the paradox that the more personal it gets, the closer it comes to the truth of the many. That is pretty amazing, considering that I haven’t even mentioned yet that it also creates our reality. 

In the beginning was the word … 

This is usually taken to refer to some kind of command. But what if it was an attempt to express the self of Source? The words of the just found consciousness within Source mind that could only and still can only be experienced and depicted in contrast. 

Consider that your stories form your reality and that of the people who hear them. Don’t take them too lightly, but most of all, never take them too seriously. Take them to heart as much as you can or you will not be able to let the stories of others reach inside you. Take your stories to be sacred and ask what they express. But don’t take them for facts or at face value or the silence, the in between words will flee and leave you here in a world of spoken into life horrors. 

Stories are, most of all, the language of creation and as such they are your birth right. Let no one dare to tell you that you do not speak this language. Let no on be the judge of your understanding. 

Namasté, dear Tribe!

Happy Solstice to all.