If we were to cast our consciousness back in time to just a few generations ago, we would find that our stories were shared with one another. The biggest excitement and entertainment was when visitors or relations from far away arrived in the community.
Gathering in the kitchen, by the fireplace, or around the campfire in the center of the camp or village, the family of families could be found simmering with anticipation to hear the news of what’s happened to their relations since last they had the opportunity to meet and share.
If this news wasn’t enough to pass the day or evening, or if the skills of the teller were exceptional, the old favorite stories were welcomed too, the stories heard over and over again and handed down through the generations.
Every word might be memorized, but this group remembering was a part of the delight. The opening words of a well-known story were enough to bring the entire gathering to the same emotional setting, spinning the entire group into the same spell at the same time. A powerful thing, this melding of the group energies.
The spell was cast by just the possibilities of vicariously sharing the journey of another. Imaginations came on line and, if the story was dramatic and dangerous, the skin prickled and the people huddled closer.
If the story was one of triumph, hearts soared and hands clapped in delight. If the story was one of hardship or need, this was the opportunity of open hearts to give love and support. This portal of community interaction was the center of the wheel and one of our most precious resources as a human family.
Those with the best story-telling skills were highly prized and deeply loved, but no matter what, everyone had a story and all stories were welcomed and savored. Indeed, this was a well recognized and favored exchange of value, no one in their right mind would fail to trade a meal and a warm place to sit for one with good stories to tell in exchange.
Since the creation of media of television and film, the magic of being able to see the story play out before our eyes has had some unexpected consequences. The mighty hypnotic thrill of this has been integrated into our collective consciousness. We no longer even notice we’ve been bewitched. Our inherent discernment mechanisms have been bypassed by the enthralling spell of being able to watch, and watch endlessly, this spinning of canned stories and the accompanying advertisements designed to control and harvest our community resources, values, and energy.
Certainly, there’s been a mass addiction to this form, as it’s like a direct injection into the veins instead of the slower ingestion required when listening to a person weave a tale, where one will actually need use the powers of their own imagination to fill in the blanks. Where this energy then spins out and weaves the glue that bonds the people together who listen together and share.
The energy exchange between people when one is telling and one (or more) is listening is missing in this scenario. This ancient way of bonding community has been severed here, and it’s happened in a way that’s made it possible to scoop up our collective energies and harvest them for profit, as is so very obvious by the tremendous amounts of money it costs to have a TV advertising spot for one’s product.
Certainly, there’s been movement to curtail and to reverse this trend of bad intent and greed that permeates our media meal (everyday, all day long, for most people). I’m not saying that all media is bad. I’m just calling attention to the social trends accompanying its prominence.
In my view, the most nefarious of these consequences has been that we’ve given over our rights and abilities to own our own stories to someone else. This includes the ownership of our powers of imagination too. Even though we’ve found out that the intent or the ‘spin’ on the content of these stories isn’t so nice, we’re addicted now to the stimulation.
Like someone who now needs a laxative to ‘go’ after using it to stimulate the system long enough, we’ve become a community that feels the need to stimulate with media in order to move emotionally and intellectually, thereby squeezing the magic, the mystery, and the vital juices out of our own harvest of experience in the here and now.
Our stories are still here, but we’ve come to consider them as second-rate entertainment. Our imaginative powers are still here too, but we’ve been programmed to believe that the made-up media spin is the only portal to this realm, and our own imaginations are silly, unreal, stupid, or even dangerous.
Media would have us believe that there’s something we must buy or something we must ‘become’ to be interesting and successful, and most important of all, to be loved. There must be a car fast enough, a triumph over a bad guy horrible enough, a face pretty enough … oh well, you get the picture. Most of us aren’t enough to be loved. This is the message and it just isn’t nice. It also isn’t true.
What is true is that we each have a story and that story is rich with meaning. The meaning is magical and miraculous.
This is true for all of us, all of the time. I’d even take this a leap further to suggest that sharing this is what we’re hungry for, the proverbial food for the emptiness we feel and can’t seem to find the cause of.
It may take some shift in personal perception to realize this truth, and perhaps one might consider sharing with loving community to help with this. The exchange of energies from such an interaction may just be alluring and juicy enough to wean one from the addiction and artificial stimulation of watching the ‘canned’ versions of ‘what life is like’ in-between the commercials on the set.
At least it may share the golden throne of where we put our attention and therefore what we assign value to in how we spend our energies.
Do we dare to stimulate ourselves with our own wonder or dazzle ourselves with our own beauty? This may seem to some like it’s hyped up and silly, but the truth is that the magic mirror of relationships is how we get the chance to see ourselves. Without this magic, just think of how much less one knows about who they are.
Many of you reading this already know of our community discussion forum at httpss://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GoldenGaia/info. For those who don’t yet know of this opportunity to share with loving community authentic stories and personal truths, please know you are welcome to join.
I personally find there is nothing so satisfying and interesting as the magic of my own life, and I know this is the same magic present in the lives of others too. I’m excited and hungry to share with others what this is for me and to hear what this is for them. There are mysteries and magic and puzzles and inspirations. We have all this and much, much more.
So, the Light’s on and there’s plenty of places in the circle for any who wish to share or just to listen. Only know that your story is worth everything. In reality, it’s the only story there is, and it’s our story too.