Rewrite The Story Of Your Life GF Live 8-31-24

If we can't give the whole of our attention to someone – or, for that matter, to any moment – then we can't listen. If we can’t listen, we can't possibly hear the whole story. And if we can't hear the whole story, then how can we ever hope to understand, let alone realize our actual role in it.

Transcript

I want to share with you an overriding idea and it's very much connected with the title that we posted which is to rewrite the story of your life starting with page one.

You know what a great idea it is isn't it to start life over and I think that a lot of us understand that we are intended to be able to do so but I don't think that many of us know what it means to really start life over and that's what we're going to be looking at together today.

Go ahead Kate let's put up the first key lesson please read along with me everybody it sets the stage for our study.

If we can't give the whole of our attention to someone or for that matter to any moment then we can't listen and if we can't listen we can't possibly hear the whole story and if we can't hear the whole story then how can we ever hope to understand let alone realize our actual role in it.

Realize our actual role in the whole story.

It's a phenomena sometimes everything is so synchronistic.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Without knowing it you and I to whatever extent it's to are addicted to a kind of a passive sense of self that is born out of identifying with a story that we were not only in quotes born into but into the unconscious nature that has written it and that keeps writing it where we believe that the story that we are suddenly drafted into the explanation of whatever the moment may be the story that our thoughts and feelings are telling us is true is the truth and we don't know any other story but that doesn't mean that there isn't another story a couple quick examples just to set the stage of what I'm trying to describe to you this passive sense of self born out of identifying with the old story.

You ever go to the doctor and they take your blood pressure and maybe you don't know it but suddenly you your blood pressure is 10,

15,

20 percent higher than it was usually.

Why is that?

Because there is a story that your body knows and it is anticipating something that it's trying to protect itself from it doesn't know what it needs to protect itself from it just doesn't want anything that contradicts what it usually thinks is true about itself so there's a backstory going on in the body the body has its homeostasis its nature it wants to remain challenge it suddenly threat threat raises blood pressure how can I be threatened just walking into a doctor's office do you understand or more to the point just less literally a few moments ago and it might happen again so just in case if you hear the sound of a big helicopter up in the mountains where my wife and I live it's a very dreaded sound because it usually means it's carrying water to a nearby fire and if you can hear the chopper it means that fire is not that far away from you so I'm sitting here getting ready to go online I hear the wop wop wop wop of the chopper and instantaneously my mind begins to imagine tell me the story oh you better drop what you're doing here you better get up and see because that probably means it's a water carrier there's a fire and the next thing you know your blood pressure is elevated you're afraid and you're captured thinking through a story that may have been true days months years ago but you don't know it's true there's something that just goes before us that's constantly telling us what it is that we're about to go through ourselves and we have no idea that this old storyteller is dragging us through an old storyline that as we agree to live with it and through it we find ourselves a captive not of what is true but of a moment where our imagination is reliving a story and then we with identifying with it find ourselves not starting life over not starting on page one but somewhere deep into a host of chapters filled with conflict worries and fears that we simply don't know aren't true but that by lending our attention to them and then resisting the story that our own mind is spinning believe there's no choice but to acquiesce to that fear worry or anxiety let me tell you a story in fact I have a couple stories to tell you so that you can get on the same page with me about this new story so before I tell you the story I trust you're still there are you able to follow what I'm outlining so far how many of you know that there is it's like living with a closet full of old clothes and you always have to put them on thinking that that's the only thing that you can be dressed in it's the same with what this mind is telling us it is dressing us all the time in some form of discouraging disparaging thought or feeling how many times have you for instance been ready to go to a family reunion you're thinking about relocating you want a new job new training I mean the minute that your mind even stumbles on the opportunity of creating in quotes something new for yourself instantaneously it's attended to by a host of old stories old fears old arguments old regrets so the whole moment is constantly being colored by an unconscious nature where yes John living from the past but when we're living in the past not from the past in the past we don't know it and it is the past that produces our experience in the present moment this old nature that is always prognosticating whatever it is that's about to take place let's get to the story father daughter and she's gone off to college visits occasionally this time she comes at a beautiful time in the season and he says to her let's go on a camping trip I want to go to your favorite place what do you think all right that sounds okay a little hesitant not like she used to be a little hesitant off they go they get to someplace very beautiful but I don't know if you've ever had this experience especially today you get to these beautiful places you've anticipated and a hundred and fifty yards from you there's a camper or a crowd of people playing rap music or whatever it is and she says I don't want to be here I don't want to be here I want to go someplace where we're gonna be alone and he says I'm all on board with that in fact I want to encourage that in you because I understand you've gone to college and once you get off to this college it's very easy to be caught up in a world of thoughts and feelings that in order to fit in you have to go along with that story I don't want you to go along with any story he tells her you're meant to explore a world that no one has ever seen before that's why we go camping so that we can have an experience that is new because we've entered into a new place so they trek off to another place to a rigorous hike to a distant valley they get there he can tell she's still not happy and eventually after doing this three or four times he says to her sweetheart what's going on everywhere we go even when there's no people there you you say let's keep moving what's this unhappiness about what's it going to take to make you happy he said we're no one else is here we're alone now she decides whether or not she wants to say the following thing to him but because she loves and trusts her father she says well maybe you're alone but my head is so full of voices telling me that things aren't the way they're supposed to be reminding me of what I'm supposed to do when I get back from this trip I have a thousand stories and not one of them is content to be where I am and he says do you remember sweetheart I want you to remember another kind of story in this moment he says come on and they she's where he says follow me and they go and they go and they sit by a river and as they're sitting by the river he says do you remember being here in this place before long time ago she's vaguely I can kind of remember we've been here before and as they're sitting on that rock watching this river go by he says so it's true isn't it that in one respect we've been here before that is true isn't it in this place she says I guess what's the point he said we've been in this place before but we have never been in this time before we have never been before and around a river that is always a new river the place may be the same place but the river is a different river sit here you'll see it the river is never the same river it's always new the place can be the same but the river is always different the river of this moment the river of life we're never present enough to understand of course there are places and things I have to do every day I get up I'm in this little house top of this mountain but I know that when I look out the window and I see the deer and Frankie the turkey and my animal friends it's always new even though they're the same creatures they're not the same creatures they've gone through changes too they're responding to the environment so even though all the time it seems like to us and as is told to the story of the daughter we travel along through this life carrying with us a kind of a mirror and this mirror of subtle and not so subtle sensations emotions and thoughts that we are looking into each moment this mirror of this consciousness that we're deriving not just a familiar and often largely unwanted sense of self but all of the habitual associations that come with it it's like what happens when we get ready to go with family or to the doctor's office there's a constant mostly nonverbal backstory and it doesn't it just explain why we feel what we do but it's also telling us what we need to do to change the circumstance so while we're looking at what our mind is projecting the content of this backstory may be reconfigured slightly but by and large the same content then it's telling us what to do with the circumstance of revisiting a moment in time that has been carried forward by an unconscious nature that has identified with it then it's telling us what we have to do how to change the circumstances and how does the mind tell us how to change the the story that we don't want and the answer is it rewrites the story again it just changes the characters and it almost always starts with some form of discontentment doesn't it a new plan a new place a new person to become something that I have to get through in order to get on to the better story that I've told myself so that we're always without knowing it and critical to the first part of this talk living in and from an old story and it's not just my old story it's not just your old story it is an old story that belongs to an old man that belongs to an old woman that belongs to an old unconscious nature into which you and I have been born and that without knowing it because nobody could explain or help us understand it certainly not our parents or their parents because they're as much as wearing these old clothes of this unconscious nature as before them and before them again the sins of the father visited seven times it seems to be always there I don't know if you're aware of it again your car you're going someplace you're rushing you don't know why you're rushing you just want to get someplace so it's like some kind of psychic preformed mold into which were poured we into which we enter and as we identify with the experience that is being generated by listening to and reliving some fashion of an old story it literally shapes us tells me who I am gives me my choices tells me what I have to do it starts to rewrite another story and I'm sitting there in this passive suggestive nature as I described at the start passive to the identity that's being recreated by something that keeps rewriting a story from the content of itself that's old that's dead that's past now this doesn't mean to be clear that you and I can't imagine or think about something that we need to do or hope to change in our life but it means that we have to understand that there are levels and that yes it's true we are endowed to be with the capacity to be a creator in this life there's no question about it but before we are endowed with the capacity to create we ourselves are creations so that the story we write for ourselves is literally if you want to use the word it's a kind of branch to the greater vine there is a larger vine a bigger story that we have been born into that has nothing to do with the recapitulation of conflicted moments from our past but that for the sake of that greater story that is like that river that is always renewing itself we are intended to constantly be renewed by re-entering or entering into for the first time as it were our relationship with this living river with the true awareness of life this is what we're meant to do because there any form of fear doubt worry all of the things that visit us daily that seem to make a victim of us are born out of a story that we're reliving revisiting in some new form or shape a conversation we had 20 years ago or 10 seconds ago and never knowing that we're literally reliving the conversations literally reliving all of the conflict in that old problem with that pal or whoever it may have been that produced the problem so let me get on to the next story are you following me let's make sure we're still on the same page everybody please I'll try to leave time for comments so here's go just listen I have to kind of spin a tail that seems to be impossible but it's it's it is very much true it's just that we can't see it so here's a world and it is our world but we'll imagine there's a world where around the age of three years old or so suddenly appears in the life of that child and that remains with that child as it grows up into an adulthood we'll just call it the storyteller something that the child begins to rely upon in order for the child to be able to deal with the circumstances that it's in so that it is forever and always calling on a way to have a an explanation of why it's feeling the uncomfortableness the fear the worry why it feels the anxiety it does and so there's always a storyteller there with this child it it's in the bed with the child it wakes up with the child in fact at a certain point the child the first thing the child does is it relates to the story that that storyteller is telling it is going to happen that day and it doesn't just end that as as when I was a child I spoke as a child when I was a child I had a storyteller no the storyteller stays with us doesn't it and it relives and retells the same stories changing characters and qualities but it's still the same storyteller meaning it's still the same dependency that we have on something talking to us and telling us about what's going on and what we have to do accordingly and it's never questioned you can actually I don't know how much you're able to see and understand you can be with people and you can see them literally their eyes roll in the back of their head and they start talking to you from a story something that they were given that they don't know they were given that they are so sure must be exactly that way or that this terrible thing is coming or they've got to worry about two days or 20 years from now all because they're listening to a storyteller this unconscious nature that is identified with the sensation of whatever that story is generating in them so here's two friends they grew up together always been close and most of us never talk about these constant voices these thoughts these stories that pick us up like some old piece of carpet and throw us into the heap and finally she says to her friend you know I got to talk to you about something what's on your mind I don't know how to respond I don't know really what to do I don't know who I am she said without something talking to me I never saw it before but it was so clear the last time we went to that remember the party at Bill's two weeks ago and then that humiliating experience she said I left there I got into bed my mind wouldn't stop it was telling me story after story about what it meant what was gonna happen how my life was over and I realized well why am I listening to this why am I listening to this storyteller she said and I just decided I it has to stop well what are you gonna do she said well yesterday and I'm not sure what any of this means but try to follow me yesterday it was still talking to me it was still going on let's break into the story for a second how many how many times are you sitting by yourself or you're with friends you can be at a lovely dinner people can be toasting you and and a thought will come and it'll just pick you out of that moment and put you into a story talking to you about why this person this passive agree why this talking to you about how and you're not there you're in an old story that belongs to an old mind and it's not your story and it's not your mind but you don't know it so her friend says to her I've noticed you're a little bit different you seem a little more relaxed what's going on well I made a change I don't know why it took me so long she said to make this change but I finally made it a change with what she said I had a kind of conversation with this storyteller and I finally for the first time in my life was able to express and she said please don't I wasn't talking to it but I made I made a dramatic change what she said I decided that I want to be part of another kind of story one that the old storyteller doesn't know anything about and and as I was feeling it I tried to I tried to convey that because for the first time in life I was very aware of the fact that this storyteller is not me I've always taken it to be me I've even I even talked to it but I realized now that it's not and and as much I gathered myself and I said I don't want to be I don't want to be part of any other story that you tell me I want nothing to do with it so my friend said well then what happened she said I fell a fear passed through me and when the fear came thank God she said I was aware that the fear was part of a story and the story was telling me that unless I listen to what it's telling me I have to do and be in this moment that something terrible was gonna happen to me and in that split second I could see that something terrible wasn't going to happen to me it was happening to me in that moment while I was identified with those thoughts and feelings telling me who I am and what my possibilities are well then what happened she said I simply said as best I can I said to it I want nothing more to do with you I want to go back to chapter one page one in my life the real starting over chapter one page one and I want to be part of what's already written there instead of part of your constant prognostic projecting what may or may not happen to me her friend said well what's what's on what is chapter one page one what he what's written there her friend said what's there are three words in the beginning in the beginning we don't know that it's always the beginning we're never inwardly in the place waiting our turn waiting to see how everything is being transformed moment to moment as surely as everything that unfolds in the ocean changes the rivers that capture the water in the raindrops everything transforming it isn't imagination page one chapter one who and what you are in reality is not an old story but a new story retelling itself in a thousand million infinite different ways in which every part of that river of energy that river of life that is moving through you is revealing something new and true about yourself that you don't have to do anything about other than observe and watch and let it move in and move out and move in and move out while you remain very much in that place the observer of all that is turning being transformed by everything that is moving through you and yet remaining the true changeless observer the true awareness the true light that allows everything to come into it and move through it that it changes without being changed itself Katie let's bring up this little key lesson now I want to read to you everybody follow me please the following letting go is an act of agreement with life it is an accord on our part with what the present moment is telling us about ourselves as it unfolds before us and within us asking us what it does and what is it that life asks of us moment to moment it's simple life is always asking will you be a witness to my story will you let go of your moment in the Sun of passing circumstance in order to realize that just behind it dwells a life whose light never fades will you choose in favor of entering into a life whose story never ends and in which fear failure and falling simply do not exist that's your real story it is inseparable from life itself it is inseparable from God him herself this is a difficult task to understand as I've been talking recently about how the past crucifies the present moment the past crucifies the present moment because here is this here is this living presence that you and I are a part of the the ceaseless movement of these energies touching transforming changing everything within us giving us giving us an ever-renewed understanding of all that dwells within us everything that comes up from within everything that comes and goes and realizing that that order of being living our life from chapter 1 page 1 line 1 isn't in conflict with what it is that we want to create as human beings it complements it imagine being part of a life where everything you do even when it seems like things have gone wrong things aren't the way you want them to be what if everything about that story as it's going on is complemented by a greater story that is revealing to you that there's no problem with what you have intended and willed intended to bring forward because you wanted to explore and understand something because desire brought you there you can't end your relationship with desire by not wanting to be attached that's insanity you end your relationship with whatever that desire whatever that will is not by in quotes cramping it and chopping down on it but by constantly bringing it into the light of another order of life another order of creation that you are already a part of that complements the constant revelation of that nature as it is being revealed and in the complementary relationship with that old nature transforming that old nature because it's bringing it always into a bigger picture a bigger understanding of its possibilities and our true possibilities are that we are renewed every moment and that part of the renewal is the end of the old story having been replaced by our entrance into a story that shows us who we are and what we are is always intended to be on page 1 chapter 1 in the beginning you know you don't have to understand what I'm saying with your mind if it's difficult you should be able to feel it got reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving the past crucifying the present putting on the same old consciousness because that old consciousness tells us that if we put it on something new will happen to us if we let our mind run like it wants to run in one of an endless form of different kinds of imagination that somehow or other we're going to be the one who rewrites our story I mean you have to ask yourself I can't do it for you how many times are you gonna let fear rewrite your story how many times you gonna let anger rewrite your story how many times you gonna let some form of negative imagination projecting something that's about to happen you hear the proverbial helicopter in your mind hovering and as it does it's kicking up all of these old thoughts and feelings and then that mind will grab one of them and it'll start to write an entire story based on that one thing that was kicked up out of the darkness it's possible for you and I to become so present and aware of this psychic prison this box that at the very advent the very start of some shock fear worry doubt something pressing in on us you've got to perform you've got to be this kind of person you need to plan what you're gonna say you need to make sure that whatever it is that might go wrong doesn't please listen to me I'm not saying that you don't act as an advocate to the best of your possibility in whatever it is that you've been preparing and planning you've gotten that far you can't abandon it but you can begin to understand that it all points along the road it's possible for you to invoke the presence and the power of an entirely new storyteller by watching the old storyteller and to realize that there's nothing wrong with whatever it is that you intended to create there's nothing wrong with whatever that relationship was that you went into that turned south and sour your storyteller tells you that he she they this they did that and you're a terrible person or you'll never find what you're looking for it can't wait to denigrate you so that when it denigrates you it can write another story about how it's going to deliver you from the pain that it has put you in that's how it works so that I have to live in two worlds at once this is the true challenge of a spiritual life I live in the world that I have been complicit in making this world that we are in is a a perfect reflection of the level of consciousness responsible for all of the horrors in it but also responsible for the things that have been good and true and beautiful they're all wound up and mixed in together and the only way that one can discern what is right and true good or not is through the awareness of this nature as it spills out a story justifying if you can believe it justifying hatred justifying anger justifying harming one another you can you can you can you can listen to that storyteller not listen to it as it defines you and defiles you with the identity that it's asking you to step into so that can mold you again in the shape of itself but you can listen to it so clearly that you begin to understand gosh I don't want to be a part of this story I don't want to live this fear again I don't want to live this impatience again I don't want to live this argument again the only way that you will ever know that you are getting ready to live again that old story is when the new part of yourself the awareness the light of life is there and it can it can see it when I say listen it's possible to listen to a fear you can listen to it tell you who you are and what you need to do you can listen to anxiety tell you why you have to feel the way it's you are you must or you can listen to that story telling you defining you and realize I've I've dressed myself a thousand times in that negative state I've dressed myself a thousand times in the promise of that Pharaoh to liberate me from the land of darkness that I'm in a thousand times I put that on no I'm not putting on anymore I'm giving notice if you will to the storyteller not through resistance not through aggression not through some form of discipline I'm giving it notice by agreeing to recognize it when it starts talking to me remember I said you go to the dentist you before you go to the dentist your blood pressure is one thing you get in the dentist chair it's another the mind already anticipating this is personal for me the mind already anticipating the pain the sound the smell I know yeah see and then what happened you start listen to this the that that the old storyteller starts to tell you what's going to happen and then you begin to resist what the storyteller tells you which is the continuation of the story the storyteller isn't protecting you by telling you what you need to do to be free of that fear or that pain it is painting you into a corner where the more you identify with what it's prognosticating the more you're a prisoner of that unconscious nature this is something to be seen we consent to let go of two things in one respect that are actually one we let go of our story and we let go of the parts of us that have been telling us it and we let go of the story and the parts that tell us this by attending to and listening by being watchful instead of willful by being willing to explore instead of having where we are explained to us by something that has no understanding at all about who and what we are can you do it right now you bring all of your attention what's the story what's moving what's talking if it is chapter one page one line one in the beginning does not talk to you when you see something beautiful in nature nothing is talking to you the observer and the observed are a singularity when you begin in earnest which is going to require you giving notice to the old storyteller it's not going to go oh I'm so glad you've seen through me it's going to start giving you a thousand reasons why you are required and is necessary for you to rely on something telling you who you are and what to do in the beginning there is no you telling you who you are and what to do you are part of the new beginning and you remain a part of that new beginning as long as you remain present to its possibilities yes it's going to fight so what can a shadow fight with the sunlight your job my job is to bring the old storyteller to become so present to its imprisonment that one day we realize something seems to be inviting me to a new possibility but every new possibility this old storyteller gives me simply delivers me back into the cell of that unconscious nature learn to listen stay awake you have more on your side than you know you do you just have to wake up and remember and to place yourself there

Reviews

I felt a real shift today. I’ve been asking the question Who am I? Not being aware of the Storyteller, I’ve been letting it tell me, mold me, and keep me held prisoner in the lie of who it Tells me I am. In the beginning….is where I start today. Thank you so much!

Thank you 🙏