Spiritual Narrative (Part 2)

Spiritual Narrative (Part 2) by Joshua Reeves, audiobook read by the author. Your spiritual narrative is your soul’s story. It is why you are here. It is to experience what is ultimately most sacred to you. Like a character in a story, you have a lot to say about what happens, but you have little to say about what the story is truly about. The plot, the supportive cast, the epiphanies along the way, these are all examples of the spiritual narrative in action.

Transcript

Headlines.

Have you ever been drawn into reading a news article by a sensational headline?

Yellow journalism is a practice that gives extreme headlines to content in order to draw the reader in.

Emergency!

Economic meeting takes place.

Doomsday!

Possible government shutdown in the works.

Last chance!

Candidate stumps for last minute votes.

Journalists aren't the only ones to give sensational headlines to the events of everyday life.

We do it too.

We give extreme headlines to our life experiences in a way that can cause us to miss the real story.

It's over!

Matt is 10 minutes late.

I'm a failure.

I didn't get the job.

These headlines may be possible,

But until they become fact,

They are sensationalism,

Which won't help us or the situation unless our goal is to make the outrageous headline real.

When we get caught up in the overdramatic headlines,

Our best chance to be free is,

Like a good journalist,

To investigate the story,

To stop listening to the stories being told and seek the true story for ourselves.

Free from bias,

We try to let the facts speak for themselves.

This can change the narrative.

What time did Matt and I agree to meet again?

Matt is 10 minutes late.

Was I prepared for my interview?

I didn't get the job.

Our headlines become questions that help us to stop telling the story and start understanding it.

Maybe Matt is stuck in traffic.

Maybe the job wasn't suited for me anyway.

After letting ourselves investigate the content,

We can then look even deeper for a grander narrative.

For those of us who have a sense of meaning and understanding of what our life is about,

Our headlines can be reflective of our greater story,

Why we are here,

And how we choose to live our lives,

Our sincere values,

And our faith.

Our true headlines become quite powerful and unchanging no matter what the story.

Everything is in divine right order.

Matt is 10 minutes late.

Everything works out for my highest good.

I didn't get the job.

When the headline changes,

Our understanding of the story changes and,

At times,

The story itself shifts as well.

To take the headline away completely and see without reservation what is there is to be true to what is.

To insert a headline is to tell a story.

To realize a fundamental truth about the story that we feel at the deepest level of our being is true is to affirm our spiritual narrative.

Living in accordance with your spiritual narrative is all about establishing a belief in your truest story,

Releasing the stories that don't support it,

And experiencing that which accomplishes in your everyday life.

Here is a four-step process in discovering your spiritual narrative no matter what the story is that you're telling yourself.

Step 1.

Identify the story you're telling yourself.

Is it that someone wronged you?

Is it that things never seem to work out?

Is it that life has failed you again?

Is it that this time it will be different?

The story we tell ourselves may be true,

It may be false,

Or it may be partly true and false.

There may be multiple stories being told.

Identify them.

Step 2.

Investigate the story.

Is it true?

Investigating the story means to become objective by stepping out of our experience and then questioning it.

The experience is real,

But is it based upon a true story?

Is the story we are telling ourselves about what happened,

Based upon facts,

Or is it based upon past judgments?

If the story we are telling ourselves is based more upon past stories than on what really happened,

It is wise to pause and look closer at what is happening.

Step 3.

Be true to what is.

Being true to what is does not focus so much on remembering the past and identifying concerns about the future,

But ultimately,

It is about getting clear on what really happened and the possibilities of how before we conclude too quickly why.

Often we won't know why something happened.

Most times there is no why.

The why is something we assign that will tell the story not because of what happened but in response to what happened.

Before we respond by finalizing a story about what happened and what it means,

Even if it is a positive one,

It is wisest to first be true to what is.

Step 4.

Embody your sincere values.

What a story means will ultimately be what we decide about it.

No matter what our initial motives or another's motives are,

Or the way life is,

The underlining facts may be unknowable,

But our decisions about them will decide our path forward.

By embodying our sincere values in response to anything that is going on,

We move towards our whole story.

We turn the page and move on from stories and events that don't serve us.

We help complete incomplete stories that seem never-ending.

When I am in a fight with my girlfriend,

It is not a solution to our argument that heals things.

It is the realization of love that brings us closer together.

When I am struggling at work,

It is not a change that causes that struggle to cease.

It is the realization and application of my sincere values that allows me to surrender control and trust in those values to demonstrate what's best for me.

When we identify and embody our sincere values,

Our spiritual narrative is able to inhabit whatever the situation we are in,

And it is not only a greater story,

But a better self that emerges.

It may sound inconsequential to the fate of the world,

But I once suffered great emotional stress realizing one evening I had locked my keys in my apartment for the third time in a year.

I went immediately into berating myself.

What's wrong with you?

How could you be so stupid?

I left a message with the property manager and walked to a dinner appointment I had on the main street.

I sat outside on a bench and my thought was,

Why is this happening to me?

I noticed at this point my appointment was ten minutes late,

It was cold outside,

And I was grumpy.

At this point I had entered into sensationalism,

Telling myself stories that can at times echo some reality,

But ultimately are trying to affirm an absurd and negative reality.

Our first opportunity to call forth our spiritual narrative is to identify the story we are telling ourselves.

True,

False,

Sensational,

Irrational.

It doesn't matter.

This is where we begin.

I ask myself,

Is what I'm telling myself true?

Certainly I'm experiencing the perceived consequences of the story as if it were true.

I'm upset,

Afraid,

And feeling dumb.

I am engaged in the second step,

Investigating the story.

I see the damage it is doing.

Stories just don't have beginnings,

Middles,

And ends,

But consequences too.

If I'm experiencing consequences I don't like,

They may be deserved,

But what if they're not?

I should look at the story.

Am I really stupid?

What are the facts?

I left my keys in the apartment and my dinner appointment is late.

Now is what I am feeling a consequence of a sad-luck story,

Or is it a choice?

What now will I choose?

I begin to calm down.

I realize this story doesn't even need to be given a bad meaning.

Maybe I'll even laugh or write about it someday.

At this point I try to be as true to what is as possible.

This is the third step.

It means that instead of engaging in storytelling for now,

I am just going to observe the best I can without judgment.

I'm going to listen,

To watch,

To be present.

This is the simplest step,

And yet it can also be the most challenging.

By being fully present without a story,

We become vulnerable to change.

Being true to what is brings me deeper.

I begin to align myself with my deeper truth.

I start to remember my core values and virtues and the spiritual beliefs that have grown out of them.

Sitting on this bench,

I lower my eyes toward the ground,

And I begin to silently chant,

Everything is in divine right order.

As I'm feeling the way beyond my measly predicament,

I realize that what I'm doing isn't just making an affirmation,

It isn't just making an act of belief or of faith,

It is making a conscious choice.

This is the final step in the process,

Embodying the values I hold most sincerely.

These values aren't the same for all of us.

They may show up differently at times.

In that moment for me,

It was faith,

Humor,

And good will.

When I did embody those values,

The circumstance changed.

I stood up,

Looked in the restaurant,

And there was my dinner appointment,

Right there.

A few minutes later,

The manager called and apologized for not getting back to me sooner.

Things felt guided,

I felt supported,

And I had a great time.

This is a true story that really happened to me.

It's a simple story,

Yet it becomes full with meaning as I use it as a way to become conscious of and to utilize my spiritual narrative.

I'm not proposing that chanting an affirmation instantaneously transforms circumstances,

But it can help us to confirm a belief that behind every scene there is a story,

And behind every story,

A theme that is seeking to be realized and fulfilled.

If we can know what our theme is,

We can stop getting trapped in the dramas and begin to live our lives with improved focus.

When we know the theme of our story,

Our stories are no longer the teachers of what we do or do not want,

They are our opportunities to embody and claim our true story.

When I am unsure whether life as I am living it is based on my true story or is based on a series of false narratives,

The best technique is for me to be as true as possible to what really is.

This means that I work to release everything and everyone,

Including me,

From the story I am telling myself.

To get closer to what is,

I stop telling the story and start listening with as little judgment as possible.

Being true to what is is not about getting rid of the stories of our lives forever,

But more about finding a truer story that may be hidden behind tangential subplots,

Unresolved cliffhangers,

And character reshuffling.

When we listen to our life,

A truer narrative can emerge.

I recall preparing for a meeting with a boss from whom I wanted a raise.

My boss and I got along quite well,

But I sometimes felt undervalued,

As I was aware that the person who worked in my position before me had made much more money.

As the meeting approached,

I became more and more anxious and increasingly lost my grip on reality.

I was full of stories,

About not getting paid what I deserved,

Which to me was clearly about not being appreciated and my boss feeling threatened by my talent.

This of course was all because I was being taken advantage of.

I entered the meeting so caught up in these stories that what was true was the furthest thing from my mind.

Any trace of the grateful employee ready to receive a raise was gone.

Instead,

I was the enraged martyr,

Ready to sacrifice his livelihood in an attempt to expose to my boss his cruelty.

Thirty seconds into the meeting,

The boss offered me a substantial raise.

I had no time to fire back at him.

I thanked him and left the meeting.

The many screenplays I had replayed that left me unable to get to sleep at night had not been green lighted after all.

I was called back to reality,

Shook his hand,

Thanked him and left.

The stories began to diminish.

I slept better and my work life improved.

If I had been truer to what I really wanted,

I could have been more clear,

Committed and compassionate towards my boss.

Deep down,

I didn't want any part in those stories I was telling myself,

But I had gotten so caught up in them that I lost sight of what I really wanted to be happier,

Healthier and wealthier.

When we forget what we really want and act counter to our spiritual narrative,

We get lost in characters that are untrue and start working against what we really want.

The victim,

The martyr,

The unloved,

The unseen,

The unforgiven—these are all roles we fall into playing when we give up on being ourselves.

How easy it is to forget that we are the actors getting lost in the parts.

We become frozen in being the abandoned lover,

The hermit,

The grumpy old person,

Or the cynical observer.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell said,

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world,

Its good facts,

Its bad facts,

Its beauties,

And its ugliness.

See the world as it is and be not afraid of it.

Whatever the stories we make up in which we are unwilling to be true to what is can be damaging.

She doesn't really love me.

He is only interested in what I can do for him.

I can stop tomorrow.

I'm not that person anymore.

When we simply stop telling the story long enough to listen closely to it,

It can begin to tell itself again.

We may even begin to sense a deeper narrative taking place and start choosing and acting in accordance with it.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Story,

As much as any story,

Encapsulates that return to one's true story.

No other story I know reveals what can happen to our character when we delve so deeply into an untrue story.

Ebenezer Scrooge,

So caught up in materialism and greed,

Has a spiritual experience,

Looking at the past,

The present,

And the future.

His spirit is returned to him and he rejoices.

I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.

I will live in the past,

The present,

And the future.

The spirits of all three shall strive within me.

I will not shed out the lessons that they teach.

We all have these experiences that return us to a knowledge of the true purpose of our lives.

When they are slow in coming they are life-altering,

Yet for many of us they are simply moments of re-centering,

Because they may be a weekly or even a daily occurrence.

Scrooge was truly transformed by his visitations,

As we are by our own,

Yet in real life,

When we tell ourselves certain stories that lead us into states of living that are undesirable,

Like Scrooge and his humbug,

We are bound to struggle not to slip back into them at times.

When we come back to love from anger,

Or back to trust from fear,

We have to give our narrative room to re-establish itself.

We have to catch ourselves from falling back into playing those worn-out parts,

And let our individuality take center stage again.

This is done not by telling ourselves a new story,

But by applying our newfound self-understanding with clarity and purpose.

The power of the story is always in the storyteller,

Yet we are beholden to something larger,

The truth.

The closer we get to it,

The more we are in line with and embody what we really are.

When it comes to truly discovering our spiritual narrative,

It is not the story that we tell,

But the one that reveals itself that we want to pay the closest attention.

Story or narrative is the metaphor we are using for spiritual living,

But there is a key difference between a spiritual narrative and a book,

For example.

A book has a beginning,

Middle,

And end.

Our spiritual narrative does not.

If our life is like a book,

The fulfillment of our spiritual narrative is possible on each and every page.

It doesn't have a starting or end point,

Other than wherein we bring our attention.

Our true story is not defined by life events,

Per se,

But by moments of clarity,

Unity,

And discovery.

A book focuses on overcoming trials and offering solutions to problems that lead to specific outcomes.

Our spiritual narrative uses trials and problems to realize its theme,

With no concern for outcome.

Our life stories are often told in relationship to our successes or our failures.

Our spiritual narrative knows no failure.

Its only intention is to fulfill its theme.

In an impersonal way,

It doesn't care if that happens through what we may perceive as a failure or success,

Because its victory is not defined through accomplishment,

But through its own fulfillment.

The spiritual narrative's purpose is not defined as an accomplishment or outcome,

But as an embodiment of virtue.

It is not whether you win or lose,

But whether you experience love more deeply now than you did before.

It is not about whether you get to where you're going,

But more about who you have come to be on the journey.

It is not about the outcome,

But the connections.

A book often seeks a balanced ending.

Our spiritual narrative seeks a way of life.

A spiritual narrative is also different from what we might call a calling or a dream.

A spiritual narrative is a way of living in alignment with your soul,

Not reaching an end point.

It is the life that follows an inward realization,

Not the other way around.

Some dreams come true,

Yes,

But most dreams are just guides.

A calling can be to become something,

But mostly,

It is a way of being in the world.

Living your spiritual narrative is about truly living.

In spiritual terms,

The truth is a slippery thing in that it is untrue to define it.

The pursuit of truth is seemingly our only way of getting a glimpse of it and having a valid experience of it.

Certainly,

It exists,

Even if we don't know what it is.

It seems only rational that at times it informs us and perhaps even guides us if we are listening.

It is not necessarily a God somewhere that has a plan for us in this bigger scheme of the world,

But a spiritual narrative that exists like our life's potential.

A call that each of us must answer and choose to live in accordance with.

Have you ever lost something only to realize you already had what you were really looking for?

I risk sounding trite,

But I have found it true that my relationship breakups have taught me love,

My failures success,

And my shortcomings my potential strengths.

All of this in the realization that I have,

Too often in my life,

Been more attached to what I thought I believed things should look like,

Instead of living my beliefs and trusting the result.

Love looks like this.

Success looks like this.

It takes wisdom to listen when love and success look back at you and say,

No,

Think again.

The message?

Don't have love,

Live love.

Don't have success,

Live success.

I remember having a breakup conversation with one of my first girlfriends.

I had started feeling tied down by the relationship.

Her feelings about our love being brand new got old.

We had separated and,

Like so many relationships,

I was desperately wanting to get back together and she was already in relationship with an imaginary partner who didn't exist yet.

As we were arguing,

I was listening,

But I was suffering with the idea that I was just like everyone else.

Here we were in our special relationship just going through the motions.

We were living everyone else's narrative.

I gave in.

I got angry.

I took a glass and flung it across the room and it shattered against the wall and went all over the floor.

We stared at each other.

I got up.

She got up.

I'll get it,

I declared.

No,

I'll get it,

She said.

Our polite selves,

Through the drama of a broken glass,

Came forth.

This didn't stop the breakup.

Leaving that night,

She said to me,

Josh,

At night when it's dark and everything is quiet and I'm holding you,

I love you more than anything.

Those weren't our last words,

But if they had been,

That would have worked for me.

Our relationship had been a failure and yet,

My spiritual narrative was being realized in ways beyond my imagination.

My story was being changed forever by a sad ending to a relationship.

My spiritual narrative was evolving.

The Power of Appreciation Cultivating an everyday awareness of our spiritual narrative requires deep appreciation.

When possessed by an untrue story about ourselves,

Appreciation of our spiritual narrative can help us regain possession of that story and give us the opportunity to find a more profound one if we choose.

One morning,

I woke up and saw something different about me in the mirror.

I saw my first gray hair.

I had to double-check the tiny hair on the side of my head to make sure it wasn't the light coming through the window.

I went to the first place in my mind any logical person would.

I'm going to die.

It's all downhill from here.

My goals aren't going to be accomplished in the ways I set out.

I'm never going to find the right partner.

My book isn't done.

I was being totally rational.

I know that the story going through my head in that moment was not truly reflective of what I actually thought.

It was a track I slipped onto that includes common cynical thinking about aging.

I had been telling myself the story that when it comes to aging,

Avoid it at all costs.

This whole time I was asking myself,

What do you do with your first gray hair?

Are you supposed to save it?

Do you make a wish and blow it into the wind?

Are you just supposed to leave it?

At last,

I stopped telling myself stories,

Took a deep breath and asked myself,

How do I authentically feel right now?

Who am I authentically right now in relationship with life and this strange looking fellow in the mirror?

And the answer was grateful.

So grateful.

Grateful for my life,

Grateful for my relationships,

Grateful for my career.

Now,

Truthfully,

There are a lot of things I'm not thankful for,

Including the gray hair,

But there's always that symbolic gray hair.

There's always something going on in life that is so small yet draws all of my attention.

Robert Anton Wilson said,

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

It is that distraction,

That nagging worry,

That conflict,

Which put in perspective with everything else,

Is just what it is.

A little piece of hair that we can choose to make the biggest part of our life or just pluck out or leave alone and move forward.

Whenever we are upset,

If we can still find a deeper appreciation for our lives,

We can live with greater awareness of what really matters.

The power of appreciation begins with comprehending the whole of one's life and then being able to touch that wholeness in a single thing,

Moment,

Or breath.

An exercise I like to do is a simple but often profound one.

First,

I fill in the blanks.

Life is,

Fill in the blank.

My life is,

Fill in the blank.

I am,

Fill in the blank.

For me,

In a given moment,

Life may be exhausting,

My life may be hard,

And I am tired.

Next,

I do it again,

But this time,

I don't fill in the blanks.

Life is.

My life is.

I am.

The freedom not to define these things allows me to return to a fuller perspective on what they really are.

I can feel them.

The power of appreciation has awakened in me a greater sense of wholeness.

The practice can also work using more practical prompts.

My relationship is.

My partner is.

My job is.

My day is.

This simple exercise can help us get back to the main cause of our lives,

Our relationships and being ourselves.

We need never look anywhere for the meaning of our lives,

For the meaning of our lives is here and now.

This is where the power of appreciation comes in.

When you can give thanks for the whole of your life,

You can carry the meaning of your life with you.

Who we are in a most present way might be described as a center in time and space,

A peak hole for the infinite.

We live in an infinite universe.

I am in awe when I think about it.

As I bring my awareness from the happenings in my room,

To my town,

To the galaxies and beyond,

It is at times overwhelming.

Somehow my awe deepens when I realize I am part of this infinite occurring.

I see that the infinite is expressing itself uniquely at every point of existence.

Right where I am,

Right as I am,

The infinite is expressing itself uniquely.

As a unique expression it is now up to me how I will spend my time,

In ever deeper appreciation,

Being blind to what really is,

Or as a captive of the trivial.

In my experience,

When something feels missing from my life,

It is more often than not myself that is missing.

I am not bringing my truest qualities into being who I am.

If something seems absent from my life,

Then the first place I look is within myself.

In other words,

If anything feels like it's missing from your life,

It's probably you.

A greater experience of life is in us and available to us.

The question is can we allow it to become us?

Until there is a space in me to love and be loved,

Love escapes me.

Until there is a space in me to prosper and let prosper,

Prosperity escapes me.

The meaning is there,

The love is there,

It always is.

The question is,

Where am I?

The Catholic author,

Walker Percy,

Wrote about the quest for finding meaning in everyday life.

He called it the search.

The search,

He said,

Is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.

To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.

Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

And what is that which we are truly looking for?

Ourselves.

A true experience of being ourselves.

The despair or everydayness that Percy alludes to is mediocrity.

It is driving to work the same way every day with no awareness of what's going on around you.

It's the tired old what do you do when you get home rituals.

It's the meaningless salutations,

The material desires that mask the spiritual callings.

It is the gray hair.

It is important to understand,

That mediocrity is not a quality of life.

Nothing in life is mediocre.

Mediocrity is a quality of defective experience.

It is a lack of appreciation.

A collapse of perspective.

Have you ever found something dull or meaningless only to discover it as something else later on?

I remember being talked into doing the master cleanse where you only drink lemon juice,

Maple syrup,

And cayenne pepper for ten days.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

Self torture is something I've learned to practice in some areas of my life,

But food isn't one of them.

I said forget it after four days and I wound up eating that can of pea soup in the cupboard.

The can of soup that sits at the back of all our cupboards that we've been passing on for years.

I remember eating that soup as being one of the most sacred experiences I ever had.

As Allen Ginsberg said,

When you notice something clearly and see it vividly,

It then becomes sacred.

I'm not trying to promote that we see pea soup for what it isn't.

I'm not saying make it holy.

I'm just saying we can see it a little more for what it is and can be.

Boredom and mediocrity are not true qualities of living.

They are symptoms of defective experience.

The power of appreciation is in helping us better see the truth of the possibilities in life.

I often think my greatest struggle in life is to experience the good of my life while it is happening.

Not as it's past,

Not looking forward,

But right now.

As a middle child,

I developed the neurosis called missing out on all the fun.

My older siblings got to do certain things and go out to places at certain times that I didn't.

I felt like I was missing out.

In my life today,

I can look at two people having a good time when I have work to do,

Or someone throwing caution to the wind and this feeling of missing out arises in me.

It is based on the desire to enjoy life,

But it can grow into the feeling of life being wasted.

I know that when I feel lacking,

I have stopped appreciating.

I have to take time to appreciate the blessings of my life.

I rearrange my bookshelf and honor the wisdom I've been given.

I go through my music and my photographs and give thanks for the memories and connections I've been blessed with.

I'll dig through the cupboards and find a can or box of something and try to make something good out of it.

When it comes to appreciation,

Always start where you are.

Never try to live your life on a page that you are not on.

Spiritual Narrative Man does not have a soul,

But he is a soul.

Alred Squire Soul is a term that allows us to address the true self without assuming it is who we think we are.

If the soul is the true self,

It also has a story.

It is a true story.

Our true story is our spiritual narrative.

It is the soul's story.

The soul is our essential self,

Therefore its experience is our true story.

No matter how far out our sense of identity spirals into tangents and subplots,

Our soul's calling,

Direction,

And purposes remain.

Have you ever felt like you were drawn to a particular person or circumstance for a reason?

Many of us have the experience of what we do being written in the stars,

But one way to describe it is to say that below the surface of the story,

There are deeper tales being told.

These are stories of the soul.

My grandfather often told a story of waking up one morning after moving to Southern California as a teenager and choosing to go to high school.

He walked out of his new home that morning,

Unsure of where to go to school.

If he took the bus one direction,

He would go to one school.

If he took the bus the other way,

Another school.

The choice he made that morning led to meeting my grandmother,

Which led to my mom being born,

And eventually to me.

To my grandfather,

This was blind choice,

And yet,

Even he could grasp that something deeply meaningful was at play.

Maybe not before he chose,

But as he chose,

The possibilities of life emerged and came forth.

Carl Jung describes synchronicity as,

A meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.

I will always remember that on my twenty-second birthday I got word that a friend was in critical condition on the East Coast.

I was searching at my parents' home to find out if I could afford a ticket.

Just then my uncle came over with what he explained as an odd birthday present,

A flight voucher that had to be used in the next several days.

I've experienced many synchronicities in my life.

For me,

They are expressions of my spiritual narrative,

My soul story.

How do you know you are in touch with your spiritual narrative?

When you are living in accordance with what is most sacred and valuable to you,

You can trust wholeheartedly that your spiritual narrative not only exists,

But is appearing actively in your life.

If the spiritual narrative is the driving power of our life story,

Our soul's theme is its engine.

We can give it a term—love,

Joy,

Inspiration,

Healing,

Harmony.

Whether words can or cannot express it,

This is what we should be living from.

Every day that we live contrary to it,

The more alien our spiritual narrative will seem in our life.

From a feeling of oneness within to being experienced as a force of anger around us,

The spiritual narrative can be known in as many different ways as there are myths about the nature of God.

In the Hebrew Scriptures,

God can often be construed as a faraway being who has disdain for his creations who are often not living in accordance with his will.

In the Gospels of Jesus,

Jesus lives with God close to him,

Views him as a loving father,

And teaches that God's kingdom is within.

Our spiritual narrative is not God,

But it might be referred to as the state of our relationship with God.

The more in alignment we are with our spiritual narrative,

The more we are our true selves,

Living at one with our idea of divinity.

The more we are in conflict with or and denial of our spiritual narrative,

The more in conflict we are with ourselves,

The less sincere we become,

The more we are in a state of separation from or even conflict with our idea of divinity.

Whether God is for us an angry father,

A supportive mother,

Or the force within,

Our ability to come to terms with that which is sacred in ourselves is our only way to live in harmony with that which we believe to be larger than ourselves.

It is foolish to think we live the life of a God.

It is wise to see that our lives parody the divine.

Divine parody is when we see divine life in our own life.

It is the idea that our lives are individualized parts of the life of the whole.

In relationship to our lives it means this.

Our life is seen as a whole with all the other stories and experiences taken together.

But wholeness truly emerges when each event can be taken as complete within itself.

The whole story can be seen right there.

When our lives seem to express in a finite way the infinite,

We are living our spiritual narrative.

A more modern term for the soul is the unconscious.

The unconscious is a psychological term meant to describe the content of the psyche beyond our current awareness of it.

There are two classic arguments for how the unconscious develops in psychology.

One argument is that the unconscious develops based on our life experiences.

Experiences enter our consciousness and whether we process them in a thorough way or not,

They imprint,

Or perhaps at times even scar our psyche,

Making up our unconscious content.

This is essentially the Freudian argument.

The other and rarer argument is that our life and self develop out of the unconscious.

This is what Carl Jung argued,

As well as for a collective unconscious,

Which spoke to a greater mind that connects us all psychically.

Philosophically,

We might apply these same ideas to the concept of our souls.

One argument says the soul,

The central aspects of who we are,

Develops from our life experience.

The other argument says who we are develops based upon the soul.

Instead of taking sides,

Could it be both?

Our soul both develops in our everyday consciousness of who we are and it also develops it?

It is both within and surrounding us?

There is so much evidence for the unconscious in our lives.

Even though of itself it cannot be measured,

Its effects may be measured both in the grand experiences we have,

The embodiment of our soul's theme and the realization of our spiritual narrative,

And also in the abnormal ways we behave,

What psychology terms our neuroses.

The film director,

John Waters,

Used a term I liked.

He called himself a healthy neurotic.

Why?

Because he knew what his neuroses were.

She who knows her neuroses harnesses her power and possesses her neuroses.

She who doesn't know them is possessed by them.

A simple way that our unconscious expresses in our everyday life is as habits.

A habit is a regular activity we engage in without awareness,

To the degree that it is more appropriate to say that it does us,

Rather than we do it.

A habit can be as simplistic as twirling our hair or as complex as driving a car.

When you're driving and engaged in a deep conversation on the phone and not realizing the time going by,

You've consciously done one thing,

But unconsciously done another.

There are even more complex levels of how the unconscious expresses itself,

As in behavior patterns.

These are unconscious routines we repeat over and over that produce the same result.

They are best described as the walls we commonly run into in our lives,

Or as the types of relationships we keep repeating,

Or the way we leave things.

I had a call from a friend who had a frightening realization.

He was seeing someone new,

But it might as well have been his ex-girlfriend.

So I met her at a party,

He tells me,

And I was immediately attracted to her.

We made a connection and I was able to convince her to go out with me.

So we go out and I find out she's from New England like my ex.

She's involved in social work like my ex,

And she has distance issues with men like my ex.

Just like my ex,

She has never been in a healthy long-term relationship.

Josh,

I had no idea.

Now,

I am his friend,

Not his psychoanalyst,

But what I could have told him was how much his ex was like his other ex who was like his other ex.

Almost every psychologist has argued that attraction in particular in romantic relationships is predominantly an unconscious function.

Jung explains his position by saying,

The young person of marriageable age does,

Of course,

Possess an ego consciousness,

But since he has only recently emerged from the mists of original consciousness,

He is certain to have things that still lie in the shadow and preclude to that extent the formation of psychological relationship.

This means in practice that the young man or woman can have only an incomplete understanding of himself and others,

And is,

Therefore,

Imperfectly informed as to his or their motives.

As a rule,

The motives he acts from are largely unconscious.

Subjectively,

Of course,

He thinks himself very conscious and knowledgeable,

For we constantly overestimate the existing content of consciousness,

And it is a great and surprising discovery when we find that what we had supposed to be the final peak is nothing but the first step in a very long climb.

Consciousness produces habits and behavioral patterns.

But what about a narrative?

What about a theme?

What about a story?

This is where unconscious becomes soul for me.

Our lives truly are like a fine novel where the story does not dictate the narrative,

The narrative dictates the story.

Our lives,

In other words,

Don't dictate our narrative but express it.

We do not live the story,

The story is living us.

Have you ever had an experience in which something happened that you weren't quite sure of?

And it wound up being in alignment with what you really wanted?

In my experience,

I have soul intentions.

Seeds planted in moments of inspiration.

I will be of service to others.

I will have loving and fulfilling relationships.

I am committed to truth.

My everyday life will come about in step with my everyday thinking but also more subtly with these deepest intentions.

Sometimes forgotten,

Though planted long ago,

These intentions of the soul cannot be avoided.

At times,

We will work against our deepest intentions and we will experience a kind of spiritual sleight of hand that tricks us back to what we really want.

I recall failing at a small business venture and struggling with what to do.

I was so dead set on being in charge that I was unwilling to work for anyone else in the same line of work.

Something had to give.

I met a man who told me of his business and his desire to retire from it.

If I worked for him,

He told me,

There could be a great opportunity to take his place.

I went to work for him,

Healed my wounds from my failure,

Succeeded,

And got back on my feet.

He never left.

I had made his job easier so it looked much better for him to keep.

This to me was the spiritual sleight of hand I needed.

My greater narrative was at work,

Helping me to overcome my ego.

If a habit is an unconscious activity that possesses us and a behavioral pattern is a routine that possesses us,

A narrative is a theme that possesses us.

Our spiritual narrative is a consistent theme that developing in form is also constantly the same at the level of the soul.

Though there is no need to try to define our narrative,

But we should be able to be aware of its presence and influence in our life.

My theme has always been something like inspiration.

When I am inspired,

I am most myself,

And when I am a vessel for inspiration for others and situations around me,

My narrative expresses itself in a way that brings my life's story forward.

Our life expresses our narrative when we embody our theme and share it with others.

Just as there is a bright side and a dark side to habits and patterns,

There is a dark side to the spiritual narrative.

When we deny it,

Or repress it,

We express its opposite in life.

The more we oppose it,

The further we push it away.

However,

The spiritual narrative is like a gravitational pull,

Calling us back.

If our narrative is true love,

For example,

And we oppose it,

Or we remain incredibly unconscious to it,

We will have trouble with commitment,

We will pick unsuitable mates,

And we will experience ourselves as unlovable.

The one will seem a fantasy or so far away we can never reach her,

Just like our theme.

If my narrative is inspiration and I deny it in my life,

I get monotonous,

I get depressed,

I suffer miserably,

I even become resentful to the point that I might betray what I really love.

I've even come to notice with some who have a deep passion for something,

Say writing,

That when they are in denial of their calling,

They will come to fear it.

Writing for the writer can become the most difficult and terrifying thing.

How does what appeals to us most become that which is hardest for us to do?

This is the power created by working against our spiritual narrative.

Somehow,

When we come to confront the thing we love most,

The excitement and passion turns into anxiety and fear of rejection.

The alien power holding us back is ourselves,

And who we really are can even become unrecognizable to us.

What is your spiritual narrative?

If we want to find the presence of the spiritual narrative in our lives,

We can look to those moments of truth when it seems God herself opened a door for us.

Our narrative is as visible as life's bringing us to a threshold we can cross.

It provides us with the relationships or the jobs or the new environment,

Bringing us ever closer to actualizing our potential.

Our lives are not random.

They are guided,

And they tell a story.

How much of the story that gets told is often up to us,

But ultimately our spiritual narrative contains our calling and purpose.

What makes a story magical beyond the will of all the characters is the narrative bringing them together for an incredible purpose,

To express what that narrative is.

The same is true in our lives.

The wonder is not in telling our own story,

But in being taken over by it as our soul's theme leads us along with everything and everyone else to achieve its aim.

We discover the soul's presence when we look not at the content of our past,

But its context.

During a long drought of singlehood,

I tried to get truly clear on what it was I wanted in a relationship.

I found myself frustrated about asking women out,

Being unsure whether I really liked someone or just sitting with the idea that I was simply trying to coerce myself and others into having a relationship that perhaps,

Deep down,

I really didn't want to have.

Something was wrong.

I made a list.

I listed beauty,

Intelligence,

Support,

And non-judgment as the qualities I desired.

I paused,

Realizing these were all a given for me.

What was at the real core of the experience I was seeking?

First,

I realized I wanted to meet someone by synchronicity or fate.

Second,

I wanted to have that soulmate feeling,

That feeling like I had known this person forever,

The feeling of safety and spiritual familiarity.

Third,

I wanted her to feel the same way.

In my life I had gotten pretty good at achieving the first two.

Then I realized it would be important to add the third.

As I looked at my list,

I realized something surprising.

What I wanted was entirely out of my control.

I could not make any of these three things happen.

What I was seeking at heart was a fulfillment of my true love myth or of a narrative of my life's purpose of love.

What narrative,

Be it in a movie,

Show,

Or novel,

Do you most identify with?

As a follower of the true love myth,

I love Wesley and the Princess Bride,

Because of his commitment to true love.

Wesley overcomes trial after trial in his pursuit of Princess Buttercup,

Even death.

Death cannot stop true love,

He declares,

It can only delay it for a while.

As irrational as it may sound,

How can we deny this?

Another character I love is Vito in Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

To follow the Godfather myth is pretty macho,

Perhaps,

But take out the crime and it is about family.

The strength of a family,

Like the strength of an army,

Lies in its loyalty to each other.

That's what the whole thing is about.

In Vito's death scene,

Both in the book and the movie,

He reverts back to being an everyman.

The myth has been lived,

But real life awaits.

He smelled the garden,

The yellow shield of light smote his eyes,

And he whispered,

Life is so beautiful.

Yes,

He thought,

If I can die saying,

Life is so beautiful,

Then nothing else is important.

Like any story,

Our spiritual narrative has a theme.

A love story,

An inspirational story.

Comedy and tragedy are a part of life,

But a spiritual narrative always arcs towards the greater good.

Our spiritual narrative may be shared as a statement about what our life is truly about.

My life is about deeper love,

Deeper life,

And a deeper connection.

My life is about making my little piece of the world a better place.

My life is about being a presence for God.

My life is about celebration.

Does this mean you quit your job as a web developer?

No,

It just means that you are more than a web developer and indeed,

Beneath the surface of your job description lies your spiritual narrative.

All of us have had an experience of personal or spiritual connection with someone whom initially we met as an employee at a business.

At first,

We don't see anything unique.

Just another uniform,

Just another attendant.

A connection takes place and they provide us with something of their soul's theme,

Or who they really are.

We connect beyond the everyday life to find the deeper meaning in everyday living.

One of the greatest gifts we have to give anyone is our attention and appreciation.

To truly appreciate who someone is beyond their social or professional role,

To listen to them,

Honor them,

Witness them,

Is not only to benefit our own experience but to support them in bringing parts of themselves they thought unseen to greater life.

Working with a dear friend on her upcoming memorial,

There was only one thing she was clear about.

Don't let anyone say anything that would make me want to get up and leave the room.

This was a wonderful footnote to her spiritual narrative.

The fact that she was about to die was not as much a defining trait as her humor and honesty.

Since what happens to consciousness at death is a mystery at this time,

A good story can actually help us construct a reality closer to what may be true.

The scene near the close of Tim Burton's adaptation of Daniel Wallace's novel Big Fish may be my favorite scene in any movie.

The dying man is escorted to the water to die and he is greeted with cheers by everyone he's ever known and loved.

In the film we are challenged to wonder if the scene is really happening or if it is just in the man's imagination.

Yet it is the metaphor of the experience that brings something true.

She that can walk into each moment,

Her whole life behind and ahead of her,

Is the wisest woman.

Our spiritual narrative does not need to be an insight into where we are going,

But about our direction.

Novelist and historian Shelby Foote said,

The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing,

The truth,

Not a different truth,

The same truth,

Only they reach it,

Or try to reach it,

By different routes.

Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust,

Preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship,

Or in the imagination,

Preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process,

They both want to tell us how it was to recreate it by their separate methods and make it live again in the world around them.

When we bring a receptive consciousness into our own stories,

Our own happenings,

We can,

If we aren't careful,

Make up stories that take us away from what is real.

Yet we can also reveal narratives that tie things together,

Show us a way forward,

And help us realize,

Even at difficult times,

That we are right where we want to be on our way to where we want to go.

Turning the Pages I received a call one morning from my friend Mark.

His voice was shaking and tearful.

Mark had been out of work for months and the arduous and occasional interview had left him bitter and incredibly isolated.

On this morning an interview awaited,

One Mark had hoped for.

It was clear this morning,

However,

That the tension had been too much.

The tears and the shaking in his voice was no longer from the sorrow of being unemployed,

But the diminished sense of dignity,

Of having to participate in the potentially dehumanizing interview process all over again.

He couldn't bring himself to go.

How do you come back to life from seeming death?

How do you return to life when the idea of living sounds worse than the idea of dying?

One way we come back to life is to return life to ourselves from whatever we've given it to.

Return approval back to yourself from a person you've given the need for approval.

Return the need for love back to yourself from a circumstance where you didn't receive it.

Return dignity to yourself from anyone who may have oppressed you.

Living our truest story,

In accord with our spiritual narrative,

Is,

At its core,

Finding the will to live and to love within ourselves,

However small it may seem,

And to live from that.

Essential to storytelling is the turn.

Just when it looks like the hero has failed,

Something happens.

It appears in the form of what Joseph Campbell called supernatural help.

It is support that comes via the hero's faith and willingness to move forward.

At the moment of failure,

A friend comes in to save the day.

A mysterious stranger appears.

The answer to the riddle suddenly surfaces.

An understanding is reached.

Whatever the turn looks like,

It adds strength and second life to the hero.

Countless action movies come to mind when the hero's pain from injuries fade,

And the hero returns to being someone you don't want to mess with.

Is the turn true in everyday life?

Perhaps it's not always as dramatic,

But it may just as much be based upon faith and willingness.

It may not be as big as almost hitting bottom and being lifted up,

But it might be as simple as realizing that there is another page to turn,

The realization that one page is not all there is.

Freedom isn't about writing the pages of our true story.

It's being able to turn them.

For Mark,

It wasn't some words of support or an epiphany that got him healthy and working again.

Things didn't get better.

They got worse.

He was admitted to the hospital.

His drinking got out of control.

His mother,

Whom he had to move back in with,

Passed away.

What he had to discover was a deeper will to live within himself.

No matter how small this will to live is,

Our ability to have even the slightest awareness of what is truly sacred,

Even real,

And to live from that,

Allows us to walk through anything.

Mark got sober and moved into a sober living house.

He got a job.

It didn't work.

He got another job.

And it didn't work.

Then he got a job he didn't like,

But it worked for his healing and rebuilding.

Today,

Dignity is a characteristic of Mark again.

The turn takes place in our life when we change ourselves in a situation.

We no longer become its effect but become a cause for something new.

Making ourselves available for the deeper story to be told transforms our character in our life.

Our life story is either a process of remembering or a process of forgetting.

Like a spiral we are either moving further away from the center or back to it.

No matter how close or how far we are from it,

However,

The center is always there.

When the moment of clarity comes where we realize that this is not who I really am,

Or that this is me,

We feel informed by the center of who we are.

I rarely end up where I was intending to go,

But often I end up somewhere I needed to be,

Douglas Adams said in his long,

Dark tea time for the soul.

If you want to turn the page on your story,

There is no better way than to commit yourself to the present.

Know that what you are doing now is important.

If you're bored,

Get out of the house.

You won't be starting a new story,

You will be coming across narratives that have been going on forever.

Conversations,

People helping people,

Romance,

Poverty,

It's all out there.

Yet your narrative is still unique.

No one has ever before experienced these things as you.

If we stop trying to tell ourselves a story that isn't our own,

We can then step into one that's truer to our deepest selves.

I regularly give thanks for the whole of my life.

That does not mean that I'm thankful for everything in my life.

There is much to not be grateful for.

Giving thanks for my whole life is different.

It is a reminder that although I may confront negative instances,

Individuals,

And circumstances,

I can use them for the positive purpose of remembering the truth of who I am.

This will not be for the process of my forgetting,

I tell myself,

Before my remembering.

Imagine that throughout your whole life you've kept two journals.

In one you record things as they happened.

In the other,

You jot down events as you would like them to have happened.

Can you think of the things you would change?

I can.

I often hear someone say they have no regrets,

But I am not one of them.

Ray Davies,

Lead singer of The Kinks,

Was once asked in an interview if he would change anything about his life.

Every little thing,

He answered.

I'd start with all those strikeouts and dropped balls in Little League.

My unsuccessful bid for a student council would have been successful.

I'd ask Kelly out on a date.

And Nicole.

And Brianna.

And,

To those girls I did take out,

I try to be an even better date.

Your first journal is filled with things as they actually happened.

It's up to date and as you experienced it.

Your second journal includes things as you would have liked them to have happened.

It is in process.

Question.

At what point do you start wanting to rewrite the second journal?

At some point you may actually come to the point where you prefer things as they've happened over how you would have liked them to,

Regrets and all.

It sounds crazy that even when we would change things,

The value of what actually happened in our life may be something we wouldn't want to give up for the world.

Perhaps the biggest change we want to make in our story is one we can still make.

It is a change in emphasis.

Watching a Little League game,

I was filled with memories of my youth.

I noticed something interesting.

What I remembered more than anything about my baseball years were my errors and my big victories.

I remember being the last out or getting the big hit and,

Unfortunately,

Not too much in between.

This saddened me.

I wish I recalled less about that and more about the names of the kids I played with,

The way the sun felt on my face,

The shapes and expressions of my coach's faces.

Looking at my life in that moment,

I realized I was doing the same thing.

I was emphasizing the mistakes and the successes.

My mind was wrapped up in the trivial and the goal-less,

Missing out on the real life before me.

In truth,

I wish I was better at remembering the people I love,

The moments of leisure,

And the beauty of my everyday life.

As I began to reflect on that more,

All of a sudden the name of a teammate came back to me.

The true story didn't change,

But I began to let myself see,

Feel,

And understand it better.

What once was lost was restored,

And my life in the present became enhanced.

Life is about the middle,

That time that whooshes by because we were making other plans,

And the best thing we can do is to embrace our wholeness,

That which is right in our life,

Not just memories but the essence of life itself.

We don't live to find it.

We don't live to create it.

We just live it.

Our commitment should never be to what the path must look like,

But to the path itself.

Have you ever heard the term,

Trust the process?

What does that mean?

Have faith?

Yes.

Believe that the process involves principles and ideas that cannot fail,

Like true love,

Justice,

The greater good,

And the human spirit?

Yes.

More than anything though,

I think trust the process means don't mess with the process,

Throwing it off.

This means to prepare for the best and get out of the way,

So as to give yourself a better opportunity to avoid the worst.

In Jennifer Goodman's The Tao of Steve,

The main character Dex shares three rules for getting a woman.

First,

One must be desireless.

Secondly,

One must do something excellent in her presence.

Thirdly,

And most importantly,

Be gone.

In other words,

Trust the process.

If it doesn't happen,

It just isn't supposed to.

When you are living at one with your spiritual narrative,

It's all you really need to trust in,

Just don't get in its way.

Sometimes this means not trusting a circumstance or even a person,

But the process.

This is not to say that people should not be trusted,

But when they let us down as they often can,

Let us remember that the greater plot is unseen in those moments.

Trust can also be a great burden to place on someone,

Or to hold ourselves to.

Whenever I trust the process,

Things not only work out more easily,

But also for the better.

In order for our spiritual narrative to reveal itself,

It does have to arise from the genuine intention of living at one with our soul's theme.

If I'm working with someone who claims she wants a loving,

Harmonious relationship and she is still with the dope and insists I'm trusting the process,

There's a problem.

Trusting your spiritual narrative means believing that love is the central theme of your life.

It means that you believe in divine powers conspiring for your greater good.

It means that you believe your life means something.

In a classic cliffhanger,

The hero is at an end.

What is before them seems inescapable or insurmountable,

But,

As we all know,

This is not the whole story.

The same is true for us.

When we face seemingly insurmountable odds,

We know intuitively that this is not the whole story.

We are simply stuck on a page of our own book.

We can look at where we feel incomplete and stay there,

Accepting it as our conclusion.

We can work on trying to express all our discontent,

Reliving negative experiences over and over again.

But there is a better option.

Turn the page.

Some of us have been living on the same page for years,

Maybe even decades.

For the person who lives on the same page,

Turning the pages of one's life isn't easy.

It means letting go.

It means having faith in a new chapter.

Most importantly,

It involves a willingness to take on the whole of one's life's theme.

It means answering the question,

What is my life really about,

And applying it.

Remembering the truth of who she is is how the hero earns her title.

It takes courage,

It takes trust,

And the seeming divine support that comes in knowing the whole story.

Courage doesn't free us from our fear.

Courage affirms what we know to be most true.

Turning a page we have been stuck on for so long may be frightening,

As the next page represents the unknown.

Yet sometimes we have to ask ourselves,

Am I willing to take a chance to step into the unknown tomorrow in order to step out of the redundancy of today?

Turning the page can be like crossing a threshold into a similar reality.

Yet,

By being willing to move forward,

We have transformed.

When we consider crossing the threshold,

We might think of a rite of passage we make in our life.

There are graduation,

Marriage,

Parenthood,

Career milestones,

And for some of us,

Our first career failure,

Our first divorce,

And maybe even our first night in jail.

These are significant even if we arrive at them through age and experience because they define who we become as a person.

I point this out to say that there are also the inner thresholds we cross.

These are steps we make in consciousness,

Falling in love,

Identifying our calling,

Mystical experiences,

Epiphanies,

And declarations.

In stories,

The thresholds being crossed are generally very clear.

Harry Potter moves through a portal to Hogwarts,

Alice steps through the door into Wonderland,

And so on.

In life,

Thresholds are not always visible.

It is rare indeed that the line is something we can see,

Point out,

Or even hesitate behind.

Unfortunately,

If we don't see the line,

We are often unclear about what would help us grow or offer insight into our future.

How to turn the page in our life's story is unclear.

The good news?

We don't have to cower behind the line.

Generally,

We don't realize we've crossed the threshold or turned the page until it has already taken place.

It takes just as much courage and faith,

Yes,

But not as much anticipation.

In real life,

Turning the pages is less about forging ahead and more about letting go.

It is more a result of our willingness than our willfulness that reveals what's next in our lives.

Turning the pages certainly involves courage and willingness,

But ultimately,

It means no longer struggling against the currents of our own spirit and our own narrative trying to carry us onward.

In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland,

You remember the part where Alice has to fit through the door?

There were doors all around the hall,

But they were all locked,

And when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other,

Trying every door,

She walked sadly down the middle,

Wondering how she was ever to get out again.

Creating our own way seems to be an essential part of truly living life's adventure.

Can you relate to this in your own life?

Did you marry someone when most people disapproved?

Did you take a job you weren't supposed to?

When it comes to living a truly whole,

Worthwhile,

And unique life,

Our role is not to bang down the locked doors.

It is to create a space in which we can find an opening we haven't seen before.

We must make our own key and make our own way.

This is what Alice finds.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table,

All made of solid glass.

There was nothing on it but a tiny golden key,

And Alice's first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall.

But alas,

Either the locks were too large,

Or the key was too small,

But at any rate,

It would not open any of them.

However,

On the second time round,

She came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before,

And behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high.

She tried the little golden key in the lock,

And it fitted.

She looks down and finds the smallest of openings,

And her heart tells her,

Yes,

That's my opening,

But her head reminds her,

You can't fit through this opening.

Your body and her ego are too big.

Our job in life is not to knock down doors.

It is to seek those openings,

However small they seem,

And move towards and through them.

These may show up as an opportunity in a relationship to say how we really feel,

As a chance to say yes to being of service,

As a book we are called to read,

Or as a question to ask.

These are not big openings.

They are small,

And,

While we initially think our bodies and egos are too huge to risk trying to fit into them,

We must think again.

I have a friend who grew up in a small midwestern town with ten people in his high school class,

So to say that he was the captain of the football team in Vella-Victorian is only so impressive,

But he'll still tell you that.

He was exceptionally smart and won a scholarship to go to a state school,

A great honor for his town.

He had applied to other schools too,

And when the acceptance letter to a large California university came,

It was the smallest of openings that called to his heart.

And he went for it.

At eighteen he said no to the path laid out for him,

A full scholarship in his home state,

And chose to pass through the small opening and move to California.

There was no scholarship.

It was a big competitive university.

He had his family's support,

But in a small town his decision was published in the local newspaper,

And many looked down on him.

Was he too good for his town and state?

Was he abandoning his roots and traditions?

Was their way of life not good enough for him?

None of this was true.

He was making his own way.

And when we make our own way,

We may feel unsupported and alone at first.

That is the darkest point.

But as we walk,

We are slowly brought through the passageway into a new experience.

For him,

It was trust in his inner calling,

Then his family,

Then scholarships and loans,

And finally a university community that would have thought him stupid to make any other decision.

When we move with faith,

The universe has a way of supporting us.

This is what happens for Alice.

A little bottle appears that says,

Drink me.

Alice drinks it and becomes who she needs to be to fit through the door.

One thing we underestimate about ourselves is that even when we step off the precipice,

We can look back up and see ourselves still there.

Boy,

That sure was a long way down.

We must continue in faith and trust or we'll return back up to the edge of the precipice.

This is what happens to Alice.

Small as can be,

She gets to the tiny door and realizes she forgot the key.

Come,

There's no use in crying like that,

Said Alice to herself rather sharply.

I advise you to leave off this minute.

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table.

She opened it and found in it a very small cake,

On which the words eat me were beautifully marked in currents.

Well,

I'll eat it,

Said Alice,

And if it makes me grow larger I can reach the key,

And if it makes me grow smaller I can creep under the door.

So either way I'll get into the garden and I don't care which happens.

At first,

The idea that we are supported by the universe sounds like magical thinking.

But as you think about the support of people that have shown up,

The people who came to you for support,

And the opportunities in serendipitous moments,

You eventually come to realize that the seemingly supernatural support you've received is maybe not so supernatural after all.

It is the natural result.

Moving towards those openings with trust and faith naturally calls forth the momentum and support to get through.

I'm not saying there is no risk.

I'm not saying failure is not a possibility.

I'm saying that if you create a space in your consciousness where trust and faith can work unencumbered,

You'll be amazed at what can come forth for you.

You can know you are at a threshold when you are faced not only with two choices,

But with two realities.

One represents not only your past,

But also your old way of thinking.

Another may represent a new way of thinking,

A new way of seeing yourself,

A new reality.

Of course,

There may be areas of our life where we feel like failures,

In a strange relationship,

Or something you wanted to become but didn't.

It is important to remember what turning the page to a new model of thinking can do.

It can allow for forgiveness,

Healing,

And humility.

I once counseled a woman who had issues with her father.

She came to me because he was back in her life in a big way after a decade of not speaking.

He was in his last days.

Growing more and more elderly,

He needed her help.

Although she felt estranged from her father and unsupported by him for most of her life,

She wanted to help him.

So she took him in.

The problem that she shared with me was,

I can't be near him for three minutes without becoming enraged.

He doesn't have to say a word and I get furious.

It was easy for both of us to see that this anger had to do with wanting support from her father and not getting it.

In a way,

She still wanted from him what she had not received in the past.

Her anger came from the frustration and resentment.

In order to care for her father,

We decided to try the following.

She would begin to see her father no longer as who she thought him to be,

The dad who was never there for her,

But as he really is,

An elderly man who needed help.

This meant doing something very important,

Releasing him from the role of father.

For her overall health,

She also needed to release her attachment to receiving support from someone who was not going to give it to her,

In this case,

Dad.

To have that sense of someone being there for you if you get in trouble,

Of feeling someone is proud of you,

My client was going to have to be willing to be receptive to life to bring forth these feelings for herself.

Through this practice,

My client realized that she had never had a successful relationship because of her attachment to a lack of being loved and supported in her life.

She didn't feel supported in her studies,

In her personal life,

Or in her spiritual life,

Especially by men.

She had to ponder,

How much of this was because of another's behavior,

And how much of this was about rejecting support because of my attachment to it from one particular source.

Over the next year with her father,

The resentment dissipated.

In her own life,

She was getting more and more bits of support.

Her relationship with her father was the best it had ever been.

In his last days,

She shared with me that she even felt loved and seen by her father,

Which was an invaluable experience.

Being stuck on a page in our lives is often a sign that forgiveness is called for.

At its most basic,

Forgiveness means acknowledging the love in our past that we didn't get to express,

Either because of our own folly or because of someone else's,

And being willing to express that love now.

The easiest way to move on with our true story is to let a long-time story go,

To stop telling it and start living it,

To put down the burden.

Many of us are familiar in some way with the myth of Atlas.

Atlas betrays the Olympians and his punishment from Zeus is to hold up the heavens,

Or the sky,

To keep it from falling to earth.

At one point,

Atlas convinces Heracles to hold the sky's forum,

But is soon tricked into holding it up once again.

The great question is this,

What would happen if Atlas released his burden?

One way to answer is to ask ourselves,

What would happen if I put down my own burdens?

Would we fail to meet our responsibilities?

Would our world fall apart?

Would they fall like tears from our eyes as we realized a way of life without them?

Today,

When we think of Atlas,

We don't imagine him as the one holding back heaven from earth,

But holding up the globe itself.

In Ayn Rand's work,

Atlas Shrugged,

Francisco asks Hank what advice he would give to Atlas if he saw that the greater his effort,

The harder the burden was to bear.

The answer Francisco gives him is to shrug.

Give up your burdens.

By that,

I don't mean to give up your responsibilities.

These are two very different things.

A responsibility is something we choose to do.

A burden is something we choose to suffer because of.

When we face the most difficult aspects of our lives,

It is not wise to hold these alone.

Give them to God is the spiritual advice.

Practically speaking,

This means release yourself from their weight and take care of yourself.

Be good to yourself and others and see what happens.

Because sometimes the best way to set the nature of life into motion is not to forge ahead but to let go.

Ramana Maharshi said,

Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the universe,

Who accomplishes everything.

Remain all the time steadfast in the heart,

In the transcendental absolute.

God knows the past,

Present,

And future.

He will determine the future for you and accomplish the work.

What is to be done will be done at the proper time.

Don't worry.

Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the divine.

In more practical words,

Be with what is in your life with as little judgment as possible,

And you may find there is something whole operating there.

Perhaps if we release our grasp of the sky,

It will not fall.

Perhaps the only thing separating heaven and earth is ourselves.

Get out of the way.

There are two powerful things that can happen when we release the burden.

The first is grace.

Grace is when the veil of limitations has lifted and we experience the wholeness of what is.

Grace is peace in the midst of seeming chaos,

Vigil in the face of tragedy,

A light that flickers in the darkness.

The second is forgiveness.

When I choose no longer to possess hatred or anger or fear towards someone or sometime,

Forgiveness occurs.

Grace and forgiveness are human experiences,

But they are what we might call divine events.

We don't do them.

We let go so that they may happen,

And we are better because of them.

Ask yourself,

Where do I want grace in my life?

Where do I want forgiveness in my life?

What am I willing to let myself out from under for this to take place?

Isn't it time we stop pretending that we are someone we are not?

It is possible,

Perhaps,

That who we are now is better,

More entertaining,

More intelligent,

And more authentic than who we imagine ourselves to be.

Living more of a true self and therefore creating a truer story,

We must let go of the imaginary person we are not and have faith in who we really are.

Some themes are realized.

Some are hidden and revealed only in glimpses of potential.

You know your spiritual narrative is realized when you identify with it more than with the singular circumstances in your life as something that has always been there and still is today.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell famously invited us to give up the life we have planned in order to live the life that is waiting for us.

This is nowhere truer than our relationships.

It is also valid in all the other areas of our lives.

Who we are supposed to become,

The way the world ought to be,

What we expect of our children,

And so on.

Our fantasies are not always visions to be actualized,

But messages to be listened to and guides to be followed.

An essential part of understanding our spiritual narrative is realizing that although our imaginations and dreams are connected with our spiritual narrative,

They are our guiding star and not our destination.

It is what comes forward by following it that matters.

It is what we find along the way as we follow our dreams,

That is,

Our true story.

Do you believe your soul has a story?

That beyond all the stories you tell yourself about what you're here for and what your life is about,

A deeper story exists?

Do you believe you have a soul story?

That guiding and calling you seeks opportunities to bring about the themes it wants.

I believe my soul has a story.

I call it my last story standing.

It's the story of my soul that overall is seeking to express and experience,

Discover and become,

The qualities of the most sacred.

My soul story is my story of learning what love is,

What wisdom is,

What truth is.

When I get caught up in thinking that everyday dramas of my life are my truest stories,

My conflict with so-and-so or my job at such-and-such,

I can remember why I'm really here,

To love,

Support,

Inspire,

And be joyful.

By bringing that into my awareness in my life,

I can transcend the drama and be who I really am.

When we are able to affirm our soul story,

Our spiritual reason for being,

We have the realization of who we really are and why we are really here,

And as a byproduct of that,

Our everyday stories work out better.

There's a story about someone who was hurt so badly,

They didn't know if they could truly love or allow themselves to feel love.

There's a story about someone who didn't get the thing they wanted more than anything else in the world and who felt like giving up on the rest of everything.

There's a story of one who felt they failed a member of their family and could never be forgiven.

There's a story of the one who,

Filled with so much uncertainty,

Secretly hated herself.

I don't know if they are true stories,

But perhaps somewhere along your life,

It's been your story.

And what happened?

Did things work out?

I'll tell you that if they did,

They did so for two reasons.

One,

The grace of God.

And two,

You affirmed a greater story about yourself.

You knew you were not at the end of that story.

You knew that a greater truth of love or forgiveness or peace of mind or joyfulness could exist for you.

Never give up on your soul's story.

Remember,

The more you affirm it and bring your awareness of it to all of the stories you tell yourself,

The closer it comes to being an ever-present truth.

Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day,

There is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.

Howard Thurman.

Amazon.

Com.

You