Preface:
This blog is my attempt to build a new language of stories, a language built from stories told and collected here. Each piece is an aspect of our storied experience, and each piece is part of my attempt to grow a collection of metaphors, concepts and symbols to reach further into our exploration of stories.
Though this piece is self-contained, I’ve included convenient links to several past posts elaborating on concepts used within this post.
This piece is intended as a truffle, confected to fill mind and body in one rich bite. You may want a warm cup of tea while you read. I recommend a metered reading pace, flowing with the speed and rhythm of the structure. I wrote this for me, a path for returning to something sacred to me. I offer it with hope that it may offer some nourishment for you.
Welcome to my confession.
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Mystery, intentions, symbols, storying, love and god
Mystery tells me that my existence defies probability. Experience shows me that our consciousness is driven by possibility. We create stories about what-could-be, about what’s possible, and we align our world to create our improbable stories. We arrange probability into wires and silicon chips, into motors and wings, and into houses with solid, liquid, gas and invisible electromagnetic networks. We arrange events so improbably against the flow of entropy, against nature’s flow toward disorder, that they would be effectively impossible without us. We are points of consciousness immersed in our rational stories that describe a non-conscious, probability driven, universe. Our confusion that: consciousness arises from what we believe is a non-conscious universe, reveals our limited understanding of consciousness and the root of our conflict with Mystery. In this gap between our conscious experience, and our stories of a non-conscious universe, I hear an invitation to embrace Mystery.
Mystery is the context of our knowing, the boundless background to our foreground of understanding. Mystery is the source of our stories suspended within it. Mystery, the unknown, holds the secrets of our existence and is the source of all that we create.
With Science and Mathematics we reach into Mystery using tools of the-easily-measurable. With our mythology, our storying, we reach into Mystery with the tools of our heart, with visceral awareness crafted by Mystery to measure when our stories are consistent with life-serving intentions. Science adds skills to our storying. We benefit when our storying is free to reach beyond our Science. Life, death, and consciousness are all present when we skillfully touch Mystery.
I believe that inceptions of -god- are symbols of Mystery. When I love I embrace Mystery, I hold faith in possibility, I invite warm humility for my ignorance, my impotence, and I recall the wonder of life’s brief opportunity.
Our Mystery symbols: statues of Buddha, mosques, ankh and Christian crosses, Hopi spirals, menorah and others, remind me that humans have peered into the sublime boundlessness of Mystery, felt its warmth and power, and have sought a path back to its pond of nourishment. Mystery’s symbols remind me that we’re cradled in supportive dependence, supported by a universe beyond our understanding. Mystery stimulates my gratitude, empathy, and compassion for our shared dilemmas of consciousness.
I believe that our fundamental, life serving, intentions are born into us: Intentions to leave the world enriched so future life can thrive, intentions to mutually balance all life-forms’ needs into the indefinite future, and intentions to grow community as a basis for meaningful cooperation. The extent of our consciousness allows us to conceive the world from others’ perspectives, to conceive of life’s interdependence.
Our fundamental intentions are as mysterious to us as is our existence, and our feelings of purpose and meaning feed from them. Intentions connect us in common ground beneath our illusion of island-like separation in agitated-fear-born waters. Our common ground joins us beyond space and through the long-arm-of-change we call time. We know fundamental intentions when we contact them, they honor our inter-relationship and consciousness-growth needs.
I believe that storying is our natural gift, the means of conscious creation. We live from stories, and I believe stories are our fundamental unit of understanding. When I story, I create narratives describing my relationships with myself and the world, narrative symbols evoking the emotions my relational intentions stimulate. My stories are pragmatic guides, my connection with meaning, and helpful traps serving as placeholders for my ignorance. Pragmatic stories help me survive my ignorance, until they fail. I can become inured, comfortable within my storied traps and refuse to grow beyond them. Growth comes when I break the bounds of old stories and expand my understanding into more inclusive, informed and enriched guiding story traps.
Mystery exposes my gift and burden of autonomy, autonomy to form my storied relationship with it. Autonomy is our unavoidable condition of choice. We choose to story by borrowing from others, from our culture, or we story from our intentions. Whether we choose to connect with our storying source or borrow from the ambient, we will be molded by the stories we practice.
Though many powerful external events happen around and to us, our relationship to what happens, through our stories, has the dominant impact on us. Which narrative would you prefer to live: “THAT JERK CUT ME OFF!” or “He must be scared that he’ll miss his exit.”? Our stories shape our minds and bodies to influence our future storying. Our storying practice is our primary locus of influence on our experience: our feelings, our interpretations, our relationships.
Skillful storying is our art of, and enchantment with, consciously risking both life and death. We reach into the unknown with fundamental intentions, into Mystery, on a journey to bring life serving understanding to consciousness. When I sample from Mystery’s pond I risk learning something that changes everything. I risk learning something simple, something profound, or something so foundational that fully knowing it will compel me to abandon and grieve my current identity, to rebirth into a new identity. Rebirthing will involve re-storying my relationship with the world. I believe there is no alternative. Our stories are intention driven strategies, drawn from Mystery’s unknown dangers, our non-storied source. To fuel life is to risk creative-destruction storying from Mystery.
I believe that most of what we do is symbolic, representations of our intentions. Our actions are expressions, lossy artifacts, mostly opaque gestures motioning toward jumbled cocktails of confused and mixed intentions. When I attempt to interpret other’s symbols I’m easily mistaken, mislead. When I act, I’m often blind to my own needs and desires.
When I confuse my autonomy with a belief that I can create fundamental intentions, I lose touch with common ground, I engage in a fear driven struggle with Mystery. Henry David Thoreau invites us from our struggle into Mystery’s refuge, into a world that: “… is as well-adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of the work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!” We suffer an obscured dilemma, a dilemma whose absurdity is revealed when exposed in narrative form: We strive to fully comprehend and control our Mystery source.
Mystery resolves itself when I free it as a question, when I relax into it as the fertile source of resolution.
Mystery would be my -god-, however I am faithless. My sense is that -god- is known on faith. When I acknowledge my infinite ignorance with humble warmth, I know Mystery beyond faith. No faith is required. I do need faith when I let go into Mystery, confidence that I may afford to know what I learn, that I may survive to integrate my learning and share it with others. Mystery inspires my reverence, gratitude and love. I believe Mystery is the inspiration, the mother of, and the essence within our authentic religious entanglements with the universe.
This is my faithless-godless-religious confession.