We live (and die) by our stories, and our current story is killing us.
Our current story won’t take us where Life is going, and where we actually want to go.
For about 6,000 years we’ve lived an “empire” story of “conquer, command, control, acquire, accumulate, and dominate”. That has been a story of separation from Life, with fear, disconnection, greed, scarcity, invasion, extraction, exploitation and other similar qualities. We’ve treated ourselves, the earth, and all the other beings as commodities to be controlled and consumed. It’s been “normal” to us. It’s been our “Matrix.”
However, Life is the fundamental, non-negotiable power and energy on this planet. Since our cultural way of being and operating has been at odds with Life, it’s not sustainable because Life prevails. We’re at the end of that cultural story and identity. The results of the U.S. Presidential election, whatever they may be, won’t change that.
This means we’re “in between trapezes”, which I’ve previously written about here.
This has naturally put us in a collective cultural chrysalis (which many people are experiencing as a crisis) and a birthing process. We’re being required to let go of our current cultural story and identity and simultaneously birth a new one. As anyone who has ever been involved in a birth process knows, birthing is not easy!
Here are a few of our current cultural stories I see that got us here and will NOT get us where Life is going, and where we actually want to go. For more details about these, see my blog post.
Story #1:
Our belief in human supremacy over all other beings on the Earth is not true and not working.
Story #2:
Our hyper-independence, hyper-individualism is very ingrained in our “heroic” cultural narrative with the myth of the strong independent “self-made” person. This doesn’t work because we can’t become ourselves only for ourselves.
Story #3:
The “Pusher/Striver/Driver” story (as I’ve called it) is defunct: “You have to be the “right” person and jump through all the “right” hoops for external approval. You have to produce and perform constantly like a machine with no downtown in order to get external rewards, e.g. privilege, prestige, money, etc.”
Story #4:
“Win at all costs” has been a dominant story, although a story of human kindness and caring for other beings and community sometimes attempts to compete with this. However, as Seth Godin says, “If one of your principles is, ‘win at all costs,’ then you have no other principles.”
I know that shedding an old identity and story, and embodying a new one, is no small thing! For an example of my recent experience of this, see my blog post.
This graphic (author unknown) expresses it well:
Eventually there comes a time when, as Anais Nin says, “. . . the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” As it becomes too painful to remain in a bud and we allow ourselves to die to “who we once were”, we are birthing a new cultural story and identity that is aligned with Life.
What might this new story and way of being look like? Soren’s Wisdom 2.0 blog gives an example:
“Ram Dass tells the story of talking to his dad about a recording and a beautifully calligraphed book he made and was selling for $4.50. His father was a very successful attorney and could not understand why they were selling it for so cheap. When his father questioned this pricing strategy, suggesting it could sell for $10, Ram Dass explained his perspective by drawing a parallel to his father's legal work.
“I know you did some work for Uncle Henry some time back,” he queried his father.
“Yes,” he replied, “I worked really hard on that case.”
“I know you did,” Ram Dass said, “I bet you made a killing off of him.”
“Of course not!” the father shot back. “It was Uncle Henry. He is family. I would never overcharge him.”
“Well, that is my problem,” Ram Dass responded, “To me, everyone is Uncle Henry.”
In his TED Talk filmmaker Damon Gameau points out that, in spite of massive evidence of the effects of our destruction of the earth, humans continue to do what we have been doing because the facts don’t matter if they don’t fit the story we’re living by.
Then he gives an example of a new cultural story we could choose to inhabit:
“. . . something remarkable happened. It started with the children, who began to skip school and take to the streets. It started with the farmers who chose to stop fighting nature and instead rebuild their soils. It started when the Indigenous people, who, for centuries, had been reminding everybody of their story, were finally being listened to. And it started when nature herself, through fires and storms, through droughts and rising waters, forced her way back into the people’s lives and demanded their respect. A new, regenerative story about human beings and nature was emerging. . .
“But of course, it wasn’t a new story at all. It was the retelling of an old story. But this time, the old story was supported by the science. . . The same scientific inquiry that had led to domination and extraction had gone so deep into nature’s bosom that it was revealing her secrets. And her secrets were divulging that she was anything but mechanistic. That she was deserving of the utmost reverence and respect. And that the original story had been right all along. . .
“Nobody knows how this new but old story ends because it is still being written. But if it is to have the Hollywood ending, if we are to break free from our cultural programming and pull off the miraculous comeback when all seems lost, then the new but old story will have to be rapidly spread throughout the culture. Because stories shape culture. Culture shapes leaders, leaders shape policies, and policies shape the system.”
A final note: These transformational times are not just a speed bump because the path that brought us here goes no further. This requires us to create our new path as we go.
This where I’m heading, and this is my passion. Let me know if you’re heading this way, too.
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