We’re born into a story. A story of culture and heritage – of country, shaped by region, city, neighborhood – fixed by family, gender, race and class. We believe this story as truth. Until one day … maybe, we can imagine something different.
When John Lennon and Yoko Ono released “Imagine” I was 12. Their call for me was set inside my story. Could I imagine no heaven? No nation – no possessions? No I couldn’t, not then.
Reading Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Dues; A Brief History of Tomorrow is opening my mind to a potential that John Lennon saw 47 years ago. It’s uncomfortable, unnerving and exciting.
Let me step outside my story, my comfort zone; see reality from a different vantage point. Change my perspective; make an actual paradigm shift.
Could I try on for size the possibility that there’s no heaven, no hell and purgatory just doesn’t exist? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. My sins won’t be punished; my sacrifices unrewarded. No being born again. All that exists is today. If this is true – what changes? Do I choose differently?
Considering I’ve depended on Karma – with a CAPITAL K to take care of some of the most egregious shit-heads of the world a new story is a huge ask for me.
Harari cleverly outlines psychological and scientific aspects of our “experiencing self” and “narrating self” – how our self-told stories shape what and how we feel. He says that it’s “much easier to live with the fantasy because the fantasy gives meaning to suffering.”
Byron Katie’s approach – doing “The Work” to accept life as it meets me, helps move me off a story that’s grinding me down. Make Inquiries. Ask – The Four Questions and Turnaround:
- “Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
- How do you react; what happens when you believe that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
… Turn it around, and find three genuine examples of how the turnaround is true in your life.”
This is how Byron Katie helped me “Let Go of the Big Mad”
It’s all a story.
I’m tellin’ ya – we gotta . . . TELL BETTER STORIES!!!
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
[Pi:] “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?” – Yann Martel, The Life of Pi
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