Human beings are meaning-making creatures.
It’s part of our magic; no other animal makes meaning like we do.
Each one of us has intricate networks of conscious and subconscious stories about life and how it works.
The collective also has almost-infinite layers upon layers of sophisticated stories; that we all are swimming through every waking moment (and perhaps, even as we sleep).
There are so many overlapping stories, that it might take a lifetime to really see all the way through them to the ultimate reality. (And who knows if we even want to, or are meant to, see the world without the lens of story and meaning.)
Many, many, many of our sophisticated stories are helpful; they show us how to live.
Many, many, many of our sophisticated stories are neutral; little, habitual shortcuts.
Many, many of our sophisticated stories are tricks, telling us things that aren’t true or even imprisoning.
Some of our stories are specific to us, our one little life. Some that we’ve picked up actually belong to the collective or someone we once knew.
Despite all our stories, none of us, little humans, knows what is really going on. And, every one of us has a consciousness that wants to build a framework of story so we can make it through the day pretending we do.
But, every once in a while, the cosmic weather gets weird enough (for example, right now - on our way to Solar Maximum in July, well on our way to a total Solar Eclipse on April 8th, Mars, Venus, Saturn and Neptune in Pisces and an incoming Mercury Rx) that life gets so strange that some of our stories can’t hold up and we glimpse the invisible, infinite essential energy of life itself.
If we choose, we can use these weird eras to pass through some portion of the clouds of story-data and deeply connect to pure energy and information.
In other words, there are times when it is easier to clock even the most sophisticated stories and then go beyond them.
This is one of those times.
Let me also tell you that once you get “out there” it’s actually a very gentle, beautiful and healing place. The Void gets a bad rap in our culture and not a lot of people spend time there. (One of MY sophisticated stories suggests that distrust of the Void can be traced back to our culture’s degradation of all that is considered feminine; but maybe that’s a story best left for another day.)
But I visit the Void all the time. I have come to like it there. When I “arrive”, it feels like relief. I like how holographic and fractal it is there. I like the infinite-layers-of-infinity flavor of it. I like how I feel when I emerge - grateful to get to live this strange little pin-point of a life.
Once we shake off even a few of our stories, we begin to tune into the flows of energy and information that are always swirling around and through us; without our sophisticated stories blocking this true glory from our radar.
I am not one of those spiritual teachers who promises total liberation from our stories so that we are free forever and ever. As, I alluded to above, I’m not sure any of us would like that very much.
Our innate ability to conceive, hold, keep and replay stories is an important and often pleasurable part of being human.
However, I do recommend small windows of time where we endeavor to transcend or just “lower the volume” on our networks of sophisticated stories so we can access something greater.
That’s what we are doing tonight at ROAM and what we do in many, many of the meditations on the site. (See Tuesday’s post for some of my favorites.)
Sometimes meditation can be more than “productive”. Sometimes we can meditate to access something beyond chasing healing, wealth, love or happiness for our little selves. Sometimes we can meditate and visit the great nowhere-everywhere for the life-affirming joy of it.
It is also an example of extreme spiritual irony that those “non-productive” meditations are the ones that most effortlessly produce the best fruits of our lives. It’s like we set out to do, be and know nothing and then something happens behind the scenes that gives us everything in return.
If we think about how much of our lives we spend gazing out through the complicated grid of our interlocking stories, it truly makes sense, every once in a while, to spend time in the felt sense of being beyond our stories, more than our stories, a little star-spark floating in the great everything.
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