The stories that guide us
Dear All,
I share these words with you in love, in the hope that they may serve as a loving and gentle reminder to remember what is truly important in life, in your life.
Growing up, I really loved absorbing beautiful stories in the form of cartoons, films, games or the many stories I could imagine myself in again and again as a child. Every day I chose a new superhero or an imaginative animal to disguise myself as a character to face the big and enchanting world. My entire childhood was literally filled with stories, stories were the way in which I could relate, in which I could express myself and in which I found some form of understanding as a young person. Stories play a huge role in our lives, in everyone's lives, regardless of where you grew up or what you got involved with, stories are the way we try to understand the world. What you are reading now, my words, are a story, an attempt to summarise a certain vision in… a story.
As humans we live in a world of stories. Just look around you, we find stories everywhere; the stories that shape our lives, such as the stories we receive from our family from childhood about how our family thinks the world works and how to live within this story based on certain norms and values. When we grow up, we are slowly exposed to the story of society, which gives us insight into how our own life story should be shaped or what we are expected to go along with. Within that social story are the stories of all companies, each with their own story trying to add something of value through their services or products. But, we also see that stories are ubiquitous in many other forms; the stories in the news about everything that is happening in the world and on television there is an unlimited range of programs, series and films that all revolve around telling a story. Libraries and bookstores are filled with nothing but stories. In short, it is quite safe to say that we live in a world of stories and that every human being always lives “in” and “through” stories. Whatever story directs your life, whether this is one big story about how you look at the world from an overarching philosophical vision or the many smaller stories we have such as the family story, our love life or the story of the company, it is good to realise that in many cases it is a story. There is no value judgment here, as I wrote in my introduction, I see the absolute added value of stories because my life has been largely shaped by countless stories. What I am trying to express in this letter is that it can be important to realise that our lives are determined by stories. Because when we realise this, we can contribute to the stories we wish to live in, without being lived by stories that we are not aware of. The question is therefore not 'whether' we live with stories, but 'in' which story do we wish to live? On the basis of which story do you wish to organise your life?
“The holistic acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the feeling, ‘We are serving the same thing,’ but they are. Both are in service to an emerging story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of civilisation”
As far as I'm concerned, there is one story that unconsciously guides the lives of many people. It is a story that has been recorded and carefully passed on since the beginning of human history, it has many chapters and paragraphs and is the basis of how many people experience and therefore shape their own life story, it concerns “the story of fear”. This story is persistent because for many people it unconsciously has a huge influence on their lives, like the fear of a dormant dragon in the cave that is known not to be easily skinned. What is the story of fear? This story conveys the idea of separation, it is the idea that what you call your “I” could somehow be separate from everything else in life. The unconscious but present fear of every human being to maintain this idea gives birth to anxious expressions when 'something' or 'someone' seems to pose even a slight threat to "the idea of me". The presence of this story has been resounding since time immemorial and worldwide we experience the everyday reality that people live in attachment to this story. The story of fear clouds our view of the underlying unity of life and hinders us from living from surrender and trust. In contrast, it is fear that motivates us to exercise control and thus gain control over our own individual situation. This story has such a powerful effect on us that we do not realise that we ourselves have become active writers in the continuation of this same story. A story that is perpetuated by all the negativity that one contributes to or engages in, such as when we consume sensational and often negative news reports, when we judge or speak ill of 'something', be it a person, a situation, an event or a sensation.
Understand that a large part of the way people think and act is conditioned by this “story” and that this subconsciously encourages us to live out of fear and not out of trust. The presence of fear is like a dark blanket that hangs veiled over man and prevents him from seeing the world in the light of love. What is especially important is that we learn to recognise how this fear manifests itself in the world, both in our own thoughts and actions but also in everything we interact or involve ourselves with. Many people's worldview is shaped by the excessive extent to which they engage with negative information such as current events, but also the influx of judgmental or hateful expressions (both online but also in our daily interactions). This is not so much about how accurate or truthful these messages are, it is mainly about the impact of the way in which this information comes to us in a negative tone on a daily basis, which means that the worldview of many people has become extremely desaturated. I am by no means opting to keep you aloof from worldly matters, no, that is not what I mean by this, I am aiming for an awareness of the impact of the way in which communication takes place in a certain tone. So I deliberately ignore the veracity of the messages because I think that too often we focus on collecting "facts" while we do not realise how these messages negatively influence our worldview. This same worldview, which often does not necessarily originate from a real understanding of reality, but is an accumulation of all the coloured information that one has collected throughout one's life, one then propagates in one's own actions.
Now, this is a very important and a crucial point in understanding the influence of fear. In many cases it is this same fear of the world that people express in fear of it, thus contributing to an even greater collective fear. When we are in fear, we will often express this same fear in all our words and actions instead of recognising this fear and finding out where it comes from and then not letting it guide us. It is the fear of 'something' (e.g. an ideology, event or opinion) or 'someone' (e.g. a supporter of a different belief) in the world that we regard as separate that feels like a threat to our carefully constructed idea of ourselves (and of the world) which causes us to respond in the same fearful reaction in defence of this idea. Again, it is not about the facts of certain events, it is about how we respond at a deeper level. Through our own actions we try to respond in an attempt to maintain control over our ideas. But, this movement does not come from trust but from a lack of trust. This creates a vicious cycle in which fear is met with fear, creating more fear. Do you see the pattern?
“Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.”
What is really the biggest problem in our relationship with fear is that we no longer feel we can trust life. When we grow up there is a natural feeling of trust, in childhood there is also fear, but often an instinctive fear that only responds to life-threatening situations. Gradually we grow up in the world and we become (unconsciously) familiar with the story of fear, which causes us to adopt the belief that we (as a separate entity) have to make life, that we have to be in control and that we have to keep a grip. Everything that then challenges the way in which “I” wish to maintain control constitutes a threat and affects in us the unsubstantiated fear that we will lose control. But, this fear only has a grip on us because we want to keep a grip on life in the absence of a deeper sense of trust. We lack the sense of belonging, of being connected to “something” that is so much bigger than our own individual lives and so, in this lonely feeling, we really think that we can only respond by keeping a grip on our lives. In the world we experience how the sense of belonging is missing, how we as beings no longer seem to feel connected to “something” that is so much bigger and more mysterious than our own individual idea of ourselves. In this rather lonely feeling we really think that we can only respond to this by keeping a grip, but we forget that we are not the ones who can grab hold of life but that life has us in the motherly womb and that we can trust. We are carried by life, by an undercurrent that we can feel when we live in trust and surrender.
Dear friend, it is of great and essential importance for all life that we come to realise that with every word, with every deed and with everything we take in, we contribute “something” to the world. That when we introduce negativity, it continues to feed the collective story of fear, that we write new pages that contribute to the maintenance of this same story. The question is, which story do you wish to live by? Is that a story of fear? A story that speaks about separation, about “I” versus “the other”? And, is that really the story you want to be guided by? We cannot solve the many suffering with fear, despair, hatred and violence, this must always originate from opposite values such as love, hope, peace and trust. We must dare to imagine that a more beautiful world is possible if we start by expressing that more beautiful world in our own actions. What is needed is that we become the active writers ourselves and that we work on telling a new story, a story that speaks of a loving and respectful relationship to the world. A story about how everything that lives and grows has the same underlying source and that all the people with whom we share the world are our brothers and sisters, a story of connection, harmony, solidarity, belonging and beauty. This is the story that is most needed now, the story that we remember somewhere deep inside because it speaks about the core of our existence.
It is time for this story to become the guiding story from where we live our lives.
In love and reverence, sven
Special thanks to my dear friend Edwin van der Sande for creating these beautiful photos!
