The Power of Stories

The Power of Stories

While reading is much more cool these days than when I was young, we do have to remember reading is something that only the few had access to for most of human history.

I don't begrudge readings coolness. I appreciate how older prints and different editions are now easier for me to find. (Though I have this skill of being able to find books that are rare and expensive for piss all in flea markets or charity shops.)

My mother was a big reader but didn't read to me. My father (before I was five) would not only read but do all the voices and perform the stories. After the divorce he would record stories onto tape, even adding a noise to tell me when we could turn the page.

Little wonder reading became so important to me. Reading was so pleasurable, much like dancing, I didn't feel it was an effort at all. I now know how much harder I have to work as a dyslexic person to get the words into my brain. I don't belittle or get snobbish about audio books either.

Interestingly reading to children (I mean who wouldn't like bedtime stories?) is not just wonderfully bonding, great for getting kids calm and happy, it actually changes their brains!

This has throws up so many ideas in my brain.

You see psychologically, we are create narratives constantly and when they don't mesh with the outside would it can cause break-downs and all kinds of mental health problems. This cognitive dissonance comes down to how we tell ourself our story.

This power of stories is both a curse and a boon.

There is a large bang. You go to the window and it is dark. Now quiet, everything appears normal.

"Probably just a car backfiring". 

Our past and our frames of reference inform us, and blind us to the world around us.

There is a large bang. You go to the window and it is dark. Now quiet, everything appears normal.

"Come away from the window, someone was shot."

Most people are not aware of this narrative thinking. This is why reading, and reading widely is important.

It allows you to freedom from the idea there is one narrative thread. That there is one set way to view the world. In evolutionary terns it makes us more adaptable to change. More resilient to the psychological stresses. Growing up I read all kinds of books sometimes several at a time. Most of the protagonists were male but instead of this isolating me it just enabled me to walk into worlds, stories where I was treated with all the male privilege. I was never the damsel in the story, I was the hero. Doing the daring do. To me it was quite profound in setting how I thought of myself.

This is why "Chic Lit" is just the dumbest idea from publishers and a trend I abhor.

The formula seem to be this

female writer+ female protagonist+human connection = Chic Lit 

So many amazing books, and wonderful stories are lumped into a grouping that stops men from hearing these voices. Voices that can be beautiful and powerful and really deserve to be read.

Reading should not be gendered.

Reading what it is like to grow up female should be compulsory.

Everyone should read The Color Purple.

Everyone should read Tolkien, even if it is the Hobbit to your children.

Stories are hugely powerful. Inhabiting worlds can show you what racism, sexism and being a villain or hero is like. This dreaming while awake is good for the mind and in my opinion, good for the soul.

This why "just watch the movie" is so wrong. It is much more personal. So much more visceral when you are not passively absorbing something but creating it within your mind. 

This changes how you emotionally connect with the content and you get to choose the voices, the soundtrack. You get to know how things smell, and taste and feel. What people are thinking as well as doing.

 So much of our lives is based on stories, narratives. When we are able to hear other people's voices, spend some time in their shoes we are empowered. In reading with others, in sharing stories with our children and friends we share this tool. This gift. We are always more able to control our narrative thinking (if you don't believe me watch a group of roleplayers the week after their first mimic).

It allows us to be our own hero's. Know that we can survive anything, from the end of the world to war, to lost love.  

Bright Blessings xxx

Mind Body Spirit

Mind Body Spirit

Know thy Self

When I teach I begin always, always, always with MIND.

We live in a multitude of cultures that thrive on the ideas of not thinking. Certainly not looking inward to our own thoughts. Yet to me to be self aware about our thought and to be able and willing to rein them in is paramount.

It you can not control your own mind how can wield the power inside and around you and use it for spiritual and magickal means?

There are two unfortunate modern trends in the pagan community. 

One is rampant anti-intellectualism, ie
"Everything we think and feel is valid (and much more worrying) fact."

The second is diametrical opposite.
"If you can't measure it or find it in history it didn't happen."

I have issues about dichotomies.  TK thinks it is a Welsh thing. We don't say yes or no (at least not often), it is more complicated than that. 

"Would you like tea?" 

"I would not" (< said me never) 

This comes from Welsh people speaking English, but thinking and phrasing things with Welsh grammar. How you speak and how you think are deeply connected.

I have no idea if this is why I find dichotomies inherently uncomfortable. 

Yet I observe myself, my patterns and look at what I think, what I say and how I say it.

This makes meditation, a core in my teaching and practice, at odds with both ends of the spectrum. 

To observe yourself thinking, it helps to learn to observe yourself, not thinking. That is what meditation is, to observe the space within.

If your mind is a movie theatre, it is to turn off, or turn down slowly, what is playing to look around the room. What happens on the screen is a projection from somewhere else but plays in the screen called MIND. The OBSERVER is more than the MIND. This OBSERVER is called the higher self, the true self and many other things.

In the other room is the wild play happening. It is the theatre called BODY. It records things, makes music and painful shocking things. For me it is a space of great power. It you meditate long enough you can get up go and sit in the other room. The BODY is a space of feeling. Of the physical sensations and stimulus, or memory and bruises. Yet watching the dance is not the same as dancing it. The BODY is wise and knowing. 

I don't think you can fully heal a person without acknowledging both rooms. To understand both the feelings and the thoughts a person has. It is also hard to do magick if the BODY and MIND are at odds with one another.

Meditation allows the healing and the wholeness of both spaces without one being better than the other. It is not a passive place. It strengthens the OBSERVER and all parts of the self.

Once we understand the truth of the MIND and the BODY is not always truth, but that it can still teach us deeply something happens.

I only know one word for it.

Magick.

This why I ask difficult questions, ones that don't have easy answers. It is why I ask my students to keep journals, to write down their thoughts and feelings. It is why I repeat the same exercise again and again with tiny variations and ask them what was different, what did it teach them, how was it the same?

It is why I find teaching Craft endlessly rewarding. Their answers tend to be wildly different than my own and often just as "right".

Bright Blessings xxx

To learn more find my book The Key here.