Have you ever thought about your personal narratives?
As a culture we connect to stories all the time. Movies, books, theater, listening to our friends, podcasts, the news. We learn from other’s stories, especially when we relate to them. They offer insight and intrigue, entertainment and a sense of connection. They teach us about love, understanding and compassion.
But what happens when we drop the stories about ourselves that we have accumulated from our past? When we no longer need them to connect to who we are now?
The stories stored in our minds from the past keep us from being present in the moment. Awakening comes from moving beyond conceptual thought and consciousness arrives from letting go of our conditioned response.
Without interpretation, the need to know and control you are free to experience your deeper self, the truth of you who are in the essence of being.
As I’ve been thinking about my next book, an interesting thing has been happening within me. Over 25 years I’ve worked on a manuscript about a story when I was 21 and fell in love with a married man who was a spy.
It’s about a young wounded woman with low self-esteem who had a difficult relationship with her mother. Wanting to individuate and find her own freedom, she chooses self-destruction and painful circumstances that reinforce her story that she is not loved.
Although at times it interests me to finish it, and although it would be my wish to help people through the writing of it, I haven’t wanted to return to the past. I’ve teetered between letting the narrative go and preserving the creative work I’ve put into it.
It’s a coming of age story—showing how I did indeed find self-love. And sometimes self-esteem just comes from growing up, although learning self-love has been a huge part of my life’s journey.
I wonder if you were to think of a story in your life that you find interesting, particularly painful, or intriguing. What’s the first story that comes to mind? If you were to share it what would it be? And then the next question would be . . . why?
What is your attachment to it? And what would happen if you let it be over, gone, free of it? Not let it define you? Or believe what it says about you? If you didn’t interpret it, analyze it, or give it any meaning? Let it remain in the past and embrace the present moment fully?
As you become aware of a story are there any remains of suffering? Guilt, remorse, shame or regret? How might you transcend it? Is it possible you are holding onto to something from the past to avoid or distract yourself from accepting what is in the present? How much of this story feeds your ego, (good or bad)?
These are all questions I am asking myself as I explore working on my next book. How does the energy of the past still have a hold on me? Is there something within it that I am currently letting define me? A need to identify with something to solidify who I am now but yet, has already passed?
If so, how important is it to return to the past to share my journey into self-esteem? Or is it something I can give up and let die to come fully into being?
There’s real freedom in this questioning. And awakening. It’s a beautiful thing to be surrendered of our narratives. I’m staying open and curious to how creativity may guide me on it’s own. Here’s to the unknowing and meeting the present!
Wishing you ease, joy and creative expansion in the now.
P.s I offer a course on transforming your past if you’re interested. You can find out more about it here.
