We Tell Ourselves

We tell ourselves:

that it’s all stories we tell ourselves no matter how sincere — and we have our favorite stories too, physicists tell the story of quantum theories hopeful of their proof, while philosophers and religious leaders might tell opposite stories with equal belief. My own favored stories, at least the ones that I’m aware of, are partial to meditation and of spiritual concerns. Yet there are also stories that play out beneath our conscious understanding, those that are deeply embedded in individual and cultural psyche, hidden from our own view and not given to examination. It’s the role of the shamans among us to bring this all to light, for the poets and storytellers to speak to us through metaphor and cause an inward look. Many of these stories serve us well and have a noble cause, while many are harmful if not at least examined and determined for their worth. It’s the stories we tell ourselves that shape the quality of our lives. Seen in this light -they at least deserve to be acknowledged.

why is everything a story?

because nothing is real in and of itself alone, nothing is independent from its neighboring field of being and existence, no description is free of a storyteller’s view. Everything exists simply as it is, exact, and honestly doesn’t need a story. That’s just for our convenience, a helpful way for us to navigate the world, at least until we come to believe that a story’s absolutely so. We only tell ourselves a version of the whole, a sample fit only for our individual view, not meant to be an ultimate description. This is when our stories cease to serve and find themselves as lies, no longer guiding us to see the world through ever larger views. It’s not that we must abandoned our most cherished stories, as really, that would only be another story told — but that everything we believe is held lightly, allowed a certain doubt to exist within their hold.

a good quantum physicist knows that an atom’s just a story, that it doesn’t exist independent of the particles that seem to give it cause, and that particles too are just another story. Right now I’m typing these words on a wooden desk that holds my computer, all made by molecules and in turn atoms, particles and infinitely regressed to a field of energetic potentiality. Nothing, really. The primordial space existing before a single stories told. That’s as close to truth as we may know and everything from this is indeed, just a story. I’ve typed these words with the cooperation from the field of everything, molecules, atoms, particles…all the way to nothing.

infinite stories.

seemingly existing on a single page.

everything we tell ourselves…absolutely nothing.

yet through this we see the world.

~

Peace, Eric