Stories vs. Reality: where do you spend your time?
How would you move and relate in the world without the filter of your stories?
How can we be in contact with the RAW REALITY of the present moment, with our experience, rather than the story we have about it? And is this even possible and desireble?
I was living in my STORY and not in REALITY
Lately, I’ve joined a “Fear Club”, an experimental space to explore the relationship with emotions, particularly fear. What I have come to realize is that we spend most of our time worrying about things that are only real in our heads and have nothing to do with the actual reality.
Some of my biggest fears are fears of losing a story, not of losing an actual thing.
So it seemed to me these were fears I could easily handle.
After all, I can lose a story. It’s just a story.
In my case, I got so attached and obsessed with the idea I had of my romantic relationship that I lost touch almost completely with the reality of the love relationship I’ve been involved in for the past 4 years.
When I became aware of this attachment and let go of it,
my own inner world crumbled,
a whole identity fell into pieces,
a whole dream broke apart.
Interestingly though, once I allowed that painful shedding of the story, what happened was not that I lost the relationship!
I ONLY LOST THE STORY I had about it..
And in case you are wondering - when we get so attached to a story, letting go of it can be heartbreaking!
The more energy we have poured into a story, the harder to release it.
Losing the story puts you in touch with reality
By losing the story, I was put for the first time in direct contact with the raw reality of our romantic life.
I could SEE, HEAR and FEEL the words, the actions and interactions between my partner and me from a completely new, curious and detached perspective.
I could honor what WAS there (and that I had never noticed before) and also acknoledge what WASN’T there (but that I had wanted to be there at all costs, to the point that I had forced my own story over the actual reality).
There was suddenly room for being in touch with pure EXPERIENTIAL REALITY.
With the simplicity of things..
With what was alive in the “naked moment” … beyond expectations, interpretations and predictions based on past behaviours or future visions.
This was a completely new and enriching experience!
We relate through stories
You know me, I am a biologist and very pragmatic, I want to understand how and why we function the way we do.
After all, our biological machinery, our brain is built a certain way and it functions by association.
We need stories to be able to learn new things, to make sense of our experiences, to be able to relate with others and the world around us.
Just to give you an example, recently I have been travelling to several new towns in central Italy - every time I was walking somewehere new, I found myself comparing it to places I had already been to, saying things like “Oh this reminds me of this city or that trip we had”
The easiest way we can relate to a new place is by comparing it to places we have already been to, by finding similarities.
Our mind is constantly trying to fit any new experience into a pre-existing box.
Honestly, I don’t think that’s necessarily bad, that’s just how we are built by nature.
We can’t live without stories. We can however choose empowering ones, since they affect us that much.
Stories are dead while reality is alive
It is important to realise that stories are just stories, and while it is inevitable to have stories, it is important to remain awake and alert and allow moments of complete opening where new things, ideas, thoughts, emotions, experiences can emerge.
When stories become too rigid structures that keep us frozen in carbon-copies of reality they are no longer useful.
Stories should be tools we use to navigate reality, or better, to jump from one reality to the next - ideally they get destroyed quickly after their use, leaving space for the next story to be assembled, serve us and get dissolved, and so on and on.
When we are able to view and live stories in a more dynamic way, they no longer hinder us, they can bring us in closer contact with reality.
The key question to ask yourself here is:
Can you be with what is REAL, rather than what you THOUGHT was real?
As I said, this is not easy to do, because it’s going against our biology, however I like to believe that here lies the true unfolding of human nature. My own experience and that of many “edge-workers” has shown that there is immeasurable value in leaving the borders of our well-known comfort zone (made up of our stories) to navigate unknown territories that we don’t know yet how to navigate.
What could be possible for you, if you allow yourself to be in contact more and more with pure experiential reality? Living in the present moment as if nothing else mattered?
Perhaps new ideas, sensations or understandings would become availabe to you, just by opening up to the vastness and infinity of the NOW.
Healthy fear keeps us awake and vibrant
One effective way I discovered to stay present, alert and open in the NOW, is to consciously keep a low level of fear always running through our system.
We have been conditioned to think that fear is bad and unhealthy (more about that in another blogpost). If we consider it just as a neutral energy that can help us navigate life (particularly new and unknown territories) it becomes a great tool to bring and keep us in touch with EXPERENTIAL RAW REALITY.
I’m speaking of a vibrant, alive state, where you are deeply in touch with your physical body (your sensations), your emotional state, your mental and energetic bodies as well. It’s a space from which you can speak from your heart directly, without having to filter things through a mental story first.
A place where you experience what is going on, without necessarily naming things (and thereby limiting their experience by the limits of verbal reality).
It’s a state I’m personally inviting in my life as often as I can remember and it’s been a game-changer.
Experiments for you:
Whenever you face a problem ask yourself: am I relating to the story or to the reality of things?
When you catch yourself dwelling in a story, bring yourself back to experiential reality (e.g. by touching an object) look at things as if you were to see them for the first time, no strings attached.
In what areas of your life have you built so many stories that you lost contact with reality the most?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic, especially if you have a psychology background, what is your take in this?
Can you relate to my findings?
If you are interested in learning to work with your feelings and emotions, I offer 1:1 and group healing spaces, where emotional healing plays a crucial part (see the section with my services).
In Love for Truth,
Luna
Source: distintions stemming from Possibility Management
