Story and Isness

[Eternal Unity]

I have caused myself UNTOLD pain, over and over again. And I have taken that pain and folded it over upon itself and multiplied it over and over again because there was something I JUST DIDN’T GET.

I have looked at you, dear world, and all the wonderful life upon you. I have looked at you, dear beloved souls, who walk this planet with me. I have looked at you, bright beings of wisdom and light who stand outside of physicality and make your fragment to visit and revisit this deeper forgetting called incarnation. I see you. And I get you. I really do. Most of all I get that you too feel the same pain I feel, also multiplied over upon itself because, beloveds, you too JUST DON’T GET IT. And I say this with the greatest respect and love.

Because I come to this reality with the willingness and desire to HELP I am often granted the unspeakably high privilege of being given a window into many other’s souls’ inner landscapes. That most intimate of views into another that happens in deep interactions such as Soul Re-Integration. This has gifted me a recurring vantage which results in an iteratively deeper KNOWING of what it is like to be here. To be in separation. To be in the heart of this deep suffering.

And so I have suffered your pain first hand and seen your pain, as close as can be seen, second hand.

And now, finally, it begins to dawn upon me. Finally, I begin to get it. And beloved, my heart wants me to share it with you. Because I wish our suffering to end.

What we have not been getting that is causing us all this misery is, quite simply, the difference between Story and Isness.

It is incredibly simple and yet it is also incredibly hard to make the shift of awareness. I am engaged now in that shift myself. Please allow me to attempt to explain so that you too might, if you wish it, engage in this shift with me.

 

Story

Story is what is outside of you. It is the stuff that is going on in your life. That is your Story. Everything materialism, empiricism and science will tell you is true and real is all Story. Everything your memories will tell you was real is all Story. This whole lifetime with all its interactions and experiences? Story.  You past lives and all the things you did? Story!  Every single word printed in every single newspaper and uttered by every single TV news caster is, of course, more Story. Most people go their whole lives and never think about a single thing other than Story.

But Story is not wrong or bad. Story itself is not causing us to suffer. It is with our ATTACHMENT to Story that we cause this pain to our own souls.

I wish to offer you another perspective on this now. A perspective that I find to be much healthier, spiritually. A perspective that helps greatly to relieve emotional pain and suffering.  A perspective that brings greater balance to the whole being.

I will use the analogy of a movie. An old fashioned one that uses a roll of celluloid film and a projector. When you thread the film through the projector and switch the projector on, a beam of light is shone through a frame of the film and a static, lifeless image is shown on the screen. When we let the film run, when we allow all the frames of celluloid to roll past the flickering light at the right speed, then the movie takes life before our eyes. We see the characters playing out their rolls and we also hear the audio track featuring their conversations. We observe the story playing out.

See how the story can only play out when we allow it to change? Indeed the only way any kind of life can happen is with this kind of on going transition of every single part of it. Nothing stays the same, everything changes. That is how the movie of life proceeds. That is how Story, frame by frame, flashes before you at a speed so fast you cannot even begin notice the individual frames.

And here is the first, basic, lesson of life. A simple, powerful understanding that, admittedly, can be quite difficult to live by. It is the realization that we cannot hold on to anything in life. We cannot insist that anything not change. That anything stays the same.  Firstly, because the only way Life can happen is that is must move and constantly change. And secondly, because anything at all that you might identify as something you want to hold on to is all just Story anyway. It is an external, fictional created show that you are co creating with all the others that share parts of it.

Holding on is both futile and impossible. Attempting to hold on is very like attempting to grab and stop the moving parts of a powerful machine. It will continue to move. You will simply hurt yourself in the process. The harder you try to hold on the deeper the injury to yourself.  The more you let go and hold lightly, the less you hurt and the more you can appreciate the marvel of the movement and wonder of the unfolding experience of the intricate machinery.

So this first basic lesson is not to resist the story. Not to insist that it be anything other than what it is. Not to demand that the parts you love stay and the parts you don’t like disappear. The story is as it is when you are as you are.

Instead of resistance the right way to experience the Story is to truly, completely inhabit your part in it. Be IN the story with all that you are. Live it, love it, feel it, explore it. But do not think you are ONLY it.

And this is where the second deeper lesson that I wish to share with you begins.

 

Isness

If Story is the external experience of your life, then Isness is the internal experience.

The reason we create Story is much like the reason we go to the cinema to watch a movie.  Think about this: you do not watch a movie so that you can get insistent about what should happen in it. You do not sit there fuming that it isn’t going as you wished. You do not even go to the cinema to simply observe the movie. No, you go to the cinema for what the movie will do to and for you INSIDE.  How you will FEEL. What emotions it will bring up. How it will bring you a new perspective and allow you to, perhaps, feel a bit differently about yourself afterwards.  Every movie, right from shoot-'em-up Westerns to weepy chick-flicks to quirky art-house productions all bring us a new landscape INSIDE ourselves. Be they trills and excitement, pathos and compassion or wonder and surprise no movie will ever make it to the screen if it does not, in some way, touch your inner self.

In exactly the same way, the reason we create Story is so that we can have the inner experiences we desire.  Incarnation is just one kind of Story. There are many, many others but it is the kind we are most familiar with so I will use it as an example.

Before you decided to incarnate, you developed a plan. Your life plan. Together with your guidance and various other beings of wisdom and light, you decided on the events of the Story that you would be telling yourself. You chose who your parents would be, who your friends, lovers and partners would be. You also chose just as carefully who your rivals would be. You chose it all. But why? Not because you so badly wanted to see the Story play out but because you really wanted to see what new growth, discoveries, feelings and explorations would happen inside of you as a result of the telling of this Story.

And all of that inner experience – that is what Isness is. That is what is real and important in all of this. The point of the Story is to derive the Isness. The Story has no purpose or value if you remove the Isness. A Story without Isness will be like a movie that doesn’t touch you in the slightest. A movie of paint drying or something even more boring than that.

And so a new set of understandings emerge:

The first point is to neither resist the flow of your story, nor to stand in judgement of yourself, others or any other part of your story. Not to attach yourself to any part of your story and insist that it be THIS WAY or THAT WAY. This first step is called ACCEPTANCE. It is the on going process of deep acceptance of your story as it is, and yourself as you are. That brings profound relief from suffering. If you wish to find peace for your soul then I cannot recommend highly enough that you seek acceptance and all that this truly means. Seek it and then LIVE acceptance. Allow acceptance to take you to the place where you become able to really immerse yourself in your Story, really and truly LIVE every day of you life, to truly LOVE it all and be joyful and peaceful.

The second point flows from the first. As we find true acceptance of the Story so we can begin to notice with ever greater clarity what is going on BEHIND the Story. Which is, of course, the Isness. Then we don’t have to die physically and find ourselves back with our guides looking at the life map one more time to remember the whole point of this whole saga. We can, right here, right now, right inside this incarnation begin to remember and explore the Isness of our own beings. As you begin to discover, claim, own and inhabit the Isness of your own being then the third point emerges. It is the realization that, since the Story is merely a vehicle of discovering your own Isness, there is no point in trying to CHANGE the Story. The Story exists to point you to yourself. So take the lesson. Look where the Story points! Discover yourself! And as you do, so you will come to the realization that you no longer need certain types of Story. You don’t need to bash your head over and over again if you notice there is a low beam in the ceiling. In just the same way you don’t need to repeatedly suffer certain kinds of difficult relationships (or whatever other painful experiences are recurring in your life) if you notice the origin of the pain within your own being. And if you are able to HEAL that pain in the Isness of your being then you would not only avoid expressing the pain in your Story but you actually change the Isness and you transcend having to experience that ever again. You become a more whole, more integral, more powerful, more real, sovereign version of YOU.

Engaging in this quest will bring you completely out of suffering, out of pain and into love, joy and peace.

And when you have accomplished this quest? Well, then a whole new adventure will begin. I cannot say for sure what that will be but I do know that neither you nor I will ever again have to play with suffering and pain.

I can see clearly that both you and I confused Story and Isness. We both thought the Story was what was real and important. Therefore we each in our own way set about trying to heal the Story. But now we release that. Now we realize the Story is perfect. It is a perfect expression of each of the players own Isness. We are not here to change the Story. If we have any role whatsoever it is to REMIND anyone that is interested in hearing it that the only thing they need to do to free themselves from their stuckness is to go within and to heal the pain that lies within the Isness of their beings.

If the Story is like a movie on a screen then the Isness is a little like the celluloid film. It is constantly changing and morphing. And as it does so, so the Story reflects that. If you think you are IN the Story then you are its victim. If you think you are in the audience then you can only observe. If you think you are fast as thought creating the celluloid as it is being shown, then you become the creator of that experience.But who are you really? Bright being, you are the pure white light, the radiant, eternal, undifferentiated Life Force that shines through the celluloid and makes the movie possible. And the less noise, darkness and filtration there is in the celluloid, the more you shall see yourself.

And that is the story about the Story that helped me to see the isness of the Isness.

I do hope it helps you too!

 

P.S

I could not find the answer in my mind because my mind was too busy holding the question. The mind can only process that which is already within it. It can only think about that which it already knows or has experienced. It cannot reach beyond itself. The heart, on the other hand, is a portal to the infinite. By listening to what is deepest within you, you can find timeless wisdom, infinite creativity, perpetual compassion and eternal love. It is all inside. And it is yours to have whenever you are willing to still the noise and to truly LISTEN to your soul.

 

Greg