Story Musings Continue

It is my belief that we must restore the relevance of deep story, the way of the song filled tongues and the sacred cauldron of the grail. Nowadays the hearth has been replaced by the TV which all too often tells aborted and abbreviated stores. This may be one of the reasons that so many of us are so bored to tears and find life meaningless. But every now and then, something bubbles up into consciousness restoring us once again to the state of true believers. Case in point – look at the buzz generated at the release of Harry Potter, at the return of the epic tales Lord of the Rings and Narnia – deeply mythic and timeless stories that continue to shake and quake to this day.

Great Story lures us with the passion and promise contained in the narrative adventure. But unlike trivial entertainment where escapism is the only goal, mythic story uses the sugar coating as a part of the dance - not as an end in itself. It engages all manner of human function (all modalities of the triune brain) and as a result is a far more effective vehicle for transformation then volumes of theoretical material. If you were to say ----Now this is the way you change your brain---- and so on, one superficial level of you learns a lot of techniques. But unless you engage with these techniques and live them experientially like you do with a great story you will not activate the deep connecting patterns that make it a life lesson instead of a head lesson. Human growth is much deeper and more enduring if it is storied with the great plots and patterns that already live in our psyches.