In a previous post I wrote about stories as triggers for spiritual growth, as catalysts. But what is it that allows a story to act as such a catalyst? By what virtue does a tale stimulate psycho-spiritual development?
In the future, I shall want to explore all those things that enable a story to trigger such initiatic events, the way in which a story can strike at many levels, from emotion, belief, worldview through to the transpersonal. I would like to examine strategies for creating such tales and the context within which they work their magic. For now, however, I want to consider something most simple, and yet sharing in the real mystery. The spirit of the story.
The story is alive. The story partakes of that rich web of causal feedback loops that is the manifestation of consciousness and sentience at all levels of existence. And it does so at very intimate levels.
The universe is made of stories not atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser, poet
I made reference to a Hasidic theory of the spiritual power of stories in my previous post. In a nutshell, this theory suggests that tales have been in existence since creation and have undergone a process of ruination that parallels the catastrophe that occurred at creation known as “the breaking of vessels”. A holy man can take and restructure those stories, “repairing” them to their proper order and thus paralleling the process of the achievement of universal perfection. In this process, the stories become powerful spiritual entities, tools for that process of redeeming creation.
It’s not my belief, but it does make for a powerful story in its own right. In the description, I do recognise the recognition of divinity of the story, of it’s sacredness, and if one was to approach the story from an animist perspective we can see that
a) the story has soul
b) the story has a relationship with its creator and with the listener, and
b) the story has a relationship with the rest of existence
So every story ever told, creates and recreates part of existence each time it is told. And if a part of existence is recreated, the whole of existence is recreated.
One after the other, each ‘owner’ would then sing his stretch of the Ancestor’s footprints. Always in the correct sequence.
“To sing a verse out of order”, Flynn said sombrely, “was a crime. Usually meant the death penalty.”
“I can see that,” I said. “It’d be the musical equivalent of an earthquake.”
“Worse,” he scowled. “It would be to un-create the Creation.”
Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (p58)
