We live in the story we create, caught in the drama that shapes our identity, relationships, and life direction. We see things from the vantage point of our personal and collective conditioning. We invest our energy in identity based or cultural standards for acceptance and worth, along with the demands for security, comfort, and convenience. We relate through our defenses, expectations, and imagined perception of reality. We are driven by false security and the marketing promise of success and happiness.
Together, we share a collective story, which don Miguel Ruiz calls the “dream of the planet”. To a varying degree most of us accept our conditioned view of reality as truth, with limited understanding of how it is affecting our path in life and the social system we find ourselves in.
Our story begins in the comfort or discomfort of the womb that carried us, and continues in our early years as our parents passed along their story in words, emotion, and physical contact. These highly subjective early experiences provide the context in which we see ourselves and the world we live in. Our perceptions of reality are shaped by every input we receive throughout our lives, which are then stored in our brain, emotion, and body. Our parents’ emotional condition contributed to the nurture or neglect of our developing heart and brain. We began our life somewhere on the continuum of the comfort and security of our parents’ love and the pain and insecurity of their struggle.
Our story continues as it is shaped by our basic needs for authenticity and connection. The provision for these needs are limited by the unmet needs of our caretakers. Our early sense of connection is based on our parents’ emotional maturity, and an authentic sense of self is too often hijacked for conformity to the beliefs and agreements that guide our parents’ lives. This story changes as we grow, every beneficial and adverse experience is recorded. Consciously or unconsciously, our story shapes our thinking, emotions, behaviors, and relationships.
Our agreements and beliefs, judgments and defenses, and sense of value and worth are established by the conditioning of our experiences and education. We form attachment to a fabricated sense of identity, along with physical and emotional comforts, that then turn into addictive life directing patterns. Our worldview and relational patterns become dominated by the patterns developed in childhood, and are reinforced in experiences throughout our lives. Most conflict, internal and relational, is rooted in conflicting perception and belief rather than fact.
Our brain and ego development, along with resulting emotional and social intelligence, often leaves us struggling with the prevailing cultural story of fear, scarcity and separation. We become disconnected from an authentic sense of self, our feelings and needs, our purpose and direction, and our relationship with others.
Our evolving story is a movement from the innocence of a child’s heart to the perceived reality of a conditioned mind. The spiritual journey is unraveling the story in our mind to Story is part of being human, and ego identity is a normal part of development. The problem is “attachment” to a rigid sense of self and a subjective perception of reality. The challenge is to let go of the false and grieve the loss, and to reimagine and recreate a story from the heart level of authenticity, connection, and purpose. the authenticity in our heart. It is the movement from the awareness of our ego shaped identity to the transformation and intent of the heart.
Story is part of being human, and ego identity is a normal part of development. The problem is “attachment” to a rigid sense of self and a subjective perception of reality. The challenge is to let go of the false and grieve the loss, and to reimagine and recreate our story from the heart level of authenticity, connection, and purpose.
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