The Critical Stories We Tell
July 27th, 2009 by A.T. MannIn my 1984 book “Life Time Astrology” I called the chapter about interpreting the horoscope using my life time scale, “My Story.” I did this because I had realized way before then that stories are how we tell other people who we are, how we act and what we believe. When you meet someone, the first thing that you do is tell them stories — a unique sequence and combination for each individual — that tell them about you. Naturally, since each story has a particular role to play in identifying qualities that you possess or were given or manifested, we all have a tendency to embellish or modify them to make our primary points. This is totally natural and we all do it in some form or another.
What happens in time is that we subtly change the stories, maybe to make us “right,” (or to make someone else wrong) or to heighten a particular trait, or even just to make it a better story. When we notice people responding in certain ways to our stories, maybe with empathy or maybe with dread, or even boredom, we further change them so that they dramatize our lives in ways that seem to make sense at the time. Over longer periods of time we begin to identify more with our embellished stories than with the true situations that gave rise to them in the first place. Many of my friends, clients and even family therefore maintain certain versions of stories that bear little or no resemblance to what seemingly happened, to the point that it virtually erases the original “truth” that lies behind it. Or we simply forget what really happened. However, one thing is definitely true: we are our stories.
In Tibetan Buddhism is is axiomatic that the truths about us are what we believe and think to be true, rather than any objective truth that lies behind appearances. Impermanence is the rule of life. Things change. Events pass and their traces disappear into the ethers. The original traumatic event and its implications are surely stored within us or our psyches somewhere as the cumulative store of them constitute our life karma. If you believe that you were abused as a child, whether or not that is objectively true, then you effectively were abused. The only way you can change this or its aftereffects is if you change your viewpoint or, as in effective meditation, you learn to simply let it go and release it.
My astrologer friend from Australia, Lynda Hill, recently wrote that she has come to view the asteroid Chiron, which many identify as the “wounded healer,” as the “storyteller.” As soon as I read this, I realized that this is an important link and began actively integrating this into my scheme of things. If Chiron shows us the wounds that we carry, then there are equivalent stories that describe the nature and impact of such woundings. I have worked with this with many clients and discovered that we all transmit and carry stories that perpetuate our wounds. In my personal case, I identify a signet ring that I have worn since 1959 with my father and his early death as a WWII bomber pilot and its attendant loss. I suddenly realized that in order to reclaim this I needed to take the ring off, which I did. Almost immediately things shifted, openings presented themselves and a very different sense of myself replaced the core of loss that I had carried and perpetuated for decades.
Think about this! Try to discover which stories describe your deepest wounds, understand what symbolizes them within you or in your outer world, and try to release them and their psychological or psychic power. It will certainly be the first stage of a new healing.
