The whole world seems to be made of stories.
I’ve written in recent posts that I’ve been trying to engage in the challenge of redefining this world as something other than hostile, dangerous, and unknown. As I turn my mind in that direction, I’ve begun to notice how prevalent stories are; and how blind I’ve been to their pervasive influence.
What do I mean? Well, stories are about something. They create a process of relationship between one thing and others; they have a beginning, middle, and end. They help situate a person in time and place, and relate to other beings or forces or objects who are also situated in time and place.
I used to wish that I could transcend culture and context, and experience things with pure perception, to be in a world of universal truth. This is in fact the path of the mystic, to unify with the One that is beyond time and space. By definition, that One is eternal, nonlinear, without story but encompassing all stories. And this is the goal and the heart of many internally-oriented meditation techniques: to quiet the mind, to step beyond the ego-self that binds us to this time and this place, in order to access that which is transcendent.
But the instant you descend into a world of time and space, something must occur to mediate between that which has descended and that which is still eternal. This is language.
The instant you inhabit this world, language spins out and becomes story. Read the full post



