We Need Different Stories
Stories about opportunities, vision, creative direction, and positive influences
Chains come in various forms. They constrain. They cause pain. Some go unseen.
The only way true beauty can surface is when there are avenues that allow forces to work that lift people up. That’s what democracy and freedom are all about. That’s the dream. The free-flowing energy of opportunity. When diverse people connect and share ideas or propel someone forward through their efforts to help.
It’s still there to some degree when people live in chains. Some of those people experience profound events they can’t explain. Still, many people look at this phenomenal force and deny its existence, while some think it just happens because someone lives in an environment of entitlement. But that isn’t true. If the chains of oppression fell away today the force would benefit everyone.
It doesn’t always offer wealth. It offers vision, creative direction, positive influences. It allows people to see that the force works outside of the confines of religion.
Religion is happy to take your money, your resources, so you can show up every Sunday to listen to someone tell you that you are the good people of the world. That you alone own the standard-bearer of what it means to be good.
But that just maintains some of the chains. That doesn’t allow people to venture beyond each viewpoint to see the forces that are working around the world to propel humanity forward.
When I first began to recognize that force in my life, it didn’t offer me any benefit. It was just like, “Hey, I’m here.” I was afraid to talk about it for years.
Over time, I began to see other people talking about it, most often just briefly. Research showed me that people have different levels of experience with it. I’ve also found people who mock it.
But I cant stop thinking about a video I saw of a family that is indebted for their entire lives as brick makers. The inhumane conditions they face crawling around in clay every day because they don’t know how to read. They said they can’t track the payments they are making to pay off their debt to the business owner who is taking advantage of that fact. Those same chains will restrain their children, when people here are spending money on things like books that tell them they’re the good people of the world.
The stories of the world need to change. We don’t need more stories that tell us some people sitting in one place of the world are good and deserving because of their belief system.
We need stories that will reach that family, those children, that business owner. Stories that say everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. That every society needs to allow opportunity, the good forces of the world that will find them. To allow everyone to see that profound beauty can happen to everyone when that force isn’t facing people who are in chains, where it is nearly impossible for it to operate.
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NOTE: I share stories about these kinds of events in my essays, my essay collection, Synchronicity, Documented, and in my memoir, GOD? DAMN (pronounced God? Dayum!). I know it’s a challenging title, but it’s been a challenging journey that led me to Carl Jung (as well as others like Nietzsche and Allen Ginsberg), and I believe the title reflects Jung’s thinking, that, without the pronunciation I’ve provided, you have to look closely to realize what it’s saying.
UPDATE: I used to be able to offer my memoir free to anyone who was interested but Kindle just sent an email requiring me to provide my ID to be able to continue to use their service. So I will be sending an email to Amazon to ask them to remove my books. I’ve been wanting to move away from Amazon for a while, and this has pushed me to do it.