Your Story's Value - Janet Conner

There are many spiritual traditions which teach that you must
dissolve your personal story; drop the story, in order to attain
"enlightenment", "awakening."  While I understand the need
not to become entangled in the content of our personal stories,
as I have done several times over the past couple of years, :)
there is still value in our stories...

MM

~

Your story is you healer.  In every story is conflict,
and within the conflict is the chance for change.  The story
is what happened; it is what is.  The value is in what the story
is telling you.  It's your guidance from Spirit, who wants to
bring you to a new place.....  Listen beyond the details of the
story you are telling yourself, for the core identity, and deeper
needs.  You can even ask:  What is the deeper need here?  If
you journal you can write your story in all its fullness and as
you do, begin to listen to hear yourself.  And as you hear yourself,
you begin to discern the needs hidden behind the details of your
story.  And behind those needs, you begin to hear the sound of
your Essence, your Core, your Soul.  This kind of listening
reaches far beyond the physical act of hearing to a spiritual act of
perceiving the essence within the words.

Gene Knudsen Hoffman says:  I am not talking about listening
with the human ear.  I am talking about perceiving what's hidden
and obscure.  We must listen with our spiritual ear, the one inside....
We must literally suspend our beliefs and listen to learn whether
what we hear expands or diminishes our sense of Truth.

Brian and Lisa Burman say: The challenge is when people are
so embedded in the character in the story [and the content of
the story] that they don't connect that they are the container for the
whole thing.  Within you is everything.  Your job is to connect with
that innate wisdom so you can have a deep connection with the
heart of what really happened, and move on.

Listen to your sorrows, joys, fears, frustrations....
To listen deeply you must open your innermost spiritual ear.
Listen beyond the story to the story behind the story...

Listen for what motivates you, what inspires you, what
frightens you, what stops you in your tracks.  Listen for what
keeps happening over and over again - the patterns...

You will learn much about yourself...

Janet Conner
Brian and Lisa Burman
Gene Knudsen Hoffman

excerpts from the book: Writing Down Your Soul
by Janet Conner

~

Your story has value.
it can reflect back to you something you need to see,
or know about a situation, or yourself, if you listen,
observe, and find what's beneath the story you
keep telling yourself...

MM

~

Photo - taken by my brother at Plum Island, MA