Tis the Season to Swallow the Story

as the sun is swallowed by a gigantic wolf

Some stories are meant to be swallowed. Think about Caterpillars. They are not meant to live their lives in entirely one form. The story of Caterpillar is the story of metamorphosis and transformation, plain and simple. Metamorphosis is not without mess and discomfort, pain of the unknown and swallowing the self. It is also not without fear of the unknown. The unconscious and the mind can project a lot onto fear. But transformation is also not without truth. And beauty. There is much beauty in Transformation.

Thank goodness for nature and the cosmos. For tadpoles and frogs, caterpillars and butterflies, and even the Sun and the Moon, who occasionally get swallowed and spit out again whole, symbolizing evolutionary shifts and change, rebirth and transformation. There are many stories that describe the journey into the belly of things, or into the dark descent of things, or stories with terrible hunger, in which things are mysteriously devoured. Sometimes we learn about seeds, that must be swallowed, which symbolize a journey below the surface, into a time of being submerged into the darkness of the story. But always, like nature, in these stories, there is renewal, there is ascent, there is return. There is initiation and transformation. Thank goodness for Story. Fairytales and Myths are the great facilitators of transformation because embedded in their heart of hearts is the story of initiation.

Image: Rahu swallowing the sun

We are between Eclipses. Two weeks ago, the moon signaled her erasure and renewal. Tomorrow morning around 10:30 pacific time, the sun will begin to be blotted out. Eclipse! Unknown mystery signaling evolutionary change and activation. Imaginal cells activate!

Story medicine and its depth of transformation and its height of imagination is something near and dear to my heart. As are butterflies. Because Butterflies have something inherent inside of them, that I think stories have too. Butterflies have imaginal cells -well, actually caterpillars do -but they are not activated until the caterpillar begins to dissolve and this activation of the imaginal cell is what rearranges the DNA and cellular structure that turns Caterpillar into Butterfly. The caterpillar is literally drinking itself, erasing itself while simultaneously activating its re-architecture, re-creation as Butterly. At the heart of stories, the Big Stories, but also, I think, seeded somewhere even in the biggest and smallest of our own personal life stories, is a different kind of imaginal cell called Imagination. At the center of the word Imagination is the word Magi. I like to think of the Magi as the living genie, or mysterious secret magician working working its magic at the heart of imagination.

Imagination has the power to change the world. Diane Di Prima said that the greatest war is the war against imagination. What if that was true? Because despite how simple it is, imagination can also be quite challenging. Especially when one is imprisoned by a story. There are many stories with dead ends, fractures, tragedies, and painful pieces. Ugh. Being human hurts. But also, imagination doesn’t have to die, just because some of our stories tried to kill us, or oppress us, or imprison us. Imagination can get us out of our stories. It’s crafty. We’re working with Mercurial things here. This is a kind of trickster magic, and it needs to be embodied. It needs to be grounded. It cannot be a flight of fancy without roots. It’s like a secret agent working above or beneath the scenes, through the art of creative renewal. It has the capacity to find lost stories, to retrieve them, to renew, rewrite, reword, repurpose them. And in thus doing so, we change our relationship to the story. We change inside of this speaking the new spell, the new story. We change as we move the energy through our anger or our fear or our tears. As we feel it take a new space in hidden nooks and crannies in our body.

Imagination.

It has the power to change your relationship to the world. It has the power to change your relationship to story. To your story. To the greater story. Imagination is something that we need now, more than ever. Not to bypass the world. Imagination doesn’t have to be an escape. Is the caterpillar escaping itself? I don’t think so. The life cycle of a Caterpillar becoming a Butterfly is also not so dissimilar from the life cycle of a rose bush or flowering fruiting plant. Both have much to teach us about the way in which our personal life stories can also go through a life/death/life cycle through the creative process.

I’d like to invite you to look at things differently. Even the word Imagination. Or Fate. or Destiny. Or Story. My work with Story and with participants in the landscape of story is intended to do just that. We are not meant to be bound by our stories. We are not meant to be imprisoned by our stories. We are meant to be free. We are meant to experience transformation in our lives. What is transformation? One form changes into another form. But also, transformation is about changing one point of view to another, or seeing our story differently. How we see (from the point of view of the caterpillar crawling up the leaf is different than how we see through the eyes of the caterpillar spinning itself into a chrysalis, or coming undone, or emerging from out its chrysalis and into a new world. How we see can and does change everything. And we must be careful with how we see. Because there are so many ways to see a story. One point of view can imprison. Another point of view can release. And the way to get from one to the next is mysterious. But I trust Story Medicine. I trust the Story to help us to see truths we didn’t see before. And to help us find secret doorways, mythopoetic landscapes, fiery feathers or ancient witches at the crossroads, with secrets to share, just for us. Even the belly of the wolf has its profound teaching. Without it, Little Red Riding Hood would not be wisened from the journey.

I find that the more points of view we can step into, in relation to our story or the stories that make the world go round, —the more ways we can see a story, the more expansive our view, the more possibility we may discover. But also, I find that when we incorporate imagination into our personal life stories -when we write or re-write our way into story, dance our way, art our way and/or create our way through them a second time, mysterious wonders spill forth. Imaginal cells are activated. One story dies and a new one is spit out of the belly of a frog who previously had swallowed the sun.

What if imagination and creativity truly can change a life story because Imagination is powerful, and Creativity transforms. And because of the mysterious magi at the center of creativity and the creative process, the inner alchemist, the inner magician of imagination who raises her caduceus that is a pen, to a blank page, that is possibility, and we engage in a writes of passage alchemical process that allows us to RECREATE the GREAT WORK that is our LIFE STORY. Or at least a portion of it. Because it is a big process. One can travel deeply into just one story, and experience a subtle or massive change that ripples through time and space.

Join me! For a deep dive into the landscape of life story writing and mythopoetic story medicine. Writes of passage into place, body, memory and imagination. Come as you are. Leave like a Butterfly in relation to at least one of your personal life stories.

so…Why not Dive into the Deep and Remarkable land of Story. Swallow your Story. Discover which Stories have Swallowed you. The Eclipses are catalyzing us all into a new story whether we like it or not. What story residue has you still bound to an old version of you that simply does not serve you anymore? Commit to Creativity. Commit to Imagination. Rewrite your Story. Crack Open your Story. Discover Gold.

I leave you with the words of the great Willie Wonka:

hold your breath,

make a wish

count to three

Come with me and you’ll be

In a world of pure imagination

Take a look and you’ll see

Into your imagination

We’ll begin with a spin

traveling in the world of creation

what we’ll see will defy

explanation

if you want to view paradise

simply look around and view it

anything you want to, do it

want to change the world?

there’s nothing to it

there is no life I know

to compare with pure imagination

living there you’ll be free

if you’ll truly wish to be