I warn you this post will not be for the feint of heart, and this is your spoiler alert. I'm going to tell you a story, or many stories. I'm going to show how we use story to create the shared experience. First I'd like go back a little to the question that started me on this personal journey of the impersonal nature of self.
I've read tons, and part of that has led me to the repetition of the stories we tell. The same myth's being repackaged again, and again, the names may alter, details shift over time, or distance to tailor the story. My questions were about who would be spreading these stories, and why? What follows is where those questions have taken me. I make no claims to answers, just perceptions, make of them what you will.
Why do we tell these stories over and over, and what does their retelling do to and for us? The shared tales of childhood give us a frame of reference to relate to each other. These stories handed down for generations, Disney has redone them, reskined them and sold them again. These form the bridges that span the gulf between us. They give shape to our very experience of reality itself. Every nation has it's own story it pass on to it's citizens to give cultural cohesion. Each of us uses these stories to help flesh out our own running narrative. They help define how we see ourselves, others, and the world as a whole.
This next bit might attack some of the most cherished held notions of self. What we typically think of as the self is really the ego attached to the physical form. The ego has no identity, it is ego. The job it performs is the protection of the physical. The way it creates it's identity is a running narrative of all it's experiences up to the present moment. As we all know memory is a slippery thing, we don't remember things like a video recording. We color it with emotions, present, and past. We are forgiving in ways we never would be in the now. Like the ideal future we see around the bend, the past becomes idealized. We then tie our sense of self to this narrative. Limiting our view of self to a few decades. In a real sense our identity is a story we tell ourselves, and broadcast to existence.
I played mmorpg's, so this next part is going to be told from that framework.
there may be terms I use which you are unfamiliar with if you care to you can find definitions
here. When you log into an mmorpg for the first time you have to create a character, or avatar. This is the character you use to interact in the game world. Each game has it's own set of customization options, these may include species/ races, colors of all kinds and generally you choose a class/job to start out with. Each game has a different set of options you must choose before you ever even enter the game. Some worlds even have no set job/class to chose going in, but like this world it's something you develop through playing. Now these choices are all being made before your avatar ever enters the world, from your avatars perspective they had no say in them. This is very much like apparently randomness of the "accident" of our births. Now I might play in several different game worlds, in each the rules are different and I am a different avatar. This seems like a good time to introduce a couple of rpg concepts metagaming, and persistent worlds. Metagaming is simply the act of bringing the real world into the game world. This is something that in mmorpg's is the norm, in the days of pen and paper rpgs this would result in stiff penalties at the game masters discretion. Persistent Worlds is the idea that the world keeps going even when your not in it. Think of it like when you sleep the world keeps spinning, things happen that you then catch up on when you wake. The same thing happens here from a metagame perspective. When a body dies the player logs out, and goes back to their real world. Some people immediately create a new avatar and reenter the world. The trick is due to the true function of karma they don't start back at level 1, they leave off kinda where they were. Others take a break, and go do other things whatever those may be. While they are gone this world being a world of time/space continues on. By the time that player chooses to log back into this world they may not even recognize it, As well as having to now catch up to those that have been playing in the more recent linear past.
How you may be asking does this relate to the idea of story being a major component of how we create our perception of reality? Well stay with me, the stories are how we not just define, put also our place in it. The stories tell us the rules everyone else is playing by. See this world could be likened to a double blind set up. We intentional hide the connection to source and through that all that is, not once, but twice. This is shown in the esoteric teachings as the veils, or the abyss separating the physical realm from god or source or first cause. This double blind, or as I think of it multi layered delusion ensures the attachment to the physical body as the identity of self. When your going to have a limited physical experience, and believe it as real you have to not just have a sense of separation from others, but also a sense of separation from source. This encourages the identification with the body. Since the ego is actually a new born entity, it has no choice but to craft an identity for itself amalgam of it's experience thus far, and they collective stories it's been imprinted with through repetition.
There is also a feed back effect built into the system as a whole. creation itself seeks to adapt to the needs of those within it. This is also leads back to why the stories are so important. The stories help reinforce the world itself. For me it isn't an esoteric question of primacy between, mind, body, spirit. It's the idea that form is a product of mind, creating structure from chaos is a product of mind. This is the realm where patterning takes place, where story does it's work.
if there is any desire I will give a more detailed look at how the tarot as a representation of the tree of life can be used to show the story, the characters, and the actions.
Jack
aka
PanseyBard
