For the clarity of my own thinking, I am now substituting STORY for RELIGION, for SCIENCE, and for all other positional assumptions about the origin and process of life. STORY is neither true nor false; that dichotomy does not hold here. STORY is simply STORY. Each STORY can be entered (and left) as with any other physical or social domain.
STORY is an imaginal realm and imaginal is real. Imagine a snake and you will have a visceral reaction. Imagine a hot slab of cherry pie with vanilla ice cream and you will have another. The body understands deeply the reality of the IMAGINAL.
STORY is like a virtual reality helmet. One can put a STORY on and take it off. Scorners and scoffers of STORY other than their own (whether RELIGION, SCIENCE, or MYTH) appear to have their helmet firmly welded to their head.
Is it possible to go outside all STORY? My affirmative answer is based upon experience which when described becomes another STORY. A subset of Zen practitioners, contemplators, and mindful folk will understand this. Those who do not wish to admit such a possibility, that a STORYless space exists, can perhaps consider that one's mind, one's awareness, can move from one STORY to another, can adopt at least temporarily a STORY other than one's DEFAULT STORY. (Ewert Cousins has called this STORY adoption ability "shamanistic epistemology.")
I find adopting the view that all views are STORY, as is this view itself, rids one of scorn, scoff, prejudice, hierarchical rankings and general negativity when regarding anyone's STORY. One is pleased to be converted to that STORY for a moment or many moments, delight in its nuance and its adventuresomeness and move on, always able to come back for another and no doubt deeper telling.
STORY is an imaginal realm and imaginal is real. Imagine a snake and you will have a visceral reaction. Imagine a hot slab of cherry pie with vanilla ice cream and you will have another. The body understands deeply the reality of the IMAGINAL.
STORY is like a virtual reality helmet. One can put a STORY on and take it off. Scorners and scoffers of STORY other than their own (whether RELIGION, SCIENCE, or MYTH) appear to have their helmet firmly welded to their head.
Is it possible to go outside all STORY? My affirmative answer is based upon experience which when described becomes another STORY. A subset of Zen practitioners, contemplators, and mindful folk will understand this. Those who do not wish to admit such a possibility, that a STORYless space exists, can perhaps consider that one's mind, one's awareness, can move from one STORY to another, can adopt at least temporarily a STORY other than one's DEFAULT STORY. (Ewert Cousins has called this STORY adoption ability "shamanistic epistemology.")
I find adopting the view that all views are STORY, as is this view itself, rids one of scorn, scoff, prejudice, hierarchical rankings and general negativity when regarding anyone's STORY. One is pleased to be converted to that STORY for a moment or many moments, delight in its nuance and its adventuresomeness and move on, always able to come back for another and no doubt deeper telling.
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