Reality and Story

We are emotional beings. For the past 400 years, the people of empire have been told that emotions are weakness. The Age of Reason, The “Enlightenment,” originates in The Royal Society when Sir Isaac Newton contributed the Scientific Method and John Locke contributed A Doctrine of Empiricism. Limited to a scientific practice, both contributions make sense, so to speak. However, the Scientific Revolution did not limit its gifts to the laboratory.

The fascination with the intellect carried into every aspect of life. It rendered expression of emotion intolerable. They tried so hard to rid the world of emotion and its sister, imagination, that Empire felt it was justified in committing genocide. Up until this past century, the Newtonian model of an objective surface reality facilitated massacres. According to Royal Society rules, reality is only that which we sense with five senses, while everybody on the planet at one time or another perceived or experienced something that we kept quiet. Reality isn’t objective. Nor, physics reminds us, is it altogether real.

Even Locke and Newton knew this. They weren’t suggesting that everybody live life by Reason alone. Just the scientists. The evisceration of emotion from our bodies and souls has led to a world without heart, a world where if you feel strong emotion, you’ve got [enter DSM term for “failing at rationality.”]

Through physics, we know that accurate measurement, the foundation of empiricism, is impossible. Empiricism has now disproven itself. We know, too, that consciousness seems not to dwell anywhere in our bodies. We know that time moves in both directions at all times. We know reality is imaginary and real, yet we still try to treat it like it’s real. Our five senses only get us the husks. To perceive the whole of Reality, we need to use our imaginations. And imagination isn’t pretend or escapist. It’s a system of perception bearing glimpses of a greater world. To clear the lenses, explore your story.

Story harvests insight from experience. It develops us like in photography.

Story allows for contradiction, counterpoint, and complexity.

Story grounds us in humility and humor, even our sad stories.

Story is truth-telling. Our secrets kill us.

Story alleviates pain, lowers blood pressure, and counters loneliness.

Story is often quiet. It just is.

Story holds every experience. Nothing is outside it.

Story is non-linear.

Story is a dynamic system in which all things occur for the purposes of changing us.

Story is repentance because it transforms our minds.

Story is confession because it acknowledges and bonds us to our lives and to community.

Story is song, song story.