The Story of Your Soul
Joseph Campbell, the song from the center, and when our story gives to someone else's story
Greetings dear humans,
What if I said….
There is a letter longing to be written from the center of your soul.
And this letter is being written by a part of you that wants to speak to you.
Your ego has no voice in this letter.
Neither does your left toe.
Who has a voice in this letter are the parts, pieces, fragments, and wholeness of you that is living in the unseen world, let’s call if the mythic dimension. This line of thought requires that we can assume we are living in a multi-dimensional reality, and there is a part of you that is expressed through symbol, metaphor, and archetype, and that these parts of you can only speak to you through story.
Joseph Campbell says it best:
“We are all manifestations of a mystic power: the power of life, which has shaped all life, and which has shaped us all in our mother's womb. And this kind of wisdom lives in us, and it represents the force of this power, this energy, pouring into the field of time and space. But it's a transcendent energy. It's an energy that comes from a realm beyond our powers of knowledge. And that energy becomes bound in each of us—in this body—to a certain commitment.
Now, the mind that thinks, the eyes that see, they can become so involved in concepts and local, temporal tasks that we become bound up and don't let this energy flow through. And then we become sick. The energy is blocked, and we are thrown off center; this idea is very similar to the tenets of traditional Chinese and Indian medicine. So the psychological problem, the way to keep from becoming blocked, is to make yourself-and here is the phrase-transparent to the transcendent. It's as easy as that.
What myth does for you is to point beyond the phenomenal field toward the transcendent. A mythic figure is like the compass that you used to draw circles and arcs in school, with one leg in the field of time and the other in the eternal.”
And story — speaks through the lexicon of symbol, metaphor, and archetype.
Something you may not know… is that I tell these kinds of stories. I have come to know them as Soul Stories.
It’s a long story how it came to be that Soul Stories made themselves available for me to tell. It has to do with a prayer sent over a cliff to the ocean, a best friend’s birthday, accidentally stumbling across a gift I have to give, being surrounded by the right people at the right time who called out this gift, finding mentors who saw and amplified this gift, searching for others who shared it, and finally finding ONE LINE from Clarissa Pikola Estes book, Run With The Wolves, where she speaks about an ancient sect of mystic storytellers who sang people’s soul into their faces.
That one line led me home.
To the center of a gift that is so pleasurable to share.
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It is one of the most incredible and delightful ways to share time with people… being in conversation with their soul.
Some of you may be wondering how it works: we sit together with the intention of being devoted to the story of your soul: and a song and story that is unique to you comes through. Then we explore all the ways that it applies to your life, often guidance, practices are revealed that can help move a block or invites one to enhance a certain way of being or path.
Every story is different. Every song is different. What has been the same, is that over the last 12 years I have witnessed people over and over again say that they could feel or sense something in their life that they didn’t have the words for— that was finally mirrored back to them through the metaphors and symbols that revealed in their Soul Story.
I began doing private sessions for individuals, but over time, the creativity of people I storied with revealed the potential of integrating Soul Stories into significant moments to widen the breadth and experience of life. (Gifts can be funny that way. Just because you have one, doesn’t mean you know how to use it with out the guidance and insights of others.)
I’ve been invited into the sanctuary of a couple who were ending their relationship, and each witnessed the other’s Soul Story. I’ve been invited into the room of a woman who was dying, as her friends honored her and witnessed her Soul Story. One woman had me tell a story to a group who gathered for philanthropic purposes to explore their story around money. Another had me tell a story before a medicine circle. There have been stories for couples, and stories for crone-hood, and stories for birthdays, people have gone on multi-story integration journeys, stories for groups, and many many, many, stories just because.
This is an invitation to receive your Soul Story —
and serve the legacy of someone who was living a really big story—
When you register for a Soul Story this week, 25% of of the cost of your session will go to support the Wallace J Nichols memorial fund — to honor a man who lived his mythos so fully, and gave his life so generously to the health and well being of the ocean. (At the end of the week, I will send you all a note about our collective contribution).
To make our story even bigger, and open the door to more people to be able to play in this kind of scenario where you receive your story and contribute to the legacy of someone else’s story:
For the next week, all Soul Story Sessions are on a sliding scale.
For the record… I have never done this before…and may never again. (*you will see the normal price in the registration process, but when you register you can choose your offering).
What if I told you that to be able to see yourself in a story that is more expansive than your day-to-day experience,
…a story that reflects and speaks your mythos —
and makes visible the not visible allies, the metaphor of your life experience,
what if I told you that when you can reach into and access your mythos.., you can gain more access to the all of who you are?
What if?
A few more words from Joseph Campbell:
What the myth does is provide a field in which you can locate yourself. That's the sense of the mandala, the sacred circle, whether you are a Tibetan monk or the patient of a Jungian analyst. The symbols are laid out around the circle, and you are locate yourself in the center. A labyrinth, of course, is a scrambled mandala in which you don't know where you are. That's the way the world is for people who don't have a mythology. It's a labyrinth. They are battling their way through as if no one had ever been there before.
And … since we are here— I would be bereft not to tell you that GETTING TO THE ROOTS, a 3.5 day creative intensive for guides, leaders, and healers and all who want to understand how to engage story as a tool for healing and transformation begins July 11th. This course focuses on learning how to identify and tell your personal mythos stories.
“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming.” ~Joseph Campbell
May great stories be with you,
Leah