Storybook Lives

By Amaya Gayle Gregory

Now don’t get pissed. Guessing a few of you will, but oh well, this is what’s coming through today.

Each of us is a master storyteller living our own unique version of life. We think that our story is THE story, that our truth is THE truth. It isn’t. It is just our version of how to do life.

If you’re religious, fundamental or progressive doesn’t really matter. That’s the story and being a believer means sticking to it. In one of these stories a man named Jesus died for your sins and you get to go to heaven because of it. I can see why that would be a compelling story to tell, to buy into, to adopt. In other stories the names change — Mohammed, Abraham, Gautama, Laozi, Patanjali, Zoroaster, and others — but no matter how much you believe it, it is still a story, your story and millions of others who think it offers something essential.

Maybe the fact that it’s a story is the reason so many feel the need to convert others to their story, to validate their belief, to soothe the unease underlying it all, that it is just a well-told story.

If you’ve been following the path of enlightenment, then waking up from the dream is your story. Perhaps you didn’t realize when you were putting yourself through all those hoops that when you awaken from the dream, you are still in the dream, that there is no escaping the dream. You are the dreamed character. How can you escape that? Even seeing that you’re the dreamed character doesn’t give you a free pass out of dreamland. The dreaming continues. It’s just different.

I bet that’s by design. Who’d make any effort if they knew? No matter. Realized or not, it’s still a dream, a story we tell ourselves, a tale of overcoming odds, becoming someone special, of annihilating the ego, of finally finding peace.

Maybe the peace that is sought can be found. It’s your story after all. Anything you can imagine can be experienced.

If you’re a devotee of Gaia, of money, of democracy, of fascism, of veganism, of you name it, it’s your beautiful wonderful unique story and it couldn’t be otherwise and it’s simply perfect.

I don’t know why it’s perfect, I just know it is. The whole goldarn picture is too big for this one to understand. There are lots of reasons it could be, but I’d just be making it up. That’s what we all do, by the way.

It is, therefore, IT IS. Sounds rather silly doesn’t it, all this isness. But damn, it is what it is. I spent a lifetime trying to turn a pig’s ear into that magical silk purse and it’s still a pig’s ear, oink, but that’s my story, a story that has no strings to hold it together.

When the story is surrendered in its entirety, well as entire as you can get within the story … that is actually deliriously laughable … what’s left to mold and shape, what structure remains in which to fit the contents of any story? It all leaks out and with no boundaries or divisions it just keeps on leaking or simply disappears.

It’s kind of wild and still, it’s just a story, my story, but that doesn’t make it any better than yours, or any worse. My story is one of compassion and understanding. It’s the natural fallout of no strings. Without the borders and dividing lines judgement and anger, righteousness and lack have no place to stand. They leak out like water through a sieve.

People do what they do based on their roles in their stories. I can’t change their stories, or how they act within them, any more than I can wave a magic wand and make a world of light and shadow attend only to the light.

This character in my story bends towards love. Of course I do. Love is natural, organic, unconditional stringlessness. Seeing people suffer brings recognition of the strings wrapped around and stealthily penetrating their stories, so compassion flows choicelessly, effortlessly, heedless of the flowing.

My story is one of love. That does not make it the right or the best story. It simply makes it mine. It feels right to me, not right in the sense of right and wrong, but in the sense of accurate for this one, a gloved fit, a key in the lock, peanut butter to my jam.

Beware of those who tell you they have the answer, the truth, the way. They do, but they have their answer, their truth, their way, not necessarily yours.

And off I go to experience another chapter in the Story of Amaya …