The Cosmic Creatrix
Use your imagination with me, will you?
Picture an all-powerful Goddess – brighter than the sun, darker than a black hole, and more immense than all the Multiverse. She has no form, yet she is every form, shifting from the seen to the unseen in every millisecond.
Because She is everything all at once — we’ll call Her “Potential.”
Once upon a time, an unfathomably long time ago, Potential got a bit bored and lonely with all Her infinite time, space, and power.
The moment She did, She birthed Her son and consort, known as the God of all that appears finite.
We’ll call Him “Limitation.”
From the moment He was birthed, Potential and Limitation have been in an ecstatic, orgasmic dance of creative exploration — pushing and pulling…pursuing and retreating…ebbing and flowing.
Thus, they’ve manifested infinite varieties of people, places, and things throughout time and space.
One day, Potential said to Limitation, “I want to try a new game, and I want to really be challenged this time! I want to completely forget who I am. I want to have no idea of my infinite power. I want to feel small and insignificant, with crushing existential angst. I want to feel pain and suffering — fear of all kinds! And I especially want to feel alone and abandoned.”
At this, She giggled, because the notion was so utterly absurd.
“Do you think you could do that my sweet…?” She purred, running a finger down Limitation’s chest.
“Of course,” He puffed up, determined to make Her proud. Then His face fell in concern, “But how will you return? What if the illusion is so perfect that you can’t make your way back?”
“Oh don’t worry,” She winked at Her Beloved, “I’ll find a way. It won’t be easy, but that’s what will make it fun! And I’ll have such a feeling of triumph when I find Myself in the end.”
Finally, Limitation agreed, and created Earth. (And many other places besides, but those are details for another day.)
Then, with a satisfied sigh that set off several supernovas, Potential split Herself into infinite, fractalized iterations of Herself. Not without some anxiety, Limitation hid all those iterations inside every aspect of His creation.
And here we are today – vessels of infinite Potential, seeking to find our way back to Wholeness through playing the games of Limitation.
How amazing is that?
Stories are Everything
“The Universe is made of stories, not atoms.” - Muriel Rukeyser
At this point, I hope you’re not getting caught up in deciding whether you believe in this story or not. That’s not going to get you anywhere!
I’d much rather you be asking yourself a different question. Something closer to the self-inquiry:
“What does this have to do with the way I live my life? IF I believed it, how would it impact the choices I make, and the outcomes I get?”
In fact, I hope you start asking these questions about every story you hear. If you do that one thing, your whole life will change.
Because story is everything.
In the book Wired for Story by Lisa Cron, the author explains that our brains are naturally attuned to narrative. Stories captivate us by triggering our curiosity and emotions. Nothing gets us to sit up and pay attention better.
That’s why the movie industry makes over $40 billion a year, streaming services collectively make around $100 billion, and the video game industry blows them both away at about $200 billion annually. We’re willing to pay A LOT for a good story. (Especially one that we can participate in, which is why video games are the most lucrative...)
But in no way is modern culture unique in this regard. Humanity has been telling stories longer than nearly any other cultural endeavor. The first written story that archeology has been able to locate was from Sumeria, The Epic of Gilgamesh, pressed into clay tablets about 4,000 years ago.
However, every expert agrees that oral story-telling goes back much, much farther than that.
The oldest known oral traditions of storytelling are thought to come from Indigenous Australian cultures. Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories have been preserved for at least 30,000 to 65,000 years, making them some of the oldest continuous oral traditions in human history.
One of the best known is that of the Rainbow Serpent…
“In the Dreamtime, the world was flat and barren, with no rivers, mountains, or trees. The land was empty and lifeless, inhabited only by ancestral spirits who slept beneath the earth.
One day, the Rainbow Serpent woke from her slumber and emerged from beneath the ground, weaving her massive body across the land. As she moved, her body carved out valleys, mountains, and gorges, creating the shapes of the land. Her long, winding form left great paths where rivers would one day flow.
As the Rainbow Serpent traveled, she saw frogs hiding beneath the earth. She called to them, and when they emerged, they had swollen bellies full of water from the underground springs. The Rainbow Serpent told the frogs to open their mouths and release the water, creating rivers, lakes, and billabongs that would give life to the earth.
As the water flowed across the land, life began to emerge. Plants grew, animals appeared, and people were born. The Rainbow Serpent gave these first people rules to follow, teaching them how to respect the land and its resources. She warned them that if they took too much or disrespected nature, they would face great consequences…”
A story that warns against taking too much from nature?
..,That’s existed for tens of thousands of years at least??
The idea gives me goosebumps.
The Stories that Shaped You
When you think about it, the force of story is like the Rainbow Serpent herself — shaping the landscape of who we are, and birthing all manner of things (thoughts, words, and behaviors) into existence.
Every belief system we have – from religious, to political, to deeply personal expectations about life – are nothing but a set of stories.
Story is everything.
If we’re suffering, it’s always from believing in a story that doesn’t serve us. And there’s a difference between pain and suffering…
Pain is inevitable. It’s a natural emotional response that happens in the moment. Things like loss, death, disease, disappointment — these are always going to happen as long as we’re alive — and they’re always going to hurt.
But suffering is technically optional, even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. It happens in the bodymind when we make up a story about the pain.
Stories like:
“God doesn’t love me.”
“I’m a bad person.”
“I deserve punishment.”
And many, many more besides…
All put us in a state of emotional anguish that sucks away our peace, love, joy, and purpose.
I’ll give a personal example.
I grew up with a pretty tumultuous homelife. My parents fought like crazy, and my dad left in my pre-teens.
From these adverse experiences, I started believing stories like:
“I’m not lovable,”
and
“I’ll be abandoned if I express my needs.”
Needless to say, living by these stories did not make for a happy early adulthood.
I married an alcoholic, and allowed our kids to live through more drama than I care to recount.
It wasn’t until I knew to ask myself the following questions that things began to shift:
“What stories (beliefs) are causing me to suffer?”
and
“What stories (beliefs) would lead to a better life?”
Sounds so simple, right?
Yet most of our stories are NOT operating on the level of the conscious mind.
Thanks for reading!
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Heroic Healing: Your Epic Journey to an Empowered Life.
In the next installment, I’ll describe more about how to shift stories that don’t serve us.
Please put any questions or comments you might have so far in the comments section below — it will really help me shape this book for the right audience.
Thank you in advance!