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Being Open to a New Story: Story 1 and Story 2
by Richmond Mayo Smith
Being Open to a New Story: Story 1: I am fasting for two weeks
I am fasting for two weeks to ask you to become fully aware of the story by which you are living your life. Such exploring is crucial and practical In these challenging times.
By story I mean the knowledge, from whatever source, you use to understand the universe and your human role in it.
Whatever your story, it determines the answers you can imagine to solve the many global problems we face. I believe that the evidence is strong and clear that we cannot solve these problems within our present story. Were we able to do so, we would be living In greater harmony with ourselves, our fellow humans and other species and our earth home. Therefore, exploring for a new story is an immensely practical activity.
Our culture's present dominant story emphasizes separateness - our individuality as human beings and our disconnection from nature. It has freed initiative for amazing accomplishments and it has also led to hatred and great violence. As we are seeing, old stories do not leave the scene quietly.
I read once that we may be good partners, good parents, good community members, good workers, but if we are living the wrong story, we will damage our earth and the lives of our children and of their children.
It appears that the new story will emphasize how deeply Interconnected we all are. For Instance, a major experiment in science shows that two particles are Interconnected In ways that cannot be explained by messages passing from one to the other even at the speed of light. Though very far apart they remain related and change together instantaneously. This is called non-locality. The universe behaves very differently than we have been led to believe.
However, what is at stake is both changing the content of our story and transforming how we create our story. Indeed the "How" - the process - is more vital than the "What", although they are Intimately intertwined. In building our new story we will learn how to be in greater harmony with the flows of Information and energy in the universe.
In this effort, I am joining many other voices saying: "Please wake up to the new story around you."
We believe being human is a far richer and joyful experience than our present story lets us believe. The universe is so much more varied, exciting and wondrous than we are aware as we go about living our daily lives.
What might some of the voices of a new story sound like? Here are two examples among many.
I heard a fragment of a radio sermon in which an Episcopal minister described a communion to be held on Thursdays. It would contain only a few readings and those short. It would be mostly silence to leave space for the unexpected, to allow spirit to enter. He remarked that our culture has emphasized control and we tend to believe that if we arrange the right order of readings and prayers, we can guide ourselves to spiritual salvation.
I have a friend who eight years ago was In the cosmetics business. She and a friend planned to vacation together, possibly a Club Med adventure. Then she read about a trip to meet the shamans of Ecuador. Off they went. Since then she has studied extensively with the shamans and has become a skilled holistic healer. She has changed the story by which she is living in dramatic fashion.
I fast to give energy to my invitation to begin conversations. Meg Wheatley In her book Turning to One Another writes:
Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change - personal change, community and organizational change, planetary change. If we can sit together and talk about what's important to us, we begin to come alive. We share what we see, what we feel, and we listen to what others see and feel.
In subsequent short papers I will offer certain questions which I hope will help you In your exploring, but you may find your own questions more useful. Thomas Merton in selections from his journals entitled Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander wrote:
A man is better known by his questions than his answers. To make known one's questions is to come out in the open oneself.
I also have three personal reasons for my fast.
1. I have grown very fond of the beauty of our Earth home, appreciate all that she gives to us and I am dismayed how we are destroying her capacity to sustain us and many other living beings.
2. I am a grandfather who needs to feel that I have made a major effort to leave my grandchildren and their children and all children a healthy earth.
3. I have no choice.
When I read the words below from A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen, I recognized that beyond thinking about what to do I felt In my body anger, despair and a great need to act and to cry out "No!"
There is another kind of revolution, one that does not emerge from the culture, from
philosophy, from theory, from thought abstracted from sense, but instead from our
bodies and from the land. It, too, is part of this language older than words. It is the
honey bee who stings in defense of her larger being that is her hive, it is the mother
grizzly who charges again and again the train that took from her the two sons
she carried inside, and that mangled their bodies well beyond all but motherly
recognition. (page 2-86)
This is not political theory. It is not philosophy. It is not religion. It is remembering what it is to be a human being - an animal. It is remembering what it is to love and be alive.
It is to learn the power of the word no. No more clearcuts. No more genocide. No more slavery, neither our own nor others.
So long as we, or I, continue to discuss this in the abstract, we, or I, still have too much to lose. Presumably the mother grizzly did not find herself paralyzed by theoretical discussions of what is right or wrong... If we only begin to feel in our bodies the immensity of what we are losing - intact ecosystems, hours sold for wages, childhoods lost to violence, women's capacity to walk unafraid - we will know what to do. (pages 287, 288)
I choose to begin this fast after the peak political season of the recent elections because, much as I respect the importance of political work, the questions I am asking are at a deeper level.
I choose to end this fast at the first minute of Thanksgiving in recognition that we In the United States of America have been especially graced with great gifts and that by accepting and using these gifts wisely, we can build a future of peace, justice and beauty for our children.
I will date this statement November 12, 2002 to make clear that this is my understanding at this date. If one is exploring, one's story is constantly being enriched and shifting in pattern.
During most of the daylight hours of my fast I will sit and walk In the Boston Public Garden because I value the friendship of its grand trees and I wish to be connected to the earth. I will welcome greeting you there for conversation and/or support.
I have in mind no set outcomes for my fast and my thoughts. My friend Joanna Macy shared this thought a few weeks ago. "An adventure is not knowing the outcome. A joyous adventure is not needing to know the outcome."
--Richmond Mayo Smith
Richmond Mayo Smith is a retired educator, and has served on the boards of numerous humanitarian, service, and education organizations. He is a former Head Master of Roxbury Latin School where he served for eight years, after teaching science for fifteen years at Phillips Exeter Academy. Richmond worked in India for three and a half years in community development with the organization World Education Inc. He is also one of the co-founders of Educators for Social Responsibility as a former chair and board member, and serves on the boards of the Marion Foundation, World Education, Center Heart and the Sant Bani School. He is the former chair of the board of the Center for Psychology & Social Change.
Being Open to a New Story: Story 2: How do you know what you believe you know?
How do you know what you believe you know?
Does your knowing come from what you read? From what your parents told you? From what you were taught In schools? From experiences in sports and physical activity? From experiences in art? From experiences with a spirit world?
What are the possibilities for knowing? Those who have explored this question deeply would answer that there are four basic ways: thinking, feeling, sensing and imaging. All are valid. Which ones do you use and trust? To which ones does your culture give priority?
Thinking
Thinking Is so primary In our culture that we often confuse it with knowing. It Is a great way of knowing which has brought us untold riches In science and literature. It emphasizes analysis, separating things Into parts, comparing them. It Is the way of knowing most dependent on language, on labeling with words. It gives us a certain picture of reality which Is useful, If we do not confuse it with the total picture of reality.
Stephen Gallegos begins his book, Animals of the Four Windows(pages 1-24 are a superb consideration of the four modes of knowing), by describing how he Is far from home when their young baby dies suddenly. One minute the baby was healthy; the next he was dead. Stephen rushes home but It takes 13 hours. He finds his wife desperate with questions: What might she have done differently? Stephen says to his wife: "Talk to your thinking. Tell it you appreciate its efforts to try to figure this out but tell it that there is nothing to figure out. Baby is dead and nothing can change that. Tell thinking that the way it can help you best now is to support you in the experience that you need to go through, to support you in feeling fully all the feelings that are going on, and to help you grow from this event. Ask thinking if it would be willing to support you in this way." Stephen reports that his wife was able to shift and to relax Immediately.
Gallegos goes on to write: "This was a situation in which thinking did not know what to do, the domains of life and death are not within its purview, and in such situations it can only support the rest of one's being. Doing otherwise just makes matters worse because it keeps attention from going. where it needs to go; in this case feeling. Thinking tries to protect us from hurt but there are times when it must help us step fully into feeling the hurt that is already there."
Sensing
Seeing, tasting, hearing, touching, smelling tell us much about the world In
which we live. It Is a major delight we are given by living In a body. We use our
senses to be aware of the beauties and dangers of our surroundings. One sense
we are not so aware of in our culture Is deep body knowing. In his book Genius
about Nobel-prIze-winning Richard Feynman, James Gleick writes: "Those who
watched Feynman in moments of intense concentration came away with a strong, even
disturbing sense of the physicality of the process, as though his brain. did not stop with, the
gray matter but extended through every muscle in his body. A Cornell dormitory neighbor
opened Feynman's door to find him rolling around on the floor beside his bed as he worked
on a problem. (page 244)
Feeling
As Gallegos observes we tend to try to understand feelings rather than to feel them In their full force. Our culture trains us to do this.
Feelings involve more than emotions. They connect us to the energies, the "vibes," In our surroundings. I find a wide range In people's ability to sense these energies. We all have a greater capacity than our culture has allowed us to develop, but some people are amazingly sensitive.
Feelings often give us instant knowing. As a teacher, I am fond of the saying "Who you are speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say." As children we were often caught in a bind when what an adult was saying was so contradicted by who the person really was.
Thinking has difficulty with feeling because feeling is continuous and thinking likes to draw boundaries and therefore distrusts feelings. Gallegos states "Our challenge is to allow thinking to come back into a true relationship with feeling rather than attempting to dominate and control ft."
Feeling moves us to act. In the major decisions of life we have a responsibility to collect Information and think about our choices, but In the end we usually decide by feel.
Language Is the Instrument largely of thinking because of Its discreteness. Feeling Is expressed in poetry and metaphor, art and music.
Imagery
Images are a powerful way of knowing. Some Images combine with sensing and thinking to enrich those ways of knowing. The Images of the twin towers struck by planes and collapsing added greatly to the force-of our memories of 9/11.
Our basic Image of the universe as a giant mechanism Is deeply Ingrained and now serves us badly
The full strength of imagery comes from a deeper source, from a world we In the West have largely ignored. This Is a world of spirit guides and archetypes, the latter being strong patterns of perceiving and behaving with. which all of us are born and which Jung has so richly Introduced to us. Examples are the hero, the child, the trickster and the earth mother. We all f III In the patterns differently depending on our life experiences. These patterns are deeper than those brought to us by our senses, feelings and thoughts and influence our behavior powerfully.
Imaging Is an insightful way of knowing. I will describe a few of my personal experiences with Images In Story (7)
Postscript
Please note that this statement on knowing has been written in language and In the mode of thinking. It has out up knowing into four modes and analyzed them. Thinking Is useful for this effort but the full picture of knowing Is much more complex and interwoven.
It Is also important to recognize that my whole series of questions and essays are largely presented In the thinking mode and are limited thereby.
Ways of knowing are a complex activity. I have friends who engage in knowing what is happening In their surroundings to an amazing degree. It seems they are aware of flows of energy and Information shut off to most of us, and they absorb this knowing In their minds, feelings and bodies. Their sense of intuition is remarkably strong.
Finally, I have a good friend, Jeremy Narby, who has worked extensively with
the shamans of Peru. When they told him that they had learned certain knowledge from the plants, he assumed that they were speaking In metaphors. Over time he discovered that they were not. They literally gained knowledge from the plants, from a world well beyond our senses. He has written about his experiences in The Cosmic Serpent.
Richmond Mayo Smith is a retired educator, and has served on the boards of numerous humanitarian, service, and education organizations. He is a former Head Master of Roxbury Latin School where he served for eight years, after teaching science for fifteen years at Phillips Exeter Academy. Richmond worked in India for three and a half years in community development with the organization World Education Inc. He is also one of the co-founders of Educators for Social Responsibility as a former chair and board member, and serves on the boards of the Marion Foundation, World Education, Center Heart and the Sant Bani School. He is the former chair of the board of the Center for Psychology & Social Change.
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