Raw & Real Stories: Letting Them Out of the Box
October 2, 2009
If you think it’s easy to tell your own stories raw & real, let me assure you that it’s not. There are many reasons why we don’t want to tell the truth. One is because people don’t really want to hear it. When you tell the truth, sometimes people can’t handle it, or they shut down, or go away, or judge you.
That hurts and it doesn’t make you want to open up and tell your story. But even though I’m personally aware that this is the risk in telling them, I feel compelled to do so anyway.
I feel compelled because underneath of my fear, I know that there is beauty and gold in these stories. They are nothing to be embarrassed of or ashamed about, though the world would have us believe that way.
While that is true and it’s logical that we shouldn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed about our stories, the truth is that we often do. We feel embarrassed because they are our own personal stories, not someone elses. They are our very own personal Pandora’s box which must be opened to reveal the truth.
But why would you want to do this? We need to tell these stories because the rawest, most vulnerable stories hold the most life energy. By the way if you read the myth of Pandora, here is what you find out:
According to the myth, Pandora had been given a large jar and instruction by Zeus to keep it closed, but she had also been given the gift of curiosity and ultimately opened it. When she opened it, all of the evils, ills, diseases, and burdensome labor that mankind had not known previously, escaped from the jar, but it is said, that at the very bottom of her box, there lay hope.
Isn’t that amazing? Open the box to all the evils of the world and there at the bottom lies hope. This is why we must tell our stories, the stories we least want to tell. The mystics say that inside of everything of darkness, there are sparks of light just waiting to be released. Inside is Light that can be shared with the world.
Imagine what happens when we don’t tell these stories. What happens when we don’t have the courage to share that which has been most dark and painful to us? We are literally hiding the light. Light that could be made available to everyone.
So that means that if I want to share with the world, I must break through my own fear, trepidation and emabarrassment and dare to release the light that is inside of these stories. I must liberate the life force that is just waiting to be released into the world.
Thank God Pandora opened that box. What if she had listened to the voices of fear and kept it closed? Yes it unleashed all manner of evil into the world , but we obviously needed to learn how to deal with that. We need to unleash the power of story in our lives and dare to trust the Hope that wants to come out into the world.
Today dare to tell your story and be sure to listen for the stories of others. Make them feel comfortable to tell their real stories. You never know what Light you can bring into the world.
Yours in story, Annie
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Comments
Got something to say?
Connect With Annie Hart
.png)
.png)