The Storyteller's Tales

 

Tribes of the Twenty-First Century – ‘The Story People’

 

When we Look back at the first half of the Twenty First Century from where we are now, we are looking back at the world of The Story People and their very different way of life.

 

The Story People were characterised by the way that they built their lives and the world they lived in through two life-long stories that they engaged with constantly; stories that they prioritised above almost anything else. They had an ongoing ‘personal’ story and a story of ‘the world’ they believed they lived in. It seems unlikely to us that people would ever choose to limit their lives in that way, but it is clear from records of the time that from the day that they first started to learn the stories as small children till the day that they died, the Story People were tuned into stories and believed those stories to be their lives.

 

Captivated by the way that they were able to communicate in words and how they were able to interpret the world by constructing stories in their heads and through the various technological devices they had invented for that purpose, human beings at that time were often not even aware that they spent whole lifetimes engaged in that story-based activity. Their children were educated from an early age to think, to communicate and to engage with life in that conceptual Story People way and taught how to live through stories to the exclusion of almost everything else.

 

By the first half of the twenty-First century, after a twentieth century when that limited version of education had spread throughout what people of the time called the ‘developed world’, engaging with those two stories came to seem like all that was needed for a person to live life to the full. Stories were so deeply embedded in their human brains that the Story People had almost forgotten they were there. They knew no life other than stories and they mistook those stories for life itself.

 

It was a time when human beings living on the planet were deeply and fundamentally divided in that way, without really recognising it. People in the ‘developed world’ believed that they lived ‘individual’ lives in a ‘real world’ and they continued to live severely limited, story-based lives within the conceptual confines of those two, parallel, interwoven and ‘never-ending’ stories, inevitably living with the constant dis-ease that way of life causes, always missing out on the love that connects us all and never experiencing the wonder and the beauty of living in Oneness.

Story People lived in that impoverished way for whole lifetimes.

 

Humans at that time were endlessly fascinated by certain core features of the stories at the centre of their lives and they were unwilling to let go of them. For instance, they could rarely see beyond the almost exclusively human concept of there being a real, fixed past and a future. As far as Story People were concerned, the past and the future were so ‘real’ that they routinely made that ‘reality’ the basis of a lot of their present moment actions. Instead of responding wholeheartedly in a simple and caring way to whatever is arising in Presence, as we would, they conceptualised the ‘situation’, making it part of their story, labelling it first, and then referred to ‘the past’ before ‘making a decision’ about what to do in ‘the future’. Obviously, that led to there being a great deal of disconnection, delusion and confusion in life because The Story People completely believed in the ‘reality’ of their stories and never paused to reconnect and to experience life directly in the connected Universe of Presence.

 

Another, even more damaging and disconnecting characteristic of those 21st century stories was that they were based on the idea that humans were separate individuals. That concept gave rise to the almost universally held and deeply damaging belief at the time that humans were in some way separate to ‘each other’ and ‘the rest of the world’.

 

To 21st century people, who confused the linguistic structure of their stories with life itself, ’the world’ was divided up into separate ‘things’ and those ‘things’ were conceived of as having quite fixed and recognisable characteristics that made them ‘real’. Story People, by prioritising their language-based stories, had built themselves into a fully labelled, limiting and rather fixed ‘world’ and the way they spent lifetimes focused on that separating, conceptualised ‘world’ meant that they were continually one step removed from the connection in love all things have in Presence.

 

Because Story People were so caught up in managing their ‘personal’ lives and reacting to ‘The World’ that they believed they lived in, it was difficult for them to simply trust in being part of the dance of life all things are part of or to simply love the experience being a living part of a living Universe.

 

So, in summary, those were the two concurrent stories that defined the lives of The Story People. Human lives at the time were built around living out a ‘personal story’ and reacting to an ongoing story about ‘the world’ that they believed they lived in. Those were the stories that occupied their attention, made them blind to The Great Connection and unfortunately shaped that troubled period of history.  

 

From where we stand now, it is easy for us to see the effect their ‘self-oriented’ and ‘human-oriented’ engagement with life had on the planet at the time and how that very human-centric way of living affected the wellbeing not just of people but of all living creatures in those twenty-first century years. The first half of the twenty-first century was a blinkered time for human beings and that made it a dark time for all of life on Earth.

 

Of course, it’s not that we don’t recognise the significant part those same two stories play in our own lives today. What was different about The Story People in the twenty-first century was that those stories were all that they had. The Story People believed that those stories were their lives and they never stepped out of them.

 

Looking back from here and now, we can see that not only were the Story People themselves suffering but the whole living Universe suffered and paid the price for their story-based self-obsession. They were a people who rarely felt or expressed the love for all and everything that comes from true connection, or discovered the natural desire that arises in One love to take care of all living beings, or experienced the true sense of belonging, fulfilment and completion that comes from living simply in the moment for the benefit of all living beings.

 

It may be difficult for us to imagine living in that way, but it’s important to bear in mind that when we are talking about the Story People and that period of history, we are talking about those dark days before people remembered once again to live life itself - and not just the story.

 

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