I Want Your Story, Not A Solution

The world we know has been narrated into existence, and it’s time for a plot shift

I want to preface this by stating that I don’t claim to have answers, but I am choosing to get raw and uncomfortable in pursuit of what feels honest, true and authentic for me during this season of my life. My blessing and curse has always been my ability to rapidly ingest and distill complex information. Discerning how to share and express what I’ve learned through experience against the information I’m digesting, is the challenge that lies before me.

Photo by Stephanie Harvey on Unsplash

We live in a society that values the ability to be hyper connected, informed, and navigationally adept, yet as Beings called humans, we have never been more disconnected, unwise, and directionless. The disparity between what we have allowed to be created versus who we are created to Be, has placed humans at the top of the endangered species list and it is fuelling our self-extinction.

We appear to be surrounded by self-anointed leaders instructing the masses away from individuation and deeper into separation. Choosing ideological texts, talking points, checklists, and carefully curated personas to tell you how to fix perceived problems, instead of allowing the medicine contained within their own stories of navigating Self accountability, responsibility, acceptance, and forgiveness, to empower others to discover their own.

As I seek to listen more than I speak, I find myself leaning into Divine connection and the insights and distilled wisdom of storytellers and philosophers, and away from expert ‘how-to’s’ and manuals that appear to create barriers to experiential knowledge by satiating the desire to know. Instinctively, I trust those willing to lay bare their raw stories versus those hiding behind filtered, photoshopped, and carefully edited outcomes.

One of the biggest lies we appear to tell our Selves is that information alone equals learning. Even worse, that the accumulation of information equals knowledge, and that from this knowledge viable one-size-fits-all solutions can be derived. 

Learning is the direct result of information in action. Knowledge is born inside of the trial and errors of learning.  Accumulated information without action is merely a hypothesis or idea. Even if others are actively putting the same information into action and achieving the expected outcome, until you do the same, you cannot say for certain whether the information is valuable or wise.

No two people experience the same reality. So to believe that another can have the solution to your problem without questioning or vetting it yourself is naive. The wisest people I know allow one simple question to lead them; 

Why.

They intrinsically understand that why is not a question to be answered by another, but a sacred invitation to allow curiosity to guide your attention in the present moment.

Ask someone Why and pay close attention to their response. Do they immediately drop into ego and hit you with a wave of information, facts, data and feelings, or do they actively call in and welcome a deeper sense of inquiry and pause? Do they hold a point of view, belief, or ideology that requires the validation of external metrics, or do they invite you to navigate your Being-ness for clues that hold your answers?

Are they attempting to lead you, or are they demonstrating in real time what it means to Remember how to lead your Self?

Meeting Why with further inquiry, activates deeper truths and invokes critical thought. When confronted with this question, our response can activate and reveal our unconscious beliefs, biases, blindspots, and triggers.

Asking Why holds the power to separate the imitators from the initiators as it becomes either a beacon to illuminate a path forward, or a weapon used to mask and deflect attention from our own fears, guilt, triggers, and shame.

When we attempt to answer Why for another, we fundamentally impede their capacity for deeper self-inquiry by projecting our perceptions onto their perspectives. Answers can quickly become a mechanism to manufacture certainty in an effort to eradicate the unsettling feeling of doubt, impeding a gateway to truth.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.⁣

Socrates

Everyone I’ve met walking the path of conscious individuation, has at least one story about a person who initiated them into higher states of awareness through their Being-ness and ability to vulnerably and courageously share the chapters most would edit or hide from the world. Those who know that perpetual healing power lies within the self-inquiry it provokes, making story an invaluable act of service.

I’d love to hear who inspires you into deeper levels of self-inquiry and how your story has inspired others. 

In the coming weeks I will be peeling back the layers of my story to activate and inspire self-inquiry into our individual and collectively held beliefs about the nature, function, and needs of current health insurance models and what they can become.