“I wish my secondary school math’s teacher had been you”
I found myself saying during this deep and insightful Tea Session Podcast with my friend Adam Barley.
Adam’s work in embodiment and movement over the last few decades has created transformation for people across the globe as he has guided practices rooted in Five Rhythms and yet emergent into new evolutionary ways of expressing what is feels like and means to be human.
This week we have been treated to many inspiring and innovating sessions as we have moved through World Unity Week. From waves of indigenous-led blessings over the solstice weekend, through song, movement and dance and archetypal patterning, we have truly entered into the realm of the imaginal.
One of the sessions that resonated most strongly with me, was the one held by Richard Olivier from Mythodrama on accessing archetypal wisdom. Having worked with archetypes as energetic patterns of identity and narrative for many years, I love Richard’s work (with his co-creator Lawrence Hillman) in bringing to life the planetary archetypes of our solar system in their evolving forms.
Well, hasn’t 2020 been full of unexpected gifts?
Some of you may disagree but through the turmoil and chaos and sadness comes awareness, choice and resolution. The global pandemic has been just that – ‘global’. For the first time in many centuries (if not ‘the first’ time ever), we have collectively begun to realise the interdependency of our global systems and our global story. We have also started to see where it needs changing – and fast!
What if this rollercoaster of emotion we are all strapped into is actually the evolutionary journey of our species and our planet? What if we are all being given the possibility of choice in the emerging story of humanity?
What if …..
“The funny thing about unity”, I often find myself saying, “is that when we truly embody it, there is no one else. You can’t be in unity one moment and out of it the next. Unity awareness completely destroys the ‘other’”
But we can forget.
WITH PAUL CLARKE
Restorying Life Podcast – A New Story of Sustainability
Join Genevieve Boast, Founder of Beyond Human Stories as she adventures into the new territory of restorying sustainability. She will dialogue with changemakers, visionaries, elders and story hackers, discovering how human resilience and invention are transforming the old stories for good. These ‘bright spots’ of innovation are the forerunners for a new story of sustainability on Earth. They serve as inspirations and reminders for each of us to choose how we will participate in the change all around us.
Today I have been sitting out under the shade of a young oak tree. He has been in our garden since we moved here 8 years ago and we have grown up together.
In recent years, due to all the travel with my work, I had rarely found the time to come and hang out with this incredible being. Since COVID and lockdown everything has changed – in this case for the better.
In my calling as a storyteller and storymaker, I am blessed to connect with people all over the world who are aspiring writers of some kind. Frequently they are seeking inspiration on how to find their authentic voice. Often they are wondering how to make a living as a storyteller.
However, more recently, I have noticed a distinct shift in the dialogues.
It is a shift away from us (the humans) writing about life as it happens to us, and a shift towards us (the conscious evolving souls) allowing life to write through us as we experience it.
This week my family and I decided to undertake a daily gratitude practice. The longer the lockdown continues, the deeper we are able to connect and create in new ways. Remember, reconnect and restory is a mantra that will not leave me these days.
Never before have I been in one place for so long and never before have I seen the gifts of quiet inner time.
Everyone seems to be talking about returning to a ‘new normal’ but I am choosing to see this as an opportunity to return to a ‘ new natural’ balance. One than honours the inner and outer arcs of attention in our human and more than human lives.
WITH ADAM WILLIAMS
Restorying Life Podcast – A New Story of Sustainability
Join Genevieve Boast, Founder of Beyond Human Stories as she adventures into the new territory of restorying sustainability. She will dialogue with changemakers, visionaries, elders and story hackers, discovering how human resilience and invention are transforming the old stories for good. These ‘bright spots’ of innovation are the forerunners for a new story of sustainability on Earth. They serve as inspirations and reminders for each of us to choose how we will participate in the change all around us.
This Spring has been glorious in the UK and, as most of us have been at home in lockdown, we’ve able to notice and enjoy it despite the challenges of COVID.
The sun has been shining for days on end, causing buds on the trees to break forth in their glorious, fresh, green hues. They’re vibrant, and new, and shining like candy.
The hawthorn tree (sacred to Beltane on the 1st May) has burst into tiny white blossoms that have the most subtle yet enticing smell if you stop of partake of their nectar. The wild herbs are equally abundant and growing out of every nook and cranny, begging for attention. Many plants have been plucked and tasted as I have taken my daily walks through the landscape and, of course, I have done nothing but stop to smell the flowers of all shapes and sizes.
This week the Swallows have returned to Avebury too. Their playful exuberance is lighting up the skies as they swoop, dive and play over my home.
For those who have access to the natural world it’s all so exquisite that it would be easy to slip off into a blissful dream and forget that we are in the middle of a crisis.
Or are we?
How often do you find yourself wondering about the new ‘normal’?
What will life look, feel and sound like when this current COVID crisis is over?
Socially what will the world look like after lockdown?
Who will return and what new face will they wear?
And will it happen again?
What then?
So we have jumped off the cliff into potential annihilation (of our way of life and ego identity).
We have crossed the threshold and entered into the forest of our imagination, seeking a new vision of what is possible.
And we are lost.
Well and truly lost.
We feel confusion, despair, doubt.
And this is exactly how it should be.
As human ‘beings’ I believe that we have always sought a higher vision.
Whether this seeking is connected to our aspirations for our personal life, or the search for higher and more evolved forms of collective social purpose, we are naturally ‘questing’ creatures, constantly striving to know more, to be more and to experience more.
In the fast changing and tumultuous times we now find ourselves living in, our human hunger for ‘more’ can be seen for what it truly is – a force that is both enabling and destructive.
Hunger itself is neither bad nor good – it is simply the catalyst for a response to the call of evolution. When aligned with the classical hero’s journey, the traits of human hunger can be seen as either destructive or creative depending on our individual and collective response to them.
Yes, we are approaching Spring and Easter, but that is not why I am feeling called to write a storyhack with this title.
I was compelled to get up this morning, come down to my kitchen table and start writing because I realised that this is the story of my life.
Your life too I believe.
The saying that ‘life is full of death….’ may sound like a cliché, but let’s stop for a moment and consider those words.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that ‘life evolves through a series of mini deaths’, each one a shedding of an old way of living, an outworn belief, or even a global system that is long past the time of it being useful to ALL.
And ALL is the watch word of this decade. Watch and see.
At the time of writing this the world has irrevocably changed in just a short few weeks, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And by the time I write next week’s storyhack it will have transformed completely once again.
Thing is – it always has.
This is the true nature of evolving life and consciousness on Earth (and beyond).
The real challenge has been one of distraction.
“These are the times when we grow”
I found myself writing this to a friend this evening.
This week my husband and I decided to start self-isolating.
Amongst the perceived confusion and chaos currently being experienced in the UK (and across the globe) due to the fast spreading COVID-19, there is a benign virus emerging and its called surrender.
So I woke up this morning with the light from a full Virgo moon streaming down my face as I lay in bed.
It was magical.
Mystical.
And so very natural.
As I sit here at my desk, staring out the window at the view of the mountains for the 100th time today, I am struck by the something fundamental around the emerging story of gender energy on the planet right now: The paradox how our old stories about what is masculine and what is feminine no longer seem to apply.
Let me explain.
What is your story about time? Seriously.
Play with me if you are unsure about this.
Take a moment and complete these sentences to uncover your time story:
Time is……..
My days are……..
I am most focussed in the……
Time runs away when……
Time stops if I.……
My life is here to……
Okay, so, is there a pattern in all of this for you?
A few weeks ago something amazing happened to me.
I felt true peace for perhaps the first time since I had been born (in this lifetime at least).
Peace
Contentment – but more than that also
A sense of being really, truly present in the moment
A moment that could stretch on for eternity
It took me by surprise
And it was humbling
Deeply humbling
This weekend brought Storm Ciara to the UK.
She was relatively minor compared to some of the global symptoms of climate change that we are experiencing in various countries right now and yet dramatic enough for those living here on a small, grey, wet island.
The thing with living on an island is that you can become quite insular.
For the last few weeks I have been cleansing.
Cleaning up what I eat and drink (or not) and how I move and exercise my body. From the 1st of January, I embarked on a 108 day consecutive yoga practice in order to firmly establish a new foundation to my self-care and health in 2020. (If you are wondering why ‘108’, this is an ancient Hindu practice of achieving oneness, nothingness and everything through the vibration of these three numbers…more on this another time!).
I have a good friend who has been helping me to create the audio version of my book ‘Tough Bliss’ for the last year. Fabio is an experienced and multi-talented sound healer, music producer and sonic enchantment weaver! He plays with frequencies and vibration better than anyone I know which is why its such a treat to create with him.
Today as I was facilitating one of the Soulistic Journey circles, I was struck with a realisation. An angle on understanding the role and meaning of ‘soul’ in my life that hadn’t come to me in quite this way before but revolutionised the way I now see my own growth and evolution.
Often when I ask people what their soul feels like, I get various answers like ‘home’, ‘peace’, ‘knowingness’ or ‘love’. I totally agree with each of these in the context of tuning into a higher place of inner wisdom that sits beyond the realm of human form or stories.
However, as I started to reflect on my own experiences of ‘soul’, I realised that my soul often comes into my life to disrupt habits, stretch comfort zones and generally break me out of my security patterns of behaviour.
Therefore, when I invite my soul to take the driving seat in the vehicle of ‘Genevieve’ then things tend to get more than a little crazy.
In fact, they get positively uncomfortable (if not exciting).
Let me explain.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with astrology, this weekend saw one of the most pivotal conjunctions of two planets in our solar system that we will encounter this decade: Pluto and Saturn. Now I am not an expert in astrology, nor astronomy, nor physics, but I do spend a lot of time adventuring in the archetypal realm trying to understand and experience the impact that certain archetypal characters (in this case Pluto and Saturn) have on our stories, psychology and actions.
“We are like fish and our stories are the water in which we swim. Their effect on our lives goes unseen unless we are willing to put our heads above the water and choose to leap into a different pool.”
Twas the week before Christmas
When all through the house of our soul, not a thought was stirring
Not even an email
Ever notice how life acts as a mirror for what you most deeply desire?
Or that which you most deeply fear?
December already.
The cold winter winds in the Northern hemisphere bring with them cleansing, clearing energies that allow us to retreat within and notice things.
One of the patterns that is being spoken to me on the wind right now is linked to the transforming energy of gifting on the planet right now. I am noticing the illusion of commercialism and consumerism is starting to fade and a new light is coming through. One that is connecting and intimate on the deepest of human levels.
Throughout 2019, I have found myself in a massive cycle of change and transformation; on every level and in every area of my life. These cycles have come before and seem to be occurring with increasing regularity in the world that we find ourselves inhabiting.
I am going to be really honest now. It has been a crazy, confusing, exhilarating and excruciating period of time where I barely know who, where or what I am from day to day. Just as I think I might have a handle on what is going on and where I am headed, my life throws me something completely new that shakes up the fabric of my story and throws it in the air to see what will settle.
WITH GILES HUTCHINS
Restorying Life Podcast – A New Story of Sustainability
Join Genevieve Boast, Founder of Beyond Human Stories as she adventures into the new territory of restorying sustainability. Over the next 6 months, she will dialogue with change-makers, visionaries, elders and story hackers, discovering how human resilience and invention are transforming the old stories for good. These ‘bright spots’ of innovation are the forerunners for a new story of sustainability on Earth. They serve as inspirations and reminders for each of us to choose how we will participate in the change all around us.
Egypt brings up a great many things.
The land and people here have a habit of presenting me with a hall of heart-mirrors every time I travel here. I have said many times, that whatever we hold in our hearts (consciously and unconsciously) will come up to be seen from the shadows as we walk through the lands of alchemy and light.
As I write this storyhack, I am travelling through the Egyptian desert in my dear friend Hassan’s van on our way to Abydos, Temple of Osiris.
Glamorous? Definitely.
Romantic – yes!
Transformative …..that’s the reason we are here.
This week I am launching into the second of our annual Soulistic Journey retreats in Avebury, England. Each retreat brings with it both a deepening into our own personal story, as well as revealing new maps into previously uncharted territory. The best bit is that we never really know where we are going until we gather together and take our first steps on the journey together!
In preparing for our circle this week, I started contemplating the word ‘retreat’ in the context of our modern social story. With all the perceived political, environmental and cultural chaos right now are we really being called to ‘retreat’?
We are living in times of true grit.
All around us, social and environmental systems appear to be in collapse and transformation. Cultures are merging and changing form. Young people across the planet are showing us what it REALLY means to be a global citizen. As I have spoken about many times, the story and archetype of the modern warrior is transforming and it’s being taken on by ‘normal’ people like you and me.
For a long time I have been using a powerful storyhack exercise known as a ‘Narrative Lens’. It is one of the fastest ways I know to immediately change the story that you find yourself living in by bringing your attention to the characters, environments and choices that create your life story.
Want to try it with me?
It’s fast. It’s powerful, and it transforms.
I have found myself pondering meta-myths lately.
You know, the ones that keep showing up in different forms, with different faces?
The ones that appear in our collective dreams in archetypal form and haunt us for days with their subtle power.
One that has stalked me of late has been that of Pistas Sophia – the fallen female Christ.
I am sat in my hotel room in Athens.
The delicious noise of the city outside, flourishing with life and light.
The sound of the Mediterranean Sea gently lapping the shoreline over my shoulder.
The Athenian mountains rising in the distance.
I have arrived.
Have you noticed this phenomenon lately?
Recently, whenever I find myself gathering in a group setting where there is a shared intention or vision, the power to manifest new outcomes and social stories seems to be turbo charged!
Perhaps it is the astrology of these times?
Perhaps it is the social, environmental and economic ‘crisis’ breeding a sense of urgency in our creative process?
Or perhaps this ‘gathering’ is an ancient power practice of storymaking that we are coming to see the importance of as we strive for change?
Much of my work involves meta-stories; deep and ancient narratives with characters that evolve and shape-shift over time.
One of the themes I have been working with personally and professionally in recent weeks has been that of the emerging feminine warrior. Often perceived through archetypes like Strength in the Tarot, Inanna/Ishtar the Sumerian Goddess of Love and Justice or Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War, the emerging feminine warrior is taking back her power on our planet.
I sit here writing this in the place of my dreams.
I sit here in a house that was built by the voice of a land that has been calling me ‘home’ since I was six years old.
I sit here crying tears of grace for the ‘tough bliss’ of a long journey, walked well (most of the time anyway…).
I sit here in a beautiful house made of glass, wood and love in the mountains of Colorado; the place of my birth; the place I left over 35 years ago; my heart home that has finally become my body, mind and soul home.
This has been a year of revelations. The last few months have been incredible, scary, traumatic, empowering and liberating; all coming in waves, breath by breath.
I have been remembering.
Rarely do I allow myself the liberation of this statement, but I have found that saying it out loud is one the fastest routes to manifestation.
Why? Because held within it is one of the magical keys to the whole Universe…. SURRENDER.
It has been almost ten years since I leapt off the cliff of a full time, successful corporate job in sustainability and into the wide ocean of running my own social business.
In those years, the lessons have been many and the tests of character and courage have not lessened. If anything, they have become more and more intense. Each new year brings with it new lessons, new insights and new wisdom into the nature of my personal story adventure. With the collective experience of time speeding up, it seems as though the collective social narrative, within which I am attempting to ‘hack’, also changes and presents me with new challenges and opportunities on an almost daily basis!
Right now I am feeling emotionally carved open.
Several things in my life are converging to orchestrate a complete melting and restorying of my purpose, identity and future path. Rather than being disorientated, I learned many years ago to surrender to this process of metamorphosis. It is a natural part of living on a constantly evolving planet, in a constantly evolving Universe. The quicker I let go of human control, the more ease and insight the transformation brings.
This week’s storyhack is a guest post from my best friend and husband, Euan Smith. He is and continues to be a constant inspiration to me in a world that is hampered by mediocrity and conformism.
“Aren’t you bored yet ?”, said no plover, ever.
In 2016 I found myself in a fortunate position. I was able to choose to step off the corporate hamster wheel for a time, well before my aspirations for ‘retirement’ had been reduced to milky tea & a nice lie-down.
My news, which I positioned as something like a ‘late gap year’, was received by those I told with varying degrees of respect, happiness & jealousy. I get all that. As said, I know I was lucky. But what fascinated me most was the frequency with which people asked, of myself and my family – “Is he bored yet ?” The regularity with which the question appeared was remarkable. Over assorted lunch dates former colleagues smiled and asserted definitively that “you’ll get bored in a few months”. Friends peered over their coffees to ask with concern – “How are you filling your days ?” Two headhunters recoiled in shock when I politely passed up their shiny baubles.
“But it’s such a great opportunity.”
No. Extended time out was the great opportunity. A ‘once in a lifetime’ blue-chip job it may well have been, but not this lifetime.
~~~~~~
March 2016. I am in J-Bay in South Africa. This morning I rose early to stroll the majesty of the beach. At this hour it is delightfully free of humans. In the lull, under skies already cobalt, wildlife has temporarily reclaimed the world. Black-backed gulls tentatively explore a stranded jellyfish. A prowling mongoose slithers frustrated into bleached grasses as I approach. Out on the rocks a group of cormorants gossip as they hold out their wings to dry. It occurs to me that, like all anglers, even birds that fish seem inclined to exaggerate the size of their catch.
Where the wet caramel sand gives way to powdery white a small plover is working. She is hard to spot amongst the bric-a-brac of shells & driftwood; only her darting movement gives her away. From this distance her body is as smooth and pebbly as those that surround her. She perches totteringly on spindly legs, colours muted and flecked through, like an upside-down cappuccino. Her small head, equally mottled, flicks from side to side. She is perpetually caught in two minds – between the need to feed & the need not to become food. She pauses and turns towards me. Even against the white of the sand her snowy breast is dazzling. Abruptly she sets off at speed down the beach, legs peddling crazily, head bent low like a granny with a shopping trolley. And then, just as abruptly, she comes to a dead stop, rises like a queen. “Running ? What ? One ? Good heavens, no !”
And then she does it again.
I follow her at a respectful distance as she scours the sand, urgently stabbing her short needle beak when an insect is uncovered. Her industry is intense. She bursts into a run again for no apparent reason, then pulls up short, suddenly wondering if she left the gas on.
A dove sized bird with greenfinch plumage explodes from a frondy palm, screaming an alarm. ‘Waiki ! Waiki ! Waiki !’. I wonder briefly if mongooses can climb trees. And then I wonder if the correct term should be ‘mongeese’ ?
~~~~~~
Perhaps all the ‘boredom’ questions came from ego, from a desire to protect our place in the world, a need to maintain status quo. Passion-riddled entrepreneurs and ladder climbers aside, I observe so many people walking soullessly through their careers, counting the hours until they can escape. They live life in their vacations & retirement, create bucket lists that they immediately consign to fantasy. We complain endlessly about monotonous meetings, about repetitive, vegetative tasks. We complain about being pulled away from our families at weekends, about having to attend yet another social event / conference / sales pitch with the boss / client / accounts team. And yet I found that when I consciously created space away from all those obligations, all the crazy noise (which many profess is also their dream) I seemed to touch an open nerve. We can all rationalise our own fears away when some hippie bails to start up a pottery in Devon, but not when one of the ‘normal’ ones steps out ? And so the default seemed to be that many created a story, a hope, that I would somehow be unfulfilled, that I would crave a return asap with my tail between my legs. “Phew. He’s back. I knew it. I’m ok.”
I watched Miss Plover for almost an hour. It felt like ten minutes.
Not once was I bored.
I came back, in my own time. With new perspective, a new story and (I think) much the better for the time away. If you can engineer it, stepping off the hamster wheel just to see what happens, is 100% the way to go.
I have an admission to make.
I am an addict.
‘Addicted to what?’ you might wonder.
Busyness.
(And so is everyone else)
One of the challenges of living in these times of global transformation is that we find ourselves in a landscape of shifting narratives. One that has been dominated for centuries by individuality and the survival of separate groups, to a new story where the forces of change on our planet require that we find solutions to common challenges and unify our approach on a planetary scale.