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.
Stop for just one moment as you rush to get out of the door.
As you run for the bus, the train or the car.
As you silently resent the kids, the dog, the phone, your emails,
For their seeming intrusion into your life.
Stop.
Breathe.
The power to change is in the subtle – which is why most people miss it.
This month, I journeyed to Sacred Ground International in Montana, US. It is a place beyond time. A space full of respect and honour for all life. A place where the teaching comes fast for those who are able to embrace and hold it. I think of the land as the portal into the deepest story we are capable of imagining and sensing.
WITH PAULA AAMLI
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 is 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.
The number 2 has played a major part in my life.
I was born on the 2nd and both my parents were born on the 2nd day of different months; the energy of 2 has followed me around in various synchronistic ways throughout my life. Curious, I started to explore the mythology of this number and its associated personality. Having worked with archetypes for years the major arcana of the Tarot jumped at me, being one of the earliest systems in Western mythology related to both number and universal correspondences.
Back in 2013, I was sat in the middle of Utah canyon country, midway through an eleven day vision quest, and I was told (categorically) to dedicate my life’s work to helping people move beyond our human stories.
At the time, I barely had an inkling as to what this meant or the grand adventure that following its trail would take me on. Six years on, I am starting to grasp the wormhole of truth, power, energy, and inspiration that this one statement holds for us individually and collectively, should we choose to accept its challenge.
WITH STEVE MALKIN
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 is 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.
Many people over the last few weeks have been asking me to describe in detail the process of storyhacking. What does it mean and how do we consciously work with its transformative elements to create change in our lives?
So here is my Storyhacking 101.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending three days in the company of my soul family. People from all across the world who share a vision of a unified world and a unity cosmology. We call ourselves the Unity Community and are developing a truly global and inclusive education and exploration platform called the Whole World View.
If not now, then when?
If not today, then
why make your promises?
A love declared for days to come
is as good as none.
These immortal words from Tracy Chapman permeated my childhood as my mother and sisters listened to her album in our small cottage in rural England. They reminded me of how to keep going towards something I wanted, no matter what seemed to be happening in the immediate world around me.
How many of us are familiar with the concept of a ‘studio’?
As a kid, my mother would retreat to her studio (which happened to be an illustrators desk in her bedroom window) and spend hours drawing. She would always emerge full of life and inspiration. I loved it when she went to her studio.
I have come across many kinds of studios in the years since, but each one has the similar magic of providing a safe, quiet space away from the noise of daily life within which we can pause, reflect and enjoy time working with our gifts.
This weekend I was gifted with a 48 hour period away from my normal story. My wonderful husband booked us into a tree house yoga retreat in the forest just outside of Sydney (at the amazing Billabong). It was just what my soul had ordered, yet the outcome was not exactly what I was expecting. In fact, what I ran up against as I came to my yoga mat multiple times each day was the strength of my own inner resistance.
I have this happy memory; a memory from a time in my younger life when there weren’t many things to be happy about.
It was a flash of colour. A dance of DNA woven in ribbons. It was coming into a moment of unity amongst a sea of duality. I was about 8 years old.
Unearthing: to dig up, excavate, exhume, bring to the surface, mine, quarry, pull out, root out, scoop out, disentomb, unbury
Forget time, granddaughter
At least your human sense of it
Instead, remember cycles
Experience moves in cycles and flows in rhythms
It dances and expresses itself in ever repeating cadences of creation and destruction
Every Earth day is a cycle
Every Earth day is special
Every moment you have is a chance to lift up and celebrate
Celebrate the moment of quietude
Celebrate the breath moving in and out of your body
Celebrate the essence of life pulsing through your veins, connecting you to every other being in creation
Every moment you are truly present and aware, you are offering a gift to the world
Every Earth day you are here to be that gift
To offer yourself up just as you are
Whole and incomplete
In process
Every Earth day is sacred
I am going to start this storyhack with a confession: I never wanted children.
At least, I never wanted physical children. There – I said it!
This decision and personal choice is something that is still considered taboo in most societies or at least very strange, but ever since I was a small child, I knew that this was not a path for me.
“Fear not
What is not real never was and never will be.
What is real always was and cannot be destroyed”
Bhagavad Gita
This is the way that one of our oldest and most powerful human archetypes is described in an ancient Hindu text. A character that is born free, lives free and dies willingly knowing that this ultimate life initiation only leads to greater freedom.
Article Originally Published in Green Spirit Magazine
March 2019
The Story That Unites
I was awoken in the early hours of the morning by a collective voice in my head. The ancestors were calling me from my slumber. I was visiting a friend in the mountains of Montana. It was March. Snow was still lying on the ground and capping the tops of the Rockies that curled around the house like the embrace of a lover. The voice asked me to rise and go outside. After a moment of hesitation I dressed, emerging from the house into a bright clear, mountain dawn.
When was the last time you were frustrated with an unconscious habit that kicked in once again and sabotaged an otherwise wonderful day?
Today (as I sit here writing this) is the first year anniversary of my grandmother’s death. One year ago today her soul woke me up at 3:33 am UK time – the very moment she was passing from one life to another (9:33pm Denver time). In many ways she is more with me now than ever, yet in others I still miss our times of practice that we shared together.
“Practice” ? You might think. That doesn’t sound like a stereotypical granddaughter, grandmother activity.
I know but nonetheless this was the essence of the deepening of my relationship with her in the latter part of her life.
Right now, the many people with whom I come into contact are working through a story of limitation and constriction in some way. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you are sitting here reading this, you are also experiencing this sense of limitation in some area of your life! I certainly do.
When you read that statement, do you feel excited or apprehensive?
Do you really believe that this is true?
New science would point us towards strong evidence that our beliefs, thoughts and intentions create the experiences and ‘reality’ we end up living.
So why is it that so many of us struggle with the concept of ultimate self-responsibility when it comes to our stories?
To recall past events and learn lessons from them is one of the oldest mythic traditions in the human lineage. Since ancient times, people have gathered to recall legends, retell tribal stories and teach young ones through remembering the adventures of those who came before them.
Therefore it comes as no surprise, after decades of working with narrative transformation and restorying, to find that it is the inner landscape of our memories that hold the most fertile ground for the creation of our future.
Death is a strange and multifaceted experience.
Over the last few years I have experienced this life changing transition in many forms. Whether it was the death of family members, the death of friendships or the death of parts of my identity, each time I was left changed forever. Transformed by the gift of insight, love and surrender to forces beyond my human control.
This week however, like a bolt from the blue, I was told that friends of mine had lost their young daughter to cancer.
Have you ever had a time when nothing seems to make sense anymore?
A period when the ‘normal’ activities of your daily life suddenly feel strange and out of place?
When the people you used to enjoy being around begin to get on your nerves?
Work you used to love stops being fulfilling?
You become bored with things that used to excite you whether that’s food, TV, sex, alcohol etc…?
You feel discombobulated (love this word) and can’t seem to keep your focus?
Recognize this?
GOOD!
There have always been stories that tell us where we came from and why we are here. They differ in shape, size, colour and character, yet at the end of each tale there always seems to be a call back into life’s biggest secret.
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘being in the world but not of it’? This has been rolling through my head increasingly over the last few weeks as I have moved from one seemingly tumultuous political environment to another. Whether the politics being played out are personal, organisational or national doesn’t really matter. It’s all made of the same messy human narratives that have the potential to suck us into their vortex of fear of the unknown! The process of breaking down in order to eventually breakthrough is one that few of us are ‘good at’. Indeed, I would challenge whether anyone living through times of intense chaos and transformation gets ‘good at the process’ when they are in the middle of it!
One of the biggest tests we will encounter in our busy lives on this planet is that of ‘the blank space’.
Huh? You may ask.
The blank space is one of the hardest to find and yet it’s there all the time. Waiting.
The blank space is called by many names, none of which recognize it’s inherent value to the human soul. Boredom, depression, lethargy, confusion, fatigue, stagnancy… all alchemical states of transformation.
A storyhack that will change your life
I don’t know about you, but I have noticed that drama seems to be on the increase these days. And I don’t mean the sort of drama that we act or watch in theatres.
No…. I mean the drama that pervades our daily lives in the form of stress, anxiety and worry.
I believe that we all come into this world with an inner spark that we carry across universes and lifetimes. It is this inner light that guides us when we are lost. One of the core purposes of our human lives is to remember and embody our spark of personal genius, pursuing its trail without distraction as we grow and evolve. And yes, I believe that we all have the ability to embody genius.
Without listening to our spark, we become listless and stagnant. Depression and lethargy are by-products of shutting down its urges. When we forget to listen to its voice, we forget who we are. In a way, we start to die a little bit every day. We try and numb ourselves to the pain of our forgetting this fundamental part of our spirit.
Extract from Tough Bliss: Restorying Life
I believe that we all have within us ‘genius’ that is waiting to be remembered.
WITH ROBIN BOAST
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking.
Season 3 – US
Thought leaders, visionaries and elders from across the world share with us their prophesies and inspiring visions for the times of transition we find ourselves privileged to be living in.
11 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT WINTER1. Silence is actually really loud2. The cold, bare land is a mirror for our stories3. Cosiness is the ultimate luxury4. Real fires remind us of our ancient past5. Family shows us where we are in our evolution6. Peace really can only be found within7. Adventure can be found in the smallest of places8. Awe and wonder reconnect us9. Magic is real10. Gratitude is the ultimate gift11. Death is really just a beginning
I believe that we all come into this world with an original spark that we carry across lifetimes. It is this inner light that guides us when we are lost. One of the core purposes of our lives is to activate and embody our spark of unique personal genius, pursuing its trail without distraction as we grow and evolve. And yes, I believe that we all have the ability to embody original genius.
Extract from Tough Bliss: Restorying Life
In our modern age of individuality, you would think that it would be easy for each of us to feel truly special, unique and full of purpose. Yet in my experience, large numbers of our 7 billion strong human community actually view their lives as the opposite to this. At best, many of us live with the constant pressure of assimilation into the dominant social story, whether we agree with it or not. At worst, we gradually lose our sense of self worth and personal purpose, sacrificing our dreams into the ocean of a meaningless and mediocre existence.
This weekend was rainy. It was one of those early-winter days in the UK where the skies are a deep unending grey. The air was moist with what the English call ‘mizzle’; a misting rain that soaks you to the bone in a matter of minutes. Just as I was about to enter into another English habit of moaning about the weather, my eye caught a picture stuck to our fridge. It was an image of a six-year-old me and my two younger sisters, sat at our Grandparent’s table on a sundrenched Colorado summer day. The picture had been taken a three months before we had moved to England.