You know that feeling when you just can’t find the right words?
Yep – as a story-worker I have it all the time.
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The sun shone down, hot and revitalising on my head and shoulders. And the summer breeze whispered through the coin shaped leaves of the Aspen tree’s, gathered like old friends around the flowing waters of the spring.
WITH EUAN SMITH
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
This storyhack is an extract from one of the ‘hidden chapters’ in Tough Bliss: Restorying Life.
I believe that deep down, humans all have a longing to feel connected and at home. Returning to the nurturing embrace of our living, breathing planet helps us remember what ‘home’ really means.
Authenticity Is The Ultimate Rebellion
(Originally published on the 13th June, 2018 by Changehackers Podcast)
ChangeHackers is the daily podcast providing insight and inspiration for people changing their world.
Hosted by Tony Cooke, it shares every day Monday to Friday every week, a conversation with an inspiring ChangeHacker – someone who is moving the needle on the front line of change and transformation for sustainability.
WITH BRENDAN CONWAY
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
I have always loved the story of Chrion. A Centaur (half man, half horse), he seemed like a perfect fusion of gifts to my young mind. Intelligence and freedom, strength and wisdom, power and perseverance. But these gifts came at a price.
The past 9 months have been a particularly challenging time for me. You see, I have a habit of changing multiple areas of my life simultaneously and this time has been no different. I have just upped the scale and magnitude.
WITH TANAH WHITEMORE
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
It seems to me that we are surrounded by a lot of death right now.
The death of loved ones, the death of ecosystems, or the death of old and outdated world views. Even the death of our identities as we move from one stage of life to the next.
In the western world, death remains an enigma. Taboo. Something to be avoided at all costs in our culture of worshipping perpetual youth. However, it is inevitable for us all. You could say, the other side of the coin of life.
Just before my 12th birthday something (or someone) started to call me deep inside. It was like a soft undulating whisper in the night; an elusive shadow moving in the afternoon shade. Sometimes the presence would be so tangible I would imagine a beautiful woman was walking beside me as I played in the meadows and garden behind the cottage. She would whisper myths to me: stories of the sun, the moon and the cycles of time as they passed through the living beings of the earth.
WITH KELLY DANIELS
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
Hacking Your Reality: The Art of Restorying
Published in The Curious Mind, Medium – April 2018
I have been engaged in an interesting research experiment this week. As I have been travelling through the forests of my everyday life, I have been asking the people I meet two questions –
1. How do you see the world around you right now?
2. What are you most afraid of?
I wanted to test the waters of the human story landscape around me and see what thoughts people were entertaining on a daily basis that were ultimately creating the reality of the story they were living in. The responses I received were in two decidedly different camps.
The Path of the Dawn Star
Written by Brooke Medicine Eagle and Genevieve Boast
Published in Indie Shaman Magazine – April 2018
Let me tell you a story of an amazing being that walked across the water into central America a few thousand years ago, bringing a teaching of love from the heart and oneness with each other and the great Creator. He was known as Dawn Star, for he prayed to the dawn star, Venus, every morning and was himself seen as the dawning star of a whole new day on earth, where love and brother/sisterhood would create a golden time. And a radiant time ensued as people followed his way, using their resources in positive and empowering ways for the good of the people rather than in judgment and warring. Dawn Star moved among the people sharing his Flower Song teachings and eventually made his way back to his central temple in Golden Tula. There, he offered his final words before it was his time to leave the planet allowing a new cycle to begin. It’s said that people from many lands gathered and formed a circle 20 miles deep and that when Dawn Star spoke, people of every culture and at the farthest distance heard and understood his powerful words.
WITH LALITH GUNARATNE
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
This week I have been in the city. As I traveled from one place to another, I observed. I listened. And I reflected.
The predominant tonality was one of distraction. I saw faces sucked down into phones, heard mindless chatter on cigarette breaks and witnessed multiple noisy after-work drinking conversations in the soundscape. Why?
We are the ancient ones who have returned for our people.
ALL people.
Once we have filled their bellies and sheltered their bodies and taught their spirits….
We have returned.
WITH REBEKAH SHAMAN
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
It seems to me that many of us are in a wistful search for something we call ‘home’. It’s a feeling that’s hard to grasp, the faint notes of a beautiful melody that drifts to us in those moments when our busy lives become still. Perhaps the song of ‘home’ really is a feeling rather than a thing or a place. Or perhaps it is the sense of rootedness that we discover when we align ourselves to who our ancestors are and where they lived – when we locate our heritage and history in their land. Genetics aside, I have spoken with enough people to know that, for each of us, there are places on this beautiful earth that invoke the feeling of safety and security that we associate with the idea of ‘home’. One of these places found me when I was least expecting it. Avebury – the place of the stone people. It is one of the spaces that I now call ‘home’.
We are all taught from an early age to play certain roles in life. Some are unique to our family, culture or religion and some are more collective such as mother, father, leader or rescuer.
As our stories evolve, so do the characters (and roles) that form them. Throughout recorded history certain core human archetypes have danced through our collective imaginations. All we must do is look to a myth-making system like Hollywood or indeed the Tarot to see how our understanding of the archetypal nature of life has changed and continues to do so. Archetypes like the Hero, Guru and Fool are still present and yet have evolved into new forms. The core archetypes we are seeing in the world right now are trans-gender, trans-culture, and trans-dogma. They are archetypes that appeal to our transforming human mythology and unite rather than separate us.
THEY ARE THE ADVENTURERS, REBELS, WARRIORS AND LOVERS OF OUR AGE.
WITH GILES HUTCHINS
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
Who you are is unique.
There has never been another you.
Never will be again.
Exactly as you are, right now, reading this.
Your eyes, your hair, your skin, your mind.
Your experiences and memories,
One of no kind.
Special.
WITH MAC MACARTNEY
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
I regularly find myself talking to people about the difference between story-telling and story-making. Here is my take. The former is an inherently human activity that helps us derive meaning of the world and our place in it. The latter is how we actually transform our inner and outer circumstances. Story-making is where the rubber hits the road and we are asked to walk our talk, in order to manifest new possibilities and opportunities. This only happens we commit and say ‘yes’ to new life experiences.
11 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT GRATITUDE
- It’s never absent from our lives
- It is the easiest way to meditate
- It helps us focus on what is important
- It dispels the lies of our minds
- It kills our stories of fear
- It brings us the vital energy of life anew
- It’s powerfully soft
- It fuels our healing
- It comes immediately after revelation & understanding
- It is the forerunner to grace
- It is another word for love
“You must tell the story that unites”
It is a journey that began before I was born. One that has taken me over 6 years to write, re-write, weave & alchemize. It’s a labour of love that I tried to walk away from several times, only to pick it back up again – compelled by a story that wanted to be told.
A few years ago, I found myself standing on stage in front of hundreds of women at a mentoring conference in London. We had just completed a visioning exercise to bring to life our biggest dream……and had then been asked to multiply it by 10! Now – I can dream pretty big when I want to. Beyond Human Stories was born from one of the biggest dreams that I have ever dared to breathe life into. So when I was asked to multiply this big dream by 10, it blew open my narrative boundaries. It made me think on a completely new level what I deemed to be possible. That day I made an oath to co-create a global storytelling platform that redefines what it means to be human.
Another day draws to a close
You sigh in relief as your mind lies – ‘it’s over’
Flickering thoughts of exhaustion, covered by hunger
Your body craves food
Physical, mental, emotional, soul food
Your cupboards are full yet you are starving
The Beyond Human Stories, Restorying Life Podcast launches!!!
The podcast is a series of dialogues with global thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs and modern mystics exploring the art and science of storymaking. Over the next 12 months we will cover the dynamics of personal, communal and global change through our series of ME, WE and US.
Unity is one of those words that can mean many things and hide many secrets. We come to it when we are ready and not before, although its sweet aroma stalks us every day of our lives. The Unity Stage in the Restory Cycle is by its very nature hard to describe in words. Many teachers, saints and laymen and women have attempted to do so, each with a unique voice. And yet, like every story, these accounts feel incomplete. Unity is something we must discover ourselves.
Eventually, we come to a point when we have been given all the information we need. This is a moment of great responsibility. It is the point when we must stop simply wandering along the trails of life and begin to carve one through the world for ourselves, using our intentions. For the first time in our journey, we shift our focus from an inward path of ‘me’ to one of outwardly dynamic giving, or ‘gifting’.
There comes a time when we have been given all the clues we need and we are faced with a choice. The mask of our identity has started to fray around the edges and we know that transformation is knocking at our door. We reach out and touch the stories that we wish we were living, yet they remain just beyond our reach. In order to grasp them, we need to let go of everything that stands in their way.
I believe that within every being in the universe there is a compulsion to seek: a star seeks to expand its internal heat until it burns its bright life out; a plant, forging upwards, seeks the light of the sun so it can grow and expand; a bird seeks its nesting place so it can reproduce and fulfill its primal urges; and human beings seek to find our true place, story and reason for existing so we can come to peace and happiness within our hearts and souls. It’s a quest that we often can’t put into words yet it’s ever present, lurking underneath the surface of our thoughts, feelings and actions in every moment of our lives.
One of the more prevalent themes of our current human story centers around the concept of struggle – the idea that we must overcome numerous and various challenges in life so that we may earn our place in the world. Our current social ideas of success and failure usually orbit around a number of trials that we must undertake and pass in order to achieve our goals, whatever these may be.
I believe that we all come into this world with an inner spark that we carry across galaxies and lifetimes. It is this inner light that guides us when we are lost. One of the core purposes of our lives, I believe, is to activate 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.
Over the last few years I have found myself on a wild roller-coaster ride of transformation in just about every area of my life. It has been a thrilling (and at times terrifying) ride through to the depths of my fears and up to the blissful heights of my hopes and dreams. At times, it has been hard to discern truth from illusion. Whilst at other times I have experienced levels of clarity and insight previous unknown to me on a micro and macro scale. There were many moments when I was so exhausted, I longed to get off and rest for a while. Then just around the next bend, I would find myself suddenly impatient, wanting to make life go faster. I guess this is the paradoxical nature of our human life; a smorgasbord of experience where we get to taste a little (or a lot) of everything dependent on our appetite.
All pervasive and waiting to be remembered, silence sits within each and every one of us.
It is a place of utter calm, utter peace and utter rejuvenation.
Silence is there whenever we stop and breathe.
It is the place pregnant with answers to every question we may ask.
It reminds us that we hold the keys to our life story.
A question that stalks us throughout our lives.
One that we never fully answer (even if we think we do).
The question that is with us at our beginning.
And our ending.
A few years ago I awoke from a powerful dream. You know, the kind that comes from somewhere outside of the normal mental shenanigans that our brains work through in sleep. A dream that contained within it a potent message.
I am naked, sitting on a white wooden chair in a room of the same colour. Looking down at my body I see words appearing all over my skin as if they are tattooed. All the words begin with ‘re’.
Geomayra is one of the strongest and most tenacious women I have ever had the honour of walking besides. She inspires me on a daily basis with her positivity, hope and flat refusal to see her life as anything other than a precious gift.
The power of storytelling
I looked up at the turquoise blue Colorado sky. Cloudless, pure and sparkling with unseen magic and energy. The bright summer sunshine was shining down on my shoulders and I was lost in my own fantasy world where every rock, tree and flower was alive with its own personality and wisdom.
I was interviewed by the vibrant Laura Peli from RTC (Round the Corner) a few weeks ago. Our combined energies and passions in helping awaken others to their potential to live a life of meaning, purpose and passion ignited a beautiful dialogue of which the highlights are presented here in the RTC blog.
“We are the Ancient Ones who have returned for our people (ALL people). Once we filled their bellies, sheltered their bodies and taught their Spirits… We have returned.”
The ancient spirit of the buffalo
In Service Of The New Story On Earth
As I realise the light within, I turn golden with my own soul
All my life I have waited for this moment
Take a moment and close your eyes. Think back to a moment in childhood where you discovered something magical; something unseen by the eyes of adults and the hustle of the world around you.
How do you start by learning archaeology in uni and end up with a business that helps people tell their life stories anew? Social entrepreneur Genevieve Boast has the answer!
Genevieve Boast is the Founder of Beyond Human Stories, its vibe and mission are a direct reflection of her own evolution and journey in life. It exists to remind us all that we have the potential to be every day hero’s. That the stories we believe about ourselves, those around us and the world in general are rarely ‘true’ and can always be rewritten. That writer and storyteller is us.
Ever since I was born, I have been obsessed with seeing beauty all around me. Fascinated by the essence of living things. I was born in Colorado in the glorious Rocky Mountains so seeing the beauty in nature here was easy.
This is a beautiful guest post by my friend Menno de Block
Most travelers contend that one of the best things of their travels is interacting with the local population. Having lived in Cambodia for a little over three months now, one thing is certain: many of the locals I’ve met here are host to some incredible stories.