Becoming a storyteller

For hundreds of thousands of years our understanding of the world and of ourselves was developed and shared orally, using story. These stories were not written down, so they were constantly changing, they were alive. It was also understood that they pointed to broader and deeper information that could not be put directly into words. They were never meant to be taken “literally.” In fact, the word literal comes from littera, the Latin word for letter. The concept of taking things literally did not exist before writing. Everything was understood to have layers of meaning.

Stories were not simply memorized, they were pondered as they related to ongoing events in the world. Understanding the world is not something that is done only with our minds. Our bodily senses help us detect and understand what’s happening in and around us. We live immersed in living webs of energy and information. Meaningful interaction with what’s going on requires more than just human words. Story and myth point to ways with which we can interact more deeply with others of all kinds. They help us understand where we, as humans, are situated in the web of life.

Stories are also used in rituals to help us shift our awareness. One example is the shift between our mundane everyday experience of the world and when we move into sacred space. Accessing sacred space and time was once common, but most of use have temporarily lost this skill. Stories, are powerful tools to help us relearn how to experience these states. Sacred space and time are not theoretical constructs, they are lived experiences. All cultures had many pathways to reach them. Reaching them, however, is not simply a matter of acquiring information, of being told facts. Reaching them requires you to transform yourself into someone who can access these states.

Stories also have the ability to move information deeply into our being, where it can help us rewrite our deep programming. A very common use of stories in the past was to help individuals become more mature human beings. You become more mature by developing new habits and a deeper and broader understanding of the world. Just getting older does not necessarily make you more mature. It’s difficult to figure out how to do these things on your own. Stories allow us to share paths that work well.

In stories there are always at least three layers of meaning. There’s the surface layer, that draws you in and serves as a memory tool. Who did what when. Then there’s an emotional layer where feelings are generated as the characters move through the story. Without emotional depth the story will feel hollow and listeners won’t invest much time or energy to understand it.

And then there are the deep layers. These layers carry information deeply into your being and generate insights and transformation that goes beyond words. They can help you access spiritual planes. Different people will see different things in the deep layers. There can be deep information that the author or teller of the story was not even aware of during its creation.

The natural world is not simply a setting for human stories to play out in. There are stories going on in the natural world all of the time. You can learn to understand and participate in these stories, which are not told in human languages. Events in the natural world weave in and out of the human world. Like all worlds, stories have spirit moving through them. For this reason you don’t want to try to pin down every detail in a story. You want to give it room to breathe so that different energies and information can move through it.

Almost all cultures today are missing elders and storytellers. Many storytellers did not grow up with a set of stories that could help them locate themselves in the world. They took Rumi’s words to heart “If you haven’t been fed, become bread.” No matter what age you are now you can learn how to tell stories. In the process your own understanding of the world will increase and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have provided at least a few crumbs to starving souls around you. As Martin Shaw says we all need a set of stories so that we have some mythic ground to stand on. So that when the world pushes at us we can push back.

Great stories and great storytellers don’t try to tell you all of the answers. They try to get you to think for yourself. They try to get you to question what you know now and activate your imagination as to what might be possible.

The only way to get good at telling stories is to jump in and start telling stories. There are three main things you need to be aware of: the storyteller, the listener and their imagination, and the story itself as a living being. You also need to remember that the people in front of you are not the only ones you are talking to when you tell a story. There are ancestors standing by. There are other stories listening in. Weather patterns may be drifting through. So you not only have to tell the story, you have to listen and be aware of what’s going on around you.

Originally all stories were told and passed on orally. Stories are much older than writing. If possible, it’s preferable that a story first comes into your life through your ears, not through your eyes. Often that’s not possible today, so reading a story as the first way of hearing it is perfectly acceptable. But don’t try to memorize the story before you tell it to others orally. Sketch a storyboard. A storyboard is just a series of rough sketches that remind you of the scenes in the story. Here is a storyboard sketch:

Simple sketch for storyboard.

You want each telling of the story to be unique. By using the storyboard you leave breathing room for new information. This keeps the story alive.

Don’t tell people what a story means. Let the story unfold and reveal itself to each person in a way that’s meaningful to them. Hermes will never come to your aid if you utter the phrase “and of course this means…”

When you’re telling the story you need to keep your energy up. You need to be higher energy than your audience. Otherwise they’ll have difficulty paying attention. It’s good to move around a bit, stand up, sit down, bring in immediate things from the surroundings. Vary your pace and tone of voice.

It’s important to remember that the facts alone are never enough to tell the whole story. This is why you focus on creating a mood, an image, emotions as you tell a story. More than facts are needed to tell deep truths. You want your story to be an unfolding adventure.

Stories are living entities, so they need to be fed. You feed a story by thinking about where you are located in the story. This might change on different tellings of the story. You need to acknowledge where your desires at this moment would place you in the story. This can help you see possible paths forward that you wouldn’t have thought of by yourself.

In stories the forest or the wild often refers to higher or deeper realms. Castles or court refer to normal day to day rules and programs. As we write stories down there is a danger that we will trap them. That they will become stagnant rules and programs that we follow without thinking. This is why it’s better to share stories orally. It leaves more room for the imagination and for discussion with others during and after the story.

An extremely common theme in many old stories is about reconnecting to your soul. Sometimes you can call your soul into communication by experiencing or creating beauty or truth. Sometimes you need to trouble your soul into communication by attempting difficult things. Your soul will slumber if you’re simply repeating social programming for the expectations of others.

For a more complete understanding of story see “A Branch from the Lightning Tree,” by Dr. Martin Shaw

If you want to explore accessing states of wonder and transformation see Josh Schrei, The Emerald Podcast.