New Spiritual Musing: "The Power of Story"

The Power of Story

The idea for today’s spiritual musing hovered above my head like a heavy rain cloud waiting for the right atmospheric conditions to set its refreshing life-giving moisture free, and the right conditions came with the addition of more thoughts and insights that added to the specific gravity of the idea of my spiritual musing, the simple idea of “story.”

Penny and I were having coffee in my writing room early one morning, as we always do, and she put the book she was reading down and said to me, “This is boring. I’m tired of reading this kind of stuff. I’d rather read a good story instead—”

She was reading Robert Moss’s The Boy Who Died and Came Back, Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse, an autobiographical account of his near death and dream experiences which I had read, along with four or five other books by Moss.

“Why?” I asked, intrigued by the abruptness of her comment, as though she had just had her fill of that kind of literature. “Why would you prefer a good story instead?”

“Because I get more out of a good story than this stuff. I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t read these kinds of books any more. I like your writing. It doesn’t bore me like this stuff, but I’d rather read your stories instead. I get more out of a good story.”

That did it. The cloud burst and the idea for today’s spiritual musing on story possessed me with daemonic imperative, and I had to explore it…

I had just finished writing My Writing Life, Reflections on My High School Hero and Literary Mentor Ernest “Papa” Hemingway, an unexpected sequel to my memoir The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, unexpected because the call to write this sequel came with a surprise Christmas gift of an Indigo Hemingway Notebook from Penny’s sister which called me back to creative writing that I kept putting off, like my book of short stories Sparkles in the Mist, my allegorical novel The Gadfly, and several other novels that are still waiting to be polished and published; so Penny’s comment hit home, because I could no longer hold back what I had come to realize about story upon completing My Writing Life.

I love Hemingway more for his short stories than his novels, but story is story and a short story simply concentrates the teleological meaning of the human condition more succinctly than a novel; that’s why I was called back to my high school hero and literary mentor with my sequel to The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, because I could no longer put off writing the stories that have been calling me for years. But not until Penny’s comment about her preference for reading a good story over those other kinds of books of which my library shelves are burdened, did I finally get the message; and before I jump in with both feet into creative writing, I have to explore the intrinsic power of story in today’s musing.

I tried one more time to draw Penny out, but she could not express why she felt she got more satisfaction out of reading a good story than those other kinds of books that Robert Moss and Carolyn Myss and Neale Donald Walsh and Thomas Moore and Gary Zukav and Dr. Wayne Dyer and kindred inner-directed truth-seeking people have written, and I have no choice but to abandon to my creative unconscious to explore the allure of story in today’s spiritual musing; but I fear that this may be a dangerous musing.

A dangerous musing dares to say the unsayable, and I hate being called to explore an idea that will take me beyond the edge of thought because I know it will defy logic; but such is the nature of story, whose teleological purpose is to nourish the soul and resolve the inherent paradox of man’s dual nature. That’s the danger, because how can one expect anyone to believe that man is both real and false, that he is and is not what he is?

It took me a lifetime to resolve the paradoxical nature of the dual consciousness of man, the being and non-being of man’s individuating reflective self-consciousness which has been the central theme of all my writing; but it wasn’t until Penny, in her exasperation with Robert Moss’s book The Boy Who Died and Came Back, blurted out that she got more out of reading a good story than those other kinds of books did it dawn on me why; and as simple as it may be, she got more out of reading a good story because story has the power to resolve the paradoxical nature of man’s dual self that those other kinds of books can only point to.

That’s a big statement. Big enough to explore in a whole book, which curiously enough I’ve already done in books like The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, Gurdjieff Was Wrong But His Teaching Works, and especially in my book The Pearl of Great Price; so I need not explore it in today’s musing. My point here is to explain what Penny meant by saying that she got more out of reading a good story than she did out of those other kinds of books; so, just what is it about story that satisfies this longing in one’s soul for—what? Just what is it exactly that a good story satisfies if not personal resolution of one’s paradoxical nature?

That’s the epiphany that came to me when Penny said that she got more out of reading a good story than those other kinds of books that she now found boring; but just what did she mean by those other kinds of books? And why cannot they satisfy that longing in one’s soul for resolution of one’s real and false self, soul’s longing for wholeness?

I’ve been reading those other kinds of books my whole life, ever since I was called to find my true self by Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge in high school more than half a century ago, and if I were to define what Penny meant by those other kinds of books I would say inner-directed books, books that address the author’s own journey of self-discovery, like The Seven Storey Mountain by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, Shirley MacLaine’s Sage-ing While Age-ing, Victor Frankl’s remarkable book Man’s Search for Meaning, C. G. Jung’s even more remarkable “confrontation with the unconscious” that he chronicled in The Red Book, and Proof of Heaven, by Doctor Eben Alexander.

The marketplace is flooded with those other kinds of books, with new ones coming out every time someone feels compelled to tell their “amazing” story of self-discovery, which often translate into self-help books of spiritual awakening, each person’s story being but another path to one’s true self little realizing that all paths lead to Rome eventually (I’m still waiting for Shirley MacLaine’s next book just to see how far her journey of self-discovery has taken her); and that’s the gist of today’s spiritual musing—the simple fact that every person’s life is the way to the resolution of one’s dual nature, one’s personal path to wholeness and completeness. That’s the power of story that Penny intuited…

“But they all serve their purpose,” I replied, coming to the defense of all those other kinds of book which, incidentally, I love to read. “Those books point to the way, each according to the author’s personal journey of self-discovery; like Robert Moss’s book The Boy Who Died and Came Back. But I guess when you’ve read enough of those books they can get boring,” I added, assenting to Penny’s literary ennui.

“Well they bore me now. My next book’s going to be a good story,” Penny said, and when she finished reading Moss’s book (Penny is stubborn, and she will finish every book she starts, including James Joyce’s ponderous Ulysses) she came into my writing room for our morning coffee with June Callwood’s Twelve Weeks In Spring, “…the inspiring story of how a group of people came together to help a friend, and in doing so discovered their own unexpected strength and humanity,” which Penny found on one of my shelves and which, ironically, bridged those other kinds of books to a good story with the personal story of sixty-eight year old Margaret Fraser’s death by cancer which she did not have to face alone because her writer friend June Callwood and a group of friends helped see her through to the end; but I have not shared this irony with Penny yet. I’ll wait until she finishes reading Twelve Weeks ins Spring first; then I can share with her why a good story can be so satisfying.

 The irony of course is that life itself is the way to one’s real self; and by way, I mean the natural individuation process of man’s paradoxical real and false self—which makes every story, whether biographical or fictional, one’s personal way to wholeness and completeness, the only difference being that a good story satisfies soul’s longing for resolution much more than those other kinds of books that only point to resolution. That’s why when I pressed Penny again to explain why she got more out of reading a good story than those other kinds of books, she replied: “A good story pulls me in, and I experience the story as I’m reading it. Those other kinds of books don’t do that for me. They only scratch the surface.”

“That’s because a good story is about becoming, which is the teleological purpose of man’s existence. You experience your own becoming when you read a good story, and this nourishes soul’s longing for wholeness. This is why you find stories more satisfying.”

“Much more satisfying than those other kinds of books,” Penny replied, with a note of triumph in her voice, thus bringing closure to today’s spiritual musing.

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