My dear friends...
Each of us has a "story" that we're living. It is the story that we tell ourselves (and others) about who we are and how we got to be this way and how we wish life to be from now on. Every time we get our feelings hurt, or find ourselves disappointed in something that someone else has done or said (or not done or not said), we are getting into our "story." Every time we set ourselves up with expectations or requirements (of ourselves or others), we are getting into our "story." Every time we find ourselves reacting and responding to another (or to ourselves) from a place of hurt or damage (real or perceived), we are getting into our "story."
Our "story" can literally run our lives. Indeed, for most people it is the only thing that does. We come from our story when we face incoming data, and we go to our story when we send outgoing data. Take our "story" away and we all but disappear.
Here is a typical example of a "story": Marilyn was eight years old when she was molested by her stepfather the first time. It happened again, until she turned 14, when it finally stopped, for reasons about which she was never clear. She kept her stepfather's behavior a secret from her entire family, and especially her mother, until she was 16. Then, she quietly and tearfully took her mother aside and told her everything.
Her mother didn't believe her.
Her mother called Marilyn a liar and a dirty little tramp who was just so angry at her stepfather for the rules he was laying down around the house that she was willing to stop at nothing, at no allegation or exaggeration, to hurt him, to get him out of the house and out of her life.
Marilyn has been "coming from" this "story" ever since. How this shows up in her life is a deep disregard and distrust of all males, and also as a continual wariness about confiding in or trusting anybody. She looks to all people who are close to her (that is, if she can even allow herself to get close to people) to betray her sooner or later, and this mars and terribly complicates her relationships with everyone.
She also feels and relives the damage from the original offense, and soothes the unhealed places in herself with various kinds of "acting out," including drug and alcohol abuse and, ironically, a kind of sexual addiction that has her enter into all sorts of liaisons with men, allowing them to fall in love with her, only then to drop them like hot potatoes, leaving them reeling with hurt and anger -- all as a "pay back" for their being "male."
This is just an example. Everyone has a story they are coming from as they encounter the world. Some stories are more serious in their ramifications than others, but all stories play their effect on the day-to-day living of individual lives...until they don't anymore.
The time comes when people simply decide that they no longer wish to identity themselves with their "story," but now wish to "come from" a new set of data when they engage life itself. This process of "dropping their story" is not an easy one, but it can be done. It is a matter of stepping aside from the story and realizing that "that was then, and this is now." It is a matter of actively choosing to never again mortgage a future moment to a past one.
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