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Archive Number 3580 | ||
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Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:07:37 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit more thoughts ..... for several years i told a particular story from which I could not disengage from my own beshadowed hidden feelings. Each time I told it, almost driven to tell it, I felt that there was something wrong in the telling.When it was over there was a thick feeling of gluey discomfort for myself and the audience. For a long time I did not tell it at all -It took me years to recognize that I was stuck somewhere myself and the retelling grabbed me unaware and engaged me in this territory like a dirt storm. I was therefore unable to be the storyteller telling a whole story, but I was captured in an emotional state of the story and character and could not let it go. Having let it go at some point, I saw the story differently and also was able finally to tell it for my audience to live through the entire process rather than making it my story and suddenly engaging them in my own unprocessed pain. It reminds me of the man who once came to me after the death of his wife. Her death was tragic and somewhat the result of a series of things that had happened which he had no chance to apologize for. His telling was purely an attempt to extricate himself from unbearable pain and my own inability at the time to listen without taking his pain. I have learned so much about the state of mind of the teller and the listener since then.. My deep responsibilty to create the right atmosphere of listening and prepare my listeners. The sound of my voice and the intention of the telling with presence and detachment without losing myself in the story, or abstracting myself out of the event. How to dive under the images and see the whole process of the story .. And how to listen to those who can not help but attempt to release themselves from pain by trying to give it away... unknowing that they are doing this and also unknowing that they are attached to the reliving and reinstigating with ever more fixation on the pain, rather than gaining any awareness or self love, or understanding. I am awe struck with what I still need to learn about all of this. Laura ------------------------------- To Unsubscribe from Healingstory send the message: unsubscribe healingstory to: listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu ------------------------------- | ||