The Muse

I am a story teller. I love telling people stories. I am a walking anecdote, my head full of metaphor. You might find me beside a campfire, weaving my craft. You might find me beneath a bridge with my fellow indigents. You could be at an inn, or in a pub, in the small hours of day and realize I am speaking, though you hadn't known I was, and suddenly be riveted. You might read one of my stories in a book. A friend might forward you one online. I love stories because I am one. I am a myth. I come from a family of myth, of mythic proportions, of gods and goddesses. They have gone but I remain; the heir of their legacy.

I am not without my enemies in the world of stories. Because we are, in fact, the end result of our dreams, our stories, there are those who wish to craft us stories that serve their purposes, and press those stories on us. These stories speak of sin, of a fall from grace that never happened, of only one perfect son. These stories tell us what is real and what is not, in defiance of our senses, our logic, our own and our neighbor's testimony. These stories define success and failure in such a way as to ensnare the soul. These stories sicken. These stories keep the mass of humanity pliable. And those are not my stories. In some cases they were mine once, but they were taken and twisted, so that rather than uplift and inspire, rather than inform, now they poison. If I could catch them, and lock them back in their box, I certainly would; but there is little more elusive of capture than a story. So it is that the responsibility of discernment falls on you, the listener, the reader, the observer. Will you choose to live a great story? What is a great story? Will you choose something inspiring? Or will you choose something more comfortable? Or will you embrace those stories that tell you the worst of humanity, unaware that what you choose to see in the world, which is your mirror, is ultimately yourself? Will you believe lies that pluck off the wings of your divinity, and burden you so that your back is bent double beneath load? And it's all a load of bull shit.

I know, beings such as I am, are not supposed to talk that way. Right? Wrong.

It would all be heinous, and tragic, if you were not a forever being. But you have, we all have, existed from the very beginning, and are without end. And here we must make distinct from one another, human stories, and divine stories. Human stories have a limited existence. They are born from a lack of knowledge, and resolve into the past when the wisdom of them is learned. Divine stories are never ending. They are a tapestry made of all the little stories, and embroidered with pearls of wisdom. Thus, you have, and we all have, chosen one set of human stories for one life, which may in practice stretch over many lifetimes, and a new set when those are finished, and so on and so forth, and will continue to do so. Did I mention forever?

Did I mention that while I am a story teller, I suck at endings. I just don't think that way. My version of an ending would be: and then he/she got it, and never believed such nonsense again, and chose a new story to live. Those I inspire often do think in terms of endings though. They have too often still been caught up in the illusion of mortality. And so many have felt a need to finalize their stories. They wrap it up and either move on to write a new story, or live a new story, or, more often, die. That doesn't bother me if their stories are small, human, transient stories, meant to end. I just don't like the inference that like human dramas, divine stories also end. He lived happily ever after? How about he ascended happily into the everafter. She died, but because she was good in the end, she went to heaven? Where she got to sit on a cloud and pluck a harp for eternity? How about, she died, but because she had learned the moral of her story she got to go on to a new one. All stories go on, because all lives go on; because all of life is forever ongoing unfoldment. Thus are the best of stories. Ongoing. Inspiring. Forever unfolding into that which is greater and greater.