Being aware of the storytelling and me as the narrator doesn´t have to be such frustrating. Not always! Sometimes the stories and the telling is loosening its importance and weight – although I am going on with the telling.
And sometimes I can observe an amazing impact on my students. Being aware of my storytelling and being aware that the student also is “only” engaged in stories that he or she is telling – without talking about this observation – something can open up – a feeling of more lightness for both of us.
How does that work? In my experience there seems to be a prerequisite: I do need some practice of inquiry – of being aware. so I can develop more confidence and a feeling of appreciation.
As Soudabah mentioned during the last call: “dawning of love” or Jack: dawning of foregiveness”. We all are telling stories – we cannot help but do so.
Karin
Thank you for this wonderfully lucid and simple sharing. Jack has a very interesting essay called, “Participatory Knowing,” in which he describes what happens when we inhabit a story. It allows us to know from the inside the systems in which we are embedded, here as ‘lived stories.’ But in doing so, we find we also open and loosen our grip on habitual perspectives, as we come to appreciate that we are all storying together: that I am telling a story just as others are as well, and in seeing this, we both are empowered to hold our stories differently and also to tell new stories together (as we are weaving and telling them now). This is the participatory element of the ‘knowing’ Jack describes.
The nonverbal communication you describe between you and your students reflects this beautifully, to me: in your own recognition of your storying, you free both yourself and your students (meaning, I think, your students intuitively find themselves freed, in their experience of themselves in relation to you, from any particular story — and thus able to ‘tell’ anew).
Delighting in the creative story play of TSK,
Bruce
Hi, Karin,
Thank you for this wonderfully lucid and simple sharing. Jack has a very interesting essay called, “Participatory Knowing,” in which he describes what happens when we inhabit a story. It allows us to know from the inside the systems in which we are embedded, here as ‘lived stories.’ But in doing so, we find we also open and loosen our grip on habitual perspectives, as we come to appreciate that we are all storying together: that I am telling a story just as others are as well, and in seeing this, we both are empowered to hold our stories differently and also to tell new stories together (as we are weaving and telling them now). This is the participatory element of the ‘knowing’ Jack describes.
The nonverbal communication you describe between you and your students reflects this beautifully, to me: in your own recognition of your storying, you free both yourself and your students (meaning, I think, your students intuitively find themselves freed, in their experience of themselves in relation to you, from any particular story — and thus able to ‘tell’ anew).
Delighting in the creative story play of TSK,
Bruce
I loved this telling of yours Karin. It opened something in me.
When I am aware, I have found when telling a story to myself or others, there is an opening, both for the teller and the receiver. If I’m telling it to myself, there’s the space of constructing, and then there’s the space of considering what was told. If the telling is to another, then we have that unique opportunity to share spaces, to commune in an opening of our own creation – where for at least a moment I become you and you become me. We touch in a world we share that we have made together. It can be an opening of profound depth if we allow it, a great space and time of intimate knowing. :-)
David