Remember, your past is a fiction, and the future has yet to be written.

Did you think the past was written in stone? Did you mistake it for 'non fiction?' How, when memory is notoriously unreliable, and people mistake 'emotional responses' for thinking? And you've been put through the blender.

"She put me through some changes boy, sort of like a Waring blender.' Warren Zevon. (Died of cancer a few years back, listen to the last album for an interesting take on life).

This is why, with every new client, we commence a thorough rewriting. I hone in on the cues to fictions, and catch them, like fireflies.

Did you notice that when you used this word, your whole body tensed up?

Do you see, the story arises out of the body. Neitzsche cautioned us not to trust words that arose from someone hunched over a typewriter, in a closet somewhere, breathing stagnant air.

The story is a flowering from the anatomy.

So it's simple enough...

First, we need to know how the story has been told thus far.

How the story has been told thus far lead us to where we are. We're in this chapter because of the proceeding chapter.

If someone says, what's your story? (which is a rare occurrence, btw) how do you answer? If it's a date, how do you answer? If it's a therapist, how do you answer? (Notice that they're both equally true and equally false).

Change the prior chapters, and this chapter changes, even if you do NOTHING else.

How can that be so?

Well, for instance, you're 49 and living with your parents. You have some terminal disease. You're solo and broke.

Version 1.

I failed. I got divorced. I got sick. So here I am, hopeless.

Version 2.

I've founded empires that fell because of missteps. I separated with someone that wasn't a match, or because I hadn't learned myself. I lived out of alignment, and my body showed the symptoms.

So here I am, recuperating, much wiser, close to family, with a host of new skills and life experience.

Planning my next move.

***

I'm saying this because, if you're stuck somewhere, it's because you wrote the story of your life so that to be stuck is the only option.

People lift illness up and put it on a pedastal, as if the principles of human transformation didn't apply to illness! What is more transformative than healing an illness?

Rudolf Steiner wrote that after a fever, children reach new heights of development. Hence the flashing, burning eyes and new awakenings after a severe illness.

It's impossible. That's just the way the story has been told.

Joanna Budwig, for instance, once said that cancer was weak and easily defeated. If that was the story of today, imagine how different the world would be. Perhaps you'd choose a different treatment.

Impossible?

Remember, there is a scene in every script when things seem impossible: beyond impossible. That's when the breakthroughs happen, because the hero is compelled to evolve.

The universe is ruthlessly compassionate: you will evolve. Choose a guide, a manual, an archetype... and hold on.

Love and rapture,

Steven Budden Jr.

Budden.us